Parterres and stone watercourses at Pasargadae: notes on the Achaemenid contribution to garden design

• Published in: The Journal of Garden History
• Main Author: D. Stronach
• Language: unknown
• Published: 1994
• Subjects: sami
• Online Access: https://architexturez.net//doc/10-1080/01445170-1994-10412493; https://doi.org/10.1080/01445170.1994.10412493

Until only a few years ago it was a still prevalent opinion that the celebrated garden carpets of sixteenth-century Safavid Iran provided the oldest extant evidence for the form of the early Persian garden. 1 From the appearance of such carpets it was already clear that Safavid gardens included numerous water channels, multiple parterres, and a centrally placed garden pavilion which often stood within a rectangular pool on the long axis of the plan. 2 Such carpets of Safavid date indicate, moreover, that the design of even the most complex gardens of the day depended on the repeated use of a single, basic motif namely that of the chahar bagh or fourfold garden. 3 Recent archaeological work in Iran has done much, however, to reveal the far older beginnings of Persian garden construction, including the characteristic presence of a chahar bagh motif On the basis of excavated evidence from Pasargadae, the capital of Cyrus the Great (559-530 BC), the founder of the Achaemenid empire, it is now possible to detect the origins of Persian garden design not just five hundred years ago, but two thousand, five hundred years ago. 4 Furthermore, the manner in which the central axis of the principal garden of Cyrus was made to fall directly in line with the permanent throne in the main portico of one of the two major palatial buildings at Pasargadae, Palace P (figure 1), provides an unequivocal demonstration of the way in which, from the second half of the sixth century BC onwards, a recognizable symbol of power at the apex of a garden design could be used to imbue a visual, axial avenue with potent indications of authority. 1. See R. ETTINGHAUSEN, 'Introduction,' in The Islamic Garden , eds E. B. Macdougall and R. 'Ettinghausen (Washington, DC, 1976), p.8. 2. See C. G. ELLIS, 'Garden carpets and their relation to, Safavid gardens,' Hali , 5 (I) (1982), fig. 5. 3. Ibid., p.9. 4. See ALl SAMI, Pasargadae, the Oldest Imperial Capital of Iran (Shiraz, I956), pp. 75-77; D, STRONACH, 'Excavations at Pasargadae: third preliminary report,' Iran , 3 (1965), pp. 29 f.; R . PINDER-WILSON, 'The Persian garden: bagh and chahar bagh,' in The Islamic Garden , eds E. B. Macdougall and R. Ettinghausen (Washington, DC), I976, pp. 7I-72; and D.STRONACH, Pasargadae. A Report on the Excavations Conducted by the British Institute of Persian Studies from 1961 to 1963 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) (hereafter Pasargadae ), pp. I07 f. Whether or not the cross-shaped designs on painted pottery of c. 4000 BC from south-west Iran should also be related to garden design-and hence to a still earlier history of the chahar bagh in Iran (see D. WILBER, Persian Gardens and Garden Pavilions [Washington, DC, I979], p. 3) is something that can only, at least for the present, invite speculation.