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Face of the Seven Spheres: The Urban Morphology and Architecture of Nineteenth-Century Isfahan (Part Two)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Extract
“Have you seen Isfahan, that city like Paradise, that holy cypress, that soul nourishing Eden, that palace of the nation and that throne of government, that face of the seven spheres, that eye of the seven lands,” Jamal al-Din al-Isfahani
One essential aspect in the discussion of nineteenth-century Qajar approaches to the Safavid city and Qajar architecture is the fact that Isfahan was no longer the capital, with the inevitable consequences that many Safavid palaces, no longer used by the city's ruling elite, had lost their administrative purpose. Architecture was created and used in a socio-political context, which determined the scope of new construction, function, style, and form. Natural deterioration and socio-economic change also required new constructions for changed purposes.
Construction activity and architectural aspirations in nineteenth-century Isfahan were inseparably tied to the state of the city's overall prosperity, the affluence and beneficence of the city's leading patricians, the relationship of the Tehran court to the city, and, to some extent, the self-image and prestige in which the city perceived itself at various times during Qajar rule.
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Footnotes
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Part One appears in Iranian Studies, 33 (2000): 3-4.
References
1. al-Din al-Isfahani, Jamal, Divān-i Kāmil, ed. Dastgirdi, Vahid (Tehran, 1320/1941), 410.Google Scholar The same verses with some variation are ascribed to Sharaf al-Din Shufurvah; see Browne, E. G., “Account of a rare manuscript history of Isfahan,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JRAS) 1901): 678.Google Scholar
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3. He received 400,000 tumans annually from the city of Isfahan and its districts in addition to the māliyāt and ṣādirīyāt, as well as the income from Yazd, Kashan, and Qum. See Rustam al-Hukama, Rustam al-Tawārīkh, 212. In 1224/1809 he presented the shah with the famous Peacock Throne on the latter's wedding to the Georgian slave Tavus Khanum Taj al-Dawla. His son Ibrahim Nazir al-Dawla was married to one of the shah's daughters and one of his own daughters married Husayn ᶜAli Mirza Farmanfarma, governor of Shiraz. See Bamdad, Sharḥ-i ḥāl rijāl-i Isfahān, 2: 278–81 and 3: 479.Google Scholar Also see Hasan Fasaᶜi, History of Persia under Qājār Rule, trans. Busse, H. (London and New York, 1972), 167,421.Google Scholar For more about Muhammad Husayn see Ansari, passim and ᶜAbd al-Husayn Sipanta, Tārīkhchah-i awqāf-i Isfahān (Isfahan, 1364/1967), 403.Google Scholar
4. Muhammad ᶜAli Mirza Dawlatshah, son of Fath ᶜAli Shah and governor of Kirmanshah, pursued an ambitious building program at about the same time, whereby he commissioned local court and garrison buildings and encouraged business and trade. Like Muhammad Husayn Khan and his son, he was known as a trader and speculator.
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7. See Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 249Google Scholar; Muhammad Hasan Khan Iᶜtimad al-Saltana, Mirᵓat al-Buldān, (Tehran, 1293/1876), 1: 116Google Scholar; and Isfahani, Tahvildar-i, Jughrāfīyā-yi Iṣfahān, (Tehran 1342/1963), 29–30.Google Scholar To what extent these were built on earlier Safavid structures remains to be investigated. Curzon noted chidingly that the Chahar Bagh-I Naw “fared no better at the hands of time,” than all the rest of the city. (See his Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols. [London, 1892], 2: 49.Google Scholar) HSItzer too lamented its decay and the ailing trees; in contrast Tahvildar recounted that the plane trees were all growing straight, high, and strong (Jughrāfīyā-yi Iṣfahān, 29). His son ᶜAbdallah Khan Amin al-Dawla built a madrasa along the middle of the avenue as well as a bath (ḥammām).
8. At the turn of the century the Chahar-Bagh-i Sadri was described thus: a “oncebeautiful avenue of plane trees extending from the bazaar Sook al-Negashin to the Pol-i Khajou, has ceased to exist, the few remaining trees having been cut down and sold. Apparently the same fate is in store for the other fine trees in the ground of the Chihil Sutun palace, the allowance for the maintenance of these grounds having been stopped, they have been allowed to run waste, and some of the timber has been removed.” Bamham to Spring Rice; No. 66,3 November 1906, FO 248/877.
