Travelling Gardens examines the extent to which historical, cultural, political, and commercial connections between Khorasan and the Lower Mesopotamian seat of the Abbasid caliphate led to an exchange or modification of palace garden concepts. As built environments, gardens more than any other human construction depend on the physical geography of the land. In regions with harsh climates, intensive sunlight, high temperatures and lack of reliable rainfall – like much of the area under consideration –, the role of geography on garden design is even more crucial. This fact suggests that the gardens generally have followed indigenous horticultural and architectural traditions. But in royal gardens, where economic factors were not of primary importance, certain garden features – such as the relationship between the throne hall and the garden, the ways that wealth and sophistication were displayed in the garden, or even the flora and fauna – appear to have been affected by inspirations derived through cultural exchanges. Several examples of cross-cultural impacts in garden design have already been traced in scholarship, but thus far there has not been a larger contextual study of gardens built during the early Islamic period, for which there is little physical evidence. In fact, our current understanding of gardens in this period is dominated by widely accepted assumptions and hypotheses based on physical evidence of ancient gardens, which have been excavated to some extent, and much later gardens, which have been partly preserved. Travelling Gardens will rectify this gap by bringing together contemporary textual sources and the remaining archaeological evidence pertaining to palace gardens of medieval Khorasan, and by comparing them to other palace gardens in Lower Mesopotamia. Based on these royal gardens, which nevertheless strongly depend on their physical, cultural and human geography, it provides a unique lens through which to gain new insights into cultural and material exchanges within the Abbasid caliphate.
