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Author: D. Fairchild Ruggles
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$36.00~~
Buy New: $28.75
You Save: $7.25 (20%)

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

2 reviews
Sales Rank: 191483

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 264
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.6

ISBN: 0271022477
Dewey Decimal Number: 720
EAN: 9780271022475

Publication Date: February 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Also Available In:

•	Hardcover - Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Islamic gardens, with their waterways and beds of plants and trees, are generally regarded as an earthly reflection of paradise. D. Fairchild Ruggles offers a different interpretation, contending that the palace garden was primarily an environmental, economic and political construct. She discusses three aspects of medieval Islamic Spain: the landscape and agricultural transformation documented in Arabic scientific literature, the formation of the garden and its symbolism from the eighth through to the 15th centuries, and the role of the gaze and the frame in the spatial structures through with sovereignty was constituted. Although the repertory of architectural and garden forms was largely unchanged from the 10th to the 15th centuries, Ruggles explains that their meaning changed dramatically. The royal palace gardens of Cordoba expressed a political ideology that placed the king above and at the centre of the garden, and metaphorically, of his kingdom. This conception of the world began to falter in later centuries, but patrons clung to the forms and motifs of the golden age. Instead of creating new forms, artists at the Alhambra in Granada reworked and refined familiar vocabulary and materials. The vistas fixed by windows and pavilions referred not to the actual relationship of the king to his domain, but rather to the memory of a once-expanding territory.

Customer Reviews:

2 out of 5 stars

paradise lost April 19, 2005
1 out of 26 found this review helpful

I haven't read this,but the author's contention,contained in the editorial review,that the concept of paradise is a latter thought,is diammetrically opposed to the generally accepted idea that the islamic garden is a a descendant from the perisan chah-bagh,the four way divided,enclosed pleasure garden.
Ancient Persia was to the arabic world what greece might have meant to the romans,a paradigm to be emulated.
The word paradise,per se,comes from the persian paradeisos,meaning the royal enclosed hunting grounds.

5 out of 5 stars

serious scholarship accessible to the layperson September 17, 2004
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

I own the hardcover version of this book. This is a fascinating topic. The writing in this book is beautiful: rich, concise, informed.

This book is serious scholarship, but much of it is accessible to the interested layperson. I highly recommend this book.

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