It was finally the weekend! After my long mathematics presentation, I came home to watch my favorite tv show, Person of Interest, to de-stress. Surprisingly, the episode was about the most famous mathematical constant, pi (π) which is equal to the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, commonly approximated as 3.14159. Mr. Finch (the main character) was acting as a substitute teacher and wrote on the chalkboard 3.1415926535. Then he asked the students, “What does this mean?” I answered the question in my mind, thinking, “If I have a bicycle tire with a diameter of 1, then one full revolution of the bicycle tire would travel the distance pi.” However, in the show, nobody answered. Then Mr. Finch answered the question himself, saying:

Person of Interest, Season 2 Episode 11 “2 Pi R”

“Pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — 3.1415926535 — is just the beginning. It keeps going forever without ever repeating, which means that contained within this string of decimals is every other number; your birth date, the combination to your locker, your social security number, etc. It’s all in there somewhere. And if you convert these decimals into letters you would have every word that ever existed in every possible combination; the first syllable you spoke as a baby, the name of your latest crush, your entire life story from beginning to end, and everything we ever say or do. All of the world’s infinite possibilities rest within this one simple circle. Now what will you do with that information; what it’s good for? Well, that would be up to you…”

Although that scene was actually inaccurate, I loved it. This scene is beautiful because most teachers in the world struggle to be as good and as interesting of a teacher as Mr. Finch is here. His knowledge about the subject expands the discussion beyond the textbooks and keeps the students focused throughout the lecture.

Wikipedia, gif, “Pi Unrolled”

We have all been taught that pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

Unfortunately, this is wrong because mathematicians have not proved that pi has the characteristic of “normality” yet. In other words, mathematicians are not sure if pi contains all the finitely long permutations of digits from 0 to 9. They are not sure if every digit continues to be used after a certain amount of time or an unlimited number of times in pi’s decimal representation. Nobody knows what we will find in the digits of pi if we keep going. For instance, when we check the first billion digits of pi, we see that the digit 7 occurs almost 100 million times. This makes pi a nice random number generator. However, after some points, pi may not contain the digit 7 and might instead have a non-repeating number with just two or three digits such as 010203112233000111222333…

For instance, after the first 761 digits of pi, there is a famous mathematical coincidence where six nines occur in a row which is called the Feynman point.

Twitter, Feynman’s Library, “Feynman Point in Pi”

But we are sure that the digits of pi keep going on forever and in a random order. This makes pi interesting because the value of pi is finite; however, its decimal value is infinitely long. This is not a contradiction. Pi is a constant number because it is the ratio of the circumference of a circle and its diameter, which are finite values. Still, we need an approximate value for pi.

In 1768, Johann Lambert proved that the value of pi is an irrational number and it cannot be written as a rational simple fraction. 22/7 is a commonly used approximation but does not contain all of the digits of pi. This is because irrational numbers cannot be written as a ratio of two numbers, such as , because they continue on to infinity and do not follow a pattern. In 1882, Ferdinand Lindemann proved that pi is a transcendental number because it is not algebraic; it is not a non-constant polynomial equation with rational coefficients (“Transcendental number”, Wikipedia).

We can safely say that pi is transcendental because the mathematician Yasumasa Kanada found that the first trillion digits of pi appear to be statistically random. If you check the table below, you see that the event of each digit occurring is independent, and the probability of it is one-tenth of the time (“Kanada Laboratory,” Super Computing)

After many years, Emma Haruko Iwao found 34.1 trillion digits of pi in 2019. It took 121 days for Haruko and his computer, because calculating pi requires a lot of power, even for a computer. You can picture it in your mind like this; if you were to print a billion decimal values of Pi in normal sized, ordinary font, it would stretch from New York to Kansas.

However, 34.1 trillion digits is still not enough to prove whether pi is normal or not (“Pi in the Sky, Google Cloud Blog). Supercomputers are still crunching the numbers. If you check the graph below, you will see the number of known digits of pi, by year, since 250 B.C.

FiveThirtyEight, Graph, “Even After 31 Trillion Digits, We’re Still No Closer To The End Of Pi”

Going back to Mr. Finch, we see that he is not 100% wrong. We can find our birthdays in pi easily. If you go to mypiday.com and type your birthday, it will give you the decimal place in pi. For example, my birthday occurs at the 675,097th decimal place.

If pi is a normal number, then we can say that our whole destiny is encoded in pi. The pictures we are going to take in the future, will be in pi because there are binary numbers behind images. All digital products are in pi. Even this article has been in pi for thousands of years. Furthermore, the DNA of every creature is in pi. Mr. Finch was actually right.

There is an interesting and artistic way to show the randomness of pi. Some scientists might be happy with their tedious scatter plots, but there are some artists who use colors for data visualization to communicate with the public. Martin Krzywinski is one such artist, who found beauty and artistry in the randomness of Pi. He took the digits of pi and gave each digit a different color. For instance, he gave 3 the color orange, 1 as red, 4 as yellow, and so on. Then he made a beautiful poster. And if you look at it carefully, you do not see any particular pattern to the colors.

Science Art by Martin Krzywinski

Should we stop working on pi? Or should we continue looking for a better approximation? Is assuming pi as equal to 3.14 good enough? Or is it enough to use 40 digits of pi to find the circumference of the Milky Way galaxy to an error less than the size of a proton (JPL NASA)? Are the first 152 digits enough to find the circumference of the observable universe at 93 billion light-years (WIRED)? There are hundreds of mathematicians who have been trying to figure out more digits of pi for years. It is like trying to get to the moon and then to the next planet, and so on…

But why? Why do mathematicians bother calculating any more digits? Why aren’t 34.1 trillion digits of pi enough? Is it because pi lurks in every circle?

