Talk:Bāgh (garden)

Copied over here from User talk:Orangemike to facilitate discussion

Dear Orangemike, it appears that you have deleted the above-mentioned entry without having the courtesy of first letting me know about your intention, let alone action. I hope that you did not fancy that I wrote that entry because I had nothing better to do with my time. About an hour ago I wrote extensively on the subject matter to User:Stifle, so that I shall be very brief here and ask you to be kind enough and restore that entry without delay. In the event that you feel disinclined to do so, please ask yourself a number of questions before possibly coming back to me with reasons in defence of your action. Firstly, did you know the meaning of the word Bāgh? Secondly, can you name a single dictionary in which this word is defined? For completeness, neither OED, nor SOED, nor Chambers, nor Mirriam-Webster have Bāgh as entry. Thirdly, how many times does Google hit the word Bāgh? Fourthly, how many sites define the word and give its historical evolution? After having answered these questions, you may finally ask the following question from yourself: Should Wikipedia accommodate an entry concerning Bāgh? After all, with the word being so prevalent, some people might just wonder what it might possibly mean. I note in passing that, the entry already had several Wikipedia links attached to it, both inwardly and outwardly. May I also request you to be kind enough and consult some other people on the subject matter? For this you may consider to contact User:Stifle and User:JohnCD (the latter was the first to tag the entry for deletion, some five minutes after the creation of the entry — the entry he tagged had half the size of the entry that you so mercilessly deleted, in total disregard of my short note in its talk page). As for I, I believe that I have already spent too much of my time on the subject matter; I would prefer to have the entry restored without needing to spend one more word. With kind regards, --BF 19:32, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Dear Orangemike, thank you for your message and the good-will gesture. I disagree with your judgement that the entry were not suitable for Wikipedia; I strongly believe that the natural home of this entry is Wikipedia, since it acts as a centre of information for so many references to the word Bāgh within the Wikipedia itself, this as testified by the existence of a manifold of links into and out of this entry. As for Wiktionary, I should point out that I have also a life outside these pages and cannot see myself ever getting involved in yet another Wiki project (if you happened to have read my remark in the upper part of my talk page, then you will have realised that my very being on Wikipedia already hangs by a very thin thread). Consequently, if you get the entry deleted from English Wikipedia, it will get lost for ever, for I simply have not got the time even to transfer the thing to Wikitionary (given what is happening, I have also not got the motivation). The choice is yours: either you kindly restore the entry to its original status as a Wikipedia entry, or you put the question to general vote. Your present suggestion is simply not acceptable to me, even though in contrast to what you might have thought, I had never accused you of acting maliciously (in fact any doubt that I might have entertained about you, were dissipated when I saw your photograph on your Wikipedia page; you simply do not have the looks of a malicious person, this in addition to the fact that all the Mikes that I have ever known, have proved to be nice and fun-loving people). For completeness, I had never read your explanation (even as of now I have not read it), since the only thing that I knew was that the entry had gone missing, without any trace. It was User:Stifle (a very fine Wikipedia editor) who on my request helped me identifying you as the person responsible for the deletion of the entry. Trusting that you will reconsider your earlier decision, With kind regards, --BF 21:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

can i ask why you've restored this article? if its been transwikied surely its no longer needed. Ironholds (talk) 16:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Dear Ironholds, it is unclear to me to whom you are addressing your question. If you have put the question to me (i.e. to BF), then my simple answer is that I have neither restored nor transwikied the entry; I only requested (as my above long texts should make it abundantly clear) its restoration. I should emphasise that I insist on having the present entry as a Wikipedia entry; I did not write the entry for Wikitionary, and further do not wish to get involved in yet another Wiki project (simply, have not got the time for). Kind regards, --BF 17:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The question is why should the article exist here when it now exists on Wiktionary, with the implication that Wiktionary is the correct and only place for it. I have no position on the matter. Stifle (talk) 17:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

