Garden and kitchen garden

In Arab culture, the garden is a model of order: water, shade, scent and food are conceived together there. The riyad does not oppose the beautiful and the useful — it joins them in one rhythm.

At the Riad, three spaces stand apart without being separated: the main garden, the secret garden (bustān) and the kitchen garden. Each has its function, its light, its silence.

It is a living system, far from the purely ornamental park, that forms the eye, feeds the table and recalls that beauty, here, begins with the earth.

The structure of the Riad

Axes, flowerbeds, a basin, shaded walks. Water organises the path; trees mark time. One enters the garden, walks it, and learns to see slowly there, instead of crossing it as a backdrop.

MAIN GARDEN

Courtyard and walks, citrus, myrtle, jasmine. Shade and scent for the daily life of the house.

SECRET GARDEN

A more withdrawn bustān: rare roses, lilies, chosen species. Denser silence, measured access.

KITCHEN GARDEN

Vegetables, herbs, fruit trees. Working the land is part of formation.

THE CHARGE

Al-Jannan

الجنّان

al-jannān — the one who tends the gardens

A single charge for all the living of the house: the main garden, the green spaces, the orchard and the kitchen garden. It is a function and not a craft of the workshop, as the Bawwab keeps the threshold and Al-Khazin keeps the volumes.

A resident — not a passing employee — sows, prunes, waters, harvests. He knows what feeds the table and what forms the eye. The earth is not delegated to an invisible service.

Dress of the same cut as the Bawwab, in deep green — distinct from the olive of the Mashrabiya. In winter, the farwa — the lined cloak — takes up the same tone. See Al-Kiswa.

The chahar bagh — a diagram, not an ornament

The Islamic garden is a cosmology set in the earth rather than a vegetal décor, and its origin is Persian before it is Arab.

Root and name

The Greek word paradeisos (παράδεισος) — the origin of our “paradise” — comes from the Old Persian pairi-daēza (“circular enclosure”, a term of ancient Iran). From the Achaemenid period onward (Pasargadae, 6th century BCE), and especially under the Sassanids, the garden was already the image of the cosmos and of royal power: water, trees, geometry, closure toward the outside.

Islam does not erase this model, but absorbs and theologises it. The Qur’an evokes the gardens of paradise crossed by rivers; Persian architecture gives it its concrete form.

The classical structure

Four equal sectors; two crossing axes of water — the four rivers; at the centre, a basin, a pavilion or a fisqiya (فسقية); walls or porticoes that close the gaze toward the interior; an ordered vegetation, between shade, scent and utility. This is a diagram and not a natural landscape — order, measure, continuity of water, separation from the chaos outside.

CHAHĀR BĀGH

Four quadrants, a cross of water, the fisqiya at the centre.

One form, many worlds

The Andalusian and Maghrebi synthesis

In al-Andalus, the Persian chahār bāgh (چهار باغ) is reinterpreted rather than copied to the letter. The great water axes remain — the Generalife, the Patio de la Acequia. The ground-level fisqiya and the low channels almost become its signature — the Alcázar of Seville, the Alhambra. Water enters even into the rooms, as at the Zisa in Palermo: the garden becomes an extension of the architecture and no longer only a courtyard. In the Maghreb, the riad’s patio keeps the same logic on a domestic scale: a centre of water, sectors, an enclosure, coolness.

Thus: the geometry and symbolism of the four rivers come from Persia; the low fisqiya, the channel that extends into the room, and the enclosed patio of the riad are the fruit of the encounter with Andalusian and Maghrebi taste.

What remains essential

The enclosure — the garden is a world apart. Flowing water — never stagnant, never spectacular in height. Cross geometry — the four sectors, the four rivers. Shade and measure — not the open, Western-style lawn.

For the Riad, this means that the patio and the garden make up the traditional form, of Persian and Andalusian heritage, where order, water and silence educate the eye and the body — the same logic that connects Dar al-Hiraf, the prayers and the rhythm of the house.

“On the northern and eastern sides, as also on the southern, there are a great many gardens full of every kind of fruit; the trees are thick and tall, and through the gardens run some small branches of the river. But, by the very number of these trees, the gardens look like woods, and it is not the custom to till the ground; it is true that in May they water it all, and for that reason a great abundance of fruit grows there.”

Leo Africanus, Della descrizione dell’Africa, Book III, Fez, “Giardini e orti” (Ramusio’s text, 1550; translated from the Italian).

This is the measure of the orchard outside the walls: tall trees, branches of the river running through, a watering in the month of May, so much fruit that it looks like a wood. Within the walls of the Riad the measure is another: the fountain, the channel, the shade.

The main garden

Shared space of the house. Citrus, shrubs and aromatic plants structure its shade and scent. It is the most visible face of the riyad.

The plants

Citrus

Bitter orange trees, lemon trees, sometimes bergamot. Shade, blossom scent, fruit for the table and orange blossom water.

Myrtle (rayhan)

Myrtus communis. Emblem of Andalusian and Maghrebi gardens. Dense foliage, discreet flower, ritual and ornamental use.

Jasmine

White jasmine and night jasmine (misk al-layl, مسك الليل). The scent of evening, linked to the tradition of inner courtyards.

Pomegranate and fig tree

Trees of Mediterranean memory. Fruit, shade, symbolic presence in Arab culture.

Cypress

Verticality, silence, boundary. They mark the axes and protect the privacy of the spaces.

The secret garden

More withdrawn than the main garden. Old roses, lilies, honeysuckle, rare species of the bustān. Stronger scent, thicker shade, measured access.

In the Arab tradition, the secret garden is a place of restraint and of maturity, not a gratuitous luxury, where one learns that not everything is given at once.

Those who work there — pruning roses, caring for delicate plants — learn patience as much as gesture.

The kitchen garden

Seasonal vegetables, herbs, a few fruit trees. The kitchen garden feeds the table of the house and forms those who live there: sowing, watering, harvesting, respecting the earth’s time.

Food for the house

What grows here is not an aesthetic exercise. It enters the shared meals, the evening cooking, the concrete rhythm of the day.

Work and formation

Care of the kitchen garden is part of the formation of the young men of Dar al-Hiraf. The hand that carves wood or lays zellige also learns to touch the earth.

الحديقةُ ظلٌّ وماءٌ ورائحةٌ وموضعُ سكينةٍ لمن عرفَ أن يبطئَ

“The garden is shade, water and scent — and a place of quietude for those who know how to slow down.”

Tradition of the riyad — a contemporary reading