As of July 2016, India embraces a total of 35 world heritage sites, ranked second in Asia after China with 52 sites. I have been to India several times, leaving my footprints behind in more than 10 places out of 35, appreciating historic remains more than 3,000 years old and also admiring magnificent building complexes founded more than 300 years ago. The height of its civilization as well as refined architectural aesthetics deserves genuine admiration of the whole world.

As one angle of India’s golden triangle in tourism, Agra is an ancient city with three sites of world cultural heritage. Among them, the Taj Mahal is the most well-known and popular attraction, and the others are the Agra Fort and the ‘City of Victory’, Fatehpur Sikri.

Brief introduction to the Mughal Empire

About 200 kilometers away from the capital New Delhi, Agra located in the lower reaches to the south of the Yamuna is soaked in history and has been recorded in ancient India’s epic ‘Mahabharata’ by the name of Agrabana in the third century B.C.. Historically, Agra was closely associated with the Mughal Empire and had been functioning as its capital from 1526 to 1658.

I have mentioned the term of ‘Mughal Empire’ several times when talking about attractions of Jaipur and the Taj Mahal. When it comes to Agra, it is inevitable that the Mughal Empire must be well explained first.

Although India has been steeped in a history of more than 5,600 years, a bit longer than China’s history, there is no coherent records available in words but through the dictation that links myths and stories together to trace her history. So, the study of India's history is more difficult and confined. In India's history, all the three most influential dynasties, the Maurya Empire, the Gupta Empire and the Mughal Empire, had almost unified India, while for the rest of the time the country was always in a state of chaos and widespread disruption.

The Mughal Empire had ruled India for as long as more than 300 years (1526 - 1858), and the founding maharaja was Emperor Babur, a descendant of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, who believed in Islam. After Emperor Babur defeated the then ruler in the Battle of Panipat, the fifth dynasty of the Delhi Sultanates --the Lodi Dynasty in 1526, he immediately proclaimed himself emperor and decided on Agra as the capital.

The six emperors in the early time were more famous by contrast, and except for the founding emperor Babur, his successors--Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan (the Taj Mahal’s constructor) and Aurangzeb—brought the empire to its fullest extent. However, the imbecility and incompetence of most monarchs after Aurangzeb, coupled with the surrounding European powers and the control from Britain, the Mughal Empire had been fast falling into decay until 1858 when Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom was crowned as the Empress of India and the Mughal Empire met its inevitable destruction officially. 

Among the early six maharajas, except for Akbar who had temporarily moved the capital to Fatehpur Sikri and then Lahore, and Shah Jahan who moved to Delhi during the later period of his reign, most of them made Agra the capital. Therefore, Agra, as the capital that once experienced Mughal Empire’s heyday, has erected leading architectures representing the height of the excellence at that time, preserving precious heritage for the world.

Since I had visited the Taj Mahal out of the three sites of cultural heritage, the other two must be collected into my harvest.