Structurally similar to the Arabian Nights, this book is a collection of five main stories and several sub-stories loosely strung together, with all the ingredients of a traditional Oriental epic-beauty, valor, love and adventure, with elements of the supernatural. The principal characters are four wandering dervishes-three princes and a rich merchant- who have renounced the world on account of their failure in love. In their journeys they meet characters more unfortunate than themselves who tell stories more fantastical than their own…

Structurally akin to the Arabian Nights, Bagh-o-Bahar comprises five stories interspersed with several other sub-stories of uneven length and interest, loosely bound together and all with traditionally romantic themes. The four dervishes who relater their experience are princes of rich merchants who have renounced the world on account of their unsuccessful love lives. They are guided by a supernatural force to a city where, with the intercession of a king and the help of the king of the djinn, they are reunited with their loves. Typically medieval, the stories describe a magnificent world of romance and affluence-of fairies and the djinn, moonlight and oriental gardens , feasts and ceremonies, and, of course, adventures and mishaps.

The stories may be set in Basra, Baghdad, Azerbaijan Sarandeep, Damascus of Constantinople but the atmosphere is typically that of a Mughal city of India. The weather, the courtly manners, the female guards and personal attendants, the dress, the variety of dishes, festivals and ceremonies, the fireworks, the superstitions and traditions as brought out by the proverbs and apt idioms, are all Indian