The idea of the Mughal Garden was really an idea transported by Babur (the first Mughal Emperor) from the Timurid civilisation of Central Asia. When Babur invaded India, he brought with him the idea of the Timurid garden, which he adapted to the landscape of India, making it the Indo-Islamic (or Mughal) garden. A Mughal Garden consists of a Charbagh (a rectangular plot of land in a symmetrical pattern, quartered by waterways), and an irrigation system made using gravity and abshars (water chutes), inlaid with chevrons. It has terraces and flowerbeds of different heights, based on which plants they enclose. The Khayabans (paved walkways) are raised above the flowerbeds and are connected by causeways. This would lead up to a building, of which only the white dome was meant to be visible above the different layers of foliage. The water would occasionally flood, keeping the trees large in order to protect the rest of the garden from the sun.
Islamic culture regards paradise as a garden, and Muslims wanted to be buried inside gardens because it would amount to a material anticipation of immaterial bliss. The Mughal rulers were buried in mausoleums surrounded by gardens in order to come as close as possible to reach that level of paradise. In short, the funerary garden was Islam’s peaceful answer to death. The gardens themselves were said to work on two planes: as a living carpet and protection from the oppressive Sun, and sensually, as a place of shade, intimacy, and cool repose. The order of the gardens was the Mughals’ answer to the unruly, disorganised landscape around them and the water was there to contrast, with its fluid, calming motion.
Most Mughal Gardens have disappeared through the centuries, for the simple reason that they require a prohibitive amount of water to maintain. Some of the only proper remaining ones are Jahangir’s funerary garden in Lahore and Babur’s Garden in Agra. Mughal Gardens used to surround both the Taj Mahal and Humayun’s tomb too, but after centuries of unruly disrepair, Lord Curzon trimmed the hedges to clean them up and more suit the English style of a garden. Mughal gardens were either built as funerary gardens or pleasure gardens, and the Shalimar Garden in Delhi is a small example of a once grand pleasure garden. In 1653, Izz-un-Nissa (also known as Akrabarabadi Mahal), a wife of Shah Jahan, laid the foundations of the Shalimar Bagh near Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi). Later, it was the venue for the coronation of Emperor Aurangzeb and was Sir David Ochterlony’s summer residence. Most of the garden is in disrepair, but the sheesh mahal (crystal palace) and central pavilion still stand today.