What is Taj Mahal built from?

Answer 1

Ingredients for building Taj Mahal:

Love + Determination + some guys and cement

Answer 2

Taj Mahal is a unique memorial of sublime love. There was no question of prestige behind it. Shah Jahan built many prestigious monuments which have been the most valuable and rare gifts to the civilised world since centuries

Answer 3

white marble. and inside it some precious jewels were fixed in the wall but due 2 the carelessness of the govt. many precious stones has been stolen. now in the walls there r empty holes.
Also the smokes exhausted by the neighbouring industries has turned the white marble into yellow but now necessary steps r taken 2 preserve its beauty.

Answer 4

marble for the building. a lot of semi precious stones were also included in the marble by marquetry (cut off some marble, cut and polish stone to same dimensions, use to fill the hile) and make designs, even inscriptions.

Answer 5

Marble building, granite base and sandstone walls for fort

Answer 6

Its built from the Ground up.

Answer 7

its build of marble which is calcium carbonate

Answer 8

The Tāj Mahal (Urdu/Persian: تاج محل; Hindi: ताज महल) is a monument located in Agra, India, constructed between 1631 and 1654 by a workforce of 22,000. The Muslim Mughal Emperor Shāh Jahān commissioned its construction as a mausoleum for his favourite wife, Arjumand Bano Begum, who is better known as Mumtāz.

The Taj Mahal (sometimes called "the Taj") is generally considered the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements of Indian, Islamic and Persian architectures. The Taj Mahal has achieved special note because of the romance of its inspiration. While the white domed marble mausoleum is the most familiar part of the monument, the Taj Mahal is actually an integrated complex of structures.

Construction
The Taj Mahal was built on a stretch of land to the south of the walled city of Agra which had belonged to Maharajah Jai Singh: Shah Jahan presented him with a large palace in the centre of Agra in exchange.[5] Construction began with setting foundations for the tomb. An area of roughly three acres was excavated and filled with dirt to reduce seepage from the river. The entire site was levelled to a fixed height about 50 m above the riverbank. The Taj Mahal is 180 feet tall. The dome itself measures 60 feet in diameter and 80 feet high.

In the tomb area, wells were then dug down to the point that water was encountered. These wells were later filled with stone and rubble, forming the basis for the footings of the tomb. An additional well was built to same depth nearby to provide a visual method to track water level changes over time.

Instead of lashed bamboo, the typical scaffolding method, workmen constructed a colossal brick scaffold that mirrored the inner and outer surfaces of the tomb. The scaffold was so enormous that foremen estimated it would take years to dismantle. According to legend, Shah Jahan decreed that anyone could keep bricks taken from the scaffold, and it was dismantled by peasants overnight.

A fifteen-kilometre tamped-earth ramp was built to transport marble and materials from Agra to the construction site. According to contemporary accounts teams of twenty or thirty oxen strained to pull the blocks on specially constructed wagons.

To raise the blocks into position required an elaborate post-and-beam pulley system. Teams of mules and oxen provided the lifting power.

The order of construction was
* The plinth
* The tomb
* The four minarets
* The mosque and jawab
* The gateway

The plinth and tomb took roughly 12 years to complete. The remaining parts of the complex took an additional 10 years. (Since the complex was built in stages, contemporary historical accounts list different "completion dates"; discrepancies between so-called completion dates are probably the result of differing opinions about the definition of "completion". For example, the mausoleum itself was essentially complete by 1643, but work continued on the rest of the complex.)

Water infrastructure
Water for the Taj Mahal complex was provided through a complex infrastructure. Water was drawn from the river by a series of purs -- an animal-powered rope and bucket mechanism. The water flowed into a large storage tank, where, by thirteen additional purs, it was raised to large distribution tank above the Taj Mahal ground level.

From this distribution tank, water passed into three subsidiary tanks, from which it was piped to the complex. A 0.25 m earthenware pipe lies about 1.5 m below the surface, in line with the main walkway; this filled the main pools of the complex. Additional copper pipes supplied the fountains in the north-south canal. Subsidiary channels were dug to irrigate the entire garden.