An entry exists in Encyclopedia Iranica published by Columbia University. It is a major academic tool that is used all over Wikipedia. --alidoostzadeh (talk) 22:20, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Here is the entry: [1] --alidoostzadeh (talk) 22:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

In Azerbaijani bagh also means "garden". The word might be borrowed from Persian, but as a matter of fact it has the same meaning in Azerbaijani language. In addition, bagh can also mean a string or rope, as is correctly noted. So I made a minor addition, I hope no one minds. Grandmaster (talk) 05:24, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Dear Grandmaster, if you read Ahmad Kasravi's book Āzari, Yā Zabān-e Bāstān-e Azarbaijān (item number 33 in [2]), then you will know why in Azarbaijani Bāgh has the same meaning as in Farsi (one might have thought that if Azarbaijani were Turkish, as some people seem to claim, Bāgh would have meant what it means in Turkish, namely cord). In fact Kasravi in this rather small book gives a very simple rule of thumb for transforming Azarbaijani words (more precisely, those words which are of the Persian origin — I should clarify that when one goes far enough in the past, Persian was Azarbaijani and vice versa, so that it is imprecise to talk about `Azarbaijani words of the Persian origin') into Farsi and vice versa. I have not made an extensive search, but my feeling is that this book of Kasravi's (himself an Azarbaijani) has not been translated into any foreign language; if this turns out to be the case, I shall myself translate this book into English if and when I have the necessary amount of time for the task — it is a wonderful book in which the arguments are very well documented; its bibliography consists of very reputable international sources. Kind regards, --BF 14:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Dear BehnamFarid. As I said, in Azerbaijani "bagh" has both meanings, i.e. it means a garden and a cord. It is quite possible that the meaning of "garden" was acquired from Persian, unfortunately I have no knowledge on the word's etymology. So I only added something that could be verified by any dictionary. I would be interested in further exploration of this topic and I believe this is an interesting article, therefore I voted to keep it. Grandmaster (talk) 11:01, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Dear Grandmaster, thank you for your message. I do not believe that I may have contradicted you. In fact, although I may not have said it explicitly, I very much appreciated your addition, since your addition concerned something valuable that had not crossed my mind at all. Further, I had indeed noticed your supportive vote and thank you for your support of the entry. Lastly, although I do not speak Azari, when I listen to spoken Azari very carefully, I can capture the meaning of what is being said. I love the language, and should I live long enough it is one of the languages that I intend to master. Each language carries a certain music in it and so does Azari. I just love the music contained in Azari. If you know the film "Taste of Cherries" by Abbas Kiarostami, then you will remember that in the last but one scene the person who travels with Mr Badi'i is from Azarbaijan. Although he speaks Farsi, the cadenza of his Azari accent adorns what he says with a very special beauty. Sometimes before taking off the car, he also reads an Azari poem in Azari which is beautiful. Finally, you may wish to have a look into the Wikipedia entries Takam, Takam-Chi, Takam-Chi (film) and Sāyā which I recently initiated; your contributions to these entries will be most valuable. With kind regards, --BF 13:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your response. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the movie that you mentioned. I would be really glad to contribute to the articles you mentioned, but unfortunately I'm not much knowledgeable of the topic. But I will be pleased to work with you on any topic that would be of mutual interest, including this one. Take care. Regards, Grandmaster (talk) 11:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Dear Grandmaster, thank you very much for your kind response. If you have not seen "Taste of Cherry" (Tame Gilās) then you must see it. Here you can buy it (in the event that you are in the USA): [3]. Please avoid reading about the plot of the film before you have seen it (the emotional tension that Kiarostami builds in this film is most essential). It gives me special pleasure, and I thank you for that most sincerely, that you offer to collaborate with me on some Wikipedia project of mutual interest. As it happens, I am at this moment leaving Wikipedia for good (this would be my second time). What I have achieved in the course of the past month, through spending many hours of my time, is fighting senseless fights. The last one concerned the entry on Bāgh, which now seems to have been targeted by an individual, by the name User:Prosfilaes, which invariably reminds me of Mephistopheles, who keeps deleting the body of the entry on account of the dubious reason that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. This same person was the first (or the second) to propose "strong delete" when the fate of the entry was put to vote. Yesterday I wrote a message to one of the senior editors of Wikipedia, asking him to remind this person that he should stop acting against the wish of the community, and just now this editor has responded by saying that people have no ownership of Wikipedia entries (you may wish to visit this page where this Prosfilaes is suggesting that I must have implicitly attacked him: [4]). In other words, this stalker can keep deleting a piece of scholarship because apparently my objection to his unreasonable acts is viewed as possibly defending "my" ownership of the entry, which I have never claimed (what is there is mostly due to Dehkhoda). So, I think that I will give up and leave Wikipedia; I feel that I am simply wasting the time that I can spend on other things, such as my professional work. I had (and still have) a grand plan for a proper biography of Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, whose present Wikipedia entry is one of the worst known to me. I have done a great deal of research on him and have uncovered several important things about him that even his biographies on Encyclopaedia Iranica and Iran Chamber Society do not cover. One component of my plan was to include the translation of the full text of one of Dehkhoda's Charand o Parands in his to be written Wikipedia biography. I do not know whether you have read Charand o Parand, but it is one of the wittiest and most hilarious works in the Persian literature and the criticisms contained in it cut like a razor. As it stands, for the time being I feel just exhausted by the effort of defending merely ten lines of text --- an effort that if that Prosfilaes gets his way, will have been for utterly nothing. So, I think that I will leave Wikipedia right now, perhaps for good, and perhaps not, but most probably I shall not be on these pages for some time to come. Please kindly keep an eye on Bagh (garden). With kind regards, --BF 14:27, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

