Iranian architecture

• 1. Introduction

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  Iranian architecture, also called Persian architecture, has a history that reaches back at least 5,000 years. The American historian and archaeologist Arthur Pope went further than most in his judgment of it. He argued that the supreme Iranian art, in the proper meaning of the word, has always been its architecture. That claim covered both the pre-Islamic and the post-Islamic periods. It is a striking thing to say about a single people across so many centuries. The buildings themselves stretch across a vast area, from Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. They range from the humblest mud dwelling to monumental complexes built for kings. So what holds this tradition together across 5,000 years of invasions and cultural shocks? What did the builders care about most? And how did a turquoise dome on the edge of the Iranian plateau come to influence builders from Baghdad to the cities of India?

• 2. Form And Scale

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  Arthur Pope insisted that in Persian architecture there are no trivial buildings. Even garden pavilions, he wrote, have nobility and dignity, and the humblest caravanserais generally have charm. He described most Persian buildings as lucid, even eloquent. Their virtues, in his account, were a marked feeling for form and scale, structural inventiveness in vault and dome construction, and a genius for decoration not rivaled in any other architecture. Scholars Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar locate the deeper source of this character in cosmic symbolism. The guiding motif, they argued, was the idea by which man is brought into communication and participation with the powers of heaven. This theme gave the tradition both unity and its emotional weight. The notion of earthly towers reaching up toward the divine towers of heaven lasted into the 19th century. It is one of the threads that runs through buildings made for wildly different purposes.

• 3. Mud, Brick, And Repetition

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  Heavy clays, found across the Iranian plateau, pushed builders toward the most primitive of all techniques. Mud was molded, compressed as solidly as possible, and left to dry. Used since ancient times, this method has never been completely abandoned. The same abundance of heavy plastic earth, combined with a tenacious lime mortar, encouraged the development and use of brick. Certain design elements then persisted for centuries. Among them are the high-arched portal set within a recess, columns with bracket capitals, the interior court and pool, the angled entrance, and extensive decoration. The columned porch, or talar, seen in the rock-cut tombs near Persepolis, reappeared in Sassanid temples. In late Islamic times it served as the portico of a palace or a mosque, and was even adapted to roadside tea-houses. The dome on four arches, so characteristic of Sassanid times, is still found in cemeteries and Imamzadehs across Iran. Post-Islamic architecture inherited these geometrical, repetitive forms, then enriched them with glazed tiles, carved stucco, patterned brickwork, floral motifs, and calligraphy.

• 4. The Kings Of Kings

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  Pasargadae set the standard for the Achaemenid builders, who worked on a grand scale. Its city was laid out in an extensive park with bridges, gardens, colonnaded palaces, and open column pavilions. Artists and materials were brought in from practically all territories of what was then the largest state in the world. Pasargadae, together with Susa and Persepolis, expressed the authority of the King of Kings. The staircases at Persepolis recorded in relief sculpture the vast extent of the imperial frontier. That grandeur was not invincible. Alexander the Great chose to burn Persepolis, one of the great acts of destruction in the region's history. Yet enough remains to form a picture of its classical architecture. A circular city plan marked several major Parthian and Sasanian cities, such as Hatra and Gor, also known as Firuzabad. The roundness of Baghdad in the Abbasid era points back to such Persian precedents. To plan the new city, the caliph Al-Mansur hired Naubakht, a former Persian Zoroastrian who fixed an astrologically significant date for its foundation, and Mashallah ibn Athari, a former Jew from Khorasan.

