Agra Fort

Agra is globally renown as the city of the Taj Mahal. But this royal Mughal city has, in addition to the legendary Taj, many monuments that epitomise the high point of Mughal architecture. In the Mughal period, in the 16th and 17th centuries, Agra was the capital of India. It was here that the founder of the dynasty, Babar, laid out the first formal Persian garden on the banks of the river Yamuna. Here, Akbar, his grandson raised the towering ramparts of the great Red Fort. Within its walls, Jehangir built rose-red palaces, courts and gardens, and Shahajahan embellished it with marble mosques, palaces and pavilions of gem-inlaid white marble.

The crowning glory of the city is obviously the Taj, a monument of love and imagination, that represents India to the world.

What to See

The Taj Mahal stands serene and awesome, on a raised marble platform, by the banks of the Yamuna, testifying to the timelessness of art and love. Its pure white marble shimmers silver in the soft moonlight, exudes a shell - pink glow at dawn, and at the close of the day, takes on the tawny, fiery hue of the majestic sun.

Shahjahan built the monument in memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, the 'lady of the Taj', who died giving birth to their 14th child. It has been called the most extravagant monument ever built for the sake of love. The construction of the Taj commenced in 1631, and was completed in 1653. Workers were gathered from all over the country and from Central Asia, and about 20,000 people were recruited to translate this wild dream into a reality.

The main architect was Isa Khan, who was brought all the way from Shiraz in Iran. After he was deposed and brutally imprisoned in the Agra Fort, by his son Aurangzeb, Shahjahan spent the rest of his life looking wistfully at his wife's final resting place, just across the river. The Taj remains a symbol of eternal love where the heart - broken Shahjahan was subsequently buried, re-united finally with his beloved Mumtaz.

Among the other monuments that Agra takes pride in is the Agra Fort, built by three of the greatest Mughal emperors. The construction of this massive structure began in 1565, under Akbar, and continued till the time of his grandson, Shahjahan. Armed with massive double walls, punctuated by four gateways, the fort houses palaces, courts, mosques, baths, gardens and gracious pavilions within its premises. Among the fascinating structures that are to be found within the fort is the red sandstone Jehangiri Mahal built by Akbar for his Hindu queen, Jodhabai, was one of the earliest constructions illustrating the fort's change from a military structure to a palace. The palace is also notable for its smooth blending of Hindu and central Asian architectural styles. The Diwan - i - Am, the Diwan - i - Khas, the Khas Mahal, the Palace of Mirrors, the Pearl mosque, the Nagina Masjid, the Garden of Grapes, and the Fish Pavilion are the other monuments in the fort complex. (more on Taj Mahal)

And what else?

Fatehpur Sikhri, Itmad-ul-Doulah Tomb, Bharatpur and also, 10 km north of Agra lies Akbar's tomb, in Sikandra. Named after the Afghan ruler Sikander Lodi, Sikandra is the final resting place of Emperor Akbar. Akbar began the construction of his own garden mausoleum during his lifetime, a red sandstone structure in a chahar - bagh, or 4 - square formal garden. An impressive marble - inlaid gateway leads to the spacious four - tiered monument which is crowned by a white marble cenotaph and screen. This last was added by Jahangir, who completed the tomb after the demise of his father.

Other places to visit include, Mathura and Brindavan. Mathura, on the banks of the river Yamuna, is the birthplace of Krishna, and Brindavan, the land of thousands of shrines and temples, which still echoes with stories and songs that recount the exploits of this charming God.

All these palaces [Delhi, Agra and Lahore] are full of gardens with running water, flowing through channels into reservoirs of stone, jasper and marble. ..... In the garden of these palaces there are always flowers according to the season.

So wrote Niccolao Manucci, Italian soldier and quack doctor who lived and travelled in India for several decades at the end of the seventeenth century. Manucci's time in India coincided with the completion of some of the greatest Moghal gardens and he, like many others since, was fascinated by their buildings and enchanted by the cool oasis of planted tranquility which they afforded in the searing heat of the plains. Moghal gardens have retained their power of fascination and now, as with other major sites, much more thought is being given to effective management and conservation to ensure that they endure into the next millennium.

One cannot ensure the good conservation of a building, garden or artifact, without understanding it thoroughly; this alone allows sound decisions or vital interventions to be made. Before turning to some of the conservation issues linked with the great Moghal gardens on the World Heritage List let us examine their design and development and touch upon the fortunes and misfortunes that made them what they are today.

The story of the Moghal gardens, in a sense, is illustrated by those on opposite banks of the river Jumna at Agra. The great flowering of the art of garden making began with the emperor Barbur's riverside palace garden and reached its most magnificent development with the Taj Mahal, the most sublime of all garden sites, Shahjahan's memorial to his beloved wife, Arjumand Banu Begum better known by her title Mumtaz Mahal, Elect of the Palace.

