فصلنامه گلستان هنر
سال چهارم شماره 3 (پیاپی 13، پاییز 1387)

The History of the architecture and urbanism of Iranian world –in many of its remained works – is the heritage of unknown artists, architects, and patrons. Ganj-Ali- Khān Zig and his son, Ali-Mardān-Khān, are among the least known patrons of architecture and civilization. Ganj-Ali-Khān was the ruler of Kerman, Herat, and Qandahar during the reign of Shah Abbās I Safavid, and his enterprise in Kerman –Ganj-Ali-Khān Complex – is well known. However, he was also the patron of many other buildings, gardens, and Qanāts in his thirty years reign. His son, Ali-Mardān-Khān, was a great patron of gardens. In Shah Jahan’s period, he built one of the most famous gardens of the world: Shalimar Garden in Lahore, now in Pakistan. The garden was registered in the world heritage sites record in 1982.

In the second half of Safavid period, the ghulams, the slaves of the shahs, played a new role in shaping the cultural milieu of the new imperial capital. The new composition of the royal household provided the ghulams with a leading role in the production of built environment that both embraced and enunciated the authority and legitimacy of the reconfigured Safavid household, its political and military order, and its economic infrastructure in seventeenth century. In this age of Safavid rule, ghulam patronage of architecture assumed substantial, statistical, and qualitative ascendancy to that of Qizilbash predecessors and contemporaries. Yet despite undertaking major imperial building projects, their claim to posterity remains rarely in their own name. The careers of prominent gulams of the household – like Sāru-Taqi, Muhibb-Ali Beg Lala, Allāh-Virdi-Khān and Ganj-Ali-Khān – underscore their crucial role in architecturally creating the new capital and centralized empire. Their agency is not confined to the organization of labour and material but should rather be viewed as embracing all the characteristics and expectations of a patron. Theirs, however, was a surrogate form of patronage: they essentially built on behalf of their sovereign.

The career of the Ilkhanid vizier and historian Rashided- Din Fazl-ul-llah Hamadani illustrates the nature of taste and artistic production in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Rashid-ed-Din makes a better model of patronage than an Ilkhanid ruler’s. Much of what is commonly called Ilkhanid architecture or painting was underwritten not by Mongols or their noyan, but by native Iranian counsellors who guided the Mongols pretensions and inspired their tastes. We have plenty of first-hand information about Rashid-ed-Din; especially the Endowment Deed for the Rab-‘e Rashidi, the history written by and illustrated for him, Jāme‘ ot-tawārikh, as well as several other manuscripts he commissioned. Rashid-ed-Din patronage illustrates two forms that became prominent in their period: the tomb complex and the illustrated manuscript. Like other members of the court, Rashid-ed-Din used his wealth to finance architectural projects in the form of pious tax-shelter foundation; including Soltāniyeh, Yazd, Bastām, Hamadan, and the Rab-‘e Rashidi in Tabriz. The latter was destroyed after the death of its founder, but we can get some idea about it from the illustrations in Ilkhanid manuscripts. The model of patronage established by the highest members of the Ilkhanid court in north-western Iran was copied by other notables elsewhere in Iran in the same and the following generation. Via Rashid-ed-Din’s eldest son, Ghiyāss-ed-Din Mohammad, the manuscript patronage was passed to the next generation. By 1340 AD then, the types of artistic work ordered by Rashid-ed-Din in Tabriz at the beginning of the century – the tomb complex – were still commissioned but the scale of patronage had diminished considerably and the audience had become local, or even private.

