MUGHAL GARDENS

BY:DIPEKSHA PATELIA

INTRODUCTION➢Mughal gardens are a group of gardensbuilt by the Mughals in the Persian style of architecture. This style was heavily influenced by the Persian gardens particularly the Charbagh structure. Some of the typical features include pools, fountains and canals inside the gardens

➢Islamic garden as “a hortus conclusus walled off and protected from the outside world; within, its design was rigidly formal, and its inner space was filled with those elements that man finds most pleasing in nature. Its essential features included running water (perhaps the most important element) and a pool to reflect the beauties of sky and garden; trees of various sorts, some to provide shade merely, and others to produce fruits; flowers, colorful and sweet-smelling; grass, usually growing wild under the trees; birds to fill the garden with song; the whole cooled by a pleasant breeze.

RAM BAGH

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➢The Ram Bagh is the oldest Mughal Garden in India, originally built by the Mughal Emperor Babur in 1528, located about five kilometers northeast of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. Babur was temporarily buried there before being interred in Kabul.➢The garden is a Persian garden, where pathways and canals divide the garden to represent the Islamic ideal of paradise, an abundant garden through which rivers flow. The ram Bagh provides an example of a variant of the charbagh in which water cascades down three terraces in a sequence of cascades. Two viewing pavilions face the Jumna river and incorporates a subterranean 'tahkhana' which was used during the hot summers to provide relief for visitors. The garden has numerous water courses and fountains.➢The name is a corruption of the Persian ram Bagh meaning 'Garden of Rest'. It is also variously known as Bagh-i Nur Afshan 'Light-Scattering Garden', Aalsi Bagh or 'Lazy Garden': according to legend, Emperor Akbar proposed to his third wife, who was a gardener there, by lying idle for 6 days until she agreed to marry him.

Dholpur Lotus Garden➢The garden was founded in 1978 and excavation began.This

has revealed a central terrace, water channels and a large pool. Dholpur was established by Babur as an encampment garden .The permanent features are the pools and water features cut into the bedrock. ➢Water Chute from Timurid pavilion to rock-cut pool. he used the private apartments in his Indian gardens as a retreat; space was assigned to his officers and companions in the surrounding" encampment.

➢In Hindustan, architectural solutions were required for this expanded use of gardens and for the new climatic and physical conditions. The solution was an aesthetic response characteristic of Babur — he formalized the arrangement of elements in traditional Timurid gardens. The principle of organization he introduced in the Lotus Garden Palace was a sequence of separate buildings and open intervening spaces forming a unified composition on a single stone platform. Unity was achieved by the balance of space and mass and a narrow watercourse which also directed movement. This differs not only from previous Timurid architectural arrangements, but from the prevailing design of North Indian palaces where multiple stories of intercommunicating small rooms were enclosed in a large, defensive structure.

Shalimar Bagh➢the Emperor Jahangir built his celebrated Shalimar Bagh, his dream

project to please his queen. He enlarged the ancient garden in 1619 into a royal garden and called it 'Farah Baksh' ('the delightful'). He built it for his wife Nur Jahan ('light of the world'). In 1630, under Emperor Shah Jahan’s orders, Zafar Khan the governor of Kashmir got it extended. He named it ‘Faiz Baksh’ ('the bountiful'). It then became a pleasure place for the Pathan and Sikh governors who followed Zafar Khan.

➢The layout of the garden is an adaptation of another Islamic garden layout known as the Persian gardens. This garden built on a flat land on a square plan with four radiating arms from a central location as the water source. It needed to be modified to suit the hilly terrain and availability of a well, which could be diverted from a higher elevation to the planned gardens. Modifications involved the main channel running through the garden axially from top to the lowest point. This central channel, known as the Shah Nahar, is the main axis of the garden. It runs through three terraces. This layout left out the radial arms and the shape became rectangular, instead of a square plan of the Chahar Bagh.

➢The Shalimar Bagh is well known for chini khanas, or arched niches, behind garden waterfalls. They are a unique feature in the Bagh. These niches were lighted at night with oil lamps, which gave a fairy tale appearance to the water falls. However, now the niches hold pots of flower pots that reflect their colours behind the cascading water.

➢The garden, as finally laid out, covers an area of 12.4 hectares built with a size of 587 metres length on the main axis channel and with a total width of 251 metres . The garden has three terraces fitted with fountains and with chinar tree-lined vistas. The Shahnahar is the main feeder channel to all the terraces. Each one of the three terraces has a specific role.➢The garden was linked to the open Dal Lake water through a canal of about 1 mile length and 12 yards in width that ran through swampy quagmire. Willow groves and rice terraces fringed the lake edge. Broad green paths bordered the lake with rows of chinar trees. The garden was laid in trellised walkways lined by avenues of aspen trees planted at 2 feet) interval.

➢Humayun's Tomb was the first garden tomb made in India. The garden is divided into 36 squares by a grid of water channels and paths. The square garden is surrounded by a high rubble wall divided initially into four large squares separated by causeways and channels, each square divided again into smaller squares by pathways creating a char bagh. The laying down of the gardens in the Persian style was introduced by Babur and continued till the period of Shah Jahan.

HUMAYUN TOMB GARDEN

➢The gardens are laid out in classical chahâr-bâgh pattern. They are divided into quarters by raised causeways. The quadrants are divided, in turn, into eight plots, each with walkways. At the intersection of these walkways are octagonal or rectangular pools.