Taj of the Deccan

I have blogged about my jinxed trip to the Taj Mahal but I must say that I have visited the Taj of the Deccan. Bibi ka Maqbara is called the Taj of the Deccan because it is inspired by the architecture, carvings and landscaping of the Taj Mahal. Located in Aurangabad, Maharashtra which had become an important centre for the Mughals in the 17^th century, the Bibi ka Maqbara is said to have been built somewhere between 1651 and 1661. Although the name means it is the ‘tomb of the wife’, it was actually built by Aurangzeb’s elder son Azam Shah (Akbar’s brother) in memory of his mother Rabbia Ul Durrani or Dilras Banu Begum. When I cross-checked the dates through a search on Wiki, I found that Azam Shah was born in 1653 so it is unlikely that the construction would have started in 1651 although these are the dates mentioned on the inscription put up by the Archeological Survey of India. The same inscription states that the monument took shape under leadership of Ata-Ullah, who was the architect and Hanspat Rai, the engineer. It is also called ‘poor man’s Taj’ because it was built with a fraction of the resources spent on the Taj Mahal and tries to copy the grandeur of the Taj.