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Isfahan -- Half the World by Prof. Kim S. Sexton Dept. of Architecture, University of Arkansas Photographs from the Ruth and Franklin Harold Collection, Professor Mary Lee Hu, and Professor Jere Bacharach |
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Architecture and Urbanism
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When the Seljuqs took Isfahan as their capital, they transformed a pre-existing hypostyle mosque into the grand four-iwan Great Friday Mosque (Masjid-i Jami). An iwan is a vast vaulted space open at one end. It was a symbol of absolutist authority dating back to pre-Islamic Persia, when iwans functioned as audience halls in royal palaces. Iwans were also known in Islamic palaces, but it was the Seljuqs who introduced the iwan into mosque architecture. The introduction of a symbol of royal prerogatives into mosque architecture encouraged the viewer to associate earthly rule with divine authority. The Great Friday Mosque has four iwans, one centered in each of the courtyard's four sides. Thereafter, this four-iwan plan became the dominant mosque type in eastern Islamic lands. |
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The Seljuqs also introduced large domed chambers into mosques in Iran. The domed chamber was known in the western Islamic mosques (Damascus, Cordoba, and others), where it usually served as a maqsura, a space reserved for the sultan and his court in the prime position in front of the mihrab niche. The mihrab niche provides the visual focus in a mosque, because it indicates the direction of prayer toward Mecca. The Seljuqs did not invent the domed maqsura, which altered the more egalitarian spatial qualities of hypostyle mosques, but they built extraordinarily large examples, the first of which was inserted in the Great Friday Mosque at Isfahan in 1086-7. Being large and rather high, Seljuq domes created a city skyline and externalized a symbol of royal power--something that was not as conspicuous in western Islamic cities of that époque. |
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Isfahan as the Safavid Capital
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When restoring Seljuq buildings, Abbas left the Safavid mark in an unmistakable yet respectful manner. His renovation of the Great Friday Mosque, for instance, visually accentuated the features most associated with imperial authority using the brilliant colored tiles favored by Persian architects. He focused on the mosque's iwans and courtyard which he had sheathed in polychromatic patterned tile veneer. The iwan vaults were elaborated with muqarnas (applied ornament which looks like stalactites or honeycombs) to which glazed mosaic tile was applied. Two minarets were added to the main iwan and clad with colored tiles, creating a new iconographic symbol of authority in which the new (twin minarets) was grafted onto the old. In general, Abbas demonstrated sensitive, if self-serving, reverence for Isfahan's glorious past and concern for its fitting display. |
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The New City Plan -- Embodiment of Safavid Ideology
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The center of the new city was a magnificent new maidan (510 x 158 meters) exultantly called the "Design of the World" Maidan (Maidan-i Naqsh-i Jahan). Its design united all of the facets of the Safavid polity into one spatial diagram: worship (the Shah Mosque), commemoration (the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfallah), sovereign administration (the Imperial Palace), and trade (Qaisariya Bazaar). |
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Abbas I's designers differentiated the new city from the old historical center by organizing the street patterns on orthogonal grids not oriented toward Mecca. The old city had narrow winding streets and the old maidan was oriented toward Mecca. The old and new maidans were connected by the winding covered street of the Great Bazaar (2 km long) covered by high stone and brick vaults by the order of Abbas I. English and Dutch traders lived near the bazaar, as Isfahan was home to one of the East India Company's warehouses. Where the Great Bazaar met the new maidan, a group of buildings was built that constituted the Qaisariya Bazaar (Imperial Bazaar--built and maintained by the emperor). They housed imperial manufactures (wholesale silks and fine textiles, goldsmiths, silversmiths, jewelers), the state mint, a hospital, public bath, and a caravanserai. Unlike the shops of the Great Bazaar, these were arranged on a regular grid and aligned with the new city. Their importance to the regime was represented by the Qaisariya Gateway on the new maidan; no other imperial bazaar in the Safavid realm had a monumental entrance. |
