Contents Persian Gardens Overview: the Persian Garden Rejuvenation of the Spirit Formal and Informal Gardens Pasargadae's Chahar Bagh Gardens of Ancient Tabriz Hanging Garden's of Babylon

Suggested prior reading:

» Lush Gardens - Paradise / Bagh - Pairidaeza (Overview page)

» Cyrus' Capital, Pasargadae

Overview: the Persian Garden

Baghs in ancient Abyaneh, near Kashan in Isfahan Province, Iran An urban forest

As we had noted in our Overview page's section on Lush Gardens - Paradise / Bagh - Pairidaeza Zoroastrians have a reputation for creating lush gardens or baghs. The word paradise comes from the Old Iranian word for exceptional gardens, pairi-daeza, which in later years was shortened to parideiza and then to paridiz. Pairi means all around, thoroughly and ultimate, while the precise meaning of daeza is uncertain. However, as a compound word, pairidaeza came to mean a celestial garden, a heavenly paradise on earth.

The description of the Garden of Eden as paradise is derived from the Persian Avestan pairi-daeza, and some would say, was located in the northern Iranian Zagros mountains (see Gardens of Ancient Tabriz below).

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, described below, then one of the seven wonders of the world, were built based on the Median (western Iranian) gardens in the Zagros mountains.

The chahar-bagh gardens of the Taj Mahal (see photographs below) are a descendant of the formal chahar-bagh gardens at King Cyrus' palace in Pasargadae.

With the correct selection of trees, herbs and plants, the pairidaeza baghs were places that could include amongst the vegetation grown within, essential health giving plants of the haoma / barsom family.

When all the elements of the pairidaeza baghs are considered together, they form an integrated composition of shade, micro-climate, vegetation, refuge, and healing.

Koocheh (Street) Bagh Tarasht, Tehran, Iran A street of walled baghs in Tehran

To understand the true significance of the Persian gardens, the baghs, both informal and formal, it is necessary to put them in the context of the surrounding countryside of Iran and Central Asia - lands given to extremes in climate, from severe winters with blizzards, to burning summers with blinding dust storms. The mountains are for the main part barren and rocky, and the ever present deserts are covered with dust or a yellow slime where the water does not drain away. Within the desolation are verdant valleys and hidden forests. Elsewhere, the land can be dangerous and hostile to the unprepared visitor. The Aryans, however, saw an inner latent beauty - like that of a gem encased in rock. They left the countryside for the main part pristine, admiring it for what it was, as nature intended, and sacred as God's creation. Where land was required for human habitation, rather than scaring the earth, they helped make it blossom, a refuge not just for themselves, but for animals and rare plants as well. That was the ancient ethic.

Sadly, in the last thousand years, the thinking and situation in Iran has changed, a change that has accelerated in the past hundred years.

Capturing visions of the old Iran at the threshold of the modern age, Vita Sackville-West wrote in Passenger to Tehran (1926), "A savage, desolating country! But one that filled me with extraordinary elation. I have never seen anything that pleased me so well as these Persian uplands, with their enormous views, clear light, and rocky grandeur." He went on to say, "Persia has been left as it was before man's advent."

When this author lived in Tehran, Iran, he had the opportunity to visit some privately owned gardens or baghs located on the outskirts of the city. The gardens were walled compounds and a change in climate was evident immediately on entering through the garden's doors. Cool fragrant air welcomed the visitor. In summer, while the surrounding land was desert-like, barren and very hot, the baghs were lush with vegetation and cool. Water (often drawn from a well) played in significant role in the design and in the creation of the bagh's micro climate as well as its calming environment. They were oases with a spiritual quality. Places for restoration of spiritual, physical and community health.

Rejuvenation of the Spirit

The pairidaeza gardens are ideal places to rejuvenate the spirit. They are a meeting place for all elements of the spiritual and material creation. They are a place for personal reflection as well as strengthening family, friendship and community bonds. They are places, if a person so chooses, to reconnect with one's spiritual self and to take a hiatus from active life to continue a spiritual quest. Even the Achaemenian kings are reported to have personally and physically worked in building and taking care of their gardens (see below).

The pools or channels of water that are invariably an integral part of the garden's design, are places for self-reflection. The entire setting is tranquil and serene, a manifestation of the amesha spenta armaiti. Complimenting self-reflection is meditation, especially when accompanied with the recitation of a mantra (manthra). The very act of tending to the garden and nurturing the plants is a religious act.

The pairidaeza is a sacred space where an inner voice can be heard. They are places for sacred contemplation and spiritual nourishment.

