The Gardens of Ghaznavids period: usages (according to the History of Beyhagi)

The history of Beyhagi is not only one of the most famous Persian literary texts, But, in turn, it is an important source of cultural and social history of Iran in ghaznavids period. In this book, there are many entries about artists, architectural monuments and artworks including governmental and private gardens.This paper intend to study, from a social-cultural perspective, usages of gardens in this period. The main question of this research is whether the governmental gardens were built during this period only as a symbol of the glory of kings, to represent or they have other usages also. To answer this question, by examining the text, the relevant material was collected and classified and using descriptive-analytical method was set. The findings were organized in two parts: The first part, deals the garden features in the cities of Ghazni, Herat, Balkh, Nishapur, and the second part studies the usages of gardens from political, military, administrative, religious, sporting and recreational aspects of early Ghaznavids period