Palace Gardens in Lower Mesopotamia - Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art by Safa Mahmoudian Hardcover

About the Book

Provides the first in-depth examination of palace gardens in the Abbasid caliphate's Lower Mesopotamian heartland

Book Synopsis

Gardens were both a setting and showcase for nearly every aspect of social and daily life at the royal court during the early Islamic period in Western Asia. Safa Mahmoudian uses a wide range of primary source materials including contemporary Arabic manuscripts, together with archaeological reports, aerial photographs, and archaeologists' letters and diaries. Through close readings of this evidence, Mahmoudian creates a picture of these gardens in their historical, architectural and environmental contexts and examines various factors that influenced their design and placement. In doing so, Mahmoudian adds to our understanding of these gardens and palaces and, ultimately, early Islamic-period court culture as a whole.

Review Quotes

Mahmoudian's interdisciplinary approach provides a compelling re-evaluation of Abbasid palace gardens as more than ornamental additions to royal complexes. By integrating landscape studies, architectural analysis, and textual historiography, she demonstrates how these gardens functioned as essential components of Abbasid court culture--sites of power, leisure, artistic refinement, and environmental mastery. Her critique of conventional garden narratives encourages scholars to reassess Islamic landscape traditions through regionally focused studies rather than generalised frameworks.--Majid Amani-Beni & Mohammad Reza Khalilnezhad "Landscape Research"

This book skilfully and vividly brings the early Islamic gardens of Lower Mesopotamia to life. Safa Mahmoudian's coverage of the subject is meticulously organised and researched, clear and persuasive in its presentation, and deeply consequential to students, researchers, and enthusiasts of garden history alike. All aspects of case-study gardens are presented: their hardscape, their plantings, and their physical and socio-political contexts. This is a wonderful book, and it will be an invaluable resource.--Annette Giesecke, Victoria University of Wellington

With this systematic interdisciplinary study, Safa Mahmoudian opens a new window on the magnificent gardens of a little-studied period of Islamic history. Her thorough insights contribute remarkably to our knowledge of these once lively gardens and our understanding of palace architecture of the Abbasid nobility and their court culture.--Attilio Petruccioli, Polytechnic University of Bari

Safa Mahmoudian has unearthed considerable evidence of the gardens of Sawād during the first Islamic centuries to paint a comprehensive picture of these long-overlooked historical landscapes. Through precise analyses, she unravels the layers of architectural, sociocultural, geographical and horticultural significance embedded in these once flourishing royal gardens now largely lost to the desert sands.--Mehrdad Qayyoomi Bidhendi, The Iranian Academy of Art

About the Author

Wolfson College, Khalili Research Centre, Oxford

Safa Mahmoudian is an art and architectural historian, who has held academic positions at the University of Oxford, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna. Her doctoral thesis, completed at the University of Vienna received the Grete Mostny Dissertation Prize in 2022. Her first monograph, titled The Story of Fadan Mādī Life, Architecture and Urban Spaces along a Canal in Safavid Isfahan (in Persian, Tehran: Rawzana) explores the riverine landscape of a main water canal - Fadan Mādī - in seventeenth-century Isfahan from various angles. Her investigations demonstrated the crucial role that the water system of Isfahan played in shaping the city's morphology, architecture and daily life.