Rashid-ed-Din Fazl-ul-llah Hamadani, the vizier of Ilkhanid sultans Ghāzān-Khān and Oljeitu, is a prominent figure and a great patron in the History of Iran. His masterpiece is an academic funeral town in Tabriz called Rab-‘e Rashidi, which was completely destroyed after his murder in 1318. Fortunately informative Endowment Deed (waqfiyyeh) of the Rab-‘e Rashidi in its original form is now in our hands. As it’s mentioned in the waqfiyyeh, the Rab-‘e Rashidi had an entrance complex including: bab-ol-abvāb (main entrance), dehliz (vestibule), dargāh-e biruni (external gate), maftah-ol-abvāb. The main part of the town included: rowzeh (the founder’s tomb), dār-oz-ziyāfeh (restaurant for poors), khānaqāh (sufis’ facility), darosh- shefa (hospital), hammām (bathroom), stores, howz (pool). The dār-oz-ziyāfeh included many rooms for travellers and residents, gatekeepers’ rooms, matbakh (kitchen), store. The khānaqāh included soffeh (iwan), tab-khāneh (warm room), tanabi, dehliz, the Sheikh’s room, courtyard with its rooms and iwan, kitchen, lavatories, and sābāt. Dar-osh-shefā (hospital) had porticos or iwans for examination, drug preparing, cooking soup for patients, teaching medicine, residence, and also kitchen, pantry, vestibule, and many rooms. The rowzeh (the founder’s mausoleum) included a four-iwans court with many rooms, domed hall, library, the founder’s tomb, sarābustān (garden), beyt-ot-ta‘lim (teaching hall), Quran readers’ hall, rooms for the complex staff and students, and the endowment administrator’s house. The founder’s mausoleum was at the back of the main iwan, opposite the mosque entrance. The waqfiyyeh has detailed information about the staff of the Rab-‘e Rashidi, which contained more than three hundred people, and their careers and fees. Therefore, it can be regarded as a rich document about the buildings functions and also the condition of the very society. The waqfiyyeh is also a very rich resource in architectural terms.

As recorded in literary sources, Qavām-ed-Din b. Zayn-ed-Din Shirāzi was the unparalleled architect in the court of Shāhrokh Timurid. Qavām-ed-Din was probably among the artisans whom Timur rounded up from Shiraz and other cultural centres and transmigrated them to his capital, Samarqand. Qavām-ed-Din’s contribution to Timurid and Islamic architecture was to produce a number of integrated large-scale monuments in a distinctive style, which includes Iranian design elements, features of the contemporary Turanian monuments, and his personal hallmarks. We know some of his masterpieces in Khorāsān (Khurasan): khanaqāh and madrasah of Shāhrokh in Herat, Gowharshād Friday Mosque in Meshed, the so-called musalla in Herat, the shrine of Khājeh Abdullāh Ansāri in Gazorgah, madrasah Ghiyassiyyeh in Khargird. In Gowharshād Friday Mosque in Meshed we can see his own architectural hallmarks; such as: minarets which sprang up from ground level, the dome which rises more than half-way along the depth of the south iwan, Golestān-e Honar 13, Autumn 2008 5 and his brilliant use of mosaic faience which covered all exposed surfaces in the mosque. Unfortunately, the building material of his madrasah in Khargird was stolen over the centuries, the shrine at Gazorgah suffered from floods and other damages, and his magnificent enterprise in Herat was deliberately destroyed. Only the Friday mosque in Meshed remains in all its pristine glory. A number of the distinctive features of the work of this master are presented in the article.

Khājeh Ghiyāss-ed-Din Pir-Ahmad Khāfi was one of the prominent statesmen in the court of Shāhrokh. He was Shāhrokh’s grand vizier for more than thirty years, and he did what he wished during this period; however, he was celebrated as a benevolent vizier, kind to inferiors, and a good manager. Among the members of Shāhrokh’s court, many of whom were patrons of art and architecture, Pir-Ahmad was celebrated as a founder and patron of many buildings and complexes. Contemporary historians recorded many of these buildings, but only a few of them are recorded by their name; including Madrasah Ghiāssiyyeh in Khargird, audience hall of Zeyn-ed-Din Abu-Bakr’s mausoleum in Tāybād, and the mausoleum of Sheikh Zeyn-ed-Din Khāfi in Herat.

