Bagh e Babur

Paradise as a Garden

‘[…] The avenue garden in which water is short and for which a stream must be diverted […] the best of young trees must be planted there, lawns arranged, and borders set with sweet herbs and with flowers of beautiful colour and scent.’ 
Babur sends instructions from India to his governor in Kabul regarding his gardens. From Baburnama.

It is not certain how Babur, the first Mughal ruler in India, named the garden that houses his own grave. Kabulis simply refer to it as ‘Babur’s gardens’ (Bagh-e-Babur). Babur died in India in 1530, his remains later relocated to Kabul. His epitaph reads ‘Paradise is forever Babur Padshah’s abode’. During his life, Babur frequently wrote to his governor instructing him about the gardens, what to plant, when, and where. He missed them. Built after his invasion of this city in 1504, the gardens are geometrically laid out and include terraces, water channels, pools, a small but elegant marble mosque (constructed by his descendant Shah Jahan), and many walking spaces. Prior to the Taliban occupation of Kabul in August 2021, the gardens offered solace to all, and Ahmadzai would frequently go there for walks. Her series ‘Bagh-e-Babur’ offers a visual interpretation of these green spaces produced from memory as if viewed from above… perhaps from the point of view of a bird in flight. Outlined on a plain background, the compositions remind one of labyrinths, architectural floor plans, or gardens woven on carpets. The viewer is seemingly invited to fly over or jump between the differently coloured panels, inventing stories, dreaming, as children do, of a world miniaturised: gardens full of roses, molten gold streams, fountains and waterfalls, deep-blue square pools of lapis, tiny emerald chinar trees, palaces with copper domes, silvery moons, and golden crests. The stark planimetries may also recall the shape of an amulet or lucky talisman endowed with protective powers or good fortune for the fugitive who carries or wears them. Through the act of painting and writing Ahmadzai spatialises her experience of walking through these gardens, evoking a personalised reading of these environs through the body. Incomplete and therefore open-ended, these works preclude the easy closure of historical memory into the present.

Dr Emilia Terracciano
Lecturer in Modern Art History at The University of Manchester