Paradise. Eden. Elysium. Arcadia. Shangri-la. Utopia. Abode of the Blessed. Medieval maps of the world always placed earthly Paradise in the East. Medieval Europe’s Paradiso, most famously described in Dante’s Divine Comedy, was rooted in the Latin word paradisos, which in turn descended from the classical Greek paradeisos. But to find its true source, one had to look farther east, across the hostile deserts of Asia’s gnarled landmass. In ancient Persian, pari-deiza meant “enclosed garden.” The linguistic roots of the “divine” garden sprouted here.
