Kashmir and the Mughals
Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1586, and his son Jahangir made it the favourite summer retreat of the court. In his memoirs Jahangir describes the valley's springs, flowers and lakes with an enthusiasm he shows for nothing else, and he visited it many times. He died on the way back from Kashmir in 1627. Under him and his successor, the Mughal court and nobility laid out a series of gardens around the Dal lake and at the springs of the valley, using the slopes and the abundant water to create terraces, channels, cascades and fountains.
The name Shalimar is older than the garden. Local tradition connects it with a villa of the ancient king Pravarasena II on the same site. Shah Jahan later used the name for his garden at Lahore, begun in 1641, and it was taken up for gardens elsewhere.
The garden
Jahangir laid out the garden in 1619, and his wife Nur Jahan is often associated with it. It rises in three terraces from the lake, each about a metre or two above the one below, along a broad central channel fed from a canal that brings water from the hills at Harwan. The channel runs through pavilions and over carved stone chutes, chini khanas, small arched niches in which lamps or flowers were set behind the falling water. Rows of fountains play along the axis, and plane trees, chinars, shade the walks.
The lowest terrace was a public garden, where the emperor held audience. The middle terrace, the Farah Bakhsh, was the emperor's own. The upper terrace, the Faiz Bakhsh, added by Shah Jahan's governor Zafar Khan in the 1630s, was reserved for the women of the court. At its centre stands a pavilion of black marble surrounded by a pool and fountains. A Persian couplet often quoted in Kashmir, saying that if there is a paradise on earth it is here, is associated with the garden, though the same verse is attached to other places.
Later history
After the Mughals, Kashmir was ruled by Afghan governors from 1752, then by the Sikh empire from 1819, and from 1846 by the Dogra maharajas of Jammu and Kashmir. Under each, the garden was used for receptions and kept up with varying care. The Dogras installed electric lighting in the pavilions. Today it is a public garden, and with the Nishat Bagh, the Chashma Shahi and other Mughal gardens in Kashmir it has been proposed for inscription as a World Heritage Site.
Further reading
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Keay, John. India: A History. HarperCollins, 2000
See also
- Kashmir — Kashmir is a Himalayan valley in the northwestern subcontinent whose early history encompasses successive Buddhist and Hindu dynasties, the distinct philosophical tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, and a 14th-century transition to Muslim rule under the Shah Mir dynasty.
- Islamic rule in Kashmir — Islamic rule in Kashmir denotes the political and religious transformation of the Kashmir Valley that began with the Shah Mir dynasty's founding in 1339 and continued through the Sultanate, Mughal, Afghan, Sikh, and Dogra periods, along with the region's twentieth-century history of partition, insurgency, and the displacement of its Hindu minority.
- Mughal Empire — The Mughal Empire was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Timurid and Chagatai descent that ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from Babur's victory at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526 until the deposition of Bahadur Shah II following the 1857 rebellion, reaching its territorial and cultural peak under Akbar, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.