9. The building was described by Morier, James, A Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, in the Years 1808 and 1809 (London, 1812), 167.Google Scholar Shaykh Jabiri Ansari, who described the palace's beauty, its decorations and paintings with great admiration, recounted how in 1317/1900 when the Zill al-Sultan planned to tear it down, he went to plead with the vice-governor, Mirza Sulayman Khan the Rukn al- Mulk, and Mirza Ahmad, the Zill al-Sultan's mullā-bāshī, to intervene and prevent its destruction. They did petition the Zill al-Sultan but Ansari's request was undermined by the interests of others at the prince's court. See Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 350.Google Scholar For a discussion of the building's relationship to the Talar-i Ashraf and its Safavid roots, see ibid, and Abu'l Qasim Rafiᶜi Mihrabadi, Ā
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10. Isfahani, Tahvildar, Jughrāfīyā, 24.Google Scholar It is interesting that Tahvildar uses the present tense when referring to the early Qajar buildings, and in this case does not mention the building's deterioration.
11. Sayf al-Dawla, the 36th son of Fath ᶜAli Shah, was born to Tavus Khanum Isfahani, the Taj al-Dawla, in 1228/1813.
12. See Mihdi Arbab, Muhammad, Niṣf-i Jahān fī taᶜrīf al-Iṣfahān, (Tehran, 1340/1961 and 1368/1989), 36Google Scholar; Iᶜtimad al-Saltana, Mirᵓat al-Buldān, 1: 120Google Scholar; and Mihrabadi, Āār-i Millī-yi Iṣfahān, 65.Google Scholar
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15. Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 55-56.
16. The tiles of the Qaysariyya were repaired again by the Zill al-Sultan. (See Hunarfar, Lutfallah, Ganjīnah āar-i Iṣfahān, [Tehran, 1350/1971], 31 and 466-67Google Scholar; and Mihrabadi, Āar-i Millī, 378-79.
17. Ansari, Tārīkh, 344-46. Ansari mentions that according to hearsay the doors were re-installed with hinges and some of the mirrors were stripped of their mercury or silver coating. During the Bakhtiari raids of the Constitutional Revolution, many of the mirrors were broken or removed and installed in other buildings.
18. Ansari, Tārīkh, 342-46.
19. “Had I caught the pagan,” wrote Curzon, “I would gladly have suffocated him in a barrel of his own paint” Persia and the Persian Question, 2:33.Google Scholar
20. “This particular form of desecration has been abandoned; and quite recently [1891] I hear the Zil es-Sultan is sitting in daily audience in one of the cabinets to receive the addresses or complaints of his astonished subjects,” Curzon, scoffed, Persia and the Persian Question, 2:36.Google Scholar
21. Isfahan News, No. 25,. 22 June 1912, FO 248/1051.
22. Sparroy, Wilfred, “The Elder Brother of the Shah,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 168 (1900): 1018.Google Scholar and “My First Morning at a Persian court,” Fortnightly Review n.s. 70 (1901): 281.Google Scholar
23. Except for the royal and a few public gardens which included the Takiya-i Niᶜmatallah and the Takiya-i Haydar, most of the thirty gardens and villas stretching along both sides of the Chahar Bagh Avenue were built and owned by military and government officials, among them, the ṣūfīdār-bāshī (commander of the cavalry), the qullar-bāshī (commander of the royal guard), the qūrchī-bāshī (commander of the cavalry), and the nāẓir (quartermaster-general). See Kaempfer's drawing of the Bagh-i Naqsh-i Jahan, and the Chahar Bagh Avenue, which shows all thirty gardens with the names of their owners. Reprinted from the Sloane Collection of the British Library in” Alemi, Mahvash “Gardens of the Safavid Period, in Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires, ed. Petruccioli, A. (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 82–83.Google Scholar
24. The available European textual sources and pictorial representations of the Chahar Bagh are frequently inconclusive about its actual condition. Taken together they frequently present contradictory messages. Some described the Chahar Bagh as majestic while others saw it as completely devastated. The very different picture provided by some of Ernst Höltzer's photographs (see note below) and Dieulafoy's lithographs, for example, epitomize the nineteenth century's debate about objectivity, which generally stressed the greater objectivity of photos.
25. Kinneir, J. M., A Geographical Memoir, 112.Google Scholar
26. The Venus Expedition was an astronomical research expedition conducted in 1874. See Law to Wolff; 25 April 1890; FO 248/514.
