He Built The Taj Mahal - Then Spent 8 Years Staring At It From Prison

The Taj Mahal is the most visited monument on earth. Most people know it as a love story, an emperor who built the most beautiful building in the world for his wife. What most people don't know is that the man who built it spent the last eight years of his life imprisoned in a tower with a single window facing it across the river. That he asked, repeatedly, to be taken there. That he was refused, every time. That when he finally crossed the river, he was carried, because he was dead. This is the full story of the Mughal Empire and the Taj Mahal. From Babur losing Samarkand in the mountains of Central Asia, to Humayun falling down his library stairs, to Akbar building a city and walking away from it, to the love story of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, the building that grief made, and the last Mughal emperor dying in exile in Burma, writing poetry about two yards of earth in the beloved homeland. Rest, relax, and drift through history. Chapters: Welcome Opening Babur: The Founder Shah Jahan's Early Life The Death of Mumtaz The Decision to Build Dawn on the Yamuna Construction The Peacock Throne Court Life at Its Height The War of Succession Aurangzeb's Victory The Imprisonment Death and the Asymmetry Aurangzeb's Reign The Fall: Bahadur Shah Zafar The Taj Today