it's not a dictionary definition

What Bagh may mean in various languages has nothing do with an article about a type of gardens.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

You are entitled to contrive whatever reason that you may wish in order to carry out your plans. Methinks that you may be suffering from what one may term as "Ahamadinejad syndrome", but it that case you are barking at the wrong tree. --BF 14:41, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I was going to fix the etymology, but in the meanwhile someone else reduced the section to the basics. Should it ever be decided that a proper etymology is in order, here goes:

Etymologically, the common noun derives from Indo-Iranian word for "share, possession, portion, lot" attested with that meaning in Avestan baga/bāga/baγa (baga in the Gathic Y 32.8) and Sanskrit bhága/bhāgá, and deriving from the verbal root bag "to distribute, allot." By Middle Iranian times, the term meant "piece" or "patch of land," from which the sense of "garden" derives, and continuing with that latter meaning in New Persian bāḡ/bāγ.

Then there was some strange stuff about what the word for garden is not related to, which I fixed as follows:

Not to be confused with the word for 'garden' is another word that derives from same verbal root but that developed differently. This word, in its oldest attested forms Old Iranian (Old Persian and Avestan) proper noun baga and the Old Indic proper noun (and theonym) bhaga, variously express "lord(s)" in the sense of a tribal leaders or patrons who apportion bounty amongst the members of their communities, or in a sacerdotal sense of "Lord(s)" who can be imagined as apportioning the world amongst their followers, or in a feudal sense of a "lord" who allocates his property amongst share-croppers in exchange for a share of income. This sense is probably also the eventual origin of New Persian baz "tribute, tax" i.e. the share of income due to a king or state.

Incidentally,... the Encyclopedia Iranica article has a nice series of articles on "garden", that are also titled "Garden".

• Garden i. Achaemenid
• Garden ii. Islamic Period
• Garden iii. Influence of Persian Gardens in India
• Garden iv. Botanical Garden
• Garden iv. In Persian Literature See BĀḠ
• Garden vi. In Persian Art

Persian garden tradition

Sounds like there is enough material in there to write a proper "Iranian gardens" article, and avoid the Bagh radish altogether.

