JOIN USThe Taj Mahal is the epitome of love and most visitors are eager to take home souvenir. This has resulted in models of the Taj Mahal being made in materials as diverse as matchsticks and diamonds. Crystal Taj Mahals by Innovative Crystal Company of the UK are available for Rs 35,000.
In 2004, a four-foot tall silver filigree replica of the Taj Mahal, made of 55 kg of pure silver was sculpted at a cost of Rs 20 lakh by a team of expert filigree artisans of Cuttack in Odisha.
The replica was made on an order from a Dubai-based non-resident Indian Nanda Kishore Tibarewal, jeweller who supervised the creation of this treasure by a team of eight filigree artisans, led by Biswanath Dey. It took more than six months to complete the work. The replica was dismantled before being airfreighted to Dubai. Two artisans flew to Dubai to refix it.
In another instance, a nine-foot tall replica, the “Wow Jewel Taj”, with a plywood support structure, was made of one-and-a-half kg gold and 18 kg of silver. It was studded with 50,000 diamonds and 35,000 cubic zirconia and was auctioned for Rs 1.2 crore. The majestic Taj Mahal — one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World and arguably its greatest monument of love — required 20,000 labourers, 1,000 elephants and 20 years to complete. By comparison, it took 45 days for 15 artisans to craft a shimmering silver-and gold-clad replica in 2014.
The costliest model of the Taj Mahal is a black one that is still being made and is estimated to cost Rs 1.3 crore when completed.
As recorded by the famous French jeweller Tavernier (1605-1689) of the Mughal era, Emperor Shahjahan, the man who built the white marble structure in memory of his Empress Mumtaj Mahal in 1632, actually wanted to create a black Taj Mahal as his mausoleum and connect the two by a marble bridge.
But as his son Aurangzeb deposed him in 1658 and kept Shahjahan as a prisoner till his death in 1666, this ambition could not be fulfilled.
But an Agra-based master artist, Iftikhar Nadeem Khan, is building the black Taj Mahal, a replica though of a smaller size. Khan’s black Taj would be 2.5 X 2.5 metres in size ( 67 sq ft) and would seek to retain the grandeur and magnificence of the original structure. The black Taj project entails a cost of about Rs 1.20 crore and is likely to be completed as and when Khan gets funds. He claims to have spent Rs 80 lakh so far on his creation.
The Taj project began in 2002 and Khan chose ebony as an ideal substitute for black marble, saying it was the hardest and heaviest wood which sinks when thrown in water. “Once polished, it is very difficult to tell the difference between ebony and black marble,” he claims.
The Taj Mahal complex has a cluster of buildings, all of which are made of red sandstone, except the main mausoleum. In place of red sandstone, Khan has used padauk, a redwood, and to get the exact effect of the white marble inlay work in the floor tiling, he has used white maple wood. And finally to describe his efforts to make black Taj Mahal he wrote a book “Black Taj Mahal: The Emperor’s Missing Tomb”.
But the grandest project to build a model of the Taj Mahal in diamonds / gold / silverwas that of Bhopal-based jeweller Syed Hanif. He was obsessed with the Taj Mahal ever since he first saw it in 1990. The 50-year-old jeweller sent every one of his goldsmiths to view the spectacular building so that they could understand its magnificence. “We took thousands of photographs of the Taj Mahal to make the blueprints, so that we could have the exact details,” said Hanif, who admitted he has spent a fortune on the lavish model.
It was announced that the miniature replica would have 400 kg silver, 10 kg gold and be embedded with eight diamonds each worth Rs 1 crore. A group of 35 artists worked on it since March 2011. Being made with total accuracy, with 30,000 parts, the basic structure of the miniature Taj Mahal was to be of copper.
The cover plates were to be made of gold, silver and diamonds. The Taj Mahal was to have 32 gold doors (each with two diamonds worth Rs 6 crore), 25 domes and a boundary made of gold weighing 10 kg.
An Islamic scholar was brought in to ensure that the Koran passages were reproduced accurately.
For the flooring 400 kg of silver was to be used. The “Taj-obsessed” jeweller was hoping to sell the model measuring 3.5-ft tall and 5.5-ft wide for Rs 100 crore. But in 2015, the creditors who had advanced money to Hanif for the project sued him for non-payment of their dues, and he was jailed.
World’s largest model of the Taj Mahal is Mohabbat the Taj, depicting the saga of love and is now a theatre of the “Kalakriti Cultural and Convention Centre” near Agra which can accommodate 585 spectators. This replica is built on a 12x12 feet platform, 10 feet high, scaled dimensions match exactly with that of the Taj Mahal.
The model weighs 10,000 Pounds. It took seven years of chiseling and carving by 28 craftsmen and designers to re-create the perfect replica of the Taj Mahal.