The epitaph on Shah Jahan’s tomb is as follows:-
    ’The sacred sepulchre of His Moat Exalted Majesty, nesting in
Paradise, the Second Lord of the Conjunction, Shah Jahan, the
Emperor.  May his mausoleum ever flourish.  Year 1076 Hijri.’

The inscription on Shah Jahan’s cenotaph adds more titles and gives the exact date of death as ‘the night of Rajab 28, A.H. 1076’. 1040 Hijri corresponds with the period from July 31, A.D. 1630 to July 19, 1631; and 1076 Hijri with the period July 4, A. D. 1665 to June 23, 1666, Old Style.  The dates in New Style would be ten days later.

The epithet ‘nesting in Paradise’ (firdaus ashiyani) was the official posthumous title of Shah Jahan, frequently used by historians instead of his name.

The title ‘Second Lord of the Conjunction’ means that Shah Jahan was held to have been born under the fortunate conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, as his ancestor Timur had been.

10.  The details in the text are inaccurate.  Arjumand Bano Begam, daughter of Asaf Khan, brother of Nur Jahan, the queen of Jahangir, was born in A.D. 1592, married in 1612, and died July 7, 1631 (o.s.), at Burhanpur in the Deccan.  After a delay of six months her remains were removed to Agra, and there rested six months longer at a spot in the Taj gardens still remembered, until her tomb was sufficiently advanced for the final interment.  Her titles were Mumtaz-i-Mahall, ‘Exalted in the Palace’; Qudsia Begam, and Nawab Aliya Begam.  She bore her husband eight sons and six daughters, fourteen children in all, of whom seven were alive at the time of her death.  The child whose birth cost the mother’s life was Gauharara Begam, who survived for many years (Irvine, Storia do Mogor, iv. 425).  Beale wrongly gives her name as Dahar Ara.

Shah Jahan, two years before his union with Arjumand Bano Begam, had been married to a Persian princess, by whom he had a daughter who died young.  Five and a half years after his marriage to Arjumand Bano Begam, he espoused a third wife, daughter of Shah Nawaz Khan, by whom he had a son, who died in infancy.  This third marriage was dictated by motives of policy, and did not impair the Emperor’s devotion to his favourite consort (Muh.  Latif, Agra, p. 101).

11.  The testimony of Tavernier is doubtless correct if understood as referring to the whole complex of buildings connected with the mausoleum.  He visited Agra several times.  He left India in January, 1654, returning to the country in 1659.  Work on the Taj began in 1632, and so appears to have been completed about the close of, 1653 (Tavernier, Travels, transl.  Ball, vol. i, pp. xxi, xxii, 25, 110, 142, 149).  The latest dated inscription, that of the calligraphist Amanat Khan at the entrance to the domed mausoleum, was recorded in the twelfth year of the reign, A.H. 1048, equivalent to A.D. 1638-9.  That year may be taken as the date of the completion of the mausoleum itself, as distinguished from the great mass of supplementary structures.