Cheerio. -- Fullstop (talk) 01:50, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

We have already Persian gardens. I think it's better to include main part of this article in Persian gardens (and improve it using the information in the Iranica articles). We can also have an article with title Bāgh, about Iranian gardens in Persian literature (similar to Iranica). It can include an etymology section. Alefbe (talk) 15:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

The present article is concerned with the word "Bagh" not the actual facts and the history and dissemination of the idea, which is currently split up among various articles: Charbagh, Persian gardens, Paradise garden, Mughal gardens, & Islamic garden, with linking to Hortus conclusus. A master article giving encyclopedic treatment of this mainstream garden tradition should contain concise summaries of those sub-articles that don't get merged, with hatnotes directing readers to more detailed treatment.--Wetman (talk) 18:16, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Gardens in India is another poor stub that might be roped in. Johnbod (talk) 19:39, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• I do not support the proposed merging of the present entry with that of Charbagh. The present entry is about Bāgh in general, and not about some specific gardens that happen to have the word Bāgh in their names. For the interested, this and this (both in Persian --- the audio slide-shows of the two articles are warmly recommended) contain some useful information concerning the concept of Bāgh in Iranian culture and history. Incidentally, in Note 1 of this entry (in the section Notes and references) I have enumerated some documented facts that could be used in some entry regarding Persian gardens. --BF 03:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

ps. See also the audio slide-show of this entry. --BF 04:03, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The fact is, the present article is about the word bagh, with an appended list:

1. Soil
2. Rocks
3. Light conditions
4. Wind
5. Precipitation.

And here we're being offered slide shows in Persian. This is a classic Wikipedia:Walled garden.--Wetman (talk) 04:28, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Wetman: First, I have had nothing to do with the above-mentioned additions, listed by you. Second, these additions have been inserted by (I think to remember) one individual who wished to preserve the entry in Wikipedia, in the face opposition by two individuals who insisted, incorrectly to my best judgement, that Bāgh were a dictionary entry and therefore had to be discussed in Wikitionary; you could trace at least part of the history of the present entry, and how it has come to become what it has become, by perusing the earlier discussions on this very page. Incidentally, the above three slide-shows were mainly (but not exclusively, of course) meant for those who know Persian (I think that for instance User:Alefbe knows Persian) and who would be willing, and capable, to extend the present entry on Bāgh on the basis of the information presented in these slide-shows. I am very sorry, but as you can appreciate, I could not present slide-shows in English on Bāgh when to my best knowledge there are none; I just offered what is available right now to general public (the texts spoken in the first two slide-shows are very well researched and reliable; I happen to know, albeit indirectly, the author of these two slide-shows --- the details provided by these slide-shows can serve as points of departure for gathering useful material for extending the present entry). I therefore do not accept your charge of "classic Walled garden" --- please note that I take your point, but you should take into your consideration that there are serious technical and practical limitations to overcome in any attempt to introduce one culture to people from other cultures. --BF 12:40, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The lead paragraph is, in its entirety:

"Bāgh, which usually translates to garden, is in fact a more general concept. It refers to an enclosed area with permanent cultures (many types of trees and shrubs) as well as flowers. It is common to near-, middle- and south-eastern countries. It usually has Irano-Islamic architectural elements."

