Bagh-i Vafa, Kabul

The Bagh-i Vafa is a garden laid out by Babur at Kabul after he settled there, and his favourite; a Mughal miniature of c. 1590 shows him supervising its layout in 1504. ^{1 2}

In his memoirs, as Brookes quotes them, Babur describes four garden plots on rising ground facing south, with oranges, citrons and pomegranates in abundance, and plantains and sugar cane that he planted and that did well. A stream runs constantly through the middle, and in the south-west is a ten-by-ten reservoir ringed by orange trees and some pomegranates in a clover meadow, the best part of the garden when the oranges colour. ¹ The miniature shows the enclosing wall, the fourfold division by water channels and the tank: the features of the traditional chaharbagh. ² From India Babur still wrote to the governor of Kabul asking that his gardens be kept watered and planted. ¹