Emperor Barbur's distaste for the gardens and grounds he found around Agra is well known. Searching for one in this region of fierce heat and desert landscape, he rejected all those he was shown, sank a well and set about creating a new garden for himself: an enclosed garden, terraced to overlook the river and graced with pavilions where one could sit and catch the cooling breezes, with water running in channels for irrigation and ornament and baths for relaxation. It is with some pride that Barbur recorded that, in that charmless Hind, plots of garden were laid out with order and symmetry, with suitable borders and parterres in every corner and in every border rose and narcissus in perfect arrangement.

There was something irresistible in this arrangement and it was soon copied by other members of the royal family and of the court until the whole river bank seemed reminiscent of their homeland.

The site of Barbur's garden, the Ram Bagh, can still be seen though it has been modified over the centuries and has not been included on the World Heritage List. Yet this site, together with the insights Barbur offers in his writings, highlights some of the key elements of Moghal garden design; dramatic siting, brilliant use of water and a deep and skillful delight in planting and architecture. For over two centuries Barbur and his successors used these elements to transform traditional Islamic design and create some of the worlds finest gardens.

Gardens were an integral part of Moghal life. The Moghal court being constantly on the move, garden palaces and gardens within fort complexes were highly appreciated as places of relaxation and as settings for court ceremonial. Ultimately, a garden which had delighted its maker in his lifetime became the splendid setting of his Moghal tomb.

A reflection of Paradise For the Moghals, gardens were like a glimpse of heaven and they drew inspiration from the Quran, modifying and adapting established designs to shape their paradise on earth. A Moghal garden or charbagh was a perfectly balanced formal composition of space, vegetation and architecture, texture and colour, light and shade, designed to address and delight all the senses.

Water formed a link between the various elements of the garden. Extensive engineering works were needed to bring it to the gardens, sometimes through canals running over many miles and irrigating the landscape as they passed, sometimes laboriously lifted from the river or from wells sunk deep into the ground. Shahjahan's Shalamar Gardens in Lahore show that the Moghals knew how to handle water in the garden to its fullest effect. Sheets of cool, quiet water contrast with shawls of fast running white water thrown over chadars; deep-throated marble chutes sometimes inlaid with coloured marble. The play of water in countless fountains caused the light to sparkle and covered the surface with ripples. Nor did nightfall put an end to the enjoyment: tiny oil lamps set in marble niches sparkled from behind cascades while flickering lights were reflected from tiny boats floating across the dark water.

In Moghal gardens there is no strict distinction between garden and building, each flows seamlessly into the other, but in palace gardens in particular there are differences of space and function and areas designed for court ceremonial are increasingly separated from the restricted areas of the zenana, the women's quarters and the place of the harem.

In all the gardens, flowers and trees brought colour and shade. We know from their memoirs that the Moghal emperors delighted in the colours and scents of flowers, of violets, jasmine and roses, that they planted trees and shrubs for colour and shade and that they also took great pleasure in the produce of their gardens, especially Barbur who declared that to have grapes and melons grown in this way in Hindustan filled my measure of content.

The age of the Great Moghals ended with the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 but their gardens never ceased to fascinate visitors. Late in the nineteenth century a great traveler, letter writer and diarist, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, wife of the British Viceroy, spent an enchanted evening at a party in the Shalamar Gardens in Lahore. From her carriage she looked down on a real garden of light where she discovered a pathway of water, down the centre of which played a succession of little fountains, giving a sort of misty mysteriousness to the scene. On either side of this fairy-like canal were broad bands of fire, and walks, and great rows of large trees with quantities of Chinese lanterns and various illuminating devices intermixed. These lines of fire and water crossed the gardens in every direction, and at the end of the first terrace we found ourselves in a sort of open colonnade...

The Marchioness was not the only one to feel the power of Moghal gardens. Influenced by the tradition of some of the very finest gardens of Kashmir, and inspired by their principles of order and geometry, the architect Edwin Lutyens created a new Moghal garden for the new capital in Delhi in 1917, at the Viceroy's House, [the Rashrapati Bhawan]. Lutyens' garden, like the ones that inspired it, is an elaborate and formal water garden and, as a contemporary critic noted, in its every detail it displayed a consummate mastery of stone. Like the Moghals, Lutyens was also sensitive to the site's relationship to the surrounding landscape and he linked it to the garden through vistas and perspectives. Lutyens' garden is, of course, not a Moghal garden but it illustrates the power of their influence and, like the gardens of the Moghals themselves, shows that great design does not copy but seeks inspiration to create anew.

Gardens, Lost and Restored

The Moghal gardens included on the World Heritage List, Shalamar Gardens in Lahore, the gardens of the Red Fort in Agra, the great tomb gardens of Humayun in Delhi and the Taj Mahal at Agra, fully illustrate the splendour and sophistication of the art of Moghal garden making. Yet these gardens are only the pinnacle of a much wider collection of garden sites, some of them equally sumptuous, some well known, some now derelict and sinking into obscurity. From the great gardens we can learn something of the culture and design of this much wider group and also something of the issues and approaches to conservation.

