Ram Bagh (Aram Bagh), Agra

The Ram Bagh, originally the Aram Bagh or "Garden of Rest", lies across the Yamuna from the Red Fort at Agra. A photo caption in Brookes dates it to 1526, and he thinks it almost certainly the earliest Mughal garden to survive in recognisable form, though much altered. ^{1 3}

Babur wrote that a great defect of Hindustan was its lack of running water, and that he meant to make water flow by wheels wherever he settled and to lay out grounds in an orderly, symmetrical way. The site of his first Agra garden is uncertain: tradition gives the name Chahar Bagh to a site at a bend of the river, but Brookes thinks the real site more probably the Ram Bagh. Its pattern is one of geometric walks with raised platforms for viewing the garden, and it may be here that Babur received the descendants of Timur and Chinggis Khan in 1528. ^{1 3} It was well kept in the reign of Jahangir, who praised it. ⁴

Rezavi adds that it is also known as the Bagh-i Gul Afshan, and that Nur Jahan renovated it, after which it was called the Bagh-i Nur Afshan. ²

R. Nath identifies the Ram Bagh with the Bagh-i Gul Afshan (Flower-Scattering Garden), Babur's own name for it, the only one of his many gardens at Agra to survive, on the east bank of the Yamuna between the Buland Bagh and the Chini ka Rauza; it was later renamed Aram Bagh, the Garden of Rest, worn down in use to Ram Bagh. ^{5 6} It lies on four distinct terraces, the main one with eight raised platforms in imitation of a hasht bihisht garden. ⁵ Water was raised by a wheel from a well on high ground by the river to the south, fell into a tank, descended a chute into a pond, ran in broad channels round the square platforms, and dropped to the second terrace by eight broad chutes with stairs on both sides. ^{6 7} Beneath a wide stone terrace on the river in the north-west quarter is an underground storey of baths, cisterns, chutes and channels, which Nath takes for Babur's "cold bath", which Babur said was so chilly in the heat that one was almost cold; how it worked remains a mystery. ^{7 8 9} For Nath, Babur was the pioneer of landscaping in India and laid down a tradition his descendants followed in their palaces and tombs. ¹⁰