Beyond Babur’s Gardens: A Symposium in Honor of Elizabeth Moynihan

Farshid Emami, Rice University

Farshid Emami (PhD, Harvard University, 2017) is an assistant professor in the Department of Art History at Rice University. He specializes in the history of architecture, urbanism, and the arts in the Islamic lands, with a focus on the early modern period and Safavid Iran. He is the author of Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024). His scholarly interests include transregional histories of early modernity, social experiences of architecture and urban spaces, and the intersections of architecture and literature. In addition to his publications on Safavid art and architecture, he has written on topics such as lithography in nineteenth-century Iran and modernist architecture and urbanism in the Middle East.

Kathryn Gleason, Cornell University

Dr. Kathryn Gleason is Professor Emerita of landscape architecture at Cornell University. A specialist on the archaeology of designed landscapes, she seeks evidence for gardens and parks around the Roman world in Italy, Israel, and Jordan, and later sites, notably the Rajput/Mughal gardens at Nagaur, Rajasthan. She coedited The Archaeology of Garden and Field (1994), A Cultural History of Gardens in Antiquity (2013), and Gardens of the Roman Empire (2018), and she contributed to The Sourcebook on Garden Archaeology (2013). She is fellow of the American Academy in Rome, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and former senior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks.

Rachel Hirsch, Harvard University

Rachel Hirsch is a doctoral candidate in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Harvard University. Her research explores the relationship between built landscapes and changing forms of empire in early modern South Asia. Her writing has been published in Muqarnas (“Building Burhanpur: The Process of Constructing a Mughal City”) and Oxford Bibliographies (“Environments and Landscapes in Islam”). Rachel holds an MS in architectural studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MA in South Asian studies from the University of Michigan, and a BA in art history and French studies from Wesleyan University.

Sahar Hosseini, University of Pittsburgh

Sahar Hosseini is an assistant professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research explores the sociocultural dynamics of societies through the spaces they create, inhabit, and transform. Her scholarship centers on the built environment and material culture of the premodern Muslim world, particularly positioning Persianate societies at the intersection of regional and transregional flows, local practices, and the natural context of each region. Her current book project, Zayandehrud and Its City: Reading the Riverine Landscapes of Seventeenth-Century Isfahan, offers a fresh interpretation of Isfahan’s seventeenth-century urban development by shifting attention from the city center and its structures to the Zayandehrud River and its associated landscapes.

Ali Akbar Husain, Independent Scholar

Trained as an architect at the University of Minnesota, Ali Akbar Husain earned a PhD in landscape studies at the University of Edinburgh. He has taught architecture and landscape in Pakistan, Mexico, and the Middle East; has worked as an architectural practitioner and a landscape consultant in Pakistan; and was a consultant to Nauras Trust, Bangalore, India, on the conservation of two seventeenth-century Indian gardens. In 2000, he wrote Scent in the Islamic Garden (republished 2012) and continues to present essays on Islamic Indian landscapes at conferences and symposia in the USA, the UK, India, and Pakistan.

Since September 2024, Ali Akbar has been an interdisciplinary research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This one-year award, tenable until August 2025, will be followed with a three-month period of research (September–November 2025) as a fellow at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Ebba Koch, University of Vienna

Ebba Koch studied and taught at the University of Vienna and held visiting professorships at Cairo, Istanbul, Oxford, and Harvard. Her scholarly interests focus on the architecture, art, iconography, and court culture of the Great Mughals of South Asia and their artistic connections to Central Asia, Iran, and Europe. Her publications include Mughal Architecture (1991, 2002, 2014), The Complete Taj Mahal (London 2006/2012), and The Planetary King: Humayun Padshah, Inventor and Visionary on the Mughal Throne (2022), which accompanies the permanent exhibition of the Museum for Humayun’s Tomb at Delhi of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, to which she was principal advisor.

