Database: Gardens and Power
Since antiquity, gardens have been a way for rulers to demonstrate their control over the environment. As such, impressive caliphal gardens were the worthy successors of Babylon's Hanging Gardens, ancient Persian enclosed parks (pairi-daeza, paradises), and the villa gardens of ancient Greece and Rome.
Abbasid gardens continued the practices established by ancient rulers and by their early caliphal predecessors in historic Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. The Abbasid caliphs built enormous garden terraces whose functions and meanings ranged from the practical and agricultural to the pleasurable and the ceremonial. They transformed this environment into a fertile landscape by cultivating a great variety of trees, such as date palms, and many delicious and fragrant plants. Their vast rectangular garden terraces featured pools, fountains, and garden pavilions, encircled or divided by water channels and walkways. Gardeners cultivated a wide variety of flowers and aromatic herbs brought from every corner of the empire. Gardens were carefully-staged areas enclosed by walls and planted with trees that offered protection from wind and sand, and boasted sophisticated hydraulic systems that managed precious water while also artfully displaying it.
Abbasid gardens were settings for special ceremonies such as Caliphal audiences, military celebrations, and poetry contests. They were meant to impress allies and rivals, perhaps especially the Byzantines. Some understood such gardens to be a metaphor for the divine order of the world and as earthly counterparts to the heavenly paradise promised to all Muslims.