Mehreen Chida-Razvi takes us on a journey to one of the ‘New Seven Wonders of the World’: the Taj Mahal. This podcast explores the daring love story behind the building and the many aspects of a landmark that has come to embody the cultures of India.
Mehreen Chida-Razvi is an art historian specialising in the art and architecture of Mughal South Asia. She regularly teaches courses and lectures on Islamic and Indo-Islamic art at universities and museums in London and Oxford, works for The Nasser D Khalili Collection of Islamic Art as the In-House Editor for their publication series, and is an Assistant Editor for the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. In 2019 she Guest-Edited a Special Issue of South Asian Studies, titled Resituating Mughal Architecture in the Persianate World: New Investigations and Analyses, in which her article ‘From Function to Form: Chini-khana in Safavid and Mughal Architecture’ appeared. She is currently co-guest-editing a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society on Persianate painting, to be published in 2021. Mehreen has published extensively on aspects of Mughal art, architecture and urbanism. A selection of her publications include: ‘Lahore’s Badshahi Masjid: Spatial interactions of the Sacred and the Secular’ (Intellect Publishing, 2020); ‘Patronage as Power, Power in Appropriation: Constructing Jahangir’s Mausoleum’ (Mumbai: Marg, Jan 2019); ‘A Sultan before the Padshah? Questioning the identification of the turbaned figure in Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaykh to Kings’ (London: The Ginko Library, 2016); and ‘Where is ‘The Greatest city in the East’?: The Mughal City of Lahore in European Travel Accounts between 1556 and 1648’ (Routledge, 2015).
She has further shared her academic expertise with wider audiences through her participation and consultation for documentaries on the Taj Mahal; programming on BBC World Service Radio, BBC2 and BBC4; participation in the Lahore and Jaipur Literary Festivals; and as an expert lecturer on cultural tours.
Mehreen is a former grantee of The Barakat Trust.
This podcast is part of Converging Paths and Arts In Isolation, a partnership with Asia House, kindly supported by the Altajir Trust, and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s Education Programme.
