Splendid Taj

When a building is as mythologised in the popular imagination as the Taj is, the best thing a book about it can do is to incorporate those myths into the telling. Giles Tillotson does this with consummate skill &mdash never depriving us of the pleasures of a juicy story, while all the while unerringly sifting fact from fiction in a surprisingly easy style. Thus, we get a memorably wry account of the familial politics of the Mughals, locating the Taj spendidly and accurately within a web of personal and cultural histories, while not refraining from the occasional jibe.

As a historian of South Asian art and architecture, Tillotson is clearly in a position to trace the building&rsquos architectural form to its Timurid and Sultanate roots. He also deals summarily with the historical and artistic controversies that have plagued the Taj since the 19th century, laying to rest such persistent ghosts as the black-Taj-across-the-river theory, or the suggestion that the Taj&rsquos craftsmanship and, more perniciously, its chief architect, were of Italian origin. Extracts from gushing travellers, grudging colonial historians and ranting Hindutva &lsquohistorians&rsquo are woven expertly into a persuasive, measured narrative that pays as much attention to the building itself as it does to the reasons why it has been seen so differently by different people. 

Finally, Tillotson provides a fascinating account of attempts to recreate the Taj Mahal in painting, photography and architecture, and a crucial chapter about the monument&rsquos conservation, detailing the indignities it was subjected to by Jat marauders and British picnickers alike, the repairs and additions undertaken by Curzon and the more recent threat posed by the 'Taj Heritage Corridor&rsquo project.