Orient the prayer hall so that its principal wall, the qibla wall, stands square to the direction of Mecca, and mark the middle of that wall with a niche, the mihrab.
qibla wall ⟂ direction of the Kaaba; mihrab on the axis
Rules · Site · Plans · Geometry
Order and running water in a flat land
Where the ground is flat and the water lies deep, raise it from wells by wheels into tanks and channels, and lay the garden out in regular, symmetrical plots round them, with walks, beds of flowers and trees in order.
Babur had made gardens in Kabul where streams ran down from the mountains, and he complains that Hindustan has no running water and no gardens worth the name. After his victory at Panipat in 1526 he crossed the Jumna at Agra to look for a site, found the ground so ugly that he almost gave up, and then set to work: first a large well for the bath house, then tanks, then the garden laid out in order, with roses and narcissus in beds. The people of the country, he says, had never seen gardens so regular and well planned, and called that bank of the river Kabul.
Babur’s gardens are the beginning of the Mughal tradition: the fourfold charbagh (The fourfold garden), water lifted and led in straight channels, and the pavilion and tank at the crossing. His descendants set their tombs in such gardens and built them up the hillsides of Kashmir.
Related rules
To draw a star pattern, cover the surface with a tiling of polygons, draw two lines through the midpoint of every edge at the same angle to it, continue each line until it meets another, and erase the tiling.
pattern = tiling + contact angle θ at every edge midpoint
Keep the grid and vary the angle at which the lines cross the edges: a small angle gives broad, blunt stars; a large one gives slender, sharp stars.
Choose the symmetry of the principal star (six-, eight-, ten- or twelve-fold) and build the field from a repeat unit that tiles the plane; stars that cannot tile by themselves are completed by secondary shapes in the gaps.
Lay out the garden as a walled square divided into four by raised walks with water channels on the two axes, and divide each quarter again.
1 → 4 → 16 beds; water on the axes
Stand the minarets free at the corners of the plinth, so that they frame the tomb in every view without crowding it.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Order and running water in a flat land”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/babur-garden. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.