Promenading in Isfahan’s Chaharbaghs
Read the Persian translation here.
When my desperate mind remembers Isfahan, I want to cry ,
It is hard to be apart from my companions and be deprived of promenading in the Chaharbagh Avenue,
May God make it easier for the lover.[1]
In the late seventeenth century, Mirza Rukn al-Din, residing in Kashan, wrote a letter to his friend in Isfahan expressing how much he had missed the city, the pleasure of being with his friends, and promenading in the Chaharbagh Avenue. In response, Aqa Mansur Semnani sent him a guide to visit Isfahan’s bazaars, gardens, and people. He insisted that these guidelines must be strictly followed; no deviation from the prescribed itinerary was allowed. Written in prose and verse, this guide aimed to ease Rukn al-Din’s longing by enabling him to vicariously walk through various places at different times of the day.[2]
What does this letter tell us about the urban spaces of Isfahan and particularly the practice of promenading? In her recent book, Kathryn Babayan explains this letter as an instruction in the etiquette (adab) of urbanity in the homoerotic context of seventeenth-century Isfahan, challenging the religious and state codes of behavior promoted by the Safavid court. Here I highlight the act of walking and the practice of promenading that are at the core of this urban exploration and personal encounter with the city as an urban planning device (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Safavid Chaharbagh, 2012. Wikimedia Commons.
Isfahan, a city in central Iran, became the seat of the Safavid empire under the rule of Shah Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) in 1591, and new architectural activity turned the medieval city into a spectacular early modern capital. Royal palaces, gardens, a vast maydan, a carefully designed public promenade of the Chaharbagh, along with other urban elements characterized the Safavid city in the seventeenth century. Shah Abbas I’s successors also contributed to the development of his urban project by adding new water-front palaces, royal gardens, and residential quarters.
Scholars have recently addressed the spatial aspects of Safavid Isfahan and how besides being a royal and Perso-Shi'ite capital city for the Safavids, the city's urban design offered a new spatial language for everyday practices of Isfahani residents. The Chaharbagh Avenue was one of these urban spaces that distinguished Isfahan from its counterparts in the seventeenth century (Figure 2). In addition to the use of the chaharbagh (literally, four gardens) or quadripartite layout for the design of the gardens in Isfahan, the name chaharbagh was also conferred upon this planned tree-lined promenade (1,650 m long) flanked by garden portals and embellished with running water, fountains, and flower beds. Open to the public for leisure walks, it was a passage between the two royal gardens of Jahanuma and Hezar Jarib. Although it is not clear how the quadripartite garden layout evolved into an urban design phenomenon in Isfahan, contemporary accounts reflect the impact of this urban space on the vitality of early modern Isfahan and the lived experience of the residents.
Figure 2. Cornelius De Bruyn, the Safavid Chaharbagh promenade (Chaharbagh-i Abbasi), ca. 1704. Wikimedia Commons.
The impressive spatial experience of the promenade was routinely mentioned in travelogues since the seventeenth century. However, the history of this important urban element in Isfahan between the Safavid (1501-1722) and Pahlavi (1925-1979) periods has received scant attention, mostly due to the prevalent assumption that in the eighteenth century the city went into a decline, having lost its status as an imperial city. One wonders what happened to such a spatially engaging and effective urban planning idea in the post-Safavid period. Did Isfahan and the Isfahanis forget the spatial experience of Chaharbagh Avenue in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? How was the practice of promenading in the Chaharbagh Avenue understood by later-generation Isfahanis?
Figure 3. Bolshov Bakunov Proskuriakov Ogranovich, “Plan of the town of Esfahan with a description.” Review by topographers: captain Proskuriakov and ensign Ogranovich. Draught by ensign Bolshov and Bakunov, ca. 1851. Published in Asnaad-i Tasviri-ye Shahrha-ye Irani dar Dore-ye Qajar, Tehran 2000. White circles demonstrate the spread of Sadr-i Isfahani’s architectural projects along his three chaharbaghs and in relation to the existing Safavid monuments (labels and lines provided by the author)
“One wonders what happened to such a spatially engaging and effective urban planning idea in the post-Safavid period. Did Isfahan and the Isfahanis forget the spatial experience of Chaharbagh Avenue in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?”