The logical reason seems cryptic: is it because pi is a beautiful source to generate random numbers? Or is it that countries can show off their technology to other countries, because calculating trillions of digits of pi requires a very powerful computer? For instance, in the Star Trek episode “Wolf in the Fold,” Spock foils the evil computer by commanding it to “compute to last digit of the value of pi.” So asking a computer to compute pi is called “a stress test” and may make it crash.

On the other hand, we humans are just weird. Staying at home and drinking tea is a beautiful activity, but when we get bored, we try to climb the highest of mountains, befriend a tiger, or try to memorize the digits of pi, like Chao Lu, who correctly memorized the first 67,890 digits of pi. We will keep doing these things because we like to understand the world around us.

We are inevitably connected to the past, and pi is a thread that’s gone through all of human history. That’s why we can say that as long as there are people, there’s always going to be somebody who wonders what’s next. And I assure you that somewhere in the world there is a mathematician or scientist using pi for something important, because pi is still the mysterious constant of nature.

Finding Pi

The previous statement is utterly true: there has always been someone who works on pi. Math is as old as civilization. Pi has been studied by the human race for almost 4000 years. When the last mammoths were going extinct, people were studying Pi. As far as we know, Archimedes was one of the first humans who calculated pi. He was most likely helping wheel makers. But how did he estimate the value of pi?

Firstly, he saw that all polygons are a circle. According to Archimedes, if you keep increasing the number of the sides of a polygon, you get closer to the perfect circle. In other words, a pentagon is more circle than a square, but a hexagon is more circle than a pentagon, and so on… Thus, more than two thousand years ago, he defined a circle as a regular polygon with an extremely large number of sides.

His definition is useful because measuring a curved surface was hard to do accurately. He found a way to find the circumference of a circle. First, he drew a square with its corners touching the perimeter of a circle and found the perimeter of the inscribed square. Secondly, he drew another square with its sides also touching the perimeter of the circle and found the perimeter of the circumscribed square. He came to the conclusion that the circumference of the circle had to lie somewhere between the value of those two perimeters of squares.

Using this method, however, the difference between those two values was pretty big. So, he drew pentagons to see the upper and lower bounds of the circumference of the circle. This gave him a smaller range of bounds. He kept increasing the number of faces of the polygon that he was drawing inside and outside the circle. Each time he did this, his estimation was getting more accurate. Archimedes got up to a 96 sided regular polygon [called an enneacontahexagon] until he grew exhausted. The lower and upper bound that he found were 3.1408 and 3.1429. Thus, he calculated π to two decimal places.

Archimedes’ method needed improvement because his life span was not going to be long enough to find the other digits of pi by hand. Mathematicians needed to discover more efficient formulas and new techniques.

Before they could do this, they needed to discover algebra. Its discovery by the great mathematicians inspired a whole new way of looking at the world.

The next great jump in calculating pi was the invention of calculus. After that, mathematicians started working on infinite series. An infinite series is an expression with numbers added together until infinity; sometimes these infinite series converge to a particular value.

There are many methods available now to calculate pi. Gottfried Leibniz found pi in infinity. James Gregory was working on one of the astonishing infinite series for the inverse tangent function below. He added infinitely many small numbers together and found pi.

He put x = 1 into the inverse-tangent series. He showed us the further we go, the closer to the estimation of pi we get. However, in order to get 10 digits of pi, we need to write about 5 billion fractions.

After that, another great mathematician, Leonhard Euler – who officially adopted the Greek letter “π” as a symbol to represent the value – found a more efficient equation for pi, when he was only 28. The symbol became iconic. Euler’s Pi equation calculates an infinite sum. The Basel Problem was named after him.

Euler also used pi to write another beautiful equation, Euler’s Identity.

Thanks to the Indian mathematician Ramanujan’s obsession with pi, we have many new formulas to find pi. When he arrived at Cambridge from India, he brought with him a notebook in which there were 400 pages of formulas to find pi.

After the invention of mechanical computers, mathematicians used Leibniz’s, Euler’s, and Ramanujan’s infinite series to calculate a trillion decimal digits of pi (Stanford Cryptography Group). Without a supercomputer, finding this many digits of pi would be difficult. For example, the mathematician William Shanks managed to calculate the first 707 digits of pi by hand but unfortunately, he had made a mistake after the 527th place.

Pi is everywhere

Children start learning about pi when they are in 7th grade and use it until they graduate from college. Even after that, most people use pi again when their children go to school. Pi appears everywhere in the universe. It is literally woven into our universe: the orbits of planets, electromagnetic waves, rivers, the colors of auroras, the structure of DNA, the Great Pyramid of Giza… If a scientist wants to describe the structure of the universe or find the relationship between planets, he/she definitely needs to use pi: anything involving a circle or a sphere is about pi. Circles appear throughout the natural world, whether they’re a soap bubble or the moon in the night sky.

 A Gif showing the clever play on the letters “pi”

Sinuosity of rivers

Pi has a direct relationship with rivers. But how? To figure this out, we need to measure the length of a river in two different ways. Assume that we know the starting and ending point of the river. First, we need the actual length to see how bendy the river is. In other words, the distance that you need to swim from the beginning point to the ending point. This whole length will be “L”. Second, we need to find a straight length. In other words, this time we need to fly from the beginning to the end. And this direct route will be a lowercase “l”. Now we can write the formula for the sinuosity by dividing L by l. The sinuosity is a ratio and measures how bendy the river is.

What is important here is there’s no limit to how high sinuosity can be. Rivers can be really bendy. However, Hans-Henrik Stølum proved that theaverage sinuosity of rivers around the world is pi. If you find the sinuosity of all the rivers and take the average sinuosity of them, you should get pi (Meandering River).

There is another interesting fact about sinuosity. Rivers can be very bendy at some points. But suddenly, those rivers become straight and make the sinuosity around pi. So, it is hard to find the sinuosity of a river equal to 7 because of fluid dynamics. Mathematicians found the highest sinuosity to be around 3.5 and the lowest sinuosity around 2.7.