If you have arguments as to why this should not be merged with at least some of the other short articles mentioned above, please start making them now. Johnbod (talk) 12:46, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Johnbod: First, my apologies for being very brief, as I have got to leave right now. Briefly, the entry on Bāgh in its present form is a bastardised version of what I had set out to write when I initiated it. I began with a sketch of what I had in mind, and the next day the entry was removed, on the misguided claim that Bāgh had no place in Wikipedia (see above). Then others jumped in and with all their good intentions made the entry what it has become. I am not happy with the entry as it is, but believe that Bāgh (the very concept of Bāgh) deserves an independent entry of its own in Wikipedia, not least because it lies at the very foundation of such important concept as Paradise (please just search the Internet on the word "Bagh" and see how many entries you hit, showing the significance of it in various cultures, specifically the cultures of Iran, India and Pakistan). Incidentally, since I had come to believe that one of the two individuals who forcefully argued for the removal of the entry from Wikipedia was stalking me (this individual's contributions to Wikipedia turned out to be exclusively related to one topic, a topic totally unrelated to things like Bāgh), I never tried to do any thing in the way of improving the present entry. Please check the history of the entry, and you will notice that for a while this very person systematically reverted any change introduced into the entry; then he suddenly disappeared, exactly as he had appeared, seemingly from nowhere. --BF 13:19, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Frankly the history doesn't matter at all now; what is important is what we currently have & how we go forward. The link with paradise is not covered at all here, but is at Paradise garden, Islamic garden etc. This is exactly the sort of reason why gathering these various short articles on the tradition into a single good treatment of the subject, with all terms redirecting to it, is desirable. Looking at the useful Encyclopedia Iranica articles, I see this is exactly the treatment they give to the subject at "garden", and also that their article on "bagh" itself is mainly about agriculture, though of course they note the uses of the word in pleasure-garden contexts. Johnbod (talk) 13:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Johnbod: I am not going to stand in anybody's way regarding this entry; you and others should proceed as you see fit. I maintain, however, that Bāgh deserves an independent entry of its own on English Wikipedia.

As for Iranica, I am personally not of very high opinion of the totality of the product; it certainly contains good entries, but some of its entries are rather poor --- please have a look into my latest comment on the talk page of Nowruz (and perhaps my earlier related comments on the same page); Shahbazi's article, referred to in the discussions, is extremely poor and non-committal on very essential issues regarding Haftsin. Not long ago, I was reading an academic criticism of one particular entry of Iranica 's, which conclusively showed how a claim in that entry was based on a trivial misunderstanding on the part of its author. The same group of people at Columbia have recently published a monumental work by Jalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, advertised earlier as the most through-going revision of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (in the light of the new scholarship regarding Shahnameh), which has proved to be one of the most controversial works ever published; many people who have grown up with Shahnameh are objecting to the very strange interpretation of some of the verses in Shahnameh given in the work, some of which plainly stupid by any standard (if you search on the Internet, you will find a very extensive criticism of the work by Bahram Moshiri, and in regard to Shahnameh I happen to agree with him totally). Actually, if you have talked to Ehsan Yarshater or listened to his frank interviews, you will know that he is extremely worried about the dearth of competent people writing about the subjects that he has planned to be touched upon in Iranica (for instance, it turns out that there is a vast body of Persian literature that has been produced in India over centuries, and according to him almost no academic research has been done on any of it). Fortunately, Iranica have recently modernised Iranica 's website and introduced a feedback facility whereby people can comment on the contents of what they publish (incidentally, this very modernisation has caused that none of the links from Wikipedia to Iranica 's entries is working at present --- it calls for some effort on the part of us to correct this problem). --BF 16:34, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Well that may well be the case, but currently their "Garden" article is a good deal more useful than our erratic collection, & of course there are other sources. I think most of our current material should be serctions (removing the repetitions) of a single article rather than scattered as they are. Johnbod (talk) 16:39, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Johnbod: I agree with you, but you cannot imagine how deeply engraved the notion of Bāgh is in my psyche as an Iranian; it is as elemental to me as father and mother. This should clarify my position. --BF 16:54, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

ps. Bāgh has always been more than a mere Garden to me, and I believe that the people of my cultural background share this elemental feeling with me. -BF 16:58, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• I suggest that someone starts a new article on the lines described above, perhaps provisionally titled Persian garden tradition, and when that has got to a reasonable stage we can decide which of the existing articles can be redirected to it. Johnbod (talk) 15:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm very supportive of the idea of combining all these stubby articles into one. (anyone interested in doing it, might find a read of this paragraph useful to - at least for sourcing. --Joopercoopers (talk) 14:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)