4.611/13 Civil Architecture in Islamic History (HASS)
Instructor: Nasser Rabbat

14-The Mughal Gardens

Jahangir: The fourth Great Mughal emperor was a nature lover and an accomplished writer.  He is responsible for the building of most royal gardens in Kashmir.  His favorite wife, Nur Jahan, was very ambitious and shared his love for building and gardens.  His memoirs, Tukuz-i Jahangiri, is an invaluable source for the study of the Mughals' taste and enthusiasm for garden building.

 

Is the Mughal Chahar Bagh an image of Paradise?

Kashmir Gardens

Kashmir: A valley surrounded by high mountains used by the Mughals as a retreat from the heat of the low plains, and the best setting for their ordered and symmetrical gardens around its central lake, Lake Dal.  A famous inscription from the Persian poet Jami in the garden of Shalimar sums up the whole feeling about Kashmir, "if there is Paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here."

Shalimar Bagh ( Sanaskrit, Abode of Love): Established by Jahangir in 1619 and completed by his son Shah Jahan (1627-58).

Achabel Bagh: A pleasure garden that gets its water from a spring, famous for its cascades.

Vernag Bagh: Jahangir's and Nur Jahan's favorite retreat, built in 1609.  Its spring is the main source of the Jehlum river.

Tomb Gardens

The Tomb of Humayun in Delhi (1565): The garden, a huge chahar bagh (1200 ft to the side) whose four axes end at four gates, is recursively divided into nine chahar baghs, of which the central one is the massive domed pavilion set on a square base.

The Tomb of I‘timad al-Dawla in Agra (1628): Built for this highly-esteemed vizir by his daughter Nur Jahan, a low pavilion over a square plinth, situated in the center of a chahar bagh (500 ft to the side) and surrounded by four octagonal minarets at the four corners, echoed by another set of minarets at the four outer corners of the garden. A vaulted baradari with carved marble screens surmounts the lower pavilion.

The Taj Mahal in Agra (1632-54):(Crown Palace) is a late name of the mausoleum built for the empress Mumtaz Mahal by her husband Shah Jahan (1628-58). It is an extremely balanced and majestic monument, highly charged iconographically, and it represents the epitome of Islamic mausolea.  The white marble mausoleum is removed from the center of the chahar bagh, which was the norm in older Mughal mausolea, to a rectangular base on the side of the garden overlooking the Jumna river on the north.  This plan solved the problem of scale that all previous mausolea had to face in conjunction with their settings in the center of a chahar bagh.