A Study on the Lighting Equipment in Qajar Era and the Impact of Modernity on its Development

The process of designing and producing the lighting devices continues, almost uniform, from Ancient Persia to the Islamic era and the artists tried to take advantage of the earlier generations experience, in terms of creating more improvement equipment in design and decoration. Qajar era was the last period of using the traditional lighting equipment before the development of modern technologies and also a turning point in the evolution and development of these devices as a result of encountering Iranian traditional society to the industrial aspect of the West. Eventually, with the arrival of gas and electricity in the late thirteenth century AH, most of these items were either supplanted or were transformed into decorative tool. Based on the primary sources, the present paper studies the types of lighting equipment since ancient time and their survival and development during the Qajar period as well as the customs and crafts associated with them, by exploring the Astan-i-Quds and Astan-i-Qum treasuries.