Mughal Architecture The Decline : Mughal Architecture during the reign of Aurangzeb

1. T H E D E C L I N E

2. Aurangzeb was a well educated person with a strict religious
orthodoxy. He had an acute sense of political realism and a
fierce appetite for power.
In the summer of 1659, Aurangzeb held a coronation durbar in
the Red Fort where he assumed the title of Alamgir
(World Conqueror).
After a bitter struggle with his three brothers, Aurangzeb was
the victor who took the throne.
Muhi-ud-Din Muhammad, commonly known by the
sobriquet Aurangzeb, or by his regnal title Alamgir, , was
the sixth Mughal emperor. Widely considered the last
effective Mughal emperor, his reign lasted for 49 years
from 1658 until his death in 1707.

3. Aurangzeb's harsh treatment of his brothers, Dara Shukoh, Shah Shuja and Murad Bakhsh, as well as of his father, Shah
Jahan, is hard to justify. After having imprisoned his father, Aurangzeb was compelled during the first seven years of his
reign to purchase the loyalty of Shah Jahan's amirs, writes Hambly. To provide plunder, Aurangzeb undertook aggressive
frontier campaigns.

5. MUSLIM ORTHODOXY
As his predecessors had done, Aurangzeb appointed the Rajput
chieftains to many of the highest offices of state where they worked
side by side with Muslims, writes Hambly.
But, continues Hambly, Aurangzeb eventually ended this practice.
Bothered by Hindu and other Indian influences encroaching upon the
Muslim state, Aurangzeb sought to bring Muslim orthodoxy to the
empire.
Aurangzeb's policies totally alienated the Rajput element of the
empire. Aurangzeb's inflammatory and discriminatory practices
reached their zenith in 1679 when he re-imposed the jizya, a poll-tax
on non-Muslims that had been abolished by Akbar.

6. Forsaking ARTS
Under Aurangzeb the Mughal empire reached its greatest extent, yet
the emperor's puritanical outlook and his costly wars meant that
the generous support given by his predecessors to learning and the
arts was almost completely withdrawn
Aurangzeb was, by temperament, an ascetic who avoided all forms of
luxury and ostentation; he even refused to wear silk against his body.
Aurangzeb limited his reading to works of theology and poetry of a
devotional or didactic character, writes Hambly.
And the emperor found both music and the
representational arts to be distasteful.

7. THE DECLINE OF MUGHAL ARCHITECTURE
Aurangzeb had none of his father's passion for the arts and
architecture. Only a few monuments in Delhi are associated with
Aurangzeb's name. These constructions, note Hambly, include the two
massive outer defenses or barbicans protecting the gateway of the
Red Fort and the exquisite Moti (Pearl) Mosque at Delhi. This mosque
was built inside the palace to provide the emperor with a place for
private prayers.

8. SHAHi BURJ : RED FORT
• The Shahi Burj (Urdu: Emperor's Tower) is a three-storey octagonal tower
of the Red Fort in Delhi.
• The tower is located at the northeastern corner of the imperial
enclosure. The water feeding, the Nahr-i-Bihisht, is channeled up from
the river with a hydraulic system through the tower and then carried by
channels into various other buildings of the fort.
• Adjacent to the south of the tower is a white marble pavilion that was
constructed during Aurangzeb's rule. The pavilion features five arches
supported on fluted columns and with low whale back roofs. In the
centre of the north wall is a marble cascade sloping into a scalloped basin
The tower was damaged during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and again
during a heavy earthquake in 1904. Originally there was a chhatri that is
now missing. The tower and pavilion have been undergoing renovation
work for many years and are closed to the public

9. MOTI MASJID
• The Moti Masjid is a white marble mosque inside the Red Fort complex in Delhi, India. The name translates into English as
"Pearl Mosque."Located to the west of the Hammam and close to the Diwan-e-Khas, it was built by the Mughal
emperor Aurangzeb from 1659-1660
The prayer hall has three arches, and it is divided into two aisles. It is surmounted
with three bulbous domes, which were originally covered in gilded copper.
The gilded copper was probably lost after the Indian rebellion of 1857.
The eastern door is provided with copper-plated leaves.
The mosque is plastered in white on the outside. Inside is the white marble
courtyard and a prayer hall, which stands on a higher level than the courtyardin
black marble. In the middle of the courtyard is a small, square ablution fountain.
The courtyard measures 40 x 35 feet

11. • The decoration of this mosque, note Blair and Bloom, is made noteworthy by its exuberant floral
carvings. The vases with stems of flowers fill the spandrels and spreading tendrils echo the
cusps of the arches which culminate in a fleur-de-lys. In this exquisite mosque, continue Blair
and Bloom, the realistic floral motifs that had been typical :l of the Shah Jahan period became
increasingly abstract.
fleur-de-lys : a stylized lily composed of three
petals bound together near their bases. It is
especially known from the former royal arms
of France, in which it appears in gold on a blue
field

15. BADSHAHI MOSQUE
The most impressive building of
Aurangzeb's reign, write Blair and
Bloom, is the Badshahi (Imperial)
Mosque which was constructed in 1674
under the supervision of Fida'i Koka.
This mosque is adjacent to the fort at
Lahore. The Badshahi is the last in the
series of great congregational mosques
in red sandstone and is closely modeled
on the one Shah Jahan built at
Shahjahanabad,.The red sandstone of
the walls contrasts with the white
marble of the domes and the subtle
intarsia decoration. The materials
depart from the local tradition of tile
revetment that is seen in the Mosque of
Vazir Khan. According to Blair and
Bloom, the cusped arches and
arabesque floral patterns inlaid in
white marble give the building, despite
its vast proportions, a lighter
appearance than its prototype.

17. Aurangzeb's son Azam Shah
in the memory of his mother (posthumously known as
Rabia-ud-Daurani
‘Dakkhani Taj’