3.1 Garden as a symbol of the universe
There is a debate among scholars regarding the
meanings and implications of the word chahar-bagh.
In the Persian language “chahar” means four and
“bagh” means garden. Some scholars believe that
the chahar-bagh concept refers to a garden divided
into four parts via the water flow. However, several
scholars argue that in the Iranian culture, chaharbagh
is a metaphor of the cosmos (Alemi 1390;
Brookes 1987). Alemi refers to the Heravi’s definition
of the garden as a universe whose architect is God
and the human is a seedling planted and created by
God (Alemi 1390). The number four in the Iranian
historical culture is a symbol of universality, indicating
the four directions in the universe, the four classical
elements: water, earth, air and fire, four periods of
creation (Alemi 1390; Faghih & Sadeghy 2012).