The fountain pipes were not connected directly to the feed pipes. Instead, a copper pot was provided under each fountain pipe: water filled the pots allowing equal pressure in each fountain.

The purs no longer remain, but the other parts of the infrastructure have survived.

Craftsmen
The Taj Mahal was not designed by a single person. The project demanded talent from many quarters.

The names of many of the builders who participated in the construction of the Taj Mahal in different capacities have come down to us through various sources.

Ustad Isa and Isa Muhammad Effendi, trained by the great Ottoman architect Koca Mimar Sinan Agha are frequently credited with a key role in the architectural design of the complex,[6][7] but in fact there is little evidence to support this tradition, and the connection with Sinan (who died in 1588) is clearly a fairy-tale.

'Puru' from Benarus, Persia (Iran), has been mentioned as the supervising architect in Persian language texts (e.g. see ISBN 964-7483-39-2).

The main dome was designed by Ismail Khan from the Ottoman Empire,[8] considered to be the premier designer of hemispheres and builder of domes of that age.

Qazim Khan, a native of Lahore, cast the solid gold finial that crowned the Turkish master's dome.

Chiranjilal, a lapidary from Delhi, was chosen as the chief sculptor and mosaicist.

Amanat Khan from Persian Shiraz, Iran was the chief calligrapher (this fact is attested on the Taj Mahal gateway itself, where his name has been inscribed at the end of the inscription).

Muhammad Hanif was the supervisor of masons.

Mir Abdul Karim and Mukkarimat Khan of Shiraz, Iran handled finances and the management of daily production.

The creative team included sculptors from Bukhara, calligraphers from Syria and Persia, inlayers from southern India, stonecutters from Baluchistan, a specialist in building turrets, another who carved only marble flowers — thirty seven men in all formed the creative nucleus. To this core was added a labour force of twenty thousand workers recruited from across northern India.

European commentators, particularly during the early period of the British Raj, suggested that some or all of the Taj Mahal was the work of European artisans. Most of these suggestions were purely speculative, but one dates back to 1640, when a Spanish Friar who visited Agra wrote that Geronimo Veroneo, an Italian adventurer in Shah Jahan's court, was primarily responsible for the design. There is no reliable scholarly evidence to back up this assertion, nor is Veroneo's name mentioned in any surviving documents relating to the construction. E.B. Havell, the principal British scholar of Indian art in the later Raj, dismissed this theory as unsupported by any evidence, and as inconsistent with the known methods employed by the designers. His conclusions were further supported by the research of Muhammad Abdullah Chaghtai, who examined carefully the origin of the tradition that the Taj was designed by a European, and concluded that it was a spurious 19th century invention, based on the misapprehension that "Ustad Isa", so often credited with the Taj's design, must have been a Christian because he bore the name "Isa" (Jesus). In fact this is a common Muslim name as well - and furthermore there is no source earlier than the 19th century which mentions an "Ustad Isa" in connection with the Taj Mahal (even if he existed he cannot, in any case, have been trained by Sinan, because the latter died in 1588). Chaghtai thought it more likely that the chief architect was Ustad Ahmad, the designer of Shahjahanabad, but admitted that this could not be conclusively proved from existing sources.[9]

Materials
The Taj Mahal was constructed using materials from all over India and Asia. Over 1,000 elephants were used to transport building materials during the construction. The translucent white marble was brought from Rajasthan, the jasper from Punjab and the jade and crystal from China. The turquoise was from Tibet and the Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, while the sapphire came from Sri Lanka and the carnelian from Arabia. In all, 28 types of precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid into the white marble.

Costs
The total cost of the Taj Mahal's construction was about 50 million rupees. At that time, 1 gram of gold was sold for about 1.4 rupees. Based on the October 2005 gold price that would translate to more than 500 million US$. (Comparisons based on the value of gold in two different economic eras are often misleading, however).

You could get more information from the link below...

Answer 9

marble......