I’m in Taj Mahal right now, a building that needs no freaking introduction and in this blog we're gonna explore the city of Agra the former capital city of the Mughal empire.
So the history of Agra actually stretches back thousands of years and this place was even mentioned in the Mahabharata but the peak of its glory was without a doubt when the city was the capital of the Mughal empire for around 130 years and the Mughal empire stretched for 200 years from Afghanistan on the west to Bangladesh on the east to beyond central India in the south. For the purpose of fitting the history of Agra into one video that I can present to you I’m just gonna focus on the Mughal era.
So right now I’m in Aram Bagh which is five kilometers from the Taj Mahal and also next to the Yamuna. This is the oldest Mughal garden in India it was built in 1528 by Babur who was the first Mughal emperor. Babur was actually born in modern day Uzbekistan and he was direct descendants of both Genghis Khan and Timur both of whom were the fiercest warriors or conquerors in the history of the world not just Asia and Babur without a doubt founded the Mughal empire.
In 1526 he met in a very decisive battle with the Lodi sultanate of Delhi and this sultanate at the time was controlling northern India. So even though the Delhi sultanate outnumbered Babur's men by tens of thousands of people and had like 100 elephants, they were using battle tactics that were very outdated and Babur on the other hand had very skilled soldiers and had artillery help from the ottomans or the Turks.
So Babur won that battle and he ended up taking over all of northern India effectively founding the Mughal dynasty and setting up his capital right here in Agra city. Over the next few years he won a couple more decisive battles which further expanded the empire then a few years after that in 1530 he actually died and he was buried for a while right here in this garden in Aram Bagh.
so what's really cool here is that you can see all these wild buffalo chilling by the side of the Yamuna river. Okay so this fort had been around for a long long time. There's squirrels behind me.. but no one knows how far back it goes but in 1526 when Babur beat Delhi sultanate at the first battle of Panipath then he took over Agra as the capital of his emerging Mughal empire and he took over the fort and this fort continued to be the main fort for the Mughal dynasty for more than a hundred years starting from there.
So when Babur died in 1530 when his son Humayun became the second Mughal emperor he was actually crowned inside the Fort.So don't confuse this fort with the red fort in Delhi even though this is also a fort made from red sandstone that is a UNESCO world heritage site too.
When I was coming in, I saw a lot of Islamic iconography but apparently this fort has a separate section with Hindu temples where Hindus could worship. That's because Babur's grandson Akbar who largely expanded this fort like 50 years after him he was a very religiously tolerant leader and he actually married a Hindu princess called Jodha. There's lots of movies and tv shows about the two of them Jodha Akbar in India.
The Mughal Empire by Emperor Akbar from the period of 1571 to 1585. The capital was later shifted to the city of Agra.
So inside the fort you also find parts that are made entirely out of white marble because Babur’s great great grandson Shah Jahan was actually obsessed with white marble and the color white,Okay let's go back a second and talk again about Humayun. Humayun, the second Mughal emperor and son of Babur, was actually very unlucky. He lost almost all of the territories that his dad gained but then he got it back and he got even more and he was unlucky because he was betrayed very often by his family, like his brothers, and one of them repeatedly betrayed him and tried to kill him over and over again and I think the best trait about Humayun was how kind he was to his loved ones.
He forgave his brothers for trying to take over his empire and trying to kill him over and over again and some say that's the reason he wasn't the great emperor that he could have been. Then in 1556 at the young age of 47 Humayun actually died in a freak accident when he slipped and fell and hit his head and his young son Akbar came into power who would change this empire forever.
So right now I am at the tomb of Akbar the great and the structure looks awfully a lot like the Taj Mahal. There's like a gate behind me and then there's the main mausoleum right over there. So Akbar came into power at the age of 13 but he became known as one of the greatest leaders of the Mughal empire. During his almost 50-year reign the Mughal empire expanded three times in size and in wealth and in order to keep his huge empire together, he came up with a central administration system that was very effective at the time.
He was also very well known for his policies of religious tolerance towards people that were not Muslims in his empire and through these policies he actually won over the support of his non-Muslim subjects across his empire as well.