Formal and Informal Gardens

The style or Persian gardens can be both formal and informal. The formal gardens are the type found in front of palaces, and are geometric in their layout. Cyrus' garden, the chahar bagh (see below, also spelt chahr bagh), meaning four gardens, consisted of four squares within a square - a quadripartite ground-plan. In addition to the various formal gardens in Iran, the gardens of the Taj Mahal in India are also an example of a formal garden. A example of informal gardens are the family baghs found on the outskirts of major Iranian cities such as Tehran.

Pasargadae's Chahar Bagh

Layout of the Pasargadae palace complex Gate A is the entrance building to the complex Palace S, situated just across the river is the apadana or audience hall The chahar bagh gardens are flanked by pavilions A and B Palace P is thought to be the private royal residence

In Persian, chahar means four and bagh means garden. Chahar bagh or the four gardens was the formal garden style used by Cyrus the Great (c. 600 to 576 - August 530 BCE) for his palace gardens at Pasargadae, the capital of Pars (Persia) during his reign. The garden at Pasargadae is the earliest known example of the chahar bagh, a design that became the core design for subsequent formal Iranian gardens including the gardens of India's Mughal rulers. The gardens of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India are based on Cyrus' Chahar Bagh design and are so named even today (see photographs below).

There is some speculation in the literature, that the four quadrants of the garden - the four rectangles or squares within a rectangle or square - represented the four quadrants of the Persian empire. The squares were created by walkways and straight white limestone lined water channels that connected square basins or pools placed at regular intervals. These water-courses or aqueducts formed the principle and secondary axes of the quadripartite layout and are the earliest known record of gravity-fed water rills cascading into regularly spaced basins arranged in a geometric system. The channels and basins served both a practical irrigation function and an aesthetic function. Besides, they also modified the climate of the immediate surroundings.

There were two pavilions beside the garden, where the royal family or visitors could sit and enjoy the beauty and fragrant air. Cyrus also had a throne placed at the midpoint of the southwest portico of palace P (see the diagram above) from where he could view and contemplate the gardens and possible even hold an audience.

It is this writer's feeling, that in addition to the formal gardens, there would also have been a surrounding park-like forest that included animals.

According to Penelope Hobhouse, Erica Hunningher, and Jerry Harpur in their book Gardens of Persia, the chahar-bagh gardens of Pasargadae could have contained fruit trees such as pomegranate and cherries, nut bearing trees such as almond, vines and roses, an under carpet of clover interspersed with spring-flowering bulbs such as iris and tulips, as well as poppies. The surrounding trees would have provided wind breaks, trees such as white-stemmed poplars, cypress and plane (chenar).

The Achaemenian kings took a personal interest in gardening. The Spartan General Lysander, who joined a later Achaemenian Persian king Cyrus the Younger as a mercenary in 401 BCE, reported to Xenophon how the Persian kings excelled not only in war but also in gardening, creating paradeisos (from pairidaeza) where they collected plants and especially fruit bearing trees and animals encountered during their foreign expeditions. Xenophon transcribed the Persian pairidaeza to his Greek form of paradeisos, the term that would later be used for the Garden of Eden in the Greek translations of the Christian Bible.

Xenophon went on to write, in his Oeconomicus (Economics 399 BCE)" The Great King...in all the districts he resides and visits...takes great care that there are 'paradises' as they call them, full of all the beautiful things the soil will produce."

Taj Mahal's Chahar Bagh in a painting at the Smithsonian Taj Mahal photograph in the National Geographic 1921. View down the central channel that bisects the bagh

Gardens of Ancient Tabriz

Map of Gan Eden location proposed by David Rohl Click to see a larger image. Map photo credit: Wikipedia

In 1999, reports were published on the discovery of ruins of an ancient garden found about sixteen kilometres (ten miles) from the northwest Iranian city of Tabriz (see map). Tabriz, in turn, is about 70 km. (40 mi.) east of Lake Urmia, a lake that features prominently in early Persian and Median history.

British archaeologist David Rohl from University College, London, was quoted in the The Jerusalem Report (February 1, 1999) in an article titled Paradise Found, as saying, "As you descend a narrow mountain path, you see a beautiful alpine valley, just like the Bible describes it, with terraced orchards on its slopes, crowded with every kind of fruit-laden tree."

"The Biblical word gan (as in Gan Eden) means 'walled garden,'" Rohl continues, "and the valley is indeed walled in by towering mountains." The highest of these is Mt. Sahand, a snow-capped extinct volcano that Rohl identifies as the Prophet Ezekiel's Mountain of God, where the Lord resides among `red-hot coals' (Ezekiel 28:11-19). He continues by saying that cascading down the once-fiery mountain, precisely echoing Ezekiel, is a small river, the Adji Chai* (also spelt Adji Chay and Aji Chai the name of which also translates in local dialect as 'walled garden'. Enclosing walls are a feature of Persian gardens). The locals still hold Sahand mountain as sacred, says Rohl, and attribute magical powers to the river's water.