First we must realize that these sites are not static. They have a rhythm of their own, marked by change and decay. Some are now entirely lost while some have been partially restored in the past and others may, in time, become the focus of new and elaborate restoration schemes. The Taj Mahal, for example, has been a tourist destination for centuries while the magnificent gardens of Kashmir have, over the past few years, been in a virtual war zone. They are consequently inaccessible for the present, especially to European visitors. No master plan can embrace the conservation of all Moghal gardens. We must take into account the economic, political and environmental context of each site and, working from a site sensitive perspective, begin to plan for conservation for and present and future maintenance.

Each site has its own life, its own profile and may have gone through a number of phases of development in the past. For example, Shahjahan was not content to create new gardens at Shahjahanabad, Lahore and of course at the Taj, he also remodeled gardens and buildings at the Red Fort in Agra and in Kashmir. The Emperors, like the nobles of their court and indeed all those who could afford it, had their favourite gardens. Some were made or changed while others were left dormant. Political disturbances would occasionally interrupt garden making and building and the decline of the Moghal empire finally caused many of them to be abandoned thus hastening their decay. We should also bear in mind that caring for these gardens as heritage sites is an entirely modern phenomenon. Even the Taj Mahal garden which, after the fall of the Moghal empire, was looked after, first by the Marathas and later by the British, was not well conserved. Indeed, in the mid nineteenth century, part of the Taj garden was stocked with fruit trees brought from the Botanical Garden in Calcutta to supply the community of Agra. At the same time the garden of Akbar's tomb in Sikandra was cleared and developed as an experimental garden in which prisoners from the local jail were set to work. Similarly, records from the early years of this century illustrate some of the extensive reconstruction and replanting undertaken by the Archaeological Survey of India in a whole range of Moghal garden sites.

All this is part of the historical context or provenance of a site and it is important that all these layers and phases of development and change be understood and documented before any major conservation or maintenance programme is undertaken. Indeed, an historical survey of the site itself and any documents or plans which illustrate its life history, constitute the vital first step in developing a management plan. Sometimes the historical survey also includes an archaeological investigation and garden archaeology is indeed a new and rapidly developing area of scientific expertise.

A sense of place

Garden archaeology is not simply concerned with tracing the foundations of buildings and hard structures but has shown itself to be an invaluable tool in understanding how Moghal gardens were planted and managed. Documents can tell us what was planted and while many pictorial illustrations of the gardens exist, it is still difficult to say exactly where plants were placed, how they were managed and if or how fashions changed. Only by combining contemporary illustrations and descriptions with archaeological investigation which might reveal planting pits and trenches as evidence of the exact locations of plants can we move to a fuller understanding of this aspect of Moghal gardens.

This may very well be a complex and expensive exercise but only then will we be able to understand the gardens and move confidently towards accurate interpretation and conservation.

Moghal gardens, even those which have decayed and through which water no longer runs, continue to draw tourists and they also frequently provide valuable leisure space for local communities. The needs of the local and visiting communities have to be balanced and a well researched and realistic management plan, the best friend of any site, is one of the most effective ways of achieving these aims. Sometimes the great numbers of visitors can seriously threaten the fabric of a site; this is particularly true of gardens, which just wear out. Simple redistribution of visitor flow could go a long way in conserving the site. At the Taj Mahal and at Humayun's tomb tourist motorways run straight through the central part of the garden leading to the tomb structures while other areas of the gardens are almost deserted. Better direction would ease this pressure on space and fabric and also help to conserve the tranquility of the gardens and enhance the "sense of place".

Maintaining a sense of place often means looking beyond the site and taking into account changes in the wider environment. Some sites, originally in open countryside are now surrounded by urban development. Humanyun's tomb and the gardens of the Red Fort at Delhi once overlooked the banks of the Jumna, now the river has changed its course and a railway runs close to one and a road to the other. In recent years the very marble of the Taj Mahal has been threatened by chemical emissions from neighbouring factories. Assessment of the wider context should also include the social and economic environment; a number of sites are now important in the local as well as the international tourist economy while others have a considerable role to play by serving the local community as meeting places and recreational sites.

Moghal gardens, like historic gardens and designed landscapes everywhere in the world, are faced with many problems but also with many opportunities. The key to their well being is a well researched management plan which will inform decisions, help identify the priorities of a programme for the maintenance of the fabric and balance the sometimes conflicting interests of professional and local groups. Great progress is being made and it is important to recognise the contribution of the government agencies in both India and Pakistan responsible for the care and protection of these monument. There is, however, still work to be done and plenty of scope for international co-operation and fundraising to support these great expressions of Moghal culture and so reveal how justified was Amir Khusrau's poetic exclamation:

By road: Agra is connected to Delhi, Rajasthan and other cities of Uttar Pradesh by an excellent bus service.