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The grand scale and inorganic mathematical order of the new city implied that the values embodied in the old capital had been surpassed and supplanted by Abbas's priorities: religious tolerance, capitalism, state Shiism, Sufi reverence for saintly teachers and concern for the welfare of the masses. The new maidan turned its back on the old center, creating instead an alignment with the new Chahar Bagh Avenue (1596-1602) and the multi-ethnic, multi-faith sacred sites and suburbs south of the Zayandeh River. The latter included Hindu cremation platforms, a Zoroastrian cemetery, and the suburbs of New Julfa (for silk-trading Christian Armenians) and Abbasabad Chahar Bagh (for Tabrizi war refugees). Many new bridges were built linking the northern city with the southern suburbs.. Operable flood gates on the lower level of the Khwaju Bridge (1650-51) celebrated Safavid technological control of nature, while on the upper level social amenities such as a promenade and pavilions invited passers-by to linger and enjoy the view of the river -- source of the city's pleasure and prosperity. By designing the avenue, bridges, and streets of the suburbs in alignment with the orthogonal layout of new city, the designers succeeded in embedding Abbas's ideology inescapably into the fabric of urban life. |
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The design of the individual buildings surrounding the new maidan was not shockingly innovative, but their organization into a legible spatial composition was unprecedented in Iran. The "Design of the World" Maidan was the heart of the new conception. The Imperial Palace occupied the entire west side of the double-storey, arcaded new maidan, having one monumental gateway (the Ali Qapu or "Sublime Portal") and two unobtrusive minor gates there. One grand portal opened onto each of the remaining sides of the maidan, giving access to the Shah Mosque (south), the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfallah (east), and the Qaisariya Bazaar (north). With one prodigious gateway on each of its sides, the new maidan looked as if it were the courtyard of a four-iwan mosque. Hence, the "Design of the World" was a sacralized one which nevertheless included two hundred shops occupying the arcaded perimeter of the maidan. Many other services were located inconspicuously just behind the maidan, including madrasas, factories, caravanserais, merchants' mansions, and artisans' dwellings. |
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The Imperial Palace was a garden palace complex, a palace type with a long history in Islamic architecture. This palace was composed of elaborate independent pavilions set in the garden, such as the Chihil Sutun, which served as audience chambers, banqueting halls, and residential apartments for the royal family. Garden palaces were typically surrounded by a wall, but in Isfahan's case it was not a fortification wall. The Imperial Palace is also unusual in that the imperial treasury, arsenal, and cavalry were not located inside the palace complex. Stephen Blake thinks that this reflects the casual protocol of Safavid emperors whose authority derived from traditional ideas of kingship rather than military control. |
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Masterpieces of Iranian Architecture
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The Shah Mosque (1611-1666) on the new maidan replaced the Great Friday Mosque as the center of Isfahani religious life, although the latter remained open for assembly and prayer. Compared to the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfallah, the Shah Mosque has a traditional Iranian design: a four-iwan courtyard, the main iwan flanked by minarets, and a towering 170-foot high domed chamber in front of the mihrab niche. The importance of the control of education in the Shiite state is evident in the unusual presence of two madrasas (theological schools) flanking the prayer hall, each with its own arcaded courtyard. Because both the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfallah and the Shah Mosque had to be oriented toward Mecca, they are turned at an angle with respect to the maidan on which each had its monumental entrance portal. In each case, the architects diminished the disorienting linkage between portal and mosque by locating the change of axis in an entrance corridor. |
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Unprecedented use of color dominates the decoration of the entrance gateways, domes, minarets, and some interior spaces of both the Shah Mosque and the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfallah. The use of polychromatic tile as surface ornament was known in other periods of Iranian history, but it was the Safavids who established colorism as the most salient characteristic of Iranian architecture. Before the Safavids, colored tiles would be used to accent certain architectural elements, but artisans working for this dynasty would cover every surface of a building with colored tiles, marble, plaster, or painted wood. Architectural historians see this propensity for elaborate surface decoration as a triumph of Persian aesthetic purpose over Turkish structural values. The application of colored tile patterning (i.e. curvilinear arabesques, floral designs, kufic inscriptions, and imitation tile "carpets") hides a building's structure. It prevents the viewer from contemplating the workings of the physical laws which keep the building standing up. Thus, a huge building can be made to seem rather weightless, like an otherworldly miracle hovering on earth.
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