Pradip Krishen, Author and Ecological Restoration Practitioner

Pradip Krishen works as an ecological restoration gardener in degraded semi-arid landscapes in western India. He created Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park in Jodhpur and was project director of Kishan Bagh Sand Dunes Park in Jaipur and Abha Mahal Garden inside Nagaur Fort.

He is the author of Trees of Delhi (2006), Jungle Trees of Central India (2015), and Abha Mahal Bagh (2020).

He made feature films in the twentieth century (that’s supposed to sound very long ago) and regards that as a career he has moved away from.

He lives in New Delhi with a dog and a cat.

Ratish Nanda, Aga Khan Trust for Culture, India

Mr. Ratish Nanda, conservation architect, is India CEO for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. He heads the interdisciplinary AKTC teams presently undertaking the two major urban conservation projects in India: the Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative, Delhi, and the Qutb Shahi Heritage Park Conservation in Hyderabad. For AKTC, he was earlier responsible for the Baghe Babur restoration (2002–2006) in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the garden restoration of Humayun’s Tomb (1999–2003).

His major publications include Delhi, The Built Heritage: A Listing (released by the Prime Minister of India); Delhi: Red Fort to Raisina; Conservation of Historic Graveyards (Scotland); and Rethinking Conservation: Humayun’s Tomb.

He studied architecture at the TVB School of Habitat Studies, Delhi, where he graduated with the Gold Medal. Ratish then did a master’s program in conservation studies focused on the built heritage at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York, England.

Laura E. Parodi, Università de Genova

Laura E. Parodi teaches Islamic art (and English for the media) at the University of Genoa, Italy. She is the author of numerous essays on Mughal art and architecture. Her interests range from garden history and historiography to manuscript culture and court ceremonial. She previously taught classes and seminars at the University of Oxford, University College Dublin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and various Italian universities. Her publications include The Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era (London, 2014) and the coedited Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction (Hamburg, 2015). Her article “Kabul, A Forgotten Mughal Capital: Gardens, City, and Court at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century” won the 2022 Professor Hasan-Uddin Khan Article Award from the International Journal of Islamic Architecture.

Sugata Ray, University of California, Berkeley

Sugata Ray is associate professor of South and Southeast Asian art and architecture in the Departments of History of Art and South & Southeast Asian Studies and director of the South Asia Art Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. His research is on post-1400s art and architecture in South Asia, with a focus on climate change and the environment, postcolonial geophilosophy, and post-humanist thought. Ray’s recent books include Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850 and Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence (coedited).

Nicolas Roth, Independent Scholar

Nicolas Roth holds a PhD in South Asian studies and most recently served as visual resources librarian for Islamic art and architecture at the Fine Arts Library of Harvard University. His research focuses on the history of horticultural practices and their reflections in literature and the visual arts, and prior to taking on his present position he worked for a local garden design firm. In his free time, he can usually be found tending to his own plot, where he strives to cultivate many of the plants he comes across in his academic work, in stubborn defiance of space constraints and climatic limitations.

Jyoti Pandey Sharma, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi

Jyoti Pandey Sharma is a professor of architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India. An educator in architecture, her work critically engages with the architectural and urban history of the Indian Subcontinent’s Islamic and Colonial eras, both in terms of their past-ness and their now-ness. Her research is widely published and awarded. She has been a summer fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, Harvard University, and a UGC associate at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, India. She has presented her research as an invited speaker at several international symposia and conferences.

James L. Wescoat Jr., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (emeritus)

James L. Wescoat Jr. is an Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of landscape architecture and geography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He conducts research on water systems in South Asia, from the garden to river basin scales. He co-led the Smithsonian Institution’s project on “Garden, City and Empire: The Historical Geography on Mughal Lahore.” His articles on Mughal water systems have focused on the Baburnama, Mehtab Bagh garden waterworks in Agra, Nagaur palace-garden complex in Rajasthan, and the Barapula Nallah watershed in Delhi, with forthcoming studies of the historical geography of the Ravi River floodplain in Lahore and the water systems of Mughal Kashmir.