A key reference point to the post-Safavid architecture and urbanism of Isfahan is the architectural patronage of Mohammad Husayn Khan-i Sadr-i Isfahani (1758 -1823), a native of Isfahan who later became the city’s governor. Grounding my exploration of Isfahan’s urbanization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, I suggest that Sadr-i Isfahani appropriated the practice of promenading as a reclamation device to revive and restore Isfahan's urban and economic prosperity. He established three chaharbaghs—Fathabad, Aminabad, and Husaynabad-i Tuqchi—between 1803 and 1809 to the east of the Safavid Chaharbagh Avenue (Figure 3). Not only did the form of the Safavid Chaharbagh Avenue shape Sadr-i Isfahani’s new chaharbaghs, but the spatial experience of the chaharbagh as an urban space was emphasized and highlighted as the signs of the city's development and reclamation under his patronage. As a patron aware of and acquainted with the urban practices associated with walking and promenading in a chaharbagh, Sadr-i Isfahani organized his urban and architectural projects (religious schools, water fountains, markets, gardens, etc.) along the new chaharbaghs (Figure 4). Placement of these urban elements and their specific arrangement represent the Chaharbagh Avenue as a pivotal idea for evoking Isfahan's glorious past, merging it with Sadr-i Isfahani’s configuration of a non-royal urban ensemble situated parallel to the main axis of the Safavid Chaharbagh (Figure 5).
Figure 4. Portal of the Madrasa-ye Sadr-i Khaju, along the Fathabad chaharbagh (currently Khaju), commissioned by Muhammad Husayn Khan-i Sadr-i Isfahani, ca. the 1800s. Photo: Samira Fathi, 2015.
Figure 5. Photograph of the Fathabad chaharbagh, late 19th century, Isfahan, Courtesy of the Gulistan Palace, Tehran.
Sadr-i Isfahani's decision to choose the chaharbagh form to revive Isfahan was the astute strategy of a seasoned urban administrator. He served in different city administrative posts before assuming Isfahan's governorship in the reign of Fath Ali Shah (1797- 1834). While Tehran was the seat of the Qajar throne and Fath Ali Shah was an active art and architectural patron, none of the projects commissioned by the king indicate any signs of attention to the chaharbagh concept. However, Sadr-i Isfahani, a local governor, deemed this idea an essential device to pull together the dispersed economic and social forces of Isfahan into a coherent urban form. By naming one of his chaharbaghs, Fathabad (referring to Fath Ali Shah), he tried to revive and represent the absent royal presence in Isfahan since the fall of the Safavids.
Figure 6. The Fathabad chaharbagh, Commissioned by Muhammad Husayn Khan-i Sadr-i Isfahani, ca. the 1800s. Photo: Samira Fathi, 2015.
To perpetuate his legacy, Sadr-i Isfahani commissioned Madayeh al-Husayniyyeh (Praises of Husayn), a tazkirah (biographical anthology) that was in fact a compilation of works of contemporary poets penned in admiration of him and his renovation and restoration efforts in Isfahan and other cities. Regardless of its eulogistic nature, the poems in this panegyric accentuate the sensory experience and shared pleasures that the people of Isfahan enjoyed in these new chaharbaghs and their adjoining buildings and public spaces. The poets describe these new chaharbaghs as crowded with young and old, day and night, experiencing the delights and joys of this earthly paradise. In one case, the poet explicitly links the joyful and pleasant experience of the reclaimed Isfahan to the establishment of Sadr-i Isfahani's chaharbaghs in the city (Figures 6 and 7).
Comparing these poetic descriptions with an 1851 Russian map of Isfahan, one can see how the design and arrangement of elements along these chaharbaghs would have contributed to the spatial experience of the inhabitants. For instance, the gardens and garden portals that adorn the edges of the Aminabad Chaharbagh, and the pools and fountains arranged in this tree-lined avenue would stimulate the senses while promenading in this chaharbagh. This avenue also linked the city to the Takht-i Foulad cemetery as a social hub associated with the rituals of shi’i shrines.
