ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes the importance of gardens with charitable purposes in the garden culture of the medieval Deccan. The garden described in Yayati Caritramu was founded not by the Sultan himself, but by one of his amirs, ‘Abd al-Qadir Amin Khan, who was also responsible for commissioning Telaganarya’s literary work. Qutb Shahi society was a remarkably multi-ethnic environment where recent Muslim immigrants from Iran, Central Asia and Ethiopia interacted daily with locally established Deccani Turks, Indian converts to Islam and Telugu-speaking Hindus of all colours, from peasant agriculturalists to members of the landed military aristocracy and Brahman administrators. It is important to note that Amin Khan’s establishment of a garden is described not in isolation but as one of seven meritorious actions that are traditionally referred to in Telugu as the saptasantanam. The idea of the saptasantanas seems to be a peculiarly Andhra conception, first appearing in the epigraphic record in the early 12th century.