Tuesday, June 3, 2025 | Day 1: Garden Poetics and Planting

Rachel Hirsch

Finding, Excavating, and Constructing Mughal Gardens: The Elizabeth Moynihan Archives at the National Museum of Asian Art

What can an archive tell us about the field of Mughal garden studies? In addition to its ability to record changes made to a historical garden during excavation, an archive can shed light on the scholarly agendas of its creator, acting as a nexus between historical record, method, and historiography. This paper uses the Elizabeth Moynihan archive at the National Museum of Asian Art to examine how Moynihan approached Mughal gardens as a nascent subject of historical inquiry. By exploring the structure and contents of the archive, this paper highlights Moynihan’s use of biography and autobiography in her search for, excavation, and construction of Mughal gardens. In doing so, the paper demonstrates the capacity for the archive to serve not only as a repository of past events, but also as a site of expanded participation, connecting garden builders and rebuilders over time and space.

Laura E. Parodi

What Really is a Charbagh?

For much of the twentieth century, scholars thought they had a clear idea of what charbaghs were: four-part ‘paradise gardens’. By the 1980s, however, it became increasingly apparent that sources were describing something else. After twenty years reviewing the issue, it is easy to dismiss the alleged paradisiacal overtones, and even easier to prove that charbaghs were not four-part gardens. It is equally clear that they were residential garden estates in many ways comparable to the Roman villa rustica. But the origins and etymology of the word remain as obscure as ever. This paper presents state-of-the-art research on the topic, highlighting uncertainties and tying some new discoveries to Elizabeth Moynihan’s work.

Nicolas Roth

Beyond the Parterre: Rare Flowers and Landscape in Early Modern South Culture

A number of plants, such as roses, narcissi, and the fragrant tropical magnolia known as campā or campak, are ubiquitous in early-modern South Asian literatures and visual arts. Others are more marginal – sometimes quite literally, appearing only on occasional album folios or in an odd poetic line, memoir passage, or dictionary entry. They are often wild plants, or, as garden ornamentals, specific to a particular corner of the Mughal world, and speak to the appreciation of the broader landscape and local specificity. This paper is dedicated to these plants rarer in the literary and artistic record, exploring the botany, cultural significance, and circumstances of the textual or visual appearance of five species: Persian lilac (Syringa x laciniata), Austrian copper rose (Rosa foetida ‘Bicolor’), yellow Judas tree (Sophora mollis), tree rhododendron (Rhododendron arboreum), and flame of the forest (Butea monosperma).

Ali Akbar Husain

The Sweet and the Salty: Garden Feasts in Seventeenth-Century Deccani Court Poetry

This essay forms part of a study concerned with representations of food in seventeenth-century Indo-Muslim culture. It is a portrayal of a garden feast from the Gulshan-i ‘Ishq (Rose Garden of Love), a masnavi, or poetic narrative, in the Arabo-Persian literary tradition. The poem was composed by Mulla Nusrati in Deccani, an archaic form of Urdu that was promoted by the sultans of the Deccan plateau to assert their cultural identity as distinct from that of the Mughals. The feast is described in terms of its savory dishes, which are likened to aspects of garden planting, and in terms of its sweet dishes, which recall features of palace architecture. The description, as a whole, evokes the characteristics of a palace garden (its architecture and planting), while drawing attention to a contest between the sweet and the salty and the need for balance and moderation as suggested by the poet.