At the extremely bendy point, rivers cut off after the bend point and make a shortcut to become straight again. This phenomenon is known as an oxbow lake, which controls the sinuosity of rivers. This keeps the sinuosity of a river around Pi.

Pi in Space

There is a mathematical order inherent in our universe. For instance, to understand our solar system, we need pi. We know that our planet moves in front of its host star. And the light comes from host stars. To talk about that light, we need to know how big the host star is. In other words, we need the surface area of the host star. The formula for the surface area of a sphere is 4πr², with r being the star’s radius. The size of a planet also helps scientists to guess whether it is habitable or not.

Another good example to show the relationship between pi and the universe is electrostatic force, which is the force between two electric charges. An electron exerts a force in all directions and forms a sphere field. Electrons also interact with each other on an electric field. To figure out that interaction, we need to find the surface area of spheres, where again pi comes up.

There is also a connection between pi and gravity. If you have had a chance to see Einstein’s field equations, you might notice that pi is there also:

The formula above calculates how objects with a large mass, such as stars and galaxies, can curve space and time with their gravity. Einstein said that, just like a ball sitting on a bedsheet, any form of momentum and energy can also curve space-time around it. In words, the formula is saying:

Gravity = 8 x π x Energy & Momentum

Lastly, if you take the square root of Earth’s gravity, you almost get pi.

Pi Day

After so many years studying pi, people decided to organize an official celebration of pi on March 14th. Since 1988, people have celebrated this magical constant. Coincidentally, Albert Einstein was born on pi day – March 14, 1879. Einstein also published his theory of general relativity on pi day.

The Google logos for Pi Day.

On the face of the Earth, mountain regions are defined as areas more than 1000 m in elevation. Although mountains cover only 27% of the total land area of the planet, the percentage of the world population who are dependant on the mountains is much larger. In terms of water dependency, about 70% of the population uses water originated in the mountains. This ratio becomes close to 100% in arid regions. Interestingly, the water towers of the world are generally located in the arid regions of the world. It is not unusual to see an arid lowland region with a big river crossing it. These regions are usually connected to a nearby mountain from which the river originated. The significance of the mountains is mentioned in the Bible as the following: “For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land” (Psalm 95:3-5).

All great rivers of the world originate in mountains. For example, the arid region of Central Asia is watered by the Tarek, Amu Darya, and Tarim Rivers. All of the big rivers of China and India originate in Tibet. Pakistan is dependant on the Indus River. Asia Minor and Northern Arabian Peninsula are supplied by Euphrates and Tigris Rivers while Northern Africa is supplied by Nile River. All Australian waters are supplied by rivers originating from eastern highlands, and Europe is supplied by the Po, Rhine, and Tiber Rivers, which originate in mountainous areas. This makes mountain water strategically important in these areas, and in fact, some countries prefer to keep their need of mountain water a secret!

Here it is worth discussing the global water cycle in order to understand the peculiar role of the mountains. All of the precipitation onto land comes from evaporation on land and oceans. A significant portion of the land precipitation goes back to seas and oceans via river discharge every year. And the main source of fresh water for humans and other living organisms comes from rivers. For low-land precipitation (as opposed to mountain precipitation) the discharge happens rather quickly, within weeks. Therefore, humans build dams in order keep the water for longer periods of time. Another longer term solution to keep more water on land is planting trees, which benefits not only humans but all other living creatures!

For mountains, the water cycle works quite differently. Since the mountains are in high elevations, precipitation starts early in the late fall and continues until the end of spring. The river discharge does not begin until early summer. Especially in arid regions, the low-land discharge mostly diminishes by early spring, and no predictions can be made as to how arid the coming summer will be. On the other hand, because of lower temperatures in the mountains, evaporation is also minimal, which makes them efficient natural storages. At the end of spring when the lowland precipitation starts to diminish, the mountain water discharge begins in a steady manner and continues during the entire summer season. When we look at the yearly usage of water even in a humid region like Europe, more than 50% of the water during the hottest and driest months of June and July is released from the Alps. This percentage is more than 95% in arid regions of the world, such as Mesopotamia and North Africa. The Holy Quran mentions the storage of bounties, including water, explicitly as the following: “There is not a thing but the stores (for its life and sustenance) are with Us, and We do not send it down except in due, determined measure. And we send the winds to fertilize; and so We send down water from the sky, and give it to you to drink; it is not you who are the keepers of its stores” (15/21-22).

Since lowland water discharge is mainly controlled by precipitation, it is also unpredictable and rather quick. This is particularly inconvenient for farmers who have to make business plans for the entire of the year ahead of time. The knowledge of yearly precipitation is vital for farmers to make reliable investments. In lowland areas, prediction of water distribution months in advance is very difficult, and almost impossible before it actually precipitates! (In fact, an area of geological sciences is devoted to forecasting precipitation. This is also important for preventing causalities in potential floods). On the other hand, mountain discharge offers stability during the year, which makes life much easier for farmers.

Mountains are generally seen in our distant horizons of our living areas with their magnificence and silence. They have many benefits that we may or may not be aware of. Indeed they are the water towers of the world.

H. Huseyin Erdem is an earth scientist living in the USA.

Note

1. More discussion on this topic may be found in The Risale-i Nur Collection (e.g., see The Words, 33rd Word) by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi.

References

1. Wiegandt, Ellen (Ed.), Mountains: Sources of Water, Sources of Knowledge, The Netherlands: Springer, 2009.
2. B. Messerli and J.D. Ives (Ed’s), Mountains of the World: A Global Priority, Parthenon Pub., 1997.

Water has a vital role in maintaining the life of the cell. For example, 70% of the human body consists of water; also, approximately 70% of the earth is formed of water. Chemical reactions happening inside cells take place in liquid environments; in other words, life activities have been made to depend on water.

