I'm not asking about the mechanics of how huge monuments like the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, or the Forbidden City were built. I'd like to know how circumstances allowed for the construction of such massive buildings that may or may not have provided practical use for anybody.
For example: over 3,000 years after the construction of the Pyramid of Menkaure, Al-Aziz Uthman proved barely able to even damage the Pyramid despite his best efforts.
How did circumstances, be they labor, political, or engineering related, prevent Al-Aziz Uthman from matching the power of Ancient Egypt?
The question is a bit strange, but hey.
The Forbidden city was built by one of largest 'societies' the world has ever seen, China, at one of its highest points.
"one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history," (A history of East Asian civilization, Volume 1. East Asia: The Great TraditionReischauer, Fairbank, Craig. )
The Taj Mahal was built by an Indian Mughal Emperor, also at or around its highest architectural peak.
And the Great Pyramids are (unsurprisingly) also an example of a civilisation at its peak doing what it does best.
All that was required was sufficient wealth, power and will. All 3 had this.
Do you know that Al-Aziz Uthman used his 'best efforts'? Or might they just be 'an effort', which he soon realised was not going to be enough and then gave it. Pyramids of all things are perhaps the hardest to destroy, it takes almost as much work to dismantle them as it does to mantle them in the first place. They are inherently stable structures, they cant be pushed over. So all you need to do is remove every damn block one at a time, gravity assists, but its no easy task.
I suspect that when you're destroying a pyramid you soon realise its a pointless exercise to spend THAT much effort to have nothing left at the end (speculation, sorry). As such I doubt that Uthman really tried his best.