Our note: Rohl's translation of Adji Chay may not be correct. Adji Chai is a Turkish name meaning bitter river referring to the high salt content of the river's waters. The ash deposited after a volcanic eruption by Mount Sahand could very well have provided the nutrients to sustain lush vegetation.

Rohl's Gan Eden extends from Lake Urmia east towards the Caspian Sea to what he considers was the land of Nod. On its southern boundary lies the ancient city of Kandovan, whose houses are carved into conical lava pillars.

We are not concerned here about the veracity of Rohl's claims. Rather, what is significant is the possibility that the reputation of ancient Persian gardens may have inspired the concept of the biblical garden of Eden.

(* The Adji Chai is also called the Talkheh Rud, (rud meaning river) and is formed by merging of three smaller rivers of Ab Nahand, Quri / Guri Chai, and Ojan Chai which all originate from the Sabalan Mountain range, southeast of Tabriz. The Adji / Aji Chai discharges in Lake Urmia / Orumieh after passing through the valleys between the Sorkhband and Yekkeh Chin mountain north of Tabriz and Osku districts. A tributary, the Mehran Rud also called Liqvan Rud, originates from the peaks between Karim and Sultan Mountains overlooking the Liqvan village near Esparakhoon and Qeshloq villages and joins the Adji / Aji Chai in Tabriz.)

Downstream Liqvan Valley (south of Tabriz, Iran) Liqvan Valley (south of Tabriz, Iran) with Mt. Sahand in the background

Hanging Garden's of Babylon

Hanging Gardens of Babylon. An artist's impression

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (also called the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis), were one of the seven wonders of the world according to Greek writers Alexander Polyhistor quoting Berossus (c. late 4th - 3rd century BC ?). The Hanging Gardens were an example of an urban patio, balcony and roof-top garden.

They were reputed to have been built by King Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BCE) around 600 BCE to placate his Median wife, Amytis, daughter of Cyaxares, the King of the Medes. Nebuchadnezzar made for Amytis, a vast terraced garden full of trees and exotic plants of every description with cool glades, fountains, and bubbling streams. By copying the lush gardens from her childhood home on the slopes of the Zagros mountains, he hoped that she would not miss her Iranian homeland and think of the palace as home.

The palace and its gardens are thought to have been located near present-day Al Hillah (formerly Babylon) in Iraq.

In ancient writings the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were first described by Berossus (c. late 4th - 3rd century BCE), a Chaldean priest. His account were quoted by later Greek authors such as Alexander Polyhistor (c. 1st century BCE), Strabo and Diodorus Siculus (see below).

Strabo (63/64 BCE - ca. AD 24), Geographies, Book 16, ch 1, § 5:
"...the hanging garden are called one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The garden is quadrangular in shape, and each side is four plethra (one plethron equals 100 feet) in length. It consists of arched vaults, which are situated, one after another, on checkered, cube-like foundations. The checkered foundations, which are hollowed out, are covered so deep with earth that they admit of the largest of trees, having been constructed of baked brick and asphalt — the foundations themselves and the vaults and the arches. The ascent to the uppermost terrace-roofs is made by a stairway; and alongside these stairs there were screws, through which the water was continually conducted up into the garden from the Euphrates by those appointed for this purpose. For the river, a stadium in width, flows through the middle of the city; and the garden is on the bank of the river."

Diodorus: (C. 1st cent. BCE)
"Vaults had been constructed under the ascending terraces which carried the entire weight of the planted garden; the uppermost vault, which was seventy-five feet high, was the highest part of the garden, which, at this point, was on the same level as the city walls. The roofs of the vaults which supported the garden were constructed of stone beams some sixteen feet long, and over these were laid first a layer of reeds set in thick tar, then two courses of baked brick bonded by cement, and finally a covering of lead to prevent the moisture in the soil penetrating the roof. On top of this roof enough topsoil was heaped to allow the biggest trees to take root. The earth was levelled off and thickly planted with every kind of tree. And since the galleries projected one beyond the other, where they were sunlit, they contained conduits for the water which was raised by pumps in great abundance from the river, though no one outside could see it being done." 2. Wellard, 1972, pp. 156

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•  © Author: K. E. Eduljee, Zoroastrian Heritage, Heritage Institute, 2007-10   •  Contact   •  Page validated by W3C.org