Fathabad and Tuqchi chaharbaghs, due to their location, were more integrated into the urban, economic, and religious fabric of the city. Fathabad Chaharbagh was flanked with Maryam Beygum’s Madraseh and the Khaju Bathhouse on the east and Bagh-i Tekiyyeh on the west, located between the Hasanabad and Khaju Gates. Beginning from the Khaju Gate the avenue widens and four lines of trees define the passages through the chaharbagh. On the east are located Madreseh-ye Khaju, Imarat-i Haji Husayn, and Bagh-i Borj; on the opposite side, Hammam-i Bistun, Koushk-i bagh, and Bagh-i Ramezan Ali. Three pools of Howz-i Khaju, Howz-i Ramezan Ali, and Howz-i Bagh-i Borj mark the water features designed for this chaharbagh.
Figure 7. The Fathabad chaharbagh. Photo: Samira Fathi, 2015.
Tuqchi Chaharbagh had approximately the same length as the Aminabad Chaharbagh. As presented on the map, it is a straight avenue with symmetrical buildings on both sides, pools in front of the garden portals, and lined with trees. There is a mosque within a garden called Masjid-i Baba Soukhteh and the design of an unlabeled structure in this garden accords with the Qurkhaneh Garden located on the other side of the chaharbagh. In the Russian map, one can notice the presence of Tuqchi Bridge, Qurkhaneh, Imarat-i Kucheh khane, Bagh-i Kuche Khane, Bagh-i Charsoo, Bagh-i Masjid-i Baba Soukhteh, Howz-i Chaharbagh, Tuqchi Gate, and Tuqchi Bazaar along this avenue.
Despite their formal and nominal analogy to the Safavid Chaharbagh, Sadr-i Isfahani’s chaharbaghs were laid over old routes, on axis with the two major gateways of the city. This axis tangentially touched the old maydan and the Safavid and pre-Safavid sites of Isfahan. It also visually and symbolically highlighted Isfahan’s status and location in the new economic, religious, and political networks of nineteenth-century Iran. In addition to the gardens, a range of buildings—bazaar, madraseh, mosque, saqqakhana (fountain)—along these chaharbaghs gave a non-royal character to these urban thoroughfares. Rather than a maydan, the avenue and the familiar social practice of walking was chosen for the development and restoration of Isfahan’s urban vitality and prosperity (Figure 8).
“The poets describe these new chaharbaghs as crowded with young and old, day and night, experiencing the delights and joys of this earthly paradise.”
Figure 8. Photograph of the Khaju bridge (Hasanabad bridge) over the Zayande river connecting the Fathabad chaharbagh to the Aminabad chaharrbagh. This bridge was originally constructed under Shah Abbas II in the 17th century and Sadr-i Isfahani restored and repaired it while establishing his new chaharbagh avenues in the early 19th century. Photo: Samira Fathi, 2015.
Looking back to Mirza Rukn al-Din's pining for Isfahan and its Chaharbagh Avenue, one can imagine that such urban sensibility continued to frame the experience of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Isfahan. The city continued to be remembered through and written about in relation to the spatial experiences of its urban spaces such as chaharbagh avenues. For the Isfahanis, Isfahan was encapsulated in the shared spatial experience of a set of urban spaces, rather than the dynastic achievements of Shah Abbas I or even ironically the death of Fath Ali Shah in Isfahan. Sadr-i Isfahani grasped this simple point and was able to identify the chaharbagh concept as a way to connect with the Isfahanis’ shared urban experience and to move towards the later street-oriented urban configuration of modern cities in Iran.
Notes
[1] Aqa Mansur Simnani. “Dastur al-amal-i sayr-i Isfahan.” Originally published in mid-17th century, in Farhang-i Iran Zamin, (Tehran, 1970).
[2] This letter is categorized as Shahr ashub (lit: city disturbance in Persian), Sehr asob or Sevkengiz (in Ottoman Turkish), a litrary genre in prose or verse that comprises a variety of themes related to people, objects, and built environments in cities.
