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
An avenue of gardens
Run a broad avenue from the palace to the river, with a water channel, pools and fountains down its middle and rows of plane trees along its walks, and line it with walled gardens, each with a pavilion over its gate.
The Chahar Bagh (‘four gardens’) was laid out by Shah Abbas I from 1596 as a promenade some fifty metres wide, stepping down towards the Zayandeh river in terraces with cascades and pools, and continuing across it on the Allahverdi Khan bridge. Chardin, who called it the finest avenue he had ever seen, describes the channel in stone down its centre, the rows of plane trees, and the gardens given to the great men of the court on either side, each with a pavilion open to the avenue.
It turned the enclosed Persian garden inside out (a garden made into a street), and it lies behind the formal avenues of later capitals.
Related rules
Place an iwan (a vaulted hall walled on three sides and open on the fourth) at the middle of each side of the courtyard, the one on the qibla side leading to a domed chamber before the mihrab.
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
Where people disagree about the width of a public road, make it seven cubits, and let no one build out into it; lanes that serve only the houses on them may be narrower.
public road ≥ 7 cubits (≈ 3.5 m)
Build as you will on your own land, provided you do your neighbour no harm: open no window, door or roof terrace that looks into his house or court, and do not set your door opposite his across a lane.
Treat a dead-end lane as the joint property of the houses that open on it: no one may open a new door into it, build over it or narrow it without the consent of all of them, and they may close its mouth with a gate.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “An avenue of gardens”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/chahar-bagh-avenue. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.