27. He found it a “tragical contrast,” in comparison to its former glory. The water channels were empty, “their stone borders crumbled and shattered,” the terraces “broken down,” the flower beds “unsightly bare patches,” the trees, “all lopped and pollarded, have been chipped and hollowed out or cut down for fuel by the soldiery of the Zill, the side pavilions are abandoned and tumbling to pieces, and the gardens are wildernesses.” Implying deliberate neglect, Curzon argued, “two centuries of decay could never make the Champs Elysees in Paris, the Unter den Linden in Berlin, or Rotten Row in London look one half as miserable as does the ruined avenue of Shah Abbas. It is in itself an epitome of modem Iran.” Persia and the Persian Question, 2:38–39.Google Scholar
28. Ernst Höltzer, Beschreibung der Stadt Isfahan (unpublished manuscript). Harvard University Library, Folder 1, 12. For photographs of these buildings in the 1880s, see Persien vor 113 Jahren, ed. Assemi, Mohammad (Tehran, 1975), 148–87.Google Scholar
29. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, 2:37.Google Scholar
30. Ibid., 2:31.
31. Mihrabadi, Āār-i Millī, 63.Google Scholar
32. Hunarfar, Ganjīnah, 63.Google Scholar
33. Different sources provide different dates for this.
34. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, 2:48.Google Scholar
35. Mihrabadi, Āār-i Millī, 60.Google Scholar
36. The majority of the private residences were two-storied, the rooms for daily life being on the lower level. All residences were surrounded by a high wall and had an angled entrance way into the court yard. If possible the andarūnī and bīrūnī were constructed around two courtyards connected by a passageway. The houses of the more affluent had two passages between andarūnī and bīrūnī and a salon with two open sides for ventilation which connected both parts. Larger and richer residences had lavish cool and dry rooms with a water pool underground for the hot summer days, but in most private houses these were small and in the dwellings of the poor not found at all. See Höltzer, Beschreibung, Folder 1, 64-66. He gives exhaustive details about the internal and external structure of ordinary private houses, the construction of the rooms, kitchens, stables, yards, gardens, the decoration etc.
37. For a study of the private houses of the nobility in the Isfahan area see Bakhtiar, A. and Hillenbrand, R., “Domestic Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The Manzil-i Sartip Sidihi near Isfahan,” in Bosworth, C. E. and Hillenbrand, Carol, Qājār Iran: Political, Social and Cultural Change (Edinburgh, 1983), 383.Google Scholar
38. Ever since the establishment of European firms in Isfahan, the city had been a center for the antiques trade, a business which increased along with the number of Europeans coming to Iran in the late nineteenth century. “The Persians used to be very tenacious in keeping their old and antique objects, but once they were relinquished [to an international market, antiques are] a welcome branch for profitable deals.. Really valuable old objects have become increasingly rare,” commented Browne who bought objects from dealers while in Julfa. Europeans were particularly enamored of Safavid tiles and were willing to pay high prices for any they could lay their hands on. The tile work from one entire wall of a Safavid-era synagogue now on display in the Jewish Museum in New York is one of many such examples. Tiles were easily stolen from mosques and shrines, even though the wardens and ulema guarded them as holy treasures. See Höltzer, Beschreibung, Folder 1,8,58,75.
39. Höltzer, Beschreibung, Folder 1,12. In Niṣf-i Jahān, Muhammad Mahdi evaluated the quality of construction and the style of the buildings that he catalogued with great discrimination and, partially influenced by European styles of taste and historicism, often judged contemporary architecture very harshly.
40. Although a relative of Aqa Najafi, the personal relationship between the two clerics was fraught with mistrust. The Shaykh al-ᶜIraqayn supposedly had little sympathy either for Aqa Najafi's theological and political ambitions or for his anti-Babi campaigns, and was himself repeatedly placed on Aqa Najafi's blacklist. Aqanoor to Hardinge; No. 42,10 August 1902; FO 248/788.
41. See Mahdi, Muhammad, Niṣf-i jahān, 177Google Scholar and Browne, E. G., A Year Amongst the Persians (Cambridge, 1926), 218.Google Scholar
42. When eventually after Nawruz 1323/March 1905, in the wake of the Constitutional Revolution, the Zill al-Sultan transferred most of his residence to the Bagh-i Naw, rumors in the city claimed it was a sign of his dismissal as governor. (Aqanoor to Hardinge, No. 19, 2 April 1905; FO 248/845.) Another central building complex sponsored by the Zill al-Sultan on Safavid remains was known as the Talar-i Shakh or Jubbah-khanah, between the Chihil Sutun and the ᶜAli Qapu, used as dīvānkhānah and prison.
