Ustad Ahmad Lahori

Ustad Ahmad Lahori (the name means Master Ahmad of Lahore, and he is also called Ahmad Mi'mar, Ahmad the Architect) died in 1649 and was an architect and engineer in the service of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The official chronicle names him, with Ustad Hamid, among the architects of the Red Fort in Delhi, built between 1639 and 1648. He is widely described as the architect of the Taj Mahal, but the article stresses that the identity of that building's architect or architects is not definitely known: the only explicit evidence for the attribution to Ahmad is a poem by his son Lutfullah Muhandis, written several years after his death, and the official histories name only the supervisors Makramat Khan and Mir Abd al-Karim. Scholars Begley and Desai call the evidence circumstantial. His date of birth is unknown, with an estimate of about 1570 to 1575, and he had three sons who were architects, mathematicians or calligraphers.