Islamic gardens and landscapes

291 Pages·2008·39.557 MB·English

by  Ruggles, D. Fairchild

Islamic Gardens and Landscapes
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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.
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Islamic Gardens
and Landscapes
D. Fairchild Ruggles
university of pennsylvania press | philadelphia
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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
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To my parents
Jeanne Françoise Peter Ruggles and Thomas Morrill Ruggles
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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
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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
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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
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