While water has such a vital importance for creatures, is there any living being that can live without water? The answer to this question is yes. For example, the African Lungfish (Protopterus), which is created with this special quality, can live without water for four years in hard times.

It is well-known that bears go into hibernation as a result of a God-given instinct during the winter cold. Storing necessary energy as fat in their bodies in order not to freeze, decreasing their body metabolism to the minimum rate, and being guided to choose a place to be protected from the cold during winter hibernation are important features bestowed on these living beings.

Another special features bestowed on some animals is the capacity for summer hibernation. This sleep is a marvelous quality that enables some animals to be able to live in hot and dry climates. Summer hibernation is the process of spending very hot summer days between sleep and lethargy in order to handle hard circumstances. A kind of silence is felt in the whole of nature during the extremely hot months of summer. This silence is caused by animals being in their summer sleep. Lungfish is one of those animals. There are various types of lungfish around the world: Queensland Lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri), which is as long as 6 feet and which lives in the Burnett and Mary rivers in Australia; African Lungfish living Central Africa; 6 feet long Protopterus aethiopicus; 4 feet long P.dolloi; P. amphibious, which is written to be longer than 13 feet in some records; and Lepidosiren paradoxa living in South America.

Quite a lot is known about the summer sleep of the lungfish in Africa (Dipnoi). When the river water which flows from the treasures of God’s mercy is withdrawn during the summer months, the lungfish, which sink into wet clay by God-given instict, wait for a drawn back of water in a state of lethargy with having very low metabolisms. The fishes open a hole for themselves on the mud (down rivers and lakes) when rivers and lakes start to dry. When the mud goes into a drying process, specially featured mucous membrane that are put onto fishes’ skins start to work fast and fishes’ bodies are covered by a secreted mucus-like adhesive substance like a water-resistant cocoon. Fishes can stay alive by sleeping about 7-8 months during deadly summer hots with the amount of accumulated water inside cocoons. Although many fishes obtain the necessary oxygen through their gills, lungfish are created with an interesting special feature. The thin membrane bladders (gas bladders) that are responsible for regulating water level in other fishes are organized into a kind of breathing organ in the lungfishes by equipping with large amount of blood vessels in order to perform like lungs. God the Almighty can make different organs (analog organ) perform similar tasks as He does make similar organs (homolog organ) perform different tasks. None of these organs, which are created as the manifestation of God’s eternal knowledge and omnipotence, are characterized as being developed by their own through coincidental mutations. In contrast, every organ is created in the most appropriate character and capability to ensure maintenance of animals’ lives in the best way. Otherwise, we had to imagine those fishes that could know dry season with every aspects and that have the capacity and knowledge to change their organs as they want.

How do the fishes living in a water-resistant and durable cocoon obtain the necessary oxygen for themselves? The hole kept inside mud is used to get oxygen when oxygen inside cocoon reduced. The cocoon’s membrane made from mucus protects the little amount of water around the fish in mud but does not block the oxygen transition. While the dried mud works like a turbot against sun lights, the hole on the wall is kept. The lungfishes shrink around 1 inch during the summer sleep, since they use (burn) some of their fat and muscle tissue. When rains start and water fills lakes and rivers, the mud turbot that keeps lungfish dissolves; and the lungfish starts to continue its normal life in water.

Heaven is often pictured as perfection, a place where everything is fresh, clean, pure, and beautiful. As the Bible describes it: He (God) will wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain. All of that has gone forever (Revelations 21:4). Many societies and religions have tried to recreate the “feeling” of a heavenly place on Earth in the form of spiritual places in churches, synagogues, mosques, cemeteries, and chapels.

The shared Jewish, Christian, and Muslim belief in only One God has resulted in similar traditions. For example, idolatry and “false gods” are forbidden. In Christianity, statues help believers to focus on God; however, it could become a controversial point where statues or crucifixes are not supposed to be taken as God. In contrast to the idea of using a physical object to help invoke spiritual feelings, Islamic law forbids the use of statues of any sort. (2) As a result of this prohibition, Muslims used nature, in the form of gardens and designs, to invoke spiritual feelings. Mosques with unique architectural designs often have elaborately decorated interiors, and the gardens are filled with symbolism and beauty.

Islamic gardens are a prime example of the concept of heaven, Earth, and the garden blending to produce spiritual symbolic sanctuaries. “Every garden created in the Islamic world tends to be seen as a metaphor for Paradise.”(3) The English word paradise comes from the Persian word Pairida za: pairi (around) and daeza (wall). (4) Thus, pairida za referred to something with a wall around it and eventually came to mean a walled garden. This word became paradeisoi in Greek and paradises in Latin. The concept of Paradise as a garden is exemplified in many Biblical and Qur’anic passages.

The Islamic view of heaven, Hell, and earth

Islam views Paradise as the opposite of Hell and always contrasts heaven with Earth. (5) In this way, “Paradise and Hell pertain to the Return to God” and so “cannot be experienced in their fullness until after the Last Day.” (6) Heaven and Earth refer to the “situation of the cosmos” from the beginning of time until the end. (7) Therefore, on the Last Day or the Day of Judgment, “heaven and earth, they will have vanished since their inhabitants will have been moved to the Garden and the Fire.” (8)

Although this view is very similar to other religious views, some of its intricate and deeply religious implications make the concept unique. In contrast to Islam, Christianity teaches that a person dies and after purgatory either goes to heaven or to Hell (Luke 16: 22-23). Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all thought to have “ideas of heaven that are historically and theologically connected to one another,” (9) which makes the specific differences and distinctions harder to conceptualize. In the following Qur’anic verse, the promise of a peaceful afterlife with God is placed in the context of a garden: God has promised the men and women who believe in Him gardens watered by running streams, in which they shall abide for ever, goodly mansions in the gardens of Eden. And, what is more, they shall have grace in God’s sight. That is the supreme triumph (Qur’an 9:72).

