Shahdara
Garden Description:Shahdara, on the banks of the Ravi is now a poor and dusty village. It was formerly the main entry point toLahorefrom Kabul and Kashmir, used as an encampment garden and a place for royal tombs. Jahangir, his wife Nur Jahan and her brother Asaf Khan are buried here. Babur's son Mirza Kamran (brother of Humayun) made the first garden in the area. It was in about 1527, or one year after the conquest of Hindustan. Shahdara became a site of Mughal architectural and political activity soon after the conquest of India by Babur in 1526.Jahangir's tomb was built on the site of Bagh-i Dilkusha,(before the coming of the Mughals, we read about six gardens in the suburbs) a garden laid out by Nur Jahan. It is a chahar bagh garden with water channels and fountains. Today it is a popular picnic place. Babur's son Mirza Kamran (brother of the second Mughal emperor, Humayun) built a garden in the area.
Kamran's baradari
stands in the midst of a formal garden built by the Mughal Prince Mirza Kamran (son of Babur, the founder of the Mughal empire) on the west bank of the River Ravi; it was built c.1527 and was the earliest Mughal garden in Lahore. With the shift of the Ravi's course, the garden site today has become an island in the river adjacent to the bridge leading from Lahore to Shahdara. The garden used to be a meeting place of Mughal princes. The garden had a number of water fountains, including an eight-point-star-shaped pool. Tragically, heavy-handed restoration work in later years entirely destroyed the garden's status as a historical site.
Jahangir's widow, Nur Jahan, died in 1645. She was buried to the west of her brother Asaf Khan in a tomb she is said to have commissioned during her lifetime. The tomb structure has since been stripped of its stone cladding, and whatever has survived of the garden was irreparably damaged when the British cut a railway line late in the nineteenth century between the tombs of the two siblings.
Although no major Mughal garden was constructed at Shahdara after the completion of Nur Jahan's tomb, these lovely gardens still continue to play an important role in the life of Lahore.
Nur Jahan had this tomb built during her last years. It is located in a garden of the Shahdara near Jahangir’s mausoleum. This is also set on a square platform in a walled area with water channels dividing into pools set on each side of the platform, similar to her father’s. The accounts from inscriptions by the monks of Shahdara describe this garden as 400 yds sq. and filled with cypress trees, tulips, roses, and jasmine. The Mughal4