Life’s so strange.
Stranger than we all realize. Actions of insignificant people in the distant past sometimes have an extraordinary impact on the course of future events in a big way.
Take the Taj Mahal for instance. Hailed as a great monument to both love and architecture, the Taj Mahal has impressed visitors from around the world for 360 years.
But few realize that but for a mistake in 1526 by a treacherous cook in Babur’s employ, the Taj Mahal most likely would never have been built.
In his memoirs Baburnama, Babur, the founder of the Mughal empire, describes an assassination attempt on him in graphic detail.
The year was 1526 and the date December 21 (about eight months after the Battle of Panipat in which Babur defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi).
Not surprisingly, the architect of the assassination plot was Ibrahim’s mother Buwa. She had some poison brought from Etawah and bribed Babur’s cook to poison his food. However, the nervous cook used only some of the poison and cast the rest into the stove.
As a result, although Babur ate the poisoned meat he only became sick but did not die.
Once the suspicious Babur learned of the assassination plot, he quickly had the plotters arrested and put them to death in the most gruesome manner (You really want to know, OK: the cook was skinned alive, the food taster hacked to pieces, one woman thrown under an elephant’s leg, another woman shot and the architect of the plot Buwa was arrested).
If the cook had succeeded in assassinating Babur, would there have been a Mughal Empire? We doubt it. Remember, these were the early days of the empire, there was disaffection in Babur’s army and the empire had yet to consolidate itself.
So, without the Mughal empire there would have been no Shah Jahan and no Taj Mahal (completed in 1648).
Now you see how ultimately the Taj Mahal owes its existence to Babur’s cook (and his failure to kill the King 122 years earlier).
Built by a Flustered Cook?
Most likely, the course of India too would have been very different if Babur’s cook had succeeded in his assassination attempt. Continue reading »
 
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