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The Great Mosque of Cordoba has the world's oldest continuously planted Islamic garden. Although its presence in a mosque courtyard would seem to confirm its significance as a symbol for "paradise on earth", the theological authorities of the 9th through 11th centuries did not regard it as such. The paper explores the water management systems that supplied the Mosque's courtyard of trees and the surrounding landscape. The same mechanisms and knowledge that made the agricultural landscape productive also made gardens flourish. The modern world tends to make a clear division between science (agriculture and hydraulics) and art (gardens and fountains), but landscape history tests this division because gardens require knowledge and an appreciation of beauty and form, but they also require an understanding of science, especially of how to collect water and make it flow to the places where it is needed. The paper traces connections between science, pleasure, the hydraulic landscape, and architecture to explain the presence of the trees in the Mosque of Cordoba. And claims that the garden in the courtyard of the Mosque of Cordoba does not signify representation of paradise on earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]