Within this verse, three important aspects are visible. First, Islam promises believers an afterlife with God; second, the Paradise of afterlife has the form of a garden; and third, the Garden of Eden, also mentioned in the Bible’s Old Testament, is part of Muslim belief.

In a religious sense, the Garden of Eden is seen as and believed to be the garden from which all life came. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have different interpretations of what Adam and Eve’s actions have meant for the human race, as well as where the Garden of Eden is located. (10) However, these three religions agree that the Garden of Eden is an example of heaven. According to Murata, God “created Adam for the earth, not for the Garden,” and so the Islamic view of Adam’s (and Eve’s) “fall” from the Garden is not as negative as it is in Christianity. Rather, it is thought of more as a “slip caused by Satan.” (11)

The Islamic view of nature

Since gardens are made up of nature, it is interesting to see how an Islamic view of nature relates to the Islamic idea of Paradise. Since nature itself is seen as spiritual in its own right, its connection as a material used to make a symbolic Paradise on Earth is very intriguing. Islamic garden construction involves using a spiritual component to build a spiritual or religiously significant product. Therefore, an Islamic garden is a reflection of God’s Beauty, (12) for what better way to reflect His Beauty than by using what He has provided?

Looking at the Qur’an’s description of Paradise, it is important to note the repetitive use of the phrase jannat tajri min tahtiha al-anhar (gardens underneath which rivers flow).” A common Qur’anic example of this is: For those who are God-conscious, with their Lord are gardens through which rivers flow (Qur’an 3:15). Fascinatingly, the Qur’an is not the only religious book that mentions water flowing; the Bible also mentions it: A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches (Genesis 2:10). The ideas of gardens, water, heaven, and Paradise, which recur throughout the Qur’an and Bible, have very specific implications as to how Islamic gardens were formed.

Islamic gardens and Islamic cosmology

Islamic gardens are connected to the spiritual side of Islamic cosmology. What makes these earthly gardens even more interesting is that they do far more than just reflect the concept of the garden in Paradise; rather, they are constructed in such a way that they echo God’s words as revealed in the Qur’an.

One of the most visible and striking aspects is the wall surrounding the garden’s exterior. This practice differs markedly from what we see in the West, where a garden is open to public viewing. External aesthetics are very important in the West, and one way to illustrate them is to design their gardens accordingly. In the Islamic world, however, gardens were walled off because the garden’s interior was far more important than its external aesthetic appeal. One reason for the wall was to enclose tranquility, which was an intricate part of an Islamic garden, and thereby separate the sacred from the outside world. These gardens were meant for private, inner contemplation and to be a retreat from the busy, hectic outside world.

A second feature is each garden’s specific layout. The idea of a four-fold separation, which is central to Islamic gardens, can be seen in both the Qur’an and the Bible. In the Bible, four rivers flow from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10). The Qur’anic description of the four rivers is more detailed and very thought-provoking: (Here is) a Parable of the Garden that the righteous are promised. In it are rivers of water incorruptible, rivers of milk of which the taste never changes, rivers of wine that are a joy to those who drink, and rivers of honey pure and clear. In it there are for them [the believers] all kinds of fruits and Grace from their Lord. (Can those in such Bliss) be compared to such as shall dwell for ever in the Fire, and be given to drink boiling water, so that it cuts up their bowels (to pieces)?” (Qur’an 47:15).

A third feature is the essential presence of water. Water, a life-giving substance, is needed to irrigate plants and trees. In the more ancient gardens, prior to efficient plumbing, gardens were irrigated through systems that brought water down from snow-capped mountains. The water was distributed efficiently in a hierarchical fashion: first for drinking, then for bathing, and then for the land. (13)

Since one function of an Islamic garden was to serve as a retreat from a long day of work or the world’s troubles, water helped to relax the people and cut down outside noise. There was usually a fountain or two that supplied flowing water, which added to the serenity.

Another important aspect was the garden pavilion, which typically had a “rectangular platform with open porches, probably columned, added to each of its shorter sides.” (14) The pavilion was meant to provide a shaded vantage point in which everyone could sit and view the magnificent garden and contemplate inner thoughts.

Since idolatry and statues are forbidden, Islamic gardens were decorated in other ways, usually with geometric shapes. Muslims saw geometric patterns in everything, including the petals of a flower or the thorn of a rose. “The squares, circles, and octagons we see in the gardens could be there for good theological reasons: the square represents the earthly order of things, the circle indicates God’s celestial perfection of eternity, and the octagon the circle squared signifies our earthly struggle to achieve everlasting unity with God’s higher plans.” (15)

Another decorative style of Islamic art and architecture is the arabesque, which “includes ornamentation in stylized plant forms and strictly geometrical interlacing work.” (16) Many times these designs dealt with the “cosmic rhythms with alternate and complementary phases of evolution and involution, expansion and contraction.” (17) Arabesque design included the idealized styling of plants and vines to create patterns. This art form, just like the gardens themselves, has a geometrical element. For example, many of the patterns were based on circles divided by six, eight, or five.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Islamic gardens intrinsically contain two aspects: architectural and cosmological. Architecturally, they resound with religious symbolism in both their design and form. It is important to remember that “the perfection and ‘economy’ of the cosmos, however, is not to be judged by human standards at all.” (18) Although Islamic gardens are mirrored after Qur’anic verses and ideals, the gardens are by no means meant to be the archetypical Paradise.

