Bihisht-i Thānī and Kūcheh-yi Ārāsteh az Khurramī, Location and Layout of Avenue(s) in Jafar-ābād and Safavid Qazvin

When Qazvin was chosen as the capital of Shah Tahmasb, governmental quarters were set up there in a garden complex in an area called Zangī-ābād. Following the destruction of a large part of Safavid Qazvin, little remains of those quarters. What remains along with other resources have always been used in order to restore the layout of the city and the plan of the governmental complex and its adjacent gardens. However, it seems that the information available to restore the plan of the Safavid city and the characteristics of its important components such as the avenues are insufficient. This article seeks to find out about the location and characteristics of the avenue(s) of the dār al-saltana (seat of the kingdom) of Qazvin. Upon the order of the king, ‘Abdi Bayg Shīrāzī, the court poet, has described the dār al-saltana including the Saʿādat garden, the palaces, avenues, and squares, in a poet. These descriptions are an important document for understanding the spaces of the new city that was built at the time of Shah Tahmasb in the northern part of Qazvin. Some Europeans who visited Qazvin have also described and depicted their observations of the Safavid royal complex in their manuscripts and drawings. Among them, Pietro Della Valle, Don García de Silva Figueroa, and Engelbert Kaempfer have provided considerable information about Qazvin’s royal complex. With an interpretive and historical-descriptive research method, ‘Abdi Bayg's description of the avenues was studied first. By identifying the spaces described in the poems and comparing their features to Kaempfer’s drawings and writings of Della Valle and Figueroa, the existence and location of the avenue(s) and their interconnections is understandable in the context of the city. Conclusively, besides the north-south, private avenue inside the garden surrounding the Urushi-Khāneh and other internal avenues, two avenues can be identified outside the private gardens: first, a semi-public avenue that connected the Ālī Qāpū gate to the entrance portal of the Urushi-Khāneh garden; and second, an avenue that connected the Ālī Qāpū gate to the city of Qazvin, reaching at its southern end to the forecourt of the Jame‘ Mosque.