Princely Safavid Gardens: Stage for Rituals of Imperial Display and Political Legitimacy

The Safavid kings were great garden builders, and yet the history of their gardens is not well known. Archaeology, urban history, Persian literary and pictorial sources as well as the accounts of European travelers who visited these gardens provide a rich array of sources that have rarely been studied as a whole. Yet there is a major difficulty. We lack a clear definition of a garden from the perspective of Safavid culture. Instead of assuming that form or spatial design constitutes a defining feature of a garden, we shall take a broad look at changes brought by Safavid kings into their cities and at the relationships between their gardens and specific urban spaces. First, we shall study the Safavid garden cities and their poetic description to achieve an understanding of the aesthetic reception of Safavid gardens. Second, we shall use pictorial representations of gardens in miniatures to establish a broad definition of a Persian garden, including private, public and princely gardens in the same concept. Third, a survey of the major garden creations and kingly rituals between 1587 and 1629 will show how the kings developed gardens in their cities and in particular in the capital cities for establishing some degree of control over their subjects and strengthening the legitimacy of their dynasty.