Overview | Search the Safavid Gardens | Introduction (Original PDF)
For a detailed chronological study of the Safavid gardens from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the researcher should refer to the original contributor’s introduction that embeds each of the nineteen catalogue entries into a chronological list of commissions under different rulers. The contributor chose these specific gardens, because they have received extensive illustrations from Ottoman miniatures of the sixteenth century (e.g. Matrakçı’s drawings of the first Safavid capital, Tabriz) to the sketches of European orientalists from the nineteenth century (e.g. Pascal Coste’s plans of the Khoy gardens). The variegated illustrations in the catalogue entries are supplemented by the contributor’s extensive use of court chronicles (e.g. Astarabadi’s Tārīkh-i Sulṭānī on Shah Ismail’s reign) that described the use and appearance of these courtly spaces, be it hunting grounds or interstitial, transitional spaces between the public and private realms of the palaces.