October 30, 1773 Hannah’s Rock

Arjumand Banu was the daughter of a wealthy Persian noble, third wife of Emperor Shah Jahan of the Mughal Empire, who ruled the lands of South Asia from modern-day Afghanistan to Kashmir and south to the Deccan plateau of South India.

As Empress consort and beloved by the Emperor above all his wives, Arjumand was better known by the title “Mumtaz Mahal”, translating from the Persian as “the exalted one of the palace”.   Jahan called her ‘Malika-i-Jahan’.  She was his “Queen of the World”.

The labor and delivery of a daughter, the couple’s 14th child was a terrible trial for the Empress Consort, a 30-hour ordeal resulting in postpartum hemorrhage leading to  her death on June 17, 1631.

The Emperor went into secluded mourning, emerging a year later with his back bent, his beard turned white.  There followed a 22-year period of design and construction for a mausoleum and funerary garden…