Alternate History – Mumtaz Mahal and Taj Mahal

We have all heard the great love that Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz Mahal (real name Arjumand Bano)! So, when she died, he built the Taj Mahal in her memory. I always admired their story, but as time went by, I decided to do some research about it.

I was surprised to find that Mumtaz died while giving birth to their 14th child. That was a clue! Second, she was buried in white marble. Third, looking at her pictures, in some of them, she clearly gives a hairy appearance!

Mumtaz died in her 14th childbirth. 14 x 9 equals 126 months of pregnancy. They were married in April 1612, and she died in June 1631, a total of 19 years and 2 months (230 months). Shah Jahan had 6 wives, some sources say 8 wives. Which means that she spent more time pregnant than not!! And she bore him more children than all the other wives combined!

Diverging a little, my maternal uncle had 3 children 11 months apart each! I remember my mom commenting to one of my aunts, ‘he is trying to kill her!’ My aunt replied, ‘yes, but she just pops them’, whatever that meant! So combining the above two statements, and adding the 14 children, there was a definite motive to kill her. He soon married her younger sister after she died! Something is fishy here!

My next theory is about white marble. Marble is metamorphic rock. It is known for its beauty and for retaining churails (beldame) and reverse footed beldames in their graves. There are rumours that Shah Jahan suffered from insomnia because when she was alive she would constantly nag him, and when she died she came in his sleep. The Mughals were great followers of holy people because they themselves were not religious (apart from Aurangzeb), and one such holy man told him that white marble had the power of retaining the churails to their grave. To confirm this, I have visited several graveyards, and always found that there was plenty of white marble used on female graves. But since it took 14 pregnancies to finally read the burial prayers, she was indeed a pichal peri extraordinaire! It would take a lot of white marble. A theory also says that one of the former PM Nawaz Sharif’s ancestors provided the donkeys for the contract given out, and that was the actual basis of their family fortune. When the Taj Mahal was finally ready, her body was dug up and she was brought from Burhanpur in present day Madhya Pradesh and reburied in Agra.

Now look at her pictures, in one of the pictures, her feet are much smaller in proportion to her body. The painter has clearly covered up her backward pointing feet! And in the same painting, she is holding the pipe of a shisha/hookah! Only the worst churails would smoke!! And in the pictures of Mumtaz Mahal alone, the sides and upper lip have a bluish tinge, suggesting hairiness. So she might have some werewolf blood in her as well. In the picture with Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal together, Shah Jahan’s hands are tantalisingly close to her neck, suggesting a desire to choke her to death.

Life is not like fiction, and in the end Shah Jahan could not escape his tormentor. The story goes that after the death of Shah Jahan, she started coming in Emperor Alamgir's dreams and threatened him with ‘grave’ consequences unless he buried her husband next to her, in Taj Mahal. He actually had requested Alamgir to bury him in the Hindukush or Uzbekistan, in the Ferghana valley, away from Mumtaz. But she had the final laugh. Visitors who visit the Taj Mahal say that every Saturday night, on the full moon, they hear a man crying and a woman screaming in the Taj Mahal. That is why they close the Taj Mahal at nights!