Read Online A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal by Michael Preston Diana Preston - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Preston Diana Preston
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minor stones, or even the claws, of a ring in which the dome is the major jewel.
The architects also added to the plan a plinth to raise the mausoleum itself above its riverside platform and positioned four circular white marble minarets, one at each corner of the plinth. Built on octagonal bases, the tapering minarets would have an interior staircase and three storeys, on each of which a balcony supported on brackets would cast shadows on the minaret in the sun. The minarets would rise to some 139 feet and each would be topped with an octagonal chattri . Although a minaret has the practical advantage in a mosque of providing a place for the call to prayer, they are not essential and, indeed, are not found in early Islamic holy buildings such as the Dome of the Rock. Their first use in a mosque in Damascus in the early eighth century probably resulted from the incorporation of the corner towers of a Roman temple previously on the site.
11
‘This Paradise-like Garden’
T he English word ‘paradise’, which first appeared in a Middle English text of 1175, is a simple transliteration of the old Persian word pairidaeza , meaning a walled garden. But the linking of gardens to an eternal idyll is much older and is common to both Christianity and Islam, with their shared roots in the Old Testament and the arid Middle East. Paradise is closely associated with the Garden of Eden lost by Adam and Eve. In his epic poem Paradise Lost , written at the end of Shah Jahan’s life, John Milton described how, in the Garden of Eden:
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade …
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse …
Water has always been the stuff of life to desert dwellers. Oases in the Arabian Desert were perhaps the forerunners of the garden and the bright, verdant green of their vegetation became a sacred colour to the Arabs and subsequently the colour of Islam. When the Prophet Muhammad proclaimed Islam, the Koran stated that the Islamic eternal dwelling or paradise was a series of terraces, each containing ever more splendid gardens irrigated by four water courses representing the rivers of life. Part of the description from the Koran reads:
With o’erbranching trees in each:
In each two fountains flowing:
In each two kinds of every fruit:
On couches with linings of brocade shall they recline.
And the fruit of the two gardens shall be within easy reach:
Therein shall be the damsels with retiring glances,
Whom nor man nor djinn hath touched before them:
Like jacinths and pearls:
Shall the reward of good be aught but good?
And beside these shall be two other gardens:
Of a dark green:
With gushing fountains in each:
In each fruits and the palm and the pomegranate .
When the Arabs invaded Persia, bringing with them the Koran, they encountered another thriving garden tradition stretching back over a thousand years. Xenophon wrote of how the great Persian ruler Cyrus had in the sixth century BC planted a garden with his own hands. One of Cyrus’s successors, Xerxes, was so transfixed by the beauty of a plane tree that he adorned its branches with gold amulets. The melding of Arabic and Persian cultures with their common love of horticulture produced gardens that their creators designed to be an earthly counterpart to the heavenly paradise.
The designers used a simple basic plan. Paradise gardens are almost invariably walled, providing privacy and a protection for the peaceful order within from the dusty chaos and swirling discord without. Watercourses intersect in the centre of the garden and represent the four rivers of life and perhaps also symbolize the irrigation essential to living in the desert. Some take the cross where the water channels meet as representing the meeting of the human and the divine, but beyond any symbolic meaning the Persians used the water for the very practical purpose of irrigating the four
The architects also added to the plan a plinth to raise the mausoleum itself above its riverside platform and positioned four circular white marble minarets, one at each corner of the plinth. Built on octagonal bases, the tapering minarets would have an interior staircase and three storeys, on each of which a balcony supported on brackets would cast shadows on the minaret in the sun. The minarets would rise to some 139 feet and each would be topped with an octagonal chattri . Although a minaret has the practical advantage in a mosque of providing a place for the call to prayer, they are not essential and, indeed, are not found in early Islamic holy buildings such as the Dome of the Rock. Their first use in a mosque in Damascus in the early eighth century probably resulted from the incorporation of the corner towers of a Roman temple previously on the site.
11
‘This Paradise-like Garden’
T he English word ‘paradise’, which first appeared in a Middle English text of 1175, is a simple transliteration of the old Persian word pairidaeza , meaning a walled garden. But the linking of gardens to an eternal idyll is much older and is common to both Christianity and Islam, with their shared roots in the Old Testament and the arid Middle East. Paradise is closely associated with the Garden of Eden lost by Adam and Eve. In his epic poem Paradise Lost , written at the end of Shah Jahan’s life, John Milton described how, in the Garden of Eden:
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade …
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse …
Water has always been the stuff of life to desert dwellers. Oases in the Arabian Desert were perhaps the forerunners of the garden and the bright, verdant green of their vegetation became a sacred colour to the Arabs and subsequently the colour of Islam. When the Prophet Muhammad proclaimed Islam, the Koran stated that the Islamic eternal dwelling or paradise was a series of terraces, each containing ever more splendid gardens irrigated by four water courses representing the rivers of life. Part of the description from the Koran reads:
With o’erbranching trees in each:
In each two fountains flowing:
In each two kinds of every fruit:
On couches with linings of brocade shall they recline.
And the fruit of the two gardens shall be within easy reach:
Therein shall be the damsels with retiring glances,
Whom nor man nor djinn hath touched before them:
Like jacinths and pearls:
Shall the reward of good be aught but good?
And beside these shall be two other gardens:
Of a dark green:
With gushing fountains in each:
In each fruits and the palm and the pomegranate .
When the Arabs invaded Persia, bringing with them the Koran, they encountered another thriving garden tradition stretching back over a thousand years. Xenophon wrote of how the great Persian ruler Cyrus had in the sixth century BC planted a garden with his own hands. One of Cyrus’s successors, Xerxes, was so transfixed by the beauty of a plane tree that he adorned its branches with gold amulets. The melding of Arabic and Persian cultures with their common love of horticulture produced gardens that their creators designed to be an earthly counterpart to the heavenly paradise.
The designers used a simple basic plan. Paradise gardens are almost invariably walled, providing privacy and a protection for the peaceful order within from the dusty chaos and swirling discord without. Watercourses intersect in the centre of the garden and represent the four rivers of life and perhaps also symbolize the irrigation essential to living in the desert. Some take the cross where the water channels meet as representing the meeting of the human and the divine, but beyond any symbolic meaning the Persians used the water for the very practical purpose of irrigating the four
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