A Study of Effective Elements on Safavid Garden-CitiesConfiguration with Emphasis on Shia Teachings

In the fifteenth century, the Safavids converted to Shi’ism and established Shi’a (The second largest denominationof Islam, after Sunni) as the official religion of their empire. The Islamic concept of the Ideal City, formed accordingto the Garden of Eden, was taken into consideration in the Safavid period. Gardens as parables of Heaven wereoften used as composing elements in urban design. This idea resulted in the formation of a powerful method of cityplanning that drew its conclusions from Shi’a ideology about the human place in the physical world and the Islamicconcept of the Ideal City. Urban designers used the ideas of Heaven in small and large-scale gardens and usedheavenly features as composition elements to create the city. Thus, the city was formed as an image of Heaven.It was a suitable place for people as surrogates of God in the world.No doubt, Safavid era should be considered as the most shinny period in the history of Iranian urbanization andArchitecture. Thus, in various ways, the factors that have been implicated in its development are reviewed anddiscussed. The teachings of Isfahan school are influenced by the intellectual wisdom of Shiism and they are themost effective factors which cause the dignity and progress of Safavid art and architecture comparing other eras.Ruling of the Safavid dynasty and legitimizing the Shiism, Indeed, Shia Safavids recovered from the previous stateand then it became a majority from a minority. Therefore, evaluation of Safavid Shiite teachings and Isfahan schoolin garden-constructing and urban development is essential in this study. Emphasizing on the basic elements ofconfiguring the physical identity and its effective role, the first part of this article deals with Islamic Iranian traditionof Safavid era. In other sections of this article, the relationships of urbanization and garden-constructing in theSafavid era and the rise of an Idea called as Garden City(Bagh-shar)and the factors involved in shaping them willbe explained.By studying about existent historic gardens, Persian Gardens are divided into different types. The way people usespecial physical and functional features could also be used as a scale of this division. It seems Iranian gardenerartist during different historical periods, tried increasing the relationship between human, nature and function.Isfahan as the most famous and magnificent of the historic Garden City is examined and the style of using elementsof the Persian garden landscaping in its urban structure would be explained. The purpose of this paper is toexamine the relationship between religious beliefs and the Shi'a Safavids in the shaping and emergence of the ideathe Garden City by the Safavids. Using an analytical-descriptive method of research, this paper tries to assess thequalitative data by means of an inductive method. Data collecting is realized using a library method. The resultsof this paper indicate the quality of relating the idea of the Safavid Persian Garden City and the pattern of Iraniangarden influenced by Islamic beliefs of Shiite Muslims in shaping it.... Key words: Shiism, Safavid, Isfahan School, Garden City, Isfahan