MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
Scientific Quarterly Journal

The Concept of the Garden in Qājār-Era Documents from Shiraz: A Lexical Analysis

https://doi.org/10.22034/manzar.2026.581517.2424
Volume 18, Issue 76
Autumn 2026
Pages 5-15
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape

Document Type : Original Research Article

Author

Ali Asadpour

Department of Iranian Architecture Studies, Faculty of Architecture and Restoration, Shiraz University of Arts, Iran

Abstract
The historical, perceptual, aesthetic, and climatic characteristics of the Persian garden have been the focus of numerous studies. However, the lexical structure of the Persian garden and the way it is organized in the language of historical sources have received far less attention. This is despite the fact that linguistic analysis of historical sources, including documentary records, can reveal new dimensions of the Persian garden. This study aims to reconstruct the Conceptual Structure of the Garden as represented in the language of everyday documents from Shiraz during the Qājār period. It hypothesizes that the concept of the garden in this period was a structured, non-referential construct constituted through a network of lexical items that defined the garden by the relationships among its constituent elements rather than by the intrinsic qualities of any individual element. Accordingly, the study addresses two questions: What semantic relationships exist among the lexical items associated with the category of the garden in Qājār-era documents from Shiraz? How are these relationships organized into a unified conceptual structure? This qualitative study draws upon lexical studies and structural linguistics. A corpus of 32 documents describing the constituent elements of gardens was selected from the National Library and Archives of Iran and the Women’s Worlds in Qājār Iran archive. By examining the semantic relationships among the lexical items occurring in these documents, the study reconstructs the Conceptual Structure of the Garden represented in documentary language. The findings indicate that the documentary Conceptual Structure of the Garden consists of two primary components, ʿarṣeh and ashjār, and is founded upon multiple relationships between land and trees. This structure is organized through a network of circulation routes (khiyābān and rāsmān), a water-supply system (majrā, mamar, and madkhal), and enclosing elements (judrān, ḥīṭān, darb, and dargāh), which together constitute what this study terms the Conceptual Structure of the Garden. This structure emerges from syntagmatic relationships, semantic oppositions, and lexical collocations among the lexical items denoting the constituent elements of the garden in the documents. No individual element occupies a privileged position within the overall structure. Quantitative dimensions, physical form, exchange value, and aesthetic description are absent from this conceptual structure. The garden therefore appears in Qājār-era documents as a self-organizing conceptual structure that differs in significant respects from modern architectural and aesthetic conceptions.

Keywords

Structural linguistics
Lexical semantics
Persian garden
Qājār-era documents
Shiraz
Subjects
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