Richard Ettinghausen, realizing that there has to be a reason why the Islamic garden “was such a ubiquitous art form in the Muslim world,” posits three reasons for this “propensity.” First is the “idea of Paradise as a reward for the Muslim faithful,” which is well-documented in the Qur’an. Second, many gardens and designs pre-dated Islamic times, and, he continues, “in Islam there exists both a sacred, visionary, and a secular, hedonistic tradition, each centered around a special garden of the highest beauty.” Third, the “influence of horticulture” or, in other words, the need for the environment and geography, was an important consideration. (19)

Islamic gardens, although a very important way for Muslims to be in touch with Paradise, are “only a sensual symbol of God’s everlasting beauty.” (20) The following Qur’anic verse shows that no matter what their location, each person should be able to see God’s wonderful creations: We shall show them Our portents on the horizons and within themselves until it will be clear to them that it is the Truth. Does your Lord not suffice, since He is Witness over all things? (Qur’an 41:53).

Finally, gardens add to a person’s life by providing stress purification as well as spiritual purification. In a way, they enable people to escape their life and move to a better place: Paradise. Through garden architecture, people have attempted to reflect a cosmic order and thereby enhance and transcend daily life. For Muslims, whatever is seen on Earth comes from God’s own greatness, and therefore: “For all believers, there is an understanding that there would be no gardens, no rivers and no fruit in this world if it were not for their archetypes in Paradise.” (21) Thus Islamic gardens are not just for the growth of God’s plants, but also for the growth of the Islamic cosmological ideal.

Footnotes

1 Miller, Lisa. “Why We Need Heaven,” Newsweek, 12 August 2002, 44-49.

2 Lehrman, Lewis, Becoming a Successful Artist, (North Light Books, 1996)

3 Brend, Barbara, Islamic Art (Harvard University Pr., 1992).

4 Moynihan, Elizabeth B., Paradise as a Garden: In Persia and Mughal India (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1979), 1.

5Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam (New York: Paragon House, 1994), 80.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Seale, Allan, New Life for Old Gardens: Designs for Reviving Your Garden (Sterling Publications, 2002).

9 Jeffrey Russell, A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), xiii.

10 John Prest, The Garden of Eden: The Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise (London: Yale University Press, 1981), 15.

11 Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, 142-43.

12 John Brookes, Gardens of Paradise: The History and Design of the Great Islamic Gardens (New Amsterdam: The Meredith Press, 1987), 19.

13 Ibid., 193.

14 Elisabeth B. Macdougall and Richard Ettinghausen, eds. “The Islamic Garden,” Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture IV (Washington, DC, Trustees for Harvard University, 1976), 72.

15 William Howard Adams, Nature Perfected: Gardens through History (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991), 62.

16 Titus Burckhardt, Art of Islam: Language and Meaning (World of Islam Festival Trust 1976), 56.

17 Ibid., 57.

18 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Boulder: Shambhala Publications Inc., 1978), 124.

19 Macdougall and Ettinghausen, eds., “The Islamic Garden,” 6-7.

20 Ibid., 39.

21 Emma Clark, Underneath Which Rivers Flow: The Symbolism of the Islamic Garden (London: The Prince of Wale’s Institute of Architecture, 1996), 16. 

In a dialogue, it is as if the meaning flows in separate rivers running beside one another in their own channel. This stream has a dynamic nature; it changes and grows. At times these rivers join together in a reservoir with a communal semantic or a lake of reconciliation.

The aim of a dialogue, in spite of differences of opinion and conviction, is to gain understanding and acceptance. The word “dialogue” is therefore distinct from the word discussion. Those who engage in dialogue do not seek to defeat or silence the other person, nor do they adopt a defensive attitude at the outset. They seek to find out, to learn and to understand collectively.

Dialogue implies being amenable to another person’s point of view. It requires that one pay attention and listen to another individual so that the heart and the mind might “open.” This mutual acceptance makes it possible to understand each other, learn together, and make a collective contribution. A wise person once stated, this process causes an endless deepening of meaning like two mirrors that reflect each other.

Dialogue is also one of the most effective means in the struggle against negative conditioning, prejudice, and fanaticism.

Certain qualities are essential if a dialogue is to be effective, and these qualities are: sincerity, humility, and epistemic curiosity.

Sincerity

Goodwill engenders trust. Mutual trust is the most important condition for the expression of deeper thought and feelings. Openhearted people do not fear communication with or the influence of others.

Humility

One of the greatest virtues is being able to set aside oneself for the sake of others. Sincerely humble people are aware of the limits of their abilities and always back away from transgression.

Humility implies the notion that we know little and still have much to learn. It also implies the willingness to change and develop in accordance with all that we have learned.

In dialogues that are governed by humility, both sides search for the boundaries of their available knowledge and notions and, they both depart to discover unknown places. They travel from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

Epistemic Curiosity

The nature of people enables them to be curious and search for truth. This basic drive should be a primary component of a healthy foundation for dialogue.

Together we can search for the answers to these questions among many others:

• Who are we?

• Why do we exist?

• What is our origin?

• What is the destination of our journey?

• What is our relationship to the Creator?

• What is the relationship among people, life, and the universe?

• What is the relationship between faith and science?

• How should we interpret critical thinking?

• Are their metaphysical laws, just as there are physical laws?

Most likely, the deepest desire of a person is to bequeath to subsequent generations, who will inhabit this aged earth until the end of time, something essential and of fundamental importance, thus giving to his own transiency an aspect of something that is long lasting.

Affection, virtue, compassion, fairness, and concord are universal aspects of spiritual enlightenment and happiness that will never lose their value. They are the conditions of a meaningful and blessed life and comprise the best legacy we could wish to leave others.

This ‘book’ or exhibition was once much more dazzling; like a magnificent vessel sailing in the ocean of love and ecstasy or a chandelier with one thousand and one lights, it was beautiful beyond imagination. With its emerald hills and slopes and exhilarating valleys and plains, with its forests inhabited by thousands of kinds of cheerful animals and paradise-like gardens, fields and orchards, and with its singing birds and merry-making insects, this ‘book’ was the realm neighboring the other world. Divine mercy poured onto it in the form of rain to make the earth more fertile and, in return, hands were held open towards it in profound gratitude.

