Date:19/07/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/07/19/stories/2005071918720100.htm

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Historian disputes Waqf Board claim on Taj

NEW DELHI: A historian with the Aligarh Muslim University has disputed the Sunni Central Waqf Board's claim that the Taj Mahal is its property. There was never a separate Waqf for the 17th century monument, she says.

Shireen Moosvi, secretary of the Aligarh Historians Society, has based her argument on Abdul Hamid Lahori's "Padshanama", an official history of the first two decades of Shahjahan's rule. Lahori's book never mentions that the Taj itself was given in Waqf. It rather says 30 villages and Tajganj were given in Waqf for the maintenance of the tomb.

The responsibility for its maintenance was to rest with the `khalifa-e-waqt' (ruler of the day). — UNI