from PART 4 - RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL LIFE, 1721–1979
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
ARCHITECTURE
Introduction
“At a distance, Tehran, built in great part of the mud on which it stands, is only distinguished from the surrounding plain by the green trees of its many gardens; but as the traveller gets nearer he will see the outline of the castellated city wall and the tiled domes and minarets of mosques. He will enter the town by a grandiose gateway adorned with glazed bricks in patterns, the prevailing tones being blue and yellow relieved with black and white, the whole giving a touch of splendour to its squalid surroundings. These gateways are twelve in number; some are adorned with the exploits of Rustum, the Hercules and knight-errant of Persia, and others depict the Persian soldier of today”. This picture of Tehran, as drawn by Ella Sykes in 1894, is an appropriately evocative introduction to the architecture of the period since it is the buildings which give the city its unfamiliar exotic appearance. Her account is one of the more sympathetic of the many written in tones ranging from wonder, disparagement and sarcasm to sober assessment by the Europeans who visited Tehran since it became Iran's capital in 1786. Most 19th-century Persian cities of any size presented a similar architectural pattern. City sites tended to have a long history of occupation. A harsh terrain and climate severely limited areas of settlement; communication difficulties in a large country made it essential that a city was sited in a good strategic position, preferably on a trade route; proximity to a water supply was vital near foothills whose water-tables would feed qanāts.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.