Voices of Islam (202 page)

The moment of this Return through the Threshold to the Center is a forever that is now—the Present/Presence that is not bound in the duality of past and future.

The Saint hath no fear, because fear is the expectation either of some future calamity or of the eventual loss of some object of desire; whereas the Saint is the ‘‘Son of His Time’’ (resides in the Eternal Present/Presence); he has no future from which he should fear anything and, as he hath no fear, so he hath no hope since hope is the expectation either of gaining an object of desire or of being relieved from a misfortune, and this belongs to the future; nor does he grieve because grief arises from the rigor of time, and how should he feel grief who dwells in the Radiance of Satisfaction and the Garden of Concord.
2

NOTES

Excerpted from Viriginia Gray Henry-Blakemore,
Thy Self, the Logos: Symbolism of the Cherubim from Mesopotamia to Monticello as Understood from the Last Essays of

1. K. Coomaraswamy,
   forthcoming from Fons Vitae, Louisville, Kentucky. Reproduced by permission of the author and publisher. Sources for the above book include three unpublished manuscripts by Ananda Coomaraswamy: ‘‘The Guardians of the Sun Door,’’ ‘‘Philo’s Doctrine of the Cherubim,’’ and ‘‘The Early Iconography of Sagittarius.’’
   

   Regaining the Center: Gardens and Thresholds
   91
   

   1. Martin Lings describes this Tree as an ‘‘outward image of the inward Tree of Immortality, which grows in the garden of the heart, and is on the axis as a gateway to the Spirit.’’ Lings,
      The Book of Certainty
      (Cambridge, U.K.: Islamic Texts Society, 1992), 28.
      

   2. Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd, famous Sufi of Baghdad, ninth century
      CE
      .
      

11
‌

T
HE
I
SLAMIC
G
ARDEN
: H
ISTORY
, S
YMBOLISM
,

AND THE
Q
UR
’
AN

•

Emma C. Clark

In Arabia at the time of the coming of Islam in the seventh century
CE
, a garden was conceived as a walled orchard or vineyard (Ar.
hadiqa, rawda,
or
riyad
), and was irrigated by a channel of water or a well. The pre-Islamic hero and poet ‘Antara ibn al-Shaddad recited the following verse: ‘‘Every noble virgin bestowed her bounty upon it/and we left every enclosed garden (
hadiqa
) shining like a silver coin.’’
1
However, in its most basic form, a grove of palm trees (
Phoenix dactilifera
) and a source of water—the oasis— was a garden too. For both the pre-Islamic Arabs and the early Muslims the walled garden, the
hadiqa,
was a gift of Perso-Mesopotamian civilization. Islam absorbed the already well-established Persian tradition of hunting parks and royal pleasure gardens and invested them with a new spiritual vision. It was through this vision, as portrayed in the Qur’an, that the traditional Islamic garden was born.

The first Muslims came from the deserts and towns of Arabia and Syria. The Prophet Muhammad, like most young Arab boys at that time, spent his early childhood brought up by a foster-mother from one of the nomadic desert tribes. It was believed that the demanding desert environment and nomadic way of life would instill the virtues of steadfastness, strength, and courage in boys at an early age and would stand them in good stead in adult- hood. ‘‘As desert dwellers, the notion of invisible hands that drove the blasts that swept the desert and formed the deceptive mirages that lured the traveler to his destruction was always with [the Arabs],’’ writes Huston Smith, a noted scholar of comparative religion.
2
For the pre-Islamic Arabs, accus- tomed as they were to living in a hostile environment, the smallest amount of water or the slightest indication of nature’s greenness was considered pre- cious and sacred, its rare appearance the work of ‘‘invisible hands.’’ To them, an oasis offered mercy in water and shade. Thus, a lush garden with fountains and shade-giving trees and the gentle green everywhere—as depicted in the

94
Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science

descriptions of the gardens of Paradise in the Qur’an—was a symbol of ease and comfort, a veritable abode of bliss.
3
The pre-Islamic Arabs already revered nature as a sign of the life-giving power of Allah, Creator of the Universe. Thus, when the Holy Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad with its promise of gardens of Paradise for the faithful and righteous—havens of such beauty and happiness that only a foretaste and refl ction of them could be experienced on Earth—it was perfectly natural for them to accept this vision.

A glance at the art and architecture of the Islamic world shows a tremen- dous diversity of artistic expression: the Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez, the Al Azhar Mosque in Cairo, and the Friday Mosque in Isfahan, all have rich art and artisanship adorning them. Each geographical location, with its native people, cultural characteristics, and artistic gifts, adapted the Islamic vision and principles to achieve pinnacles of art and beauty that are both reflections of the land in question and also recognizable manifestations of the Islamic spirit and this is no less true with Islamic gardens. Across the Islamic world, these gardens show a great variation of styles, reflecting practical and environmental factors, as well as indigenous cultural factors: factors such as topography, availability of water, and purpose or type of garden. However, like the other Islamic arts and architecture, despite their diversity, Islamic gardens retain the same principles and are quintessentially expressions of the same Islamic spirit.

