The Hellenistic tradition of garden design was absorbed by Romans when they conquered the Middle East and it survived in the Middle East after the eastern part of the Roman Empire became the Christian Byzantine Empire. Muhammad (circa 570 - 630 C.E.), the founder and prophet of Islam, probably visited Syria at least twice in his youth, there he would have seen gardens in a local variation of the Hellenistic style. Muhammad obviously loved gardens and told his followers that the righteous would be rewarded after death by eternal life in a paradise garden watered by four rivers.
The idea of four rivers is much older than Islam. Genesis 2:10-14 describes a river which began in the garden of Eden and then branched into four rivers which flowed through the Middle East. This belief was not unique to Judaism, Persian ceramics dating back 6000 years show the world divided into four sections, with a pool or spring of life at the center. The Persian concept of a garden as paradise may also be that old, but the earliest Persian gardens that we know of date from around the sixth century C.E.
In an area like the Middle East, where ideas and cultures were constantly being hybridized with each other, it is difficult to be nationalistic and say that Islamic gardens are descended primarily from Persian gardens. What can be said is that the characteristic Islamic garden, with its division of a garden into four parts, was inspired by Persian gardens and reinforced by the Prophet Muhammad's descriptions of paradise.
Because Muhammad described Paradise as being watered by four rivers, traditional Islamic gardens are usually divided by four canals or channels of water, often with a pool or fountain at their juncture. Muhammad had also described paradise as a place of plenteous shade; in a desert climate shade is much more highly valued than bright flower beds. Both because of their connection with paradise and their practical value in hot climates, Islamic gardens are usually gardens of water and shade and they are usually geometric; but different styles developed in various parts of the Islamic world. The gardens of Mughal India were especially distinctive; featuring cascades and broad sheets of water.
After the Western part of the Roman Empire collapsed, ornamental gardens were rare in Western Europe. Early Medieval gardens were almost always utilitarian, although some monastic gardens seem to have retained the formal lines of Hellenistic gardens.
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