¹ The only comprehensive study of the Islamic garden ever undertaken is, to the best of my knowledge, contained in a paper(‘Les jardins de l'islam’) read by Georges Maréais to the Association of Muslim Students at Algeris in 1914 and subsequently published in Erucation algérience, Alger–Baconnier, 1941, but more accessible in Mélanges d'historie et d'archéologie de l'Occident musulman, Algeris, 1957, I, 233–44. More limited in scope despite its title is Annamarie Schimmel's ‘Al–Junaina. Al–azāhir wa 'l–bas–tin fī hadāral al–Muslimīn’, Fikr wa–Fann(Hamburg), I, 2, 1963, 45–61.

² The Arab attiude to the desert is more ambiguous and complex than this, but in the question of gardens only the negative side of this ambivalence concerns us.

³ Ana logically the etymology of ‘Paradise’ in European languages reveals the peimitive meaning of the wors as ‘garden’, since it is derives ftom the Greek Φαρáδεισος (of Persian derivation and signifying pleasure–park or garden) which is the word used in the Septuagint for the garden of Eden.

⁴ SŪra IV, verse 57. I have not consulted the consulted on the recurrect pharse in the Qur'anic descriptions of Paradise, tajrī min tahtiha al–anhār ‘underneath which rivers flow’, but two interpretations seem possible. Quite evidently it refers to a Paradisal mount either washed by rivers at the foot, as Milton(Paradise lost, III, 30–1)says:‘Thee, Sion, and the flowrie Brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,’ or cooled by subterranean rivers, as in the following account, once again quoting from Paradise lost(IV, 223–30): ‘Southward through Eden went a tiver large, Nor chang'd his course but through the shaggie hill Passd underneath ingulft, for God had thrown That Mountain as his Garden mould high rais'd Upon the rapid current, which through veins Of porous Earth with kindly thirst up drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Waterd the Garden⃜’ Howbeit, the image is an archetype which recurs constantly whether in literature or scripture.

⁵ cf.wilber, Donald M, Persian garden pavilions, Rutland, Vermont, and Tokyo, 1962,19.This book is incomparably the best work published on any aspect of Islamic gardening.Google Scholar

⁶ The following verse from the epitaph of the Granadine Sultan YŪsuf III (shāhid preserved in the Alhambra Archaeological Museum; transcriprion in Lafuente y Alcántara, Inscriptions arabes d'Espagne, Leydan and Paris, 1931,172) makes clearer the aesthetics of this cadre better than any amount of description: ‘May rainclouds water his grave and revive it, and may the moist garden carry ro him its fresh perfume’.

⁷ The custom was very widespread and found perhaps its fullest expression in Persia and the Muslim regioms of India. The most recent example that I know of is the funerary garden laid out in the Urdu Park at Delhi for the interment of Abu 'l–Kalām Azad, where the famous Indian theologian lies buried at the intersection of two asymmetrical axes. As far as Spanish practice is concerned by far the best account may be found in Torres Balbás, ‘Cementerious hispanomusulmanes’,Al–Andalus, XXII, I, 1957, 133, where various references are given. The practice of siting mounments and even tombs within a garden so as to evoke sensations of not unpleasing melancholy in the beholder was revived by the sentimental eighteenth century, above all in France where such mausolea proliferated in the romantic ‘jardin anglais’. In addition to the well–known caseof Rousseau's burial in the park at Méréville, Morfontaine, Plessis–Chamant, and funerary garden as forming the dwelling–place of the deceased, an attitude which finds practical expression in the custom of burying the dead in close proximity to a saint's grave precisely in order that they might partake of his presence and benefit from the baraka ar spiritual emanation exuded by his tomb.

⁸ In ‘La Rauda de Medicine, carde de la medirtation musulmane surla destinée du Prophete’, BUlletin de l' Institut Français d' Archéologie (Cairo), LIX, 1960, 241–72 (reprinted in Opera minora, Beirut, 1963, III, 186–315), Massignon, with the extraordinary penetration characteristic of all his work, argues that the organizatiom of the Rauda or Mausoleum of the Prophet at the Madīna Mosque responds to abstract tendencies in Muslim art to provide a schema or frameworkfor religions meditation and even for mystical sublimation.

⁹ A fuller account than is possible in this brief essay could not to afford to neglect the possibility of Roman irrigation system was still in use when the Arabs arrived in 711. One analogy is, however, too important to be overlooked: the axial watercourse of the Perso–Arab garden corresponds closely to the ‘euripi’ of the Romans, notably in the Garden of Agrippa at Rome and in that of Loreius Tibertinus at Pompeii. Parallel material, yielding points of comparision as well as of contact between the Perso–Ismalic and the Egypto–Hellenistic garden traditions, can be found in Jack, Lindsay'sLeisure and pleasure in Roman Egypt, London, 1965, 248–346.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Qalā' id al–'iqyān, Būlāq, 1283/1866–7, 153. For the location of this garden see Al–Andaldus, XXIX, 1964, 293–4, where we studied it in the context of Ibn Shuhaid's biography.

