Mughal Architecture

Mughal architecture is the Indo-Islamic building style developed under the Mughal Empire on the Indian subcontinent from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, fusing Persian, Islamic and indigenous Indian architectural traditions into a distinctive imperial idiom. Its buildings are marked by large bulbous domes, tall slender minarets, monumental gateways called iwans, and extensive use of white marble frequently combined with red sandstone, often inlaid with semiprecious stones in intricate floral patterns using a technique called pietra dura. Mughal builders also laid out their most important structures within a charbagh, a formal garden divided into four quadrants by water channels, symbolizing the four rivers of paradise described in Islamic tradition and framing the main building as its ceremonial centerpiece. The style's most celebrated monument is the Taj Mahal at Agra, a mausoleum the emperor Shah Jahan commissioned in 1632 and completed around 1653 to house the tomb of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, built almost entirely of white marble and widely regarded as the summit of Mughal architectural achievement.