An opening
Manuel Gomez Anuarbe is one of the founders of the Spanish Association of Friends of Gardens and Landscaping, and is at present preparing a guidebook on Persian gardens.
In this article I shall try to highlight some of the qualities of the Iranian gardens, in comparison with the gardens of other countries, that the experts may have overlooked. My aim is to express my own personal view as a Spanish landscape architect on the Iranian gardens — having seen, over the past years, gardens in India, Pakistan, and of course in Iran itself.
The living impression of the ruined Iranian gardens
The first interesting point is the great number of gardens still existing in Iran, and that some of them are more or less, and others wholly, in a state of ruin — yet they can still leave a powerful impression on the visitor. Carbut has expressed the impressive quality of the Iranian gardens better than anyone else; he says that, until he came to Iran, he did not know what a garden was. The ruined Persian gardens, in comparison with Western gardens preserved in the best conditions, can stir feelings far more intense — and this is on account of their Iranian poetry.
The religious gardens, beyond mere viewing and pleasure
Another point I wish to note is that the books speak only of those gardens built solely for viewing and pleasure, but overlook the gardens of mausoleums, the courtyards of mosques, the religious schools, the bazaars, and the caravansarais. Many of the orchard-gardens, too, follow the same general principles and ought to be counted as gardens.
Shah Abbas and the chahar-bagh of Esfahan
On the other hand, certain particular gardens have such complex symbolic plans that it is better to study them apart from the gardens that are imitations of them. In my view, the gardens that were built at the order of Shah Abbas on the Caspian shore, in Qazvin, and above all in Esfahan, fall into this group. In cities such as Shiraz, too, a few gardens of this kind still exist; and so one cannot avoid the thought that the Iranians had a particular sense of life. In some cities such as Esfahan, the original name of the largest avenue of the city has always been Chahar-bagh, and it seems that the plan of Esfahan is the result of a fully developed philosophical thought, fed by the garden — one that has found a geometric and numerical expression.
The Ashraf gardens beside the Caspian Sea
Yet Shah Abbas carried out a great project also near the Caspian Sea. One of the most extensive and astonishing of the old Persian garden ensembles, named the gardens of Ashraf, still exists at Behshahr in Mazandaran province.
The Safi-Abad palace, built on a hilltop and overlooking the Caspian, calls to our mind an Italian Renaissance villa. When we know how vast Shah Abbas's knowledge was of European urbanism — and especially of the gardens of Italy and Rome — we shall be astonished. Shah Abbas had the capacity to choose for himself fitting companions and to draw on the learning of the cultivated men of his time; Sheikh Baha'i was among them, and his importance has not yet been fully assessed.
Palace on the hilltop: the symbol of paradise
Shah Abbas, on the mountain-palace, in a forest landscape from the river, decided to build his palace on an island. This island is the symbol of a paradise that is at once distant and near. He could either visit it by boat, or simply enjoy looking at it from his palace — built on four terraced levels of a hillside earthwork. The ruins of this palace, with the matchless kolah-farangi pavilion, still show that it was set in the middle of a chahar-bagh, in which the main axis ran from one bridge to the other, drawing in from afar the view of the Caspian Sea.
His palace, then, lay at the centre of a chahar-bagh, in which rose-bushes had been planted, and which was set on a mountain in a forest — a place to which one had to climb up four levels to reach.
Cheshme-Emarat, Chehel-Sotun, and Farah-Abad
On a level lower than this same mountain, there is another garden named Cheshme-Emarat (Spring-houses), which the water of the Abbas-Abad river feeds. The water, by its own force, reaches the first floor of the kolah-farangi (which feeds a fountain at the centre), and then descends into the four pools, each on one side of the plan. The plan of this garden is square, with three sides walled and one side closed by the mountain. The fruit-grove in this enclosed garden continues up to the mountain.
Within the city itself, its park is an example of a chahar-bagh; this park is what remains of the hill-garden.
Another garden, Chehel-Sotun — known today as Bagh-e-Shah, and now within the city — is divided in two by a stream coming from Abbas-Abad. The water falls from several levels and forms pools and waterfalls, and then passes through the kolah-farangi. Fruit trees are planted on either side of the stream-axis.
Shah Abbas also built another palace on a hilltop overlooking the Tajan river, named Farah-Abad Palace, today a ruin. This palace complex contains a kolah-farangi named Jahan-Nama, and beside it a garden, both square in plan, and a bath-house. Beside the palace there was also a caravansarai used as a bazaar, and a mosque, beside an outlet to the sea by which Shah Abbas could go to the sea by boat.
Shahgoli (Shahkali), Tabriz
Shah Abbas also had another water-garden with an island in the middle of a lake, called Bagh-e-Shah, located near Babol. Sadly, nothing remains of this garden. These gardens recall Shahgoli in Tabriz — present from the Qajar period, but whose age is still hidden from us. This island-and-lake of Tabriz is similar to the island-and-lake of Bagh-e-Takht in Shiraz and Farah-Abad in Esfahan, of which today no trace remains.
The water-bound island: paradise in Mughal-Rajput gardens
The idea of an island bound by water as the symbol of paradise is also to be found in the Mughal and Rajput gardens of India and Pakistan.
As a particular example of paradise, one may name the Dilaram garden in Amber, a geometric water-garden designed in three levels so that it may be seen from afar.
Spain and Philip II
In Spain, the last years of Philip II's reign (1527-1598) coincided with Shah Abbas's (1587-1629). Philip recreated the same idea of the water-garden in one of his gardens near Madrid. Without doubt Philip II had in mind the water-gardens of Bacalhoa, which he had seen in Portugal in his youth. But at Bacalhoa there is no island — only a kolah-farangi pavilion was built beside a lake. A few years later another water-garden, named Quinta das Torres, with an island carrying a kolah-farangi at its centre, was built at a very close distance to Bacalhoa.
Did Philip II know of the design of Iranian and Mughal gardens, or was he merely following an idea common across the world? Let it not be forgotten that Philip II — being a very religious man, like Shah Abbas — was interested in symbolism and mysterious matters, and the picture of paradise was probably of great importance to him.
A universal longing
The picture of a paradise connected to an island in fact has a longer history. There is also an example in the suburbs of Palermo in Sicily, and perhaps the oldest living example of this idea may still be seen at Tivoli near Rome — the place where the Emperor Hadrian built the first water-garden, named Hadrian at Tivoli, as a recreation of the places he had seen in the lands of his empire. The influence of Greece, Egypt, and the eastern civilisations was visible in the palaces and gardens of Tivoli.
It seems that the idea of an island-as-paradise is an important part of mankind's universal longings. But it can be said that the Iranians strove, more than any other people of the world, to display this longing in the architecture of their own gardens.