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025 | Day 2: Mughal Gardens in Cultural and Environmental Context

Sugata Ray

An Architecture of Drought: El Niños and the “Monsoon Garden” of Dig

Extolled by Ernest B. Havell as the “finest and most original of Indian palaces,” the Mughal-influenced garden complex of Dig in Bharatpur has garnered significant attention. In the nineteenth century, colonial administrators studied the complex to locate a “Hindoo” style appropriate for inventing the Indo-Saracenic. More recently, art historians have turned to Dig to comprehend the diffusion of Mughal aesthetic idioms in the eighteenth century. Drawing from the methodologies of eco art history, I instead return to the hydroaesthetic cultures of Dig—including the construction of water tanks, the use of mechanical devices that mimicked the sound of rain, and the naming of pavilions after the monsoon—that materialized in the wake of a series of El Niño-induced droughts in the region. Taking cataclysmic monsoon failures as constitutive for the configuration of Dig’s architecture, I propose, allows for an interconnected history of climate anomalies and aesthetics to emerge.

Pradip Krishen

Indigenous Desert Plants for Abha Mahal Bagh: Babur May Not Have Approved

Late in the winter of 2013–4, Lady Helen Hamlyn asked me if I would plant up a garden called “Abha Mahal” behind a palace that had recently been restored in Nagaur Fort in western Rajasthan. I declined, because I’m an ecological restoration practitioner and knew next to nothing about formal Rajput gardens. To cut a long story short, Lady Hamlyn arm-twisted me into agreeing, although I managed to insist that I be allowed to use native plants from the western desert instead of ornamental ones and not be forced to grow everything in parterres. My presentation is the story of how it all went – what we learned, what didn’t work, and what did. I have lots of pictures to share and some useful pointers about how to be adventurous and not be a stickler for planting only what one sees in miniature paintings!

Sahar Hosseini

Engineering Abundance: Of River, Water, and Gardens in Safavid Isfahan

This talk focuses on the now-vanished garden of Hezar Jarib, established by Shah Abbas I (r. 1588–1629) as part of his vision for the southward expansion of the city of Isfahan at the turn of the seventeenth century. The garden’s size, its plentitude of fruit-bearing and shade-giving trees, and the numerous streams coursing through its vast expanse and flowing down its terraced slope—watering the colorful and aromatic flowers and shrubs that adorned it—all evoke a vivid sense of abundance and sensory pleasure. Yet this sensory richness and apparent abundance stood in stark contrast to the environmental constraints of the region. Such a landscape of plentitude was made possible through the careful management of natural resources, particularly through Safavid interventions in the water systems of the Zayandehrud. These included modifications to existing riverine irrigation networks as well as the construction of new hydraulic infrastructures to support the garden. Although these low-lying infrastructures remain largely invisible, they reveal how deeply the garden was embedded within a broader ecological system that extended to the snow-covered slopes of the Zagros Mountains.

Farshid Emami

Birds and Beasts: Animals and Garden Design in Safavid Isfahan

Safavid Isfahan boasted scores of gardens laid out in various forms and serving a range of functions. Yet these gardens were more than mere pleasure estates filled with aromatic plants and sumptuous pavilions; animals of various kinds—from roaring beasts to frolicking birds—roamed on their grounds, hovered above their leafy trees, and glided in their pools, granting a distinct character to the gardens. This presentation will explore the gardens and urban landscapes of Safavid Isfahan through the lens of the birds and beasts that were bred, kept, and displayed in them. These now-lost gardens—dedicated to songbirds, falcons, peacocks, among other creatures—can be examined on the basis of literary descriptions. But the faunal world of Safavid gardens is also manifest in the painted tiles that adorn pavilions and in garden carpets. These literary and visual materials reveal that living creatures were integral to Persianate garden design during the early modern period, bestowing distinct sensory experiences and symbolic meanings to the gardens.

