Water Matters
July 2008
Banner photo: R.Maro/version-foto.de
Water and Gardens in Islamic Desert Culture
Penelope Hobhouse, an award-winning garden writer, talks to the SGI Quarterly about water and gardens.
Shahzadeh Garden, Kerman, Iran
[Jerry Harpur]
Water is the spirit and essence of life, particularly for the desert-dweller. Gardens in ancient Persia were based on the availability of water. The manipulation of water was the key to a settled way of life in the desert, fundamental to a non-nomadic way of life. Without water, people could only live by a natural spring or where they could sink a well. Originally the nomad tribes were dependent on natural oases.
At first the gardens were used to grow orchard trees for fruit and shade, as well as crops for sustenance. The water was obtained from springs or sinking wells and transported by underground conduits called qanats which were introduced to Persia in the seventh century BCE. All of these things required quite a high degree of hydraulic manipulation and skill. After the coming of Islam in the eighth century CE, the Persians invented the water wheel to raise water for irrigation, utilizing fast-moving river water or oxen and sometimes ostriches. This was how the ancient gardens of Baghdad and Samarra were made.
The earliest example of these desert gardens was that of the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great (590-530 BCE) at Pasargadae built in 550 BCE, at least 1,000 years before Islam. Pasargadae was set on a very arid plain, but excavations have shown that an aqueduct brought water from a river. Rills (small channels) about 40 centimeters wide, fed the water through basins at 15-meter intervals. The rills were narrow to prevent too much evaporation.
Ingenious Technology
The Achaemenids also made qanats by sinking a shaft down to the water table beneath the mountains to create a tunnel which might run for 80 kilometers to a desert settlement. This was essential on the high plateau in Iran as there is very little rainfall and river water, and the water table is dependent on snow melt. The qanats fed water into a reservoir which was slightly higher than the highest point in a garden.
The water was put to multiple uses. Some rills were very narrow and used for irrigation, others went underground and were used for periodic flooding of the sunken flower beds, and still others were there to cool the air. If there was a plentiful supply of water, you could have cascades and waterfalls as in the later Mughal Emperors' gardens in Kashmir constructed in the early 17th century. Fountains required greater water pressure but helped cool the air and drown noise, while also keeping insects at bay.
Qanats were constructed by first sinking a series of vertical shafts, then tunneling between them to the water source
Today in Iran, now that the climate is even drier due to the activities of humans and goats which have devastated ancient forests, people are restoring qanats and using them again after many years. These ancient conduits are the best way to access precious water which lies under the mountains.
When the Arabs came from the west to Persia, they brought with them their new language and their new faith, but they adopted Persian and Sassanian habits of life. Although there are no exact images of the first Islamic desert gardens, manuscript sources give us a clear idea of the general layout. In the Qur'an (written around the seventh century CE), there are many descriptions of "paradise," which literally means "a wall around," based on ancient Persian gardens which became the symbols of paradise and spiritual inspiration.
A paradise garden was based on the classic chahar bagh design by which the garden was divided into four by water channels. In Islam this represented the four rivers of Paradise. The plantations of fruit trees, roses and other flowers lay in geometrically arranged beds below the level of the flanking pathways, so making irrigation simple and giving a sensation of walking on a carpet of flowers. The shapes of these gardens are recognizable from Persian and Mughal miniatures and in garden carpets dating from the 15th century. There is often a contemplative figure sitting beside a fountain and a cypress tree entwined by almond blossom as symbols respectively of immortality and rejuvenation in spring. Poets described gardens in exaggerated verse to please their kingly patrons and often described individual flowers in romantic terms.
Babur's garden near Jalalabad, made in the early 16th century; the miniature, dated 1680, shows Babur directing his gardeners and his garden architect
[Will Parrinello and Jim Iacona]
Islamic people expanded and exported their gardening techniques all over the world. Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire that covered most of the Asian subcontinent from the early 16th to the mid-19th centuries, made gardens in Afghanistan and India, and his descendants became famous for their magnificent tomb gardens and more luxurious lake-side gardens in Kashmir.
Although the religious significance of gardens often declined as the Mughal civilization became richer, the magnificent tomb gardens where an emperor was laid to rest in a vast mausoleum at the center of a chahar bagh reinforced the original sacred element, connecting the Emperor in death with God. The Taj Mahal, built by the Emperor Shah Jahan for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal between 1630 and 1648, was not only a great homage to her, but its architecture and layout reached a peak of perfection never surpassed. These great tomb gardens were not just private gardens but were open to the public for prayers.
All over the world gardens have been developed in the chahar bagh style, very often with no direct religious significance. But today if someone makes a paradise garden they definitely imply that it is a sacred place for meditation. Perhaps all gardens are sacred spaces. Without gardens a lot of people would be very unhappy. They are very therapeutic places to be in and if there is some spiritual connection to God, this is where you can find it.
Penelope Hobhouse is an award-winning garden writer and designer whose books include Plants in Garden History and Gardens and Plants of the Mughal Emperors (forthcoming).
