Babur, born in the Ferghana Valley of Central Asia, compared his homeland with growing conditions on the plains of North India: 'In Hindustan hamlets and villages, towns indeed, are depopulated and set up in a moment!... if they fix their eyes on a place in which to settle, they need not dig water-courses or construct dams because their crops are all rain-grown, and as the population of Hindustan is unlimited, it swarms in. They make a tank or dig a well; they not not build houses or set up walls' ( 486-7 Babur-Nama, trans A S Beveridge). The distinction is significant:
Timurid gardens were maintained by flood irrigation
Hindu gardens were 'rain-grown' or irrigated from step wells
Pleasing the eye and cooling the air were additional benefits of irrigation channels, allowing them to become decorative features - as they had been in Persia at least since the time of Pasargadae and quite possibly in Ancient Mesopotamia.