Those who sensed nature in that manner could not help but establish a deep heartfelt relation with the sound, melody, taste, smell and beauties which issued from it by the Hand of Power. For they were so intimate and familiar with it that whenever they gazed on it, they felt different things pertaining to the worlds beyond.

Like the elegance and grace in the architecture of a palace inspiring in us different things beyond the palace itself, nature, this exhibition of the miracles of Divine art, inspires in our hearts an intuition of the existence of One who, being the real source of all harmony and beauty, has brought it into existence and designed it, One who, although He makes us feel Himself through every work of His, is beyond the capacity of direct human perception.

The natural world and the heavens are as if in each other’s arms. It is as if in response to the strong desire of mountains to meet with heavens which they show by making their peaks lean on their skirts, heavens hang their skirts down over them. Like bees flying from one flower to the other, human imagination travels through the reflections of the Creator’s beauty and goes as fas as the horizon. When it reaches the horizon, thinking that the road goes on far into eternity beyond heavens, it sets out for a new journey and man begins to hear the melodies belonging to the worlds beyond. Those who, through their imaginations, can stay in those worlds for a long time, succeed in meeting the true beloved, with the love of whom they are consumed and for the union with whom they long.

For those who have resolved to make a journey through this realm of nature which provides knowledge of God for the traveller and where the heart, spirit and conscience overflow with innumerable kinds of pleasures, with its exhilarating spectacles, multi-coloured hills and slopes, impressive mountains that lead one into day-dreams, amorous gardens, awe-inspiring forests, streams and rivers murmuring in their way to union with seas-it is especially in spring and summer, a realm of joy, pleasure, peace and imagination. 

There is a magnificence, a charm, and a poetical harmony in every corner of this ‘book’ or exhibition. It is as if-with all its variety of beauty diversified in colours and forms, and the sheer charm of its general appearance, such that one would say, It is impossible for it to be more beautiful than this!-nature were in a sort of beauty competition. Those who have awakened to those beauties observe it differently and hear from it melodies of unimaginable beauty. Those ‘intoxicated’ spirits see trees dancing mentioning His Name and flowers announcing Him in the languages particular to themselves, and they hear everything in nature whispering peculiar messages from that symphony of beauty.

There are parts of nature which know of neither winter nor autumn. They are so dazzling and charming that you feel near the pont of touching the ultimate reach of beauty where this and other worlds are as if concentric with each other. The slopes of those places give you the impression that you are in gardens of Paradise, the rivers flowing through them bring to your mind the rivers of Paradise, and the swaying of their trees bring you a gust of breezes in gardens of Paradise. In short, in the beauties exhibited in those places you feel and observe the eternal beauties and, thinking that the worldly life is too short to experience all those beauties perfectly, you feel an earnest desire for eternity and turn to the Infinitely Powerful One so that that vital desire of yours may be realized.

What a pity it is that this magnificent book, this charming exhibition, which the Infinitely Merciful One has created and presented to man to observe and study and to be exhilarated by, is no longer given any more care than is given to a heap of junk or rubbish. Worse than that, it is more and more becoming a wasteland and like a dunghill.

Today, air, that magnificent conductor of Divine commands, is a suffocating smoke and a perilous ‘whirlpool’. Water, that source of life and other Divine bounties, is either a hazardous flood or forms desolate expanses of pitch. And earth, that treasure of Divine grace and munificence, is a wilderness no longer productive and a ruin without any ecological balance.

Like everything else entrusted to us, we have deplorably treated this ‘book’, this magnificent exhibition, which is an embodiment of Divine grace and mercy. How deplorably and awkwardly we have treated plains and residential places, which we have changed into deserts and heaps of ruin. How deplorably and gracelessly we have treated seas and rivers, which we have polluted. Again, how deplorably and awkwardly we have treated air and water, and fields, forests, and gardens, which we have made unfavorable to any life. Truly, by changing this Paradise-like world to a hell, how deplorably and awkwardly we have treated ourselves!

Unless we improve this world, whose order we have destroyed and which we have polluted, and restore it to its essential beauty and magnificence, it will inevitably collapse on us in heaps of wreckage.

The natural environment contains a mosaic of species (groups of interacting organisms). They do not live in isolation but live in association with one another. It is the arrangement of a particular set of living organisms (plants, animals, bacteria, etc.) and their interaction with each other and with their environment which forms the ecosystem. An ecosystem can be identified on different scales.

On a large scale, the whole world can be considered an ecosystem, while on a smaller scale an ecosystem can be a pond or a wood. The components of an ecosystem (organisms, plants, soil) are linked together by transfers of energy and nutrients (ions).

The environment touches everyone. The air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink and bathe in, the countryside we walk in–all these are affected in one way or another by mankind’s polluting activities. As the results of these activities come to light and the pressures on the environment increase, so does the concern with which we view the world about us.

What are the most important of our common environmental problems?

The greenhouse effect is the greatest environmental threat facing mankind and there are only a limited number of strategies that can be adopted to delay its onset and attempt to reverse the trend. One lesson, which is being recognized increasingly, is that the world uses too much energy of the wrong sort. The most obvious way of attempting to combat global warming is to cut down on our use of fossil fuels. For it is this major source of energy, with its release of carbon into the atmosphere, which is the single biggest cause of the greenhouse effect.

The hole in the ozone layer is not something which most people can witness for themselves and so they rely on experts to tell them it is important. But one aspect of the pollution of the atmosphere, of which people are all to aware, is the smoke and gasses that come from power stations, factories, and car exhausts. Air pollution is a danger which affects us all. Worldwide, more than a billion people–a fifth of the world’s population–live in communities which do not meet the basic air quality standards set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). For example, in Bombay, simply breathing is equivalent to smoking ten cigarettes a day. In the United States of America it is said that air pollution causes as many as 50,000 deaths a year.

