A Comparative Study between the Quran’s Vision of Paradise and the Mughal Islamic Gardens of Lahore

Abstract Like every culture Mughal Islamic gardens, represent beauty, happiness and also improve the public perception, these gardens have special characteristics with philosophical concept of Islam’s doctrine that is the basic focus of this research. Although the idea of a paradise is existing in human civilization since ancient times but Islamic architecture refined the concept of earthly gardens and represented them as symbolic sites of heaven on earth. In Quran’s contents paradise is a beautiful place which gives a model for all Islamic gardens of the world as it reported in 166 instances. Great Mughal gardens are heavily influenced by Islamic beliefs such as Quranic verse ‘Garden’s underneath rivers flow’ is well portrayed in form of chahr bagh, constructed in rectilinear layouts with special use of water and plants hence, evoking the idea of religious paradise as well as dynastic pleasure. Therefore, investigate a comparison between characteristics of Mughal Islamic garden landscape and sophisticated heavenly descriptions of paradise in Quran, by using grounded theory method including observational and questionnaire survey. Conclusively this paper has approached the “sense of Islamic garden” by analyzing the gardens and proved that the Quranic paradise imagery served as a basic theme for Mughal Islamic garden architecture especially in Lahore, Pakistan.