Apr VSS - Gardens

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The Garden as a Symbol of Power: Protocol at the Caliphal Court of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III in Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ

Esther Lupón González

Lecturer, Centro Superior de Diseño Hacer Creativo, Zaragoza

PhD candidate, Department of Art History, University of Zaragoza

The medieval Islamic garden recreated the Qur’anic paradise: a lush enclosure crossed by rivers and streams where aromatic plants and fruit-laden, shade-giving trees flourish. Its canonical form, the chahar bagh or cruciform garden —evoking the four rivers of Eden— was adopted by Caliph ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (929–961) in the palatine city of Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, near Córdoba. There, the Upper Garden formed a visual extension of the Audience Hall, the celebrated Salón Rico, core of caliphal protocol. Embassies arriving at the Umayyad court traversed the city along a choreographed route engineered to impress and overawe through measured spectacle and political theatre. In this way the caliph displayed mastery over the natural elements and astonished his guests with experiences few rivals could equal. The murmur of fountains, the fragrant air of the gardens, and the glittering play of water heightened the sovereign’s majesty during audiences and celebrations.

Gardens in Late-Mughal Courtly Culture: Political Symbolism and Aesthetics under the Nawabs of Bengal, c. 1707-1757

Baijayanti Chatterjee

Seth Anandram Jaipuria College, University of Calcutta

Although gardens had been central to courtly culture in India long before the arrival of the Mughals, yet Mughal gardens were rich in political symbolism and aesthetic connotations in a manner very different from early Indian gardens. According to James Wescoat, Mughal Gardens, besides their paradisiacal symbolism had two types of political significance: on the one hand they symbolized dynastic claims and on the other hand territorial claims. Even in the twilight years of the Empire, Mughal Garden traditions continued to dominate landscape-designing under the ‘successor-states’ that arose on the ruins of the once great empire.

Even the British adopted the political symbolism of Mughal gardens when the province of Bengal finally passed into their hands by the mid-eighteenth century. Therefore, by exploring the flowering of Late-Mughal Gardens in early eighteenth-century Bengal my effort is to demonstrate how Mughal courtly culture outlived the formal apparatus of the empire with the establishment of several sub-imperial gardens in the different and often remote corners of the erstwhile empire.