Indeed, there are serious environmental pollution problems in many countries in the world caused mainly by the burning of coal by heavy industries. The discharge from these coal-burning plants goes into the air and water without treatment. Technology for environmental protection is not advanced and legislation, where it exists, is either poorly operated or not operated at all.

Air pollution is not only a problem of industrialised countries. In the Third World, air pollution of a different sort is causing ill-health. In some regions–for example, in Africa– smoke from indoor cooking fires causes severe lung disease in infants. Carbon monoxide in the air reduces the blood’s ability to carry oxygen and this is liable to pose a risk for people suffering from heart disease. Another component, the oxides of nitrogen, are powerful lung irritants and can reduce resistance to infections like flu. In addition, one of the most important consequences of air pollution is the production of acid rain.

In one way or another man is now producing so much waste that he is in danger of being swamped by it. New York has the world’s biggest rubbish dump. Cranes as tall as six storey buildings work round the clock emptying barges of waste from the city–26,000 tonnes of it a day–creating literally a mountain of rubbish. Also, the United Kingdom is producing 80 million tonnes of rubbish each year. In theory, one tonne of rubbish can produce 400 cubic metres of landfill gas–60 per cent of it is methane and around 40 per cent carbon dioxide with a few other trace gasses like nitrogen and hydrogen. Typically, landfill gas is produced fairly quickly over the first few years and then production slowly tails off. On average it takes about 15 years for about a quarter of the waste to rot down, so the danger is long lasting. At most landfill sites the methane and carbon dioxide diffuse into the air. But landfill gas can represent a real hazard. Methane, for example, can explode when concentrations in air reach 5 to 15 per cent. However, if waste tips were properly managed it would be possible for more energy to be extracted from them but that would mean controlling more precisely what goes into them. There is another reason why collecting and burning the gas from landfill sites is worthwhile and environmentally friendly: it reduces the greenhouse effect. Methane is about 27 times less effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. That means that if the methane is collected and burnt to form carbon dioxide the net impact on the greenhouse effect is reduced. Burning the landfill gas also breaks down some of the CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) which are in the rubbish and so reduces still further the greenhouse effect.

Methane is not the only problem associated with rubbish tips. Another risk is that noxious substances can leak away, poisoning rivers and aquifers.

Dumping waste is not the only option. There are two other possible ways of dealing with it; it can be incinerated or recycled. Though currently only a small proportion of waste is dealt with that way.

Water is one of the most basic necessities of life. We drink it, wash in it and cook in it. Animals and plants cannot do without it. But increasingly over the last hundred years water has become prone to pollution as the effluent from towns and cities, from industries and from agriculture is discharged into rivers, seas and lakes and contaminations seep down to underground aquifers. Over the years pollution has killed animals and plants and has left many rivers biologically dead. River-borne pollution has brought with it disease and death for man.

In the last twenty years or so man has woken up to the damage being done and slowly, national and international controls over what can be allowed into rivers, seas and lakes are being implemented. Cleaning up the world’s rivers and seas will be a painfully long and expensive business but all those who have studied the problem agree that it is essential. The three main materials dumped at sea are dredgings, industrial waste and sewage sludge. In addition to the accidental contamination of water-ways and land with chemicals from waste disposal, there have been serious problems in some countries as a result of chemicals which have been purposely used on the land–notably pesticides and fertilisers. Both nitrate containing fertilisers and chemical pesticides can contaminate water, and pesticides can contaminate food. There has been increasing concern among environmentalists about the effect of nitrates and pesticides on people. Though the concern about nitrates may be overstated, the problem of pesticide use, notably in developing countries, is very worrying.

One of the prime concerns is the destruction of tropical forests. In 1950 tropical forests covered nearly 25 percent of the world’s land masses. Today they cover less than 7 percent.

Having reviewed some of the significant threats to the environment, the question has to be posed: Is it too late to save the planet? The message is clear. We must act now if we are to attempt to correct the damage which has already been done to our environment. We must reassess our values and priorities before it is too late. We must, in fact, heed the warnings. Today, we must start to choose clean and green technology. Clean and green technology does not mean only clean-up technology. We will try to develop our technology but it should be environmentally friendly.

If we look carefully at the universe, we see in it an ecological balance, a harmonious interrelation and interdependence. Do you believe that this is random? So the balance of the universe created by God must be preserved. ‘Everything with Him is measured’ (13:8). Also, ‘There is not anything, but its stores are with Us and We send down each thing in an appointed measure’ (15:21). ‘God is the One who created everything in due proportion’ (54:49).

Environment is not merely an inheritance from our forefathers, for us to waste; it is a trust and an investment we make for our children. Protection and conservation of the environment is an important and vital human issue. As such, it is also an Islamic issue because the human being is the answerable creature of God, who carries the burden of using and understanding the resources of the creation; within the creation, the human being is both means and end. No other creature can perform the task of protecting the environment.

God gives us some guidance in the Qur’an:

‘He has created you from earth and made you dwell in it’ (11:61).

‘And do not withhold the things of the people unjustly and do not make mischief on the earth’ (26:183).

‘Corruption has overtaken [them] in hand and sea, for what the hands of the people have earned, that He may let them taste some of what they have done, in order that they may return’ (30:41). 

References

• Peter H. Collin (1989), Dictionary of Ecology and Environment, Collins, Middlesex, UK.
• James Wilkinson (1990), Green or Bust, BBC Books, London.
• Jonathon Porritt (1990), Friends of the Earth Handbook, MacDonald Optima, London.
• World Commission on Environment and Development (1989), Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
• Ahmet Zidan and Dina Zidan (1991), Translation of The Glorious Qur’an, Biddles Ltd., Guildford, UK.