Gardens of Taj Mahal in perfect 'alignment with solstices'

A new research has revealed that the gardens of Taj Mahal, the Crown of Palaces, a splendid white mausoleum that was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife Mumtaz Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, are found to align with the rising and setting sun during the summer and winter solstices.

The mausoleum is one of the components of a quite large complex of structures, composed by buildings and gardens, including subsidiary tombs, waterworks infrastructure, the small town of Taj Ganji and a Moonlight Garden, north of the River Yamuna .

The construction began in 1632 AD and was completed around 1653 AD. A board of architects under imperial supervision worked to the Taj Mahal, among them there were Abd ul-Kari, Ma'mur Khan, Makramat Khan, and Ustad Ahmad Lahauri, who is generally considered the principal designer of the complex.

Since most Mughal charbagh gardens are rectangular with a tomb or pavilion in the center, the Taj Mahal garden is unusual because its main element, the white Mausoleum, is located at the end of the garden. This fact created a debate amongst scholars regarding the reasons why the traditional charbagh form had not been used.

The Taj Mahal complex has a north-south axis and when an architectonic structure is aligned in this manner, it is aligned to the projection on the horizontal plane of the 'axis mundi', the axis about which the world is rotating.

However, in their planning, architects could also use some elements aligned in the directions of sunrise or sunset. In fact, architects have six main directions: two are joining cardinal points (north-south, east-west) and four are those given by sunrise and sunset on summer and winter solstices.

Alignments to solstices are present in the garden of Taj Mahal and the enclosure of the garden is a symbolic horizon, where its axis is representing the 'axis mundi'. On the solstices, from the centre of the rectangular enclosure, people can see the sun rising and setting at its four corners.