The splendour of Safavid Isfahan is no doubt proverbial. The landmarks that come to mind--the great Maydān-i Shāh with its stage perpetually set, the elegant Chahār Bāgh avenue, the graceful bridges slung across the Zayandah Rud--would make it appear as though the topography of Isfahan today, except for the old Jāmiᶜ, is a Safavid one. It is hard to believe, however, that the ages have not left a deeper mark, that the patterns of life generated in the pre-Safavid past did not affect profoundly the course of subsequent development.

Consider for example the curious orientation of Shāh ᶜAbbās’ imperial centerpiece, the Maydān-i Shāh. The two imperial mosques built to the south and east of the Maydān, the Masjid-i Shāh and the Luṭfallah Mosque, awkwardly twist on their axes in order to face the proper direction for prayer, the qiblah.

In the Safavid period the concepts of miniature painting, already fully established in the Timurid period, still prevailed with certain modifications and changes in emphasis. Timurid painting in its turn had expanded and refined an art which had developed in the course of the fourteenth century into the “kind of painting,” as Dūst Muḥammad wrote in the mid-sixteenth century, “which is current at the present time.” Although Persian miniature painting achieved its first stage of maturity under the Jalā'irid sultans in the second half of the fourteenth century, the development was uneven. During the Jalā'irid and subsequent Timurid periods illustrations were produced which were markedly different from each other not only in concept and purpose but also in their stage of artistic development and degree of sophistication.

The study of the various factors that influenced the development of the art of the book in Iran is a vast subject.

Shortly after the year 1000, Abū Nuᶜaym al-Iṣfahānī (948-1037), the author of a historical study about his hometown, called a ten volume work on Muslim hagiography with a poignant title, Ḥilyat al-auliyā, “The Ornament of the Saints.” At that moment, the learned and pious author, grandson of a noted aesthetic, could scarcely foresee that Iran would indeed deserve the epithet of being “decorated by saints” during the centuries to come even more than before Abū Nuᶜaym's lifetime. Therefore, it seems not improper to take this charming title as a starting point for some deliberations about the religious situation in early Muslim Iran.

Abū Nuᶜaym was one of the numerous disciples of Ibn Khafīf, the great saint of Fars who died, a centenarian, in 982 in his hometown Shiraz. We may single out this mystic for our purpose to give a short survey of pre-Safavid religious life in Iran.

The most common classification of Persian literature is the classification according to geographical divisions. The literary style sabk carries the name of the geographical area in which it reached its climax. The boundaries of these divisions, however, are very flexible.

The three main literary styles which follow each other consecutively are known as: Khurasani, ᶜIraqi, and Hindi. The time spans of each style are equally flexible. Within these broad geographical divisions we then come across certain “literary schools” which reflect regional peculiarities and idiosyncrasies and are identified with smaller entities like provinces or towns. For example, there are: the Azerbayjani school, the Tabriz school, or the Shirvan school. This paper deals with literature in Isfahan in pre-Safavid times.

Isfahan has enjoyed a central geographical position and played a very important role in the history of Iran. It is, therefore, natural that in the history of Persian literature we come across The Isfahan School of poetry.

Nicht viele Städte der islamischen Welt haben in der abendländischen Reiseliteratur so starke Beachtung gefunden wie das safawidische Isfahan. Europäische Kaufleute, Missionare, Diplomaten und Abenteurer haben es mit den verschiedensten Motiven besucht, sich zum Teil lange dort aufgehalten und über ihre Beobachtungen, ihre Erlebnisse sowie über Persönlichkeiten des öffentlichen Lebens Berichte hinterlassen, deren Angaben bei allen individuellen Unterschieden ungewöhnlich mannigfaltig sind und zusammengenommen, kritische Verwendung vorausgesetzt, allein schon für eine Geschichte der Stadt Isfahan und mancher Aspekte der safawidischen Geschichte überhaupt ausreichen, wenn auch in erster Linie für das 17. Jahrhundert. Einem wichtigen Teil dieser Aufgabe hat kürzlich Sibylla Schuster-Walser ihre Untersuchungen zur Wirtschaftsund Handelspolitik gewidmet.

Nun war aber Isfahan auch im 16. Jahrhundert schon safawidisch. Doch ist für diese Zeit mit europäischen Berichterstattern ganz im Gegensatz zu dem folgenden Jahrhundert nicht viel Staat zu machen.

My aim in this lecture shall be to situate the world of color within the traditional context of the Islamic culture of Persia; to explore the conceptual motivations that provoked its intense crystallization and saturation during the Safavid era; and to ultimately follow this world of color as it is annihilated into nothingness within the presence of Absolute Light. We will therefore witness the conceptual birth, life and death of color as a cyclical yet timeless, metaphysical expression of the Absolute within the world of phenomenal forms.

