Islamic Gardens and Landscapes i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 1 11/15/07 3:53:00 PM PENN STUDIES IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE John Dixon Hunt, Series Editor This series is dedicated to the study and promotion of a wide variety of approaches to landscape architecture, with special emphasis on connections between theory and practice. It includes monographs on key topics in history and theory, descriptions of projects by both established and rising designers, translations of major foreign-language texts, anthologies of theoretical and historical writings on classic issues, and critical writing by members of the profession of landscape architecture. The series is the recipient of the Award of Honor in Communications from the American Society of Landscape Architects, 2006. i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 2 11/15/07 3:53:00 PM Islamic Gardens and Landscapes D. Fairchild Ruggles university of pennsylvania press | philadelphia i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 3 11/15/07 3:53:00 PM Publication of this volume was assisted by a generous grant from The Getty Foundation. Copyright © 2008 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Printed in Canada on acid-free paper. 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2  Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 904-42 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Ruggles, D. Fairchild. Islamic gardens and landscapes / D. Fairchild Ruggles. p. cm. — (Penn studies in landscape architecture) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-3: 978-0-822-4025-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn-0: 0-822-4025- (hardcover : alk. paper) . Gardens, Islamic. I. Title. sb457.8.r85 2007 72.097'67—dc22 2007023294 i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 4 11/15/07 3:53:00 PM To my parents Jeanne Françoise Peter Ruggles and Thomas Morrill Ruggles i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 5 11/15/07 3:53:01 PM i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 6 11/15/07 3:53:01 PM Contents Preface ix Chapter : The Islamic Landscape Place and Memory 3 Chapter 2: Making the Desert Bloom Transforming an Inhospitable Earth 3 Chapter 3: The Science of Gardening Agricultural and Botanical Manuals 29 Chapter 4: Organizing the Earth Cross-axial Gardens and the Chahar Bagh 39 Chapter 5: Trees and Plants Botanical Evidence from Texts and Archaeology 5 Chapter 6: Representations of Gardens and Landscape Imagery in Manuscript Paintings, Textiles, and Other Media 63 Chapter 7: Imaginary Gardens Gardens in Fantasy and Literature 75 Chapter 8: The Garden as Paradise The Historical Beginnings of Paradisiac Iconography 89 Chapter 9: The Here and Hereafter Mausolea and Tomb Gardens 03 Chapter 0: A Garden in Landscape The Taj Mahal and Its Precursors 7 Chapter : Religion and Culture The Adoption of Islamic Garden Culture by Non-Muslims 3 vii i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 7 11/15/07 3:53:01 PM List of Gardens and Sites 47 Spain 52 Sicily 59 Morocco 60 Algeria 65 Tunisia 66 Egypt 68 Turkey 7 Syria and Region 78 Oman 8 Iraq 83 Iran 85 Central Asia 92 Pakistan 96 India 200 United States 222 Glossary 225 Notes 227 Bibliography 24 Index 255 Acknowledgments 26 Color plates follow page 28 viii contents i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 8 11/15/07 3:53:01 PM Preface ardens are at once highly meaningful, expressing the position of G humankind with respect to the earth and cosmos, and utterly ordinary, reflecting the need to produce a food crop in order to survive the fallow season and plant anew another year. Moreover, the urge to garden, to domesticate the wild landscape by clearing it of all but selected plants, watering them, and tending them until they flower and bear fruit, is a basic human endeav- or that requires few resources and no grand conceptual scheme. Although gardens and landscape works requiring complex irrigation or drainage systems may occur on a large scale and reflect either the ambition of kings or the ability of a community to organize itself, others are quite humble and occur spontaneously. This book looks thematically at Islamic gardens and cultivated landscapes, placing them on a continuous spectrum with the city and architecture at one end and nature and wilder- ness at the other. The Islamic garden is a popular theme among architects and enthusiasts, and every year a new volume is produced with handsome illustrations of stunning gardens. However, a great many of these focus entirely on elite formal gardens, defining them as enclosed spaces that are geometrically laid out and interpreting their symbolic meaning narrowly as “paradise on earth.” The removal of the garden from the broader context of landscape, agriculture, and water supply results in a limited and superficial view, giving extraordinary emphasis to religion and dynastic politics while ignoring other factors that contributed equally to garden form and meaning. This is not a book about the origins of the Islamic garden or its formal properties. Un- like Islamic architecture—where we can observe highly recognizable forms in mosque, palace, and tomb design—in Islamic history there is really only one formal garden plan, with a few variations on it. This is the so-called chahar bagh, or the four-part garden laid out with axial walkways that intersect in the garden center, discussed in Chapter 4, and the various stepped terrace variations of it that proliferated in the Safavid and Mughal realms, discussed in Chapter 0 and throughout. Gardens begin as secular endeavors, stemming from the practical need to organize the surrounding space, tame nature, enhance the earth’s yield, and create a legible map on which to distribute natural resources. Three early chapters address these practical issues. Symbolic interpretations of the meaning of such domestication and fertility came later in the history of garden making, so that the good garden became a sign of human success, and a productive landscape a sign of divine favor. There have been several inspiring theological ix i-xii 001-145 31814.indd 9 11/15/07 3:53:01 PM