Some Islamic gardens are vast open spaces, such as the magnifi ent Shalimar Bagh (‘‘Abode of Love’’) in Lahore, Pakistan, with its terraces and marble pavilions, or the Shalimar Bagh in Kashmir where water rushes down, channeled from the mountains. Some gardens, like the pre-Islamic
hadiqa,
have the appearance of orchards and are also called
bustan
(the Persian word for ‘‘orchard’’), for example, the Menara Garden in Marrakech, Morocco, with its olive groves and fruit trees. Then there are the great mausoleum gardens of Mogul India, such as those of Itimad ud-Dawlah or Humayun. However, our main interest in this chapter is the smaller, enclosed garden, the
chahar-bagh,
which is the type of garden that most people associate with Islam.

The classic
chahar-bagh
is a fourfold garden (from the Persian
chahar,
‘‘four,’’ and
bagh,
‘‘garden’’) that is constructed around a central pool or fountain with four streams flowing from it, symbolizing the four directions of space. Sometimes, the water is engineered to flow from the central foun- tain outward as well as inward toward the center of the garden from fountains placed at the four corners—as in the Court of Lions at the Alhambra. Often, paths are substituted for channels of water. This basic fourfold pattern is the quintessential plan of the Islamic garden, and there are many interpretations of it across the Islamic world. For example, the garden might be rectangular rather than square, such as the Patio de la Acequia (‘‘Patio of the Water- Channel’’) of the Generalife in Granada. The plan of the garden may also

The Islamic Garden: History, Symbolism, and the Qur’an
95

be repeated on a kind of grid system, following irrigation channels, as in the Agdal gardens near Marrakech. The pattern may also be manifested in the smaller, inward-looking courtyard garden of the traditional Islamic house, which is not always divided into four sections. However, with its central pool or fountain and surrounded by four walls, it still echoes the classic
chahar-bagh,
both in its form and in its symbolism. As we shall see, the fourfold garden is not a symbol particular only to Islam. Rather, it is of a universal nature, and it is founded upon a profound understanding of the cosmos.

PROTOTYPES OF THE ISLAMIC GARDEN

The idea that Paradise is a garden is a very ancient one. It predates Islam, as well as Judaism and Christianity, by centuries, and appears to have its origin as far back as the Sumerian period (around 4000
BCE
) in Mesopotamia. Here, a garden for the gods is mentioned in some of the first writings known to humanity. The Babylonians (
c.
2700
BCE
) described their Divine Paradise as a garden in the
Epic of Gilgamesh:
‘‘In this immortal garden stands the Tree
...
beside a sacred fount the Tree is placed.’’
4
Thus, in Mesopotamian sources we already have two indispensable elements of the Paradise Garden of Islam: water and shade. In the Qur’an, the Gardens of Paradise are called
jannat al-firdaws: jannat
(plural) meaning ‘‘gardens,’’ and
firdaws
(singular) meaning ‘‘Paradise.’’
5
The word
janna
(singular) can also mean ‘‘Paradise.’’ Most of the other terms in traditional Islam that describe gardens, such as
bagh
(‘‘garden’’),
bustan
(‘‘orchard’’), and
gulistan
(‘‘rose-garden’’), are Persian words.
6
Thus, they indicate where the developed form of the Islamic garden originated. It was the unique impact of the Qur’anic revelation on the ancient Sassanid and Achaemenian civilizations of Persia with their
pairidaeza
s (walled hunting-parks) and sophisticated irrigation systems, such as those in the gardens of Cyrus the Great at Pasargardae, that ultimately brought the Islamic garden into being. The English word ‘‘Paradise’’ itself comes from the Middle Persian word
pairidaeza, pairi
meaning ‘‘around,’’ and
daeza
meaning, ‘‘wall.’’

Persian gardens and hunting-parks were distinct areas, set apart from the surrounding, often inhospitable, landscape and were usually defined by high walls. Thus, we immediately envisage an isolated region, shutting out a diffi- cult environment to protect an area of fertility and ease within. The traditional Islamic fourfold garden is often represented in miniature paintings as sur- rounded by high walls. It is in the nature of Paradise to be hidden and secret, since it corresponds to the interior world, the innermost soul—the Arabic noun
al-janna
having the sense of ‘‘concealment’’ as well as of a garden.
7
This concept is similar to that of the
hortus conclusus,
the monastic garden of medieval Christendom. The courtyard of a traditional Arab-Islamic house is

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Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science

a kind of
chahar-bagh
in miniature; there may not be room for many plants and flowers but there is always water, usually a small fountain or a small pool in the center with possibly one palm tree or some plants in pots. These houses are often quite high, with four stories or more and a flat roof on which one can sleep on hot summer nights, the windows rarely opening out onto the street. Instead, they look inward, usually with balconies, onto the courtyard and the miniature Paradise Garden within. On entering one of these houses, in order to maintain privacy from the street, the corridor is cleverly constructed so that it bends around, preventing passers-by from peering into the secluded family home.