• 5. Vaults And Domes

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  Massive barrel-vaulted chambers, solid masonry domes, and tall columns appeared with the Parthians and the Sassanids. Parthian innovations fully flowered during the Sassanid period, and their influence lasted for years to come. The Sasanian Empire built the first large-scale domes in Iran, in royal buildings such as the Palace of Ardashir and Qal'eh Dokhtar. After the Muslim conquest of the Sassanid Empire, the dome became a feature of Muslim architecture far beyond Iran. The Ilkhanate period delivered several innovations that let builders reach far higher. The Dome of Soltaniyeh, built between 1302 and 1312 in Zanjan, measures 50 meters in height and 25 meters in diameter. That made it the third largest and the tallest masonry dome ever erected. Its thin, double-shelled form was reinforced by arches between the layers. What set Persian domes apart from those of the Christian world or the Ottoman and Mughal empires was colour. Their exteriors were covered in tiles much like the interiors. Reflecting the sun, the blue domes of Isfahan looked like glittering turquoise gems, visible from miles away to travelers following the Silk Road.

• 6. Six Styles Of An Era

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  Mohammad Karim Pirnia sorted the traditional architecture of the Iranian lands into six classes, or sabk. On the Zoroastrian side stood the Parsian style, reaching up to the third century BCE, and the Parthian style, which ran through the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian eras. The oldest remains of the pre-Parsian style are at Teppe Zagheh, near Qazvin, with Chogha Zanbil, Tepe Sialk, Shahr-e Sukhteh, and Ecbatana among its other examples. The Islamic styles begin with the Khorasani style, from the late 7th until the end of the 10th century. The Razi style ran from the 11th century to the Mongol invasion, taking in the Samanid, Ziyarid, and Seljuk periods. The Azari style spanned from the late 13th century to the rise of the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century, with monuments such as Soltaniyeh and the Gur-e Amir. The Isfahani style then carried through the Safavid, Afsharid, Zand, and Qajar eras, from the 16th century onward, and gave us the Shah Mosque and the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque on Naqsh-e Jahan Square.

• 7. The Four-Iwan Plan

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  The Jameh Mosque of Isfahan is the most important religious monument of the Great Seljuk period. Two major and innovative domed chambers were added to it in the late 11th century. Around the early 12th century, four large iwans were erected around its courtyard, giving rise to the four-iwan plan in mosque architecture. The plan quickly spread to other major mosques, including those of Ardestan and Zavareh. This was a benchmark era despite heavy losses, since much of the Seljuk heritage was destroyed during the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Tower tombs, an older Iranian type, also continued, such as the Toghrul Tower built in Ray in 1139. More innovative were mausoleums with a square or polygonal plan, like the two Kharraqan Towers near Qazvin, built in 1068 and 1093. Further afield, the Turkic Qarakhanids built in Bukhara and Samarkand, where the Kalyan Minaret of around 1127 survives from their great congregational mosque. The Ghaznavids and then the Ghurids raised ornate brick towers whose exact functions are unclear, among them the Minaret of Jam in present-day Afghanistan.

• 8. Isfahan And After

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  Abbas I made Isfahan his capital and embarked on the most ambitious construction program of the Safavid period. He moved the center of the city toward the Zayandeh River and laid out a new planned district. Its heart was the rectangular public square known as the Maidan-e Shah, or Naqsh-e Jahan, created between 1590 and 1602. Three buildings stand at the middle of three of its sides: the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the Shah Mosque, and the Ali Qapu palace gateway. Because the qibla differs from the orientation of the square, both mosques sit at an angle, and their vestibules bend on the way in. The dome of the Shah Mosque reached 53 meters and became the tallest in the city when it was finished in 1629. The Safavids perfected the haft-rang, or seven colour, style of tile burning, favoring gold, white, and turquoise on a dark-blue background. Calligraphy and arabesque bands were planned by Ali Reza Abbasi, appointed Master calligrapher at the court in 1598, while Shaykh Bahai oversaw the projects. Centuries later, contemporary architecture began with the first Pahlavi period in the early 1920s. The Azadi Tower, designed by Hossein Amanat and completed in 1971, drew on historic Iranian forms, while the Milad Tower of 2007 became the tallest tower in Iran and the 24th tallest free-standing structure in the world.