DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0193
Byzantine Gardens
165
water falls down from it over the terraces, "and if one stretches a hand out of the
window, it is at once covered with water." The pavilion of the caliph at Toledo was
much the same as this.
The large rectangular water cisterns on whose glittering mirrors the Persian looked
down with such delight, were called by him Deriatcheh, that is, little sea.
Fortunately there has been preserved, far from the town, still recognisable m its
ruins, the site of a real villa urbana. This is at Ashraf, a few kilometres from Astrabad,
on the slope of the Elbrus; mountains, and dating from the time of Abbas the Great.
FIG. Il8. PAVILION IN THE SHAH'S GARDEN, ASHRAF
" There are seven perfectly regular, rectangular gardens, not arranged to correspond to
one another according to any main design, but simply placed side by side as would be most
convenient on the land they occupied." So does Sarre describe this place (Fig. 117),
and the travellers of the seventeenth century have complained, just as he did, of the want
of unity in the plan, and this without reflecting that it was the late Italian Renaissance
which first conceived the notion of that unity which they desire here.
As always in the East, these Persian gardens are separately walled in, each with its
chief buildings arranged as terraces, dropping towards the north and north-west. Through
a large fore-court one arrives at the head garden, called Bagh-i-Shah, the Shah's garden.
This is the largest, just short of 450 by 200 metres, and it rises in ten terraces.
A wide canal between walls cuts through from one terrace to another, falling down the middle
m cascades, and streaming through the pavilion (Fig. 118) which overlooks the open pillared
165
water falls down from it over the terraces, "and if one stretches a hand out of the
window, it is at once covered with water." The pavilion of the caliph at Toledo was
much the same as this.
The large rectangular water cisterns on whose glittering mirrors the Persian looked
down with such delight, were called by him Deriatcheh, that is, little sea.
Fortunately there has been preserved, far from the town, still recognisable m its
ruins, the site of a real villa urbana. This is at Ashraf, a few kilometres from Astrabad,
on the slope of the Elbrus; mountains, and dating from the time of Abbas the Great.
FIG. Il8. PAVILION IN THE SHAH'S GARDEN, ASHRAF
" There are seven perfectly regular, rectangular gardens, not arranged to correspond to
one another according to any main design, but simply placed side by side as would be most
convenient on the land they occupied." So does Sarre describe this place (Fig. 117),
and the travellers of the seventeenth century have complained, just as he did, of the want
of unity in the plan, and this without reflecting that it was the late Italian Renaissance
which first conceived the notion of that unity which they desire here.
As always in the East, these Persian gardens are separately walled in, each with its
chief buildings arranged as terraces, dropping towards the north and north-west. Through
a large fore-court one arrives at the head garden, called Bagh-i-Shah, the Shah's garden.
This is the largest, just short of 450 by 200 metres, and it rises in ten terraces.
A wide canal between walls cuts through from one terrace to another, falling down the middle
m cascades, and streaming through the pavilion (Fig. 118) which overlooks the open pillared