The Garden of Babur in Kabul: A Dynastic Project of the Mughal Dynasty and Its Survival

Abstract

The Bagh-i Babur in Kabul is generally held to have been founded by Babur in 1504, when he made Kabul his home. A close examination of the Mughal sources, however, reveals a more complex picture. I suggest that, contrary to other Mughal funerary gardens, which were built by a single patron, the Bagh-i Babur was a dynastic project of several succeeding generations of Mughal emperors. It was incepted by Babur; preserved by his sons Mirza Kamran and Humayun, and his grandson Mirza Hakim, as an honoured burial site of the early Mughals; enclosed and transformed, as I suggest, into a grand terraced construction by Emperor Akbar; highlighted by Emperor Jahangir with dynastic inscriptions; and thoroughly renovated and enriched with buildings by Emperor Shah Jahan. After the Mughal era, the garden became a place of recreation for the people of Kabul, and at the end of the nineteenth century it was rehabilitated and appropriated as a residential pleasance by the Afghan kings, who shaped their reigns and concepts of kingship on Mughal models. After periods of unrest and destruction, the garden was reconstructed in the early twenty-first century and became a public park for the people of Kabul.