The ‘Chahar Bagh’ Garden Plan And Its Symbolism
A famous feature of many Islamic gardens, though not all of them, is a lay-out called ‘Chahar Bagh’. This means ‘Four Gardens’ in Farsi, the main language in Iran, which is the source of many garden ideas. (In Urdu, ‘Char Bagh’ means the same thing.)
The ‘Chahar Bagh’ Garden Plan
The classic version of the ‘Chahar Bagh’ has a fountain at the centre of the garden which flows into four water channels at right angles to each other. Other water channels flow round the outside of the garden to link these up (see Plan 1, next page). Thus the garden is divided into four by water channels, hence ‘Four Gardens’. Some famous examples of the ‘Chahar Bagh’ lay-out are the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, Granada, Spain, the Garden of Fin, Kashan, Iran and the Taj Mahal garden in Agra, India.
The four water channels are often associated with the four rivers of Paradise, described in the Koran, which flow to the four quarters of Heaven or from them towards the centre. In some ‘Chahar Bagh’ gardens, like the Generalife and the Garden of Fin, this two-way flow has been carefully engineered through having fountains both at the centre and at the ends of the water channels. Thus, in a sense, gardens can be designed as an earthly representation of the Paradise described in the Koran. They can depict the fountains and rivers and the four gardens of Paradise described in the Koran.
“Gardens under which rivers flow” is a phrase used in the Koran more than 30 times to describe Paradise, according to Emma Clark, a present-day English designer of Islamic gardens, who is herself a Muslim. Some Islamic gardens give this feeling strongly. In Granada’s Generalife Gardens, crystal clear water gushes from cave-like hollows in rocky walls or wells up from the ground, runs through man-made water-channels, then disappears underground again and re-emerges elsewhere.
There is also a practical reason for the ‘Chahar Bagh’ lay-out, though it cannot explain the trouble taken in the design of some gardens in order to use this plan. This practical reason is that in Iran, where many garden ideas come from, water is often brought into the garden by an underground canal from the mountains, called a ‘qanat’. These ‘qanats’ are dug underground for long distances so that water does not evaporate in hot weather. To bring water up from a ‘qanat’ into a garden, you need an opening in the centre of the garden and water channels which can spread the water in all directions for irrigation.
The waters flowing up from underground in such Iranian gardens are quite powerful. Iranian visitors to the Garden of Fin sometimes play a game of aiming a coin down the central hole in the square pool from which water wells up into the garden. It looks easy because the hole is large and the water seems peaceful. But at the last moment your coin is suddenly pushed away from the hole by the invisible upward flow.
Some version of the ‘Chahar Bagh’ lay-out is very common among Islamic gardens. But, as the garden plans on the next pages show, there are some very different versions. Many versions do not involve the four channels of flowing water shown in Plan 1, which is the fullest version. Sometimes garden designers have wanted to use a ‘Chahar Bagh’ lay-out for symbolic reasons, although they do not have enough water for four water channels. As Plan 4 shows, the ‘Chahar Bagh’ lay-out can be produced entirely through using paths. This is very common. There are many options for a garden designer – many more besides these four. Also there are Islamic gardens which do not use any sort of ‘Chahar Bagh’ plan. There can be just a pool in the centre. But always there must be some sort of water feature, some rectangular enclosure, and symmetry and regular geometric shapes.