The Jahangir Mahal, or Palace of Jahangir, Akbar's son, adjoins the palace. The red courts, particularly that called the Begum's Court, with their massive pillars supported by Hindu brackets, and carvings of birds and flowers, looked coarse and heavy after the chaste beauties we have just been seeing.
As we see so often repeated in history, and in our own times, the great palace which Akbar founded as the abode of his dynasty, was destined to be inhabited but for a very short time. Jahangir, his son and successor, lived and died in northern latitudes, and Shah Juhan, his son, began the palace at Delhi. The race lay under a cloud, for the latter emperor was dethroned by his son Aurungzebe, and under him the fort became merely a citadel and the residence of a Mogul governor. It changed hands during the Mahratta war several times, and was finally held by General Lake after the defeat of the Mahratta power at Delhi.
To the founder of the short but brilliant Mogul dynasty, was it given first to call into existence a nationality among the people. On ascending the throne at the age of fifteen, Akbar, by raising the Hindus and refusing to favour the Mussulmans, welded the people into one nation. His latitude in religious matters is shown by the Hindu god and goddesses at Futtehpore Sikri, the Windsor of Agra as it has been called. There is even here a palace called the Palace of the Christian Woman.
It is to Akbar that we owe the most deeply interesting city of India, and to his successors the second, that is, Delhi.
The Jumma Musjid, or Cathedral Mosque, stands opposite, and slightly turned eastwards away from the Fort. It is the second largest mosque in India, but though of vaster proportions, it can claim no pre-eminence to beauty. It stands on the usual platform, and the inside is inlaid with black and red marble. The inscription over the central arch tells us that it was built by Shah Jahan in 1653, in honour of the Princess Juhanara, whose tomb we shall see later on at Delhi. However, the colouring of the three domes is highly peculiar and remarkable. They are of deep red, and the white lines meeting up and down them at right angles form a zigzag, and resemble from a distance the stripes of a zebra.
In the afternoon we drove through a bit of the native quarter to reach the pontoon bridge, and crossing over it came to the tomb of Itmud-ud-Daulah, or Ghias Beg.
Ghias Beg was the grandfather of the beautiful Muntâz of the Taj, and Vizier to the Emperor Jahangir, who honoured him after death by this mausoleum. He was a poet also, and it is told how, when the emperor visited him on his deathbed, and he was asked if he recognized his royal master, the minister replied by a quotation from a Persian poet:—
"Even if the mother-Hindman happened to be present now,
He himself would surely know thee by the splendour of thy brow."
The mausoleum is a little gem set in a green garden, and overawed by four red gateways, quite out of proportion and keeping with it. The front presents the appearance of carved ivory, so delicate is the lacework of the marble tracery. Like the other buildings of Agra the outside and inside are embroidered with stones, but these are not so precious, being chiefly plum-pudding or agate stones. The design and finish of the work are however most remarkable. There is a slender vase in blue and green with serpent handles; a basin in blue and white, resembling the old willow-patterned plate; a cup with a spray of flowers, or vase with an outspread peacock's tail. The ceilings, though sadly weather-worn, still show what a splendid and gorgeous mass of colouring and variegated patterns they were. The mausoleum is divided into a succession of courts opening one out of the other, and each is the death-chamber of one or more. Following the melancholy circle of the building, we see the narrow marble sarcophagi of brothers, sisters, a whole family, descending even to the second generation, who find their tombs within this narrow circle.