The Shalimir Garden are today a popular ground for people escaping the heat of Lahore. The park is always busy, and people come to simply walk around, to those who come for picnics, to the few who come to play cricket. The garden is majestic in it's size, and pretty impressive when you see the fountains and consider that they were built without modern technology.
The Shalimar Gardens (Urdu: شالیمار باغ), sometimes written Shalamar Gardens, were built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in Lahore, modern day Pakistan ( The Mughals ruled the Indian subcontinent between 1526 and 1858, in an area now divided among India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Kashmir.):
The generous water supply and dramatic water falls became possible due to the engineering skills of Ali Mardan Khan, buried not far from his favorite garden, adept at constructing canals for supply of water. Ali Mardan Khan proposed to the Emperor that the waters of the Ravi be brought from Rajpot (Present day Madhpur in India) to Lahore. Shah Jahan approved, and within two years, a canal named Shah Nahar (Royal Canal) over 100 miles long was completed. The complex water storage, system of aqueducts and hydraulic devised by Mughal architects and engineers, to provide water supply on a large scale in the flat terrain of the Punjab simulating the undulating and dramatic sites of the Kashmir is a tribute to their ingenuity and skill.
Once the canal was completed, a royal edict was issued in 1641 to commence the garden...
These gardens contained more than a hundred species of plants, including evergreens, screwpines and other trees, roses, violets, sunflowers, cockscombs, and several varieties of jasmines. The gardens were not only enchanting places of repose but also yielded a substantial revenue in roses and musk mallow. In the eyes of contemporary French travelers these gardens were the equal of Versailles.
No comments:
Post a Comment