Charbagh

Charbagh is a Persian-style garden layout, in which the main building is put at the centre of a quadrilateral garden, divided by walkways or flowing water into four smaller parts. Charbagh style was brought to India by Mughals. Humayun’s tomb and Taj Mahal in India are the most famous examples of this style. In the Charbagh at the Taj Mahal, each of the four parts contains sixteen flower beds.

Ram Bagh (corrupted form of Aram Bagh) was the oldest Mughal Garden in India, originally built by the Mughal Emperor Babur in 1528, in Charbagh style. It located about five kilometers northeast of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. Babur was temporarily buried there before being interred in Kabul.

Another typical example of the Charbagh style is the mausoleum and its garden of
I’timād-ud-Daulah (1628), father of Nur Jahan, located in Agra. The tomb, embellished with delicate inlaid works using colored stones despite a white house of white marble wholly, is a jewel of Mughal architecture.

When Humayun tumbled out of this world silently under the influence of opium, his widow made the first full-blown piece of Mughal architecture, the Humayun’s Tomb in Charbagh style in Delhi.

The Humayun’s tomb is the first garden-tomb in India. It was also the first structure to use red sandstone at such a scale. The tomb was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993. This was the first splendid monument of the times of Akbar, created mainly in red sandstone and white marble.

Akbar’s built the Red Fort at Agra in Red Sandstone. The grand mosque and palaces at his ad hoc capital in Fatehpur Sikri and his own tomb at Sikandara are the best example how the Islamic architecture merged with Indian traditional wooden-like post and beam structure. Some call it the Akbar Style!