43. On the Masᶜudiya see Vaṭīd, 14 (1351/1972): 35–40.Google Scholar
44. Aqanoor to Kennedy, 18 September 1891; FO 248/535 Nasir al-Din Shah, in an autograph and secret telegram to the Zill al-Sultan. See Adamiat, Shūrish-i bar imtiyāznāmah-i Rizhī (Tehran, 1360/1981), 55.Google Scholar The Malik al-Tujjar was Isfahan's most influential and richest merchant, dealing largely in opium and piece-goods with direct business links to London, Bombay, and China. He was intimately connected to the ulema and local nobility and among the architects of the 1891-92 boycott against the British Tobacco Regié. He and Hajji Muhammad Husayn Kaziruni were the merchants’ delegates at the Anjuman-i Muqaddas-i Milli-i Isfahan, founded in 1906. The first hall of the timchah shows early Qajar (perhaps even Zand) elements of Persian architecture. The second and larger courtyard features a style typical for the late nineteenth century, with the two-story late Qajar tarma-style galleries and round arches. In 1922, the building was endowed as vaqf. For an architectural and functional description see Gaube, Heinz and Wirth, Eugen, Der Bazar von Isfahan (Wiesbaden, 1978), 162–66.Google Scholar
45. Gaube and Wirth, Der Bazar, 195-96,201.
46. See Muhammad Mahdi, Niṣf-i Jahān, 74-77 and Höltzer, Beschreibung, Folder 1, 2 and 67.
47. Isfahani, Tahvildar, Jughrāfiyā-yi Iṣfahān, 18.Google Scholar Muhammad Mahdi Arbab claimed that there were 400 public mosques in Isfahan, a number which seems extremely high, see his Niṣf-i jahān, 60. Mir Sayyid ᶜAli Janab in al-Iṣfahān (Isfahan, 1992), 87–98Google Scholar, lists some 198 mosques and Afzal al-Mulk counted 210, see Safarnāmah-i Iṣfahān, ed. Afsharfarr, Nasir (Tehran, 1380/2001), 33.Google Scholar The city plan drawn by Sultan Sayyid Riza Khan in 1342/1923-24, only a few years before the drastic modernization by Riza Shah, noted about 90 mosques. That map has been published by Muᵓassisa-i Jughrafiya va Kartugrafi-yi Sahab. In the seventeenth century, Chardin listed 162 mosques, 48 colleges, 1,802 caravansaries, and 273 baths in Isfahan. Among the most important Qajar mosques, Muhammad Mahdi Arbab listed the Masjid-i Jamiᶜ, Masjid-i Hakim, Masjid-i Bidabad, Masjid-i Shaykh Lutf Allah, the mosque built by Mir Sayyid Hasan Mujtahid Isfahani, one built by Shaykh ᶜAli Khan Zanganah Tarvaskan, the Masjid-i Misri, and Masjid-i ᶜAli Quli Aqa in the Mahalla-i Chaharsuqi. (See Niṣf-ijahān, 60-69 and Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 262Google Scholar.) Other Qajar mosques were built by Janab Hajji Shaykh Muhammad Taqi in the Mahalla-i Nimavar Vafaqiallah, which was still under construction in the 1880s. Muhammad Mahdi described it as bigger and better than the Masjid-i Hajji Muhammad Jaᶜfar. While praising new mosques, he singled out the ruined Masjid-i Sam Taqi across from the shrine of Imam Jumᶜa-i Ahmad as the standard of architectural and artistic craftsmanship, which he considered unmatched in his own time. (See Niṣf-ijahān, 60-68. For Höltzer's list, which differs slightly, see Beschreibung, Folder 1,9.)
48. This leads into questions of the function of tomb architecture and traditions of burials in mosques and shrines. Other Iranian examples of tomb-mosques, mostly belonging to more prominent religious personalities, are the shrine of Shaykh Safi in Ardabil, the mosque of Fatima in Qum, and Imam Riza in Mashhad.
49. See Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 76-78.
50. See Hunarfar, Ganīnah, 761-63. See R. Hillenbrand's article on nineteenth century religious architecture in Bosworth and Hillebrand, eds., Qajar Iran, 352-69 for a discussion of the dynamic aspects and the monumental and theatrical elements of Qajar mosques.
