Food and livelihood security

A significant number of Qazvin residents still own or work in Bāghestān gardens, earning between 30 and 100 percent of their income from the gardens. Bāghestān products such as grapes, pistachios, almonds and to a lesser extent dried apricots are still considered strategic and play an important role in the economic cycle of the city. Every year, part of the gardens’ produce is exported to foreign markets.

Beyond the production system, job opportunities arise from Bāghestān such as making homemade sweets, including different kinds of Bāklavā. Jobs such as “Koobandegi” are still thriving in Qazvin, with the Koobandegis receiving almonds and pistachios needed for sweets, grinding them, and delivering the delicacies to the families. In recent decades, due to the popularity of Qazvin traditional sweets in other cities, the production of homemade sweets in small industrial workshops has flourished and has employed a significant number of people.

Agrobiodiversity

Bāghestān hosts a rich agrobiodiversity where approximately 100 local varieties of pistachio, almond, grape, apricot, walnut, and plum trees coexist. Grape, pistachio and almonds represent the species with the highest number of local and endemic varieties. For instances, 25 varieties of grapes have been identified, which trace their history back to the 16th century.

Bāghestān contains many 100 to 1000-year-old trees which make the site an in situ botanical garden with impressive individuals that serve to provide grafts and keep alive highly adapted varieties. Indeed, the local agrobiodiversity is adapted to floods but also to frost and semiarid conditions which makes farmers’ role central for keeping alive that heritage.

Local and traditional knowledge systems

The system is based on the reshaping of the whole watershed and landscape to absorb the seasonal floods and adapt agriculture to these conditions. Therefore, a whole network of dykes and soils adaptations have been developed through centuries. In the meantime, biodiversity adaptation and trees’ management have also been developed to form trees that can handle floods but also resist long periods of drought and frosts.

During the wet season, the gardens are flooded with water up to the tip of the dikes. This water then gradually penetrates the ground. Gardens are irrigated twice a year, once in winter and once in spring. Gardens do not need irrigation for the rest of the year, even in the summer heat. The seasonal works undertaken mainly consists of the maintenance of the dykes, shoveling and weeding the gardens, grafting, pruning and harvesting the fruit trees.

Cultures, value systems and social organizations

On this basis, and over time, appropriate social relationships and a special lived experience have been formed. These include the relationship between garden owners and gardeners, the role of responsible and local trustees, how gardens are managed and transferred, and how costs are shared.

Another key element of this system involves the customary rights in Bāghestān. Indeed, the traditional management method of the gardens is based on a hierarchical structure, a methods that remains central in managing the gardens despite the presence of government institutions. For this, one of the most significant and key elements of customary rights in the gardens is its historical water division document, which is still adhered to in its entirety and accuracy. It reflects the hierarchical structure of the garden, including the allocation of each river and below each river, the allocation of localities. This document specifies the exact start and end dates of irrigation, and for each day of this period, it specifies which garden is irrigated first and which ones are subsequently flooded. The traditional water distribution system of the Qazvin gardens, including Bāghestān, is registered as an Intangible National Heritage in the national list since 2017.

Landscapes and waterscapes features

The agricultural landscape in the Qazvin garden is the result of complex systems and interrelated activities that have been formed over time. The result of this entanglement has been the creation of an interconnected zone called the traditional garden of Qazvin: Bāghestān. Farmers in these areas have continued to work and live to this day with the proper use of local resources and institutions within the ecological constraints of their region. In such systems, ecological, social and agricultural sustainability are strongly interdependent. These elements in Bāghestān include plots, small lands with a variety of crops and nongeometric and organic planting systems, irrigation systems, structures and methods of water transfer, interactions. The whole system is a spectacular adaptation to the local context providing a wealth of ecosystem services that have made possible the development of Qazvin.