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Lahore Fort’s Sheesh Mahal and Agra’s Taj Mahal were both commissioned by the same Mughal emperor.
Each expressed – mostly, in white marble – his abiding love for his favourite wife.
Shah Jahan (1592-1666) had three wives, but only one marriage was a “love match”.
He renamed his beloved, “Mumtaz Mahal” – “the exalted one of the palace”.
Allegedly, Mumtaz Mahal had a dream/vision of heaven; the Sheesh Mahal was her husband’s attempt to make that dream “real”.
Comments closedOn 19 July the world lost one of its most eloquent instrumentalists..
Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate was 58; he died after a short illness.
He was not the only great kora player, but he was, unquestionably, the kora’s most prominent and most influential exponent; Toumani Diabate turned it into a “concert” instrument.
At age 22 he recorded Kaira – the world’s first absolutely solo kora album.
(oft-misdescribed as an African “harp”, the kora is in fact a harp-lute)
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