Nasim Gardens

Dal Lake, India

Nasim Bagh ("Garden of Breezes," "Garden of Bliss"), located on the western side of Dal Lake, is considered to be the earliest Kashmiri Mughal garden.

In 1589, Akbar was the first of the Mughal emperors to visit Kashmir, where he laid out the Hari Parbat fort and the Nasim Bagh. In 1635, Shah Jahan planted around 1200 trees in the garden, for which the garden was well known.

At the present time, only the ruins of earlier structures and grids of ancient chinar trees remain in the Naseem Bagh. The garden provides camping facilities for visitors, and forms part of the campus of Kashmir University.

Sources:

Brookes, John. Gardens of Paradise: The History and Design of the Great Islamic Gardens. London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1987.

Moore, Charles Willard, William J. Mitchell, and William Turnbull. The Poetics of Gardens. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1988.

Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Sharma, Suresh K., and S. R. Bakshi. Encyclopaedia of Kashmir. New Delhi: Anmol Publications Pvt Ltd, 1995.

Villiers-Stuart, C. M. Gardens of the Great Mughals. London: A. and C. Black, 1913.

Younghusband, Francis. Kashmir. New Delhi: Sagar Publications, 1970.