Akbarieh Garden

Akbarieh Garden lies on the edge of Birjand, capital of South Khorasan, in the dry uplands of eastern Iran once known as Qohestan, “the mountain land”. It is one of the nine gardens inscribed together by UNESCO in 2011 as the Persian Garden, and the only one in Khorasan. Like the others, it turns scarce water into an ordered paradise of trees, channels and pools.

The garden was the seat of the Khozeimeh family, later known as the Alam, who governed Qohestan and Sistan for generations. Its main pavilion is a Qajar building, credited to the governor Heshmat ol-Molk in the late nineteenth century, though some scholars date the beginnings of the complex earlier, to the Zand era. The two-storey pavilion faces a long pool, with a columned porch and windows looking out over the trees.

For a century the garden was a centre of local government. Its rulers received envoys and consuls here, and it remained a residence of the region's governors until 1978. Its last private owner, Asadollah Alam, who served as Prime Minister and later as Minister of the Imperial Court under Mohammad Reza Shah, left it in his will to the shrine foundation of Astan Quds Razavi.

The garden is planted with pines and fruit trees and watered, as in all Persian gardens, by channels fed from an underground supply. Today it is managed by Iran's cultural heritage authorities and houses a museum. In a region of pale hills and brown plains, its shade feels like a gift.