Ebba Koch

The Zahara Bagh, or the Garden of Princess Jahanara, Revisited

Agra’s riverfront was once among the most magnificent sights of Mughal India. Both banks of the Yamuna River were adorned with imperial gardens and lavish garden houses of the nobility. Today, besides the fort and the Taj Mahal, only the gardens and tombs on the left bank of the Yamuna still retain some of their former grandeur. Here the Ram Bagh attracted the attention of Elizabeth Moynihan, with whom I discussed the Agra gardens at Delhi in the late 1970s. Little was then known about the garden next to the Ram Bagh, the so-called Zahara Bagh or Zara Bagh. This paper confirms my identification of the garden as that of Shah Jahan’s daughter, Princess Jahanara (1614–1681), presents a survey of its surviving buildings, and highlights its importance in the unique historical riverfront landscape of Agra, which is threatened more than ever before by new urban developments.

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 | Day 3: Conservation, Ecology, and Heritage Management

Ratish Nanda

Restoring Mughal Paradise

In 1997, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) committed to restoring the enclosed gardens of the Humayun’s Tomb World Heritage Site (1999–2003). The garden restoration led to a 1000% increase in visitor numbers as well as to a more challenging effort at Bagh-e Babur (2002-2007), Babur’s surviving Kabul garden. From 2007–2018, AKTC undertook the creation of Sunder Nursery Park in Delhi, where sixteenth-century monuments are today set in a landscape inspired by Mughal garden traditions. Since 2013, working at the Qutb Shahi tombs at Golconda, Hyderabad, the restoration effort has revealed remnants of at least five enclosed gardens. For all these garden restoration projects, Professor M Shaheer (Shaheer Associates) served as Landscape Architect and enhanced the understanding of landscape traditions.

Jyoti Pandey Sharma

The ‘Other’ Moonlight Garden: Rereading the Mahtab Bagh in Delhi’s Red Fort

In the Mughal leisure garden corpus, the Mahtab Bagh (Moonlight Garden) stands out as a space for nighttime leisure under the mantle of moonlight with a careful selection of garden elements to accentuate the nocturnal experience. Two such gardens are known to exist: one at Agra, forming part of the Taj Mahal ensemble, and the second in Delhi’s Red Fort. I focus on the latter, arguing that it has been invisiblized in more than one way, as a physical space, in the archives, and in scholarship, with the adjoining Hayat Baksh Bagh taking center stage. Asserting that Red Fort’s Mahtab Bagh be re-acknowledged as a Mughal Bagh, I critique its evolutionary trajectory from the Mughal to the colonial to the contemporary eras to demonstrate how what was originally envisaged as a sensual pleasure garden became a site of multiple interventions that compromised the very idea of a Mughal Bagh. I conclude by making a case for recognizing Mahtab Bagh as an important type of imperial leisure space in the Mughal leisure garden compendium.

Kathryn Gleason

Beneath the Waving Verdure: the Role of “Garden Tanks” in the Desert Water Harvesting Systems at Ahhichatragarh Fort, Nagaur, Rajasthan

The gardens of the palaces in the Ahhichatragarh Fort were poetic expressions of sensuality, pleasure, and wealth. To create such paradisiacal settings in the Thar Desert, a reliable water supply was essential, not simply for irrigation but to provide optimal cultivation conditions for the plants displayed. Garden archaeology uses close examination of soils, often imported to construct planting beds within architectural complexes. Archaeological investigations of the gardens within the palace have revealed imported soils in “garden tanks” for monsoon water storage and plant cultivation. Each garden had its own configuration, responding to the varied water sources and conceptions of garden design over time. This paper presents the archaeological findings and asks whether the innovative soil structure of the gardens was unique or characteristic of gardens in this region.

James L. Wescoat Jr.

Modern Interests in Mughal Garden Waterworks: Revisiting the Mahtab Bagh Project

The Mahtab Bagh project led by Elizabeth Moynihan included a chapter on “Waterworks and Landscape Design.” That chapter made an initial estimate of the garden water budget, linking each hydrologic component with inspiring Quranic inscriptions in the Taj Mahal complex. Twenty-five years later, this paper revisits the Mahtab Bagh water study in two ways which shed light on both its origins and subsequent scientific advances. It first draws upon Elizabeth Moynihan’s Mughal garden archive to retrace water-related antecedents of the Mahtab Bagh project in earlier studies of gardens along the Yamuna River in Agra by the Archaeological Survey of India, U.S. National Park Service, and Indo-U.S. Subcommission. It then provides a systematic update of advances at comparable garden sites such as Nagaur Fort and through analysis of updated hydrologic data and methods for the Mahtab Bagh area. Taken together, this approach offers insights into some of the modern interests in Mughal garden waterworks.

