The Wooden Audience Halls of Shah Jahan: Sources and Reconstruction

Even before the great audience halls at Agra, Lahore, and Delhi, Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58) built wooden audience halls as a new type of palace architecture for his court receptions. Contemporary descriptions, paintings, and regional wooden mosques enable a reconstruction that also sheds light on the exchange of forms and ideas between Mughal India and Iran.