Identifier: persiapastpresen01jack (find matches)
Title: Persia past and present; a book of travel and research, with more than two hundred illustrations and a map
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Jackson, A. V. Williams (Abraham Valentine Williams), 1862-1937
Subjects: Zoroastrianism
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan Company London, Macmillan & Co., ltd.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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m direct communication with homesince I left Urumiah. Buildings of brick, mortar, and stone are not the glory ofShiraz ; it owes its renown rather to the causes which I shall nowenumerate. In the first place the natural beauty of its environsis greatly enhanced by cultivation and by art. The entireplain surrounding the city is well cultivated, and owing to itstropical situation (for Shiraz is nearer to the equator than isthe northern part of India) it yields abundantly to tillage andirrigation. The vineyards around the city produce the bestwine in Persia, a product for which Shiraz has ever beenfamous. There are two varieties of this wine, a red and awhite; the taste of the white wine reminded me somewhat of aMarsala. The gardens and rose-bowers of Shiraz are still more famous.Within the city and on its outskirts there are dozens of these 1 On the latter point compare also this building, see Weeks, From theCurzon, Persia, 2. 102. Black Sea, p. 116. 2 For some of the artistic points of
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GARDENS AND ROSE-BOWERS 327 pleasure-grounds, some of which still retain their beautydespite the neglect into which they have fallen. The Persiangarden in general is somewhat different from its counterpart inother lands and is more like an orchard, a horticulturalenclosure, than a garden in the narrower landscape sense ; infact the ordinary Persian word for garden, hdgh, may some-times best be rendered by our word orchard, with little of theconnotation of flower-garden. Instead of being winding paths,the walks are usually laid out in straight lines, with brick andtile borders, while terraces also are constructed whenever possi-ble, as in our own gardens, and finished with stonework andmasonry. A reservoir of water, even if its basin be only asmall tank, necessarily graces the area, and luxury may adda fountain and cascades falling over stone slabs, but water is aprecious article, and lavishness in this regard is equivalent toextravagance, even if nature responds liberally to the small

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