I regard the arguments about nationalism or the lack of it, and about whether or not the Safavid state can be called a nation-state, as in many ways sterile. What I am much more interested in is the question whether or not the Safavids created a state at all, in any generally accepted sense of the word. I propose in a moment to look at some of the commonly accepted characteristics of the state, and see whether or not the Safavid system possessed these characteristics. It is because I do not want to place primary emphasis on the concept of the “nation-state” that I have entitled this paper “The Safavid state and polity”--the latter meaning, of course, an organized society of which they were a part, for to Plato and Aristotle the polis was more than just a natural organism such as a herd or a hive.

“The literature of the Safavid period is usually regarded as a literature of decline.” So Jan Rypka begins his chapter on this literature. In 1911, in a letter to E.G. Browne, Mīrzā Muḥammad Qazvīnī, the noted Persian scholar, pronounced an even harsher judgment on this period: “Under this dynasty,” he wrote, “learning, culture, poetry, and mysticism completely deserted Persia….”

The first question we must face is whether this was, in fact, the case. Did Persian poetry and prose under the Safavids sink into literary doldrums, as so many critics have judged, or, rather, was this an age of positive literary merit? And if our response should be negative, how are we to account for the decline of literature in the face of the political strength and economic prosperity of Persia under the Safavids, and for the flourishing of other arts in this period?

The Safavid period marks a definite turning point in the history of Persia and the beginning of a new phase in the history of Islam in that country. Yet, despite its distinct character and the break it seems to display with respect to the centuries preceeding it, there is definitely a long religions and intellectual history which prepared the ground for the sudden establishment of a Shiᶜite order in Persia and the transformation of the country into a predominantly Shiᶜite area. There are several centuries of growth of Shiᶜite theology and jurisprudence, the development of Sufi orders with Shiᶜite tendencies and the establishment of Shiᶜite political power--albeit of a transient character--all preceeding the Safavid period.

As far as Shiᶜite thought is concerned, the advent of the Mongols and the destruction of the major centers of Sunni political power in Western Asia enabled Shiᶜism to flower in Persia more than ever before, culminating in the establishment of Shiᶜism as state religion for a brief period under Sulṭān Muḥammad Khudābandah.

It is indisputable that the religious history both of the Safavid period and of the two centuries that preceded it remains inadequately explored. There existed in Transoxania and Anatolia, as well as the Iranian plateau, a plethora of groups and individuals with diverse tendencies and aspirations that it is difficult, in our present state of knowledge, to synthesize into a comprehensible whole. There are however a number of minor observations on Professor Nasr's presentation that I wish to make. The first is an expression of respectful disagreement, and the others are intended to direct attention to matters not mentioned in his otherwise comprehensive paper.

Professor Nasr's contention that Sufism owes its essential origin to Shiᶜism, and that therefore its suppression in the Safavid period ought to be regarded as a return to the womb that bore it, is highly contestable.

Avant d'essayer de tracer un exposé des valeurs de l'architecture safavide, il est utile d'analyser les formes géomètriques des voûtes et les systèmes constructifs. Ensuite quelques exemples significatifs de palais et de maisons seront choisis, soit en rapport avec la dialectique de l'ancien et du nouveau, soit dans les relations entre les ouvrages auliques et les demeures bourgeoises, soit dans la recherche d'une relation rationnelle entre la forme et la structure. Enfin se posera le problème irrésolu de la formation culturelle des architectes de l'âge safavide.

Le bois. Le bois, le chanār ou platanus orientalis, est depuis toujours largement employé dans l'architecture persane pour le soutien des terrasses horizontales. Les couvertures en forme de toit se trouvent rarement ẹt tout au plus aux époques qājār tardive ou moderne. On voit encore dans certaines formes modernes spontanées et paysannes des systèmes à structures de ligne homogènes, d'ascendance notoirement achéménide, par exemple dans certains ṭālārs rustiques du Mazandaran, comme celui publié par André Godard.

Between the Masjid-i Jāmiᶜ and the Maydān-i Shāh was a distance of several kilometers, dotted by minarets, mausoleums, mosques and bazaar areas which served the trade of the central plateau of Persia. They had been built over the intervening centuries since Sasanian times, the old town gradually expanding, some of the small clusters of the bazaar still remaining as satellite villages under Shāh ᶜAbbās’ reign. It was his genius which formed the new city, and it was his conception that linked the new with the old.

Today, the least known to the visitor but in many ways quite the most fascinating aspect of Isfahan is the region that lies between the great mosques: the bazaar. Built by Shāh ᶜAbbās, the entrance to the bazaar, the Qaysariyah, stands at the center of the north end of the Maydān-i Shāh. Set back from the main plaza in a fivesided recess, it forms a courtyard which once embraced a large pool.