Uni-axial Pattern of Persian Garden (CHAHARBAGH) Re-finding

During more than 60 years of research about Persian garden, most of the researchers noted that CHAHARBAGH is the most important pattern of Persian garden and it is an "Archetype". CHARBAGH is formed by two perpendicular axes in garden which divide it into four square shape parts. Most of the literature about the Persian garden confirms the idea that the concept of the Persian garden without the CHAHARBAGH pattern is meaningless, but the existing historical Persian Gardens, shows another fact about the Persian Garden pattern. There is uni-axial pattern of Persian Garden which is described in historical books such as "Irshad ul zerae" (or a guide book for planting) which is written about 400 years ago. This paper aims to challenge the stereotypical pattern in the Persian garden by having a critical approach towards the literature review and raise the question that what the uni-axial Pattern of Persian Garden exactly is. Why this pattern is formed during the history, and was it repeated during history. In order to re-find an-axial pattern of Persian garden, with a deductive approach, the paper tries to recognize all the documents about uni-axial Pattern of Persian Garden, among historical documents such as, the first documents of PASARGAD garden, Persian miniature, and Persian garden-carpet. Philology of the words "BAGH", "PARDISE" help us to find some facts about it. The word ‘paradise’ derives from the Persian word ‘Pardis’ for a garden and usually has the same meaning in every culture and language. It is representative of ‘paradise on earth', but there is no emphasis on "two perpendicular axes in garden" in the meaning of this word and the word: "BAGH".In other hand, we can draw a complete plan of uni-axial pattern of Persian garden according to the book "Irshad ul zerae"and correcte some mistakes of other researchers' drawings such as Subtenly, Damgaard, Yavari and Alemi. Other Documents especially the first documents of PASARGAD garden, shows us that it was the first uni-axial Pattern of Persian Garden which excavated by Sami and also Stronach. Existing historical Persian garden like SHAZDEH garden in Mahan, DOLATABAD garden in Yazd, HAFT_TAN garden and NARENGESTAN garden in Shiraz, CHEHELSOTOON in Isfahan are evidences for the fact that we can observe uni-axial Pattern of Persian Garden during different historical period. The Iranian traditional arts such as carpet and miniature are also show the pattern during history. In Persian Garden –carpets we can observe 3 patterns of CHAHARBAGH archetype which includes: tow perpendicular axes pattern, three parallel zones pattern and uni-axial pattern. In Persian Miniature we can also observe 3 patterns of CHAHARBAGH archetype which includes: "Imaginary Gardens" with uni-axial Pattern, miniature with two perpendicular axes pattern, and "story miniature" with uni-axial Pattern related to different age. In a deductive conclusion we can re-find Uni-axial pattern of Persian garden as an important pattern of CHAHARBAGH. As another result, this paper found that the scope of existing uni-axial Pattern of Persian Garden during history is pervasive and also this pattern is based on ZORASTRIAN beliefs.