According to some historians, Ebrāhim-Soltān, the son of Shāhrokh, built the two madrasahs Dar-os-Safā and Dār-ol-Aytām in his career as the ruler of Shiraz. The madrasahs were destroyed in Safavid period and there is only a little information inherited to us about it. We have a manuscript of the Holy Quran with an endowment deed which says that the manuscript was endowed for the khanaqāh of Dar-os-Safā in Shiraz in 829 AH. It has the seal of Dar-os-Safā on the margins of its two pages. By means of the text and seals we can understand that Dar-os-Safā was in Shiraz in 9th century AH, and that it was a complex including khanaqāh and probably other buildings, rather than a simple madrasah. Comparing obtained information, some conjectures can be made about the complex and we can liken it to its precedent complexes Rab-‘e Rashidi in Tabriz and madrasah Ekhlāssiyyeh in Herat.

Pir-Mohammad Shirāzi was a calligrapher in the second half of the eighth and the ninth centuries in Shiraz. Qazi Ahmad Qomi, the author of Golestān-e Honar, attributed the inscriptions of many of mausoleums, tombs, and buildings of Shiraz to Pir-Mohammad. Although we know a little about him, the literary texts paralleled him to Abdollāh Seyrafi and said that he was the master of the Timurid prince, Ebrāhim-Soltān. On the north side of Khodāy-Khāneh in the Friday Mosque of Shiraz, there is an inscription which has Pir-Mohammad’s signature. There is also an inscription, with no date and signature, at the bottom of a blind arcade in the west wall which was engraved in the same period.

Doost-Ali-Khān Mo’ayyer-ol-Mamālek was a prominent patron in Qajar period. He was the treasurer and the administrator of architectural work in the court of Nāser-ed-Din-Shah Qajar. In the latter post, he was the supervisor of building works of the court and played an intermediary role between the shah and the architects. Building important monuments as Shams-ol-Emāreh and Tekyeh Dowlat was his most important enterprise in this field. Besides governmental buildings, Doost-Ali- Khān built many buildings in Tehran; including pious foundations such as mosques, bathrooms, madrasahs, cisterns, and bazaars. Bāgh-e Ferdows Palace in Shemirān is one of his private buildings. His unlimited wealth, power, and close relation with the shah, as well as his architectural and artistic talent among other factors, made him a great patron of architecture in that period. He, as the shah himself, was fascinated by the architectural achievements in Europe; and this resemblance between his taste and the shah’s, can be regarded as another factor of his achievement. Doost- Ali-Khān was also interested in collecting antiques and decorative stuff. Although the contemporary texts have not mentioned him as having artistic taste, we can find him having such a virtue regarding his intense interest to architecture and high quality of his buildings.

Ustad Ali-Mohammad Esfahāni is one of the prominent tile-makers of Qajar period. He was a master in design, painting, and different techniques of tile making and tile working. He was also the only master of that period, who wrote a treatise on the matter. The treatise was published in Edinburgh in 1305 AH/ 1888 AD. He was inspired by the Safavid style, because his artistic character was formed in Isfahan. His works have subjects as tales of Shāhnāmeh of Ferdowsi, daily life, feasts and parties, eslimi-khatāyi patterns, as well as naturalistic plant patterns. Regarding the strength of attribution, his works can be classified as the signed, the ordered, and the attributed works. In most of his signed works, he mentioned his tile-making workshop in Tehran. Many of his works can be found in religious buildings in Tehran, Rey, Qom, and Isfahan; and many others are in museums in Britain, Germany, and USA.

The study and research on the Iranian architectural history usually encounters many problems, some of which are due to dominance of unexamined thoughts and theories. In the article, the author tries to illustrate and explain some of these problems in the historical studies of Shushtar through a case study of Shadorvān Bridge-Dam. Finally he proposes a new theory on the nature of Shadorvān, through studying literary sources and the etymology of the term.