Definitely was not expecting this here. I was walking out and I saw a bunch of deer just chilling in the garden. I don't know if these are wild or tame, not sure what's going on. So I was trying to get close and try to get some shots of the deer and then I saw what looked like two dogs sort of like walking nearby the deer and I look closer and those are freaking wolves like the jungle book and then I talk to some dudes and they're like yeah the jungle starts right behind this place so there's like a lot of wild animals here.
So those deer that I saw are definitely not tame deer. They're like wild deer, they just come out here to chill sometimes and I understand why they don't want to let people out into the gardens. So after Akbar reigned from 1556 to 1605, he died and he passed on the empire to his son, the fourth emperor of the Mughal dynasty, Jahangir, and Jahangir actually built this mausoleum for eight years which is surprisingly completely empty in the middle of the day. It's just only like 15 kilometers away from the Taj Mahal but no one comes here.
I think not enough people know about this cool spot so make sure you do come here when you visit Agra. I mean there's a lot to say about Jahangir and his conquests but I think the most interesting things about him where his romances let's say and I’ll leave that up to you to look that up because that's a story by itself. After Jahangir died his son came into power as the fifth emperor of the Mughal empire and this guy was probably pretty famous across history and even in modern times for his love affair as well.
I’m talking about Shah Jahan, So Shah Jahan was the fifth Mughal emperor who ruled from 1628 to 1658 ,what a lot of people would consider as the peak of the glory of the Mughal empire. He owned the royal treasury at this time which included some very very expensive things like the kohi noor diamond.
you might have heard of and that's why some people still consider him as the wealthiest man in history. Although he was a very successful military commander and he expanded the Mughal empire further, he is most well remembered for his architectural achievements. Speaking of romances Shah Jahan was married to the love of his life and his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal for a while but in 1631 she died while giving birth to their 14th child and he was heartbroken and decided to make the Taj Mahal in her memory as a mausoleum for her.
He started construction of the site in 1631 and it took like 22 years to complete and is still one of the most amazing buildings ever created but the best way to see this building is not out here from the back but crossing the river and going to the other side and inside it. So the Taj Mahal complex is huge and there's like several gates to enter this area one of the east one on the west and one on the south.
I’m coming through the western gate and then you get close to the main royal gate. I just came in through the west gate and behind me you can see the royal gate. There's actually a garden between the main gate and the royal gate and that's like a signature of Mughal architecture everywhere you go: there's two gardens and two gates. So there's another garden on the inside too.
So I’m about to enter the royal gate and I can see the first glimpses of the Taj Mahal My hair is a mess today but I am inside the main complex of the Taj Mahal and behind me is the royal gate that I entered through and on the other side is literally the Taj Mahal.
I haven't been here for a while. Last time I was here was like 25 years ago. I don't really remember much from the last time I was here except for that a monkey tried to steal our camera so I’m definitely not putting my camera down anywhere in this complex. To my left right now are the fountains and these are electrical now but they used to be manual back in the days and when the royal family or the Mughal royal family walked in they used to like mix perfume in the water so it smelled like a natural perfume when they walked in.
Apparently it took more than 20 000 people and 5 000 animals to build this too. They had to use more than 3 000 elephants. It's crazy now, it was crazy back then.
So one of the reasons the Taj Mahal is called one of the seven wonders of the world is because it's an architectural masterpiece and it doesn't use any paintings at all. So I’m sure you guys have seen the Taj Mahal and it's minarets but did you know there's a guest house right next to it where people used to stay and on the other side there's a mosque.
The cool thing about Taj Mahal is that it's symmetrical which means all sides look like the front side. That's because when Shah Jahan created it he wanted to be able to see it from wherever he was and still feel like he was looking at the front of the Taj Mahal.
Shah Jahan who ruled over the peak of the empire was also kind of responsible for the decline of the city of Agra. in 1658 he moved the capital of the empire from here to Shahjahanabad which is basically old Delhi and then the city kind of declined over the years and eventually so did the Mughal empire.
The ownership of Agra changed hands a lot of times, most notably to the Marathas for a bit and then to British East India and then the British Raj but Agra was never the same again after the glory days of the Mughal empire. That is it for this video and I think that is it for this round of videos from India because I’m leaving the country.
...probably going to be another country.
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