¹¹ Kitāb ibdā' al–malāha wa–inhā' al–rajāha fī usūl sinā'al al–filāha, in Lerchundi and Simonet, Crestomat03AF;a ar00E0;bigo–espaňola, Granda, 1881, 136. The poem onagriculture, hitherto unpublished save in excerpts, has been edited with translation into Spanish by Sta. Joaquina Eguaras, and should appear shortly in the series of publicationd edited by the Escuelas de Estudios Árabes of Madrid and Granada.

¹² Here archaeology steps in to confirm Ibn Luyūn: the excavation of the Patio de la Acequia in the Generalife, hereafter referred to, laid bare the bases of columns which must have supported a dome over the central crossing.

¹³ aqud al–Maqqarī, Nafh al–tīb, Cairo, 1949, x, 80, II. 15–17.

¹⁴ This palace still exists in the ourskirts of Granda, albert in a deplorable state of derelication. Still extant also is the large rectangular pool (bahr) alluded to by the poet: measuring 121 X 28 metres, before it was filled in for cultivation, it must have been spacious enough to invite comparison with the dayācha or ‘little sea’ type of garden common in Iran.

¹⁵ I prefer the interpretation of this verse suggested to my colleague Dr. J. D. Latham to that of Dr. E. Garcί G00F3;mez (Cinoco poetas musulmanes, Madrid, 1944, 247). The verse indicates that homosexuality, being something rephensible, requires extenuation, which in this case, the dark beauty of the myrtle's foliage, so reminiscent of down on the check of a youthful catamite, supplies.

¹⁶ Silla del Moro, Madrid, 1948, III.

¹⁷ See ‘El Generalife después del incendio de 1958’, I, 1965, 9’, whence we reproduce the excellent plan by Sr. Jes00FA;s Bermúdez (fig. 1).

¹⁸ The possibility of there being another Arab garden under the present Parador de San Francisco (inside the walls of the Alhambra) cannot be excluded, because the courtyard of this hotel is still crossed by the watercourse of the Muslim palace which anciently occupied the site. Nor can mention be omitted in this context of the Vega of Murcia, which dates from the twelfth century. See Torres Balbás, ‘Patios de crucero’, Al-Andalus, XXIII, 1, 1958, 176–8.

¹⁹ On the Indo-Islamic garden see C. M. Villiers-Stuart, Gardens of the great Mughals, London, 1913, passim. Some useful data on Moroccean gardens are contained in Jean Gallotti, Le jardin et la maison arabes au Maroc, paris, n.d. [but c. 1926], 2 vols.

²⁰ See Georges, Marçais, ‘Remarques sur l'esthétique musulmane’, Annales de l'Institut d' Études Orientales (Algeris), IV, 1983, 64–9; reprinted in Mélanges d'historie et d'archéologie de l'Occident musulman, Algiers, 1957, I, 99.Google Scholar

²¹ Acknowledgements are due to Sr. Francisco Prieto-Moreno, on pp.190–1 of whose book (Los jardines de Granada, Madrid, 1952) appears the plan whixh we reproduce here (fig. 2).

²² Although these prickly pears are an ananhronism there can be no doubt that, in spite of popular belief that this cactus came to Spain from the American continent, there flourished on the Mediterranean littoral a species known as Opuntia tuna, because the German traveller MÜnzer saw it there in 1494, omly two years after the Reconquest. See Viaje por Espaňa y Portugal, 1494–1495, Madrid, 1951, 29–32.

²³ Pérès's ed., Rabat, 1940. Al-Himyarī's list really totals 21, but we have excluded zahr al-kittān ‘linen-flower’ because this plant was cultivated for industrial purposes only.

²⁴ The Arabs, like the Greeks and the Romans, were addicated to the beautiful custom of scattering, during and after the funeral, branches of odoriferous shurbs on the grave, in addition to how in Granada he saw the Imām chanting besice a tomb whilst seven women, all dressed in white, scattered thereon branches of myrtle. A funerary garden should, of course, be an aromatic spot, redolent with the spices of jasmine and of myrtle; indeed, to judge from how luxuriantly it flouridhes in Andalusian epitaphs, the latter of these must have figured very prominently in those places where the moods of death were so exquisitely caputured. But climate as well as aesthetic factors determines the character of the setting, and in the shade of tombs away from the Indian heat: a role which accounts for its presence in Mughal iconography.

²⁵ op. cit., 5. Cf. the same author's La poésie andalouse, en arabe classique, au XI siècle, Paris, 1937, 167–85

²⁶ Paraíso cerrado para muchos, jardines abiertos para pocos ‘Paradise closed to many gardens open to few’. It is perhaps no accident that this poet was a native of Granada.

²⁷ The article by E. García Gómez, ‘Primavera de flores árabes’, Vétice, V, 61–2, 1942, 91 and 100, was not accessible to the author till proof stage. This brief study is a notable analysis of the floral metaphores in al-Himyarī's work.