Development of patterns of popular mosques of early modern era of the city of Qom

The history of popular architecture of Iran has rarely been a subject of academic inquiry. These are buildings that were built by ordinary people not social or mental elites. During transitional period of modernity (the up-down modernization early Pahlavi era) numerous small mosques emerged in the religious city of Qom. It was happened while Reza Shah’s plan for unveiling Iranian women as well as closing social religious rituals was running. In this study at first the contextual causes of such social resistance are analyzed. The first step of the study was searching for mosques founded during that era. It was done by field enquiry so 47 examples were documented and 8 of them that has limited changes comparing buildings, were selected for more studies. From spatial point of view two general patterns were found: mosques without courtyard (unlike traditional courtyard mosques) and mosques that were built on top of old water-storages (Aab- Anbar). These two phenomena along with other minor phenomenon of mezzanine in mosque were historically analyzed searching their roots. The search was lead to the patterns of Takiyeh in some cases and in the case of Aab-Anbars it was found that this pattern is specified to the city of Qom. The dictatorship of RezaKhan was lead to emotional effort to keep religious atmosphere within neighborhood so as not to be prevented by governmental forces. While every old community had a specified water-storage with its tank raised over ground, there was an opportunity to use it as a place for religious gatherings. Then turning towards the matter of form, structural and technological characteristics of theses mosques were taken into account. So some patterns were put as subject of deeper enquiry: exposed brick vaults with fine detailing on steel I-beams and iron-pipe columns as well as long vertical or lateral windows. Another found subject was fixed library shelves in these mosques. The mentioned columns were in some cases pipes of transferring oil. The creative thinking behind use of in-hand modern elements has many lessons for contemporary conflicts of localization while the identifiable character of the form of these mosques as specified religious space makes them valuable for study in current circumstances.