All times are presented in EDT

Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Day 1: Garden Poetics and Planting

9:30 a.m. Welcome

• Debra Diamond

9:45 a.m. Introductory keynote

• James L. Wescoat Jr.

10:05 a.m. Finding, Excavating, and Constructing Mughal Gardens: The Elizabeth Moynihan Archives at the National Museum of Asian Art

• Rachel Hirsch

10:25 a.m. What Really is a Charbagh?

• Laura E. Parodi

10:45 a.m. Q&A

• Facilitated by Debra Diamond

10:45 a.m. Break
11:10 a.m. Welcome back

• Massumeh Farhad

11:15 a.m. Beyond the Parterre: Rare Flowers and Landscape in Early Modern South Culture

• Nicolas Roth

11:35 a.m. The Sweet and the Salty: Garden Feasts in Seventeenth-Century Deccani Court Poetry

• Ali Akbar Husain

11:55 a.m. Q&A

• Facilitated by Massumeh Farhad

12:10 p.m. Response

• James L. Wescoat Jr.

12:30 p.m. Day 1 ends

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Day 2: Mughal Gardens in Cultural and Environmental Context

9:30 a.m. Welcome

• Debra Diamond

9:40 a.m. An Architecture of Drought: El Niños and the “Monsoon Garden” of Dig

• Sugata Ray

10:00 a.m. Indigenous Desert Plants for Abha Mahal Bagh: Babur May Not Have Approved

• Pradip Krishen

10:20 a.m. Engineering Abundance: Of River, Water, and Gardens in Safavid Isfahan

• Sahar Hosseini

10:40 a.m. Q&A

• Facilitated by Debra Diamond

10:55 a.m. Break
11:05 a.m. Welcome back

• Massumeh Farhad

11:10 a.m. Birds and Beasts: Animals and Garden Design in Safavid Isfahan

• Farshid Emami

11:30 a.m. The Zahara Bagh, or the Garden of Princess Jahanara, Revisited

• Ebba Koch

11:50 a.m. Q&A

• Facilitated by Massumeh farhad

12:05 p.m. Response

• Thaisa Way

12:25 p.m. Concluding remarks

• Massumeh Farhad

12:30 p.m. Day 2 ends

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Thursday, June 5, 2025

Day 3: Conservation, Ecology, and Heritage Management

9:30 a.m. Welcome

• Debra Diamond

9:40 a.m. Restoring Mughal Paradise

• Ratish Nanda

10:00 a.m. The ‘Other’ Moonlight Garden: Rereading the Mahtab Bagh in Delhi’s Red Fort

• Jyoti Pandey Sharma

10:20 a.m. Q&A

• Facilitated by Debra Diamond

10:35 a.m. Break
10:45 a.m. Welcome back

• Massumeh Farhad

10:50 a.m. Beneath the Waving Verdure: the Role of “Garden Tanks” in the Desert Water Harvesting Systems in Ahhichatragarh Fort, Nagaur, Rajasthan

• Kathryn Gleason

11:10 a.m. Modern Interests in Mughal Garden Waterworks: Revisiting the Mahtab Bagh Project

• James L. Wescoat Jr.

11:30 a.m. Q&A

• Facilitated by Massumeh Farhad

11:45 a.m. Response

• D. Fairchild Ruggles

12:05 p.m. Concluding remarks

• Debra Diamond and Massumeh Farhad

12:30 p.m. Day 3 ends