The Magnificent Fraud

The Magnificent Fraud

After an epic battle, Shah Jahan was the undisputed master of a vast subcontinent. Yet it was a hollow victory. His wife had just died in childbirth. For nineteen years the princess of Persia had been his soul mate. Their love was the stuff of storybook legend. In an age when Asian kings kept their wives in harems, she was his chief adviser. She even rode by his side into battle.

His grief was monumental. Those who heard his anguished howling were sure that he had gone mad. When he emerged from his chambers, his courtiers and servants gasped in horror. In only eight days his black hair had turned white. He demanded that his subjects join him in mourning. Those caught smiling in public were executed. The shah’s sorrow reduced his vast kingdom to a place of utter desolation.

Then he turned his grief into a frenzy of activity. He imported the finest architects and craftsmen to build the world’s greatest monument to love—a magnificent mausoleum that would house the treasured remains of his wife. More than twenty thousand workers took twenty-two years to build it at a cost of billions in today’s dollars. Centuries later, it remains one of the architectural marvels of history. It has been dubbed the eighth wonder of the world. When the building was finished, the shah ordered the architectural plans destroyed, the architects murdered, and the hands of the master craftsmen cut off so that their genius could never create anything to rival his magnificent memorial to his wife.

Perhaps you have seen the monument that Shah Jahan erected to his wife, Mumtaz Mahal: the breathtakingly beautiful Taj Mahal. The wife of a British officer was heard to say, “I would gladly die tomorrow if some man loved me enough to put such a building over my grave.” An Indian poet wrote of the Taj Mahal, “Only let this one tear-drop, this Tajmahal, glisten spotlessly bright on the cheek of time, forever and ever.”

But do you know the little secret that will never appear in a tourist guidebook? Indian researchers have discovered that the ornate burial box does not contain the ashes of Mumtaz Mahal. She is thought to be buried somewhere else, in an unmarked grave. How did this happen? Did Shah Jahan know the awful truth? There are plenty of theories. One is that when Shah Jahan visited the work site, he tripped over a box that had been carelessly left among the rubble. He angrily ordered it to be thrown away. Terrified workers tossed it into a nearby garbage pile where it disappeared forever. But that story is impossible to confirm.

But this much is true: the eighth wonder of the world perpetrates one of history’s greatest frauds. It stands as mute testimony to the tragedy of wasted endeavors. It also raises a question: Are we building magnificent facades that hide empty boxes? One day we will stand before God and give an account for how we have invested his resources. It’s good to reflect on an old Italian proverb:

When the game is over, both king and pawns go back into the same box.

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

2 Corinthians 5:10