51. Hunarfar, Ganjīnah, 755-60.
52. Iᶜtimad al-Saltana, Mirᵓat al-Buldān-i Nāsirī, 1: 120–21.Google Scholar Also see Dawlatabadi, Yahya, Ḥayāt-i Yaḥyā, 1:37.Google Scholar
53. The construction was continued by his son Hajji Sayyid Asadallah, known as Sayyid Thani, and finished by his grandson Hajji Muhammad Baqir. (Hunarfar, Ganjīnah, 763-88); also see Iᶜtimad al-Saltana, Mirᵓāt al-Buldān, 117.Google Scholar For more on Shafti's life and his political power in Isfahan see the biographical dictionaries, Tunakabuni, Qiṣaṣ alᶜulamā, (Tehran, 1954)Google Scholar; and Mudarris, Rayḥānat al-Adab (Tehran, 1974).Google Scholar Also see Muᶜallim Habibabadi, Makārim al-āār, (Isfahan, 1958)Google Scholar; Yādgār 10: 28–43Google Scholar; and Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 284-85.
54. See Hunarfar, Ganjīnah, 789-92. Ansari (Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 291-92) noted that it was only the mosque's shabistān, or winter prayer hall, that was built under the patronage of Abadihi. See also Mihrabadi, Āār-i millī, 595-97.
55. Hunarfar, Ganjīnah, 822-24.
56. Mihrabadi, Āār-i millī, 593-95.
57. Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 293Google Scholar; Hunarfar, Ganjīnah, 793-94 and 796-805; and Mihrabadi, Āār-i millī, 710-12.
58. The latter was occasionally involved in grain speculations and in the early 1890s imprisoned and pressed by Zill al-Sultan for money. See PO 248/535 and FO 60/326.
59. See the correspondence from Isfahan, 1868, FO 248/249.
60. His publishing house, the Idara-i Daᶜvat-i Islami, put out the newspaper Majalla-i Islām (also called Guftugū-yi Ṣafākhānah-i Ifahān), and printed the Qurᵓān, the Zād al-Maᶜād of Majlisi and the Ṣaḥīfa-i Sajjādīya.
61. Hunarfar, Ganjīnah, 805-22; also see Yādgār 9: 33.Google Scholar Hunarfar, L.. “Rukn al-Mulk” in Vaḥīd. 6 (1347): 13–16Google Scholar and 6 (1347): 205-10; Bamdad, Sharḥ-i ḥāl. 2: 115–116Google Scholar; H. Picot, Persia (enclosure in Picot to Hardinge, 27 January 1898; FO 60/595).
62. al-Din Mahdavi, Sayyid Muslih, ed., Taẕkirat al-Qubūr yā Dānishmandān va Buzurgān-i Iṣfahān, (Isfahan, 1348/1969), 160Google Scholar; and Najafi, Musa, Andīshah-i siyāsī va tārīkh-i nahzat-i bīdārgīrānah-i Hajji Aqa Nūrallāh Iṣfahānī, (Tehran, 1396/1990), 16–18.Google Scholar
63. The cynicism in this verse is difficult to render, but the meaning is approximately the following: [from] the third share (uḻs), religious endowments, fallow lands, and properties combined (amassed) in one go (spree), emerged the Masjid-i Naw, as light for a party in Isfahan. Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahā, 297.Google Scholar The final details of the building and court yard were completed in 1305/1887-88 and covered an area of ca. seven jarīb (about 0.7 of a hectare.) One jarīb today is calculated at 1,000 square meters, but there were numerous local differences so that the jarīb could vary from 400 to 1400 square meters. A jarīb-i shāh was 200 square meters and a jarīb-i rams 760 square meters. Hinz, Walther, Islamische Masse und Gewichte (Leiden, 1955), 65–66.Google Scholar
64. Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 270.Google Scholar
65. See Hunarfar, Ganjīnah, 843 and 838 and Gaube und Wirth, Der Bazar, 161-62.
66. Besides being a founder and president of the Shirkat-i Islamiya, Kaziruni was also a director of the Shirkat-i Masᶜudiya, a business venture that Zill al-Sultan organized to compete with the British Tobacco Régie. Kaziruni was also the man who persuaded the bazaaris to keep their shops closed during the occupation of the British consulate in 1906 to force the Zill al-Sultan to resign his thirty-two-year tenure as governor of Isfahan. Barham to Spring Rice, decypher, No. 24, 13 March 1907; FO 248/905. Barnham to Spring Rice; No. 32,13 March 1907; FO 248/905.
67. Barnham to Spring Rice, No. 58,26 May 1907, FO 248/905.