Isfahan

A city in Iran which was a Parthian provincial capital and possibly occupied throughout the Sassanian period, the central province of the ancient pre-Islamic Iranian empires. The Great Mosque of Isfahan was one of the most influential of all early Seljuq religious structures; it was probably completed around 1130 after a long and complicated history of rebuildings. The best known Safavid monuments are located at Isfahan, where 'Abbas I built a whole new city. 'Abbas expressed his new role by moving his capital in about 1597-98 to Isfahan. According to one description, it contained 162 mosques, 48 madrasahs, 1802 commercial buildings, and 283 baths. Most of these buildings no longer survive, but what remains constitutes some of the finest monuments of Islamic architecture.

The second city of Iran, Isfahan stands on a fertile plain, watered by the Zayandeh Rud. An Achaemenid palace, known to Strabo as Gabai, may have existed here. By the early 3rd century, Isfahan was a Parthian provincial capital and we presume that it was occupied throughout the Sassan-ian period; indeed, the city’s oldest bridge, the Pol-i Shahristan, is thought to rest on Sassanian piers. Isfahan fell to the Muslims in the 640s. The 9th-century writer Ibn Rosteh reported that in his day it was a round city, like Firuzabad and Baghdad, 3100 metres in diameter. Two early Islamic monuments survive: part of the congregational mosque, which is encased in the existing Friday Mosque and was found during restoration in 1971, and the porch of the Masjid-i Hakim. In 1051, Isfahan was occupied by the Saljuqs, under whom it flourished and for a time was their capital. The principal Saljuq monument is the Friday Mosque, which contains two 11th-century dome chambers and was rebuilt in its present form after a fire in 1121. Following the Saljuq period, Isfahan declined until the Safavid ruler, Shah Abbas I (1587-1628) made it his capital. He embarked on a tremendous programme of building and the city’s most famous monuments — including the Maidan-i Shah (begun in 1598-1606), Masjid-i Shah (begun in 1612 and finished in 1638), Mosque of Shaikh Lutfullah (160317), the Chehel Sotun pavillion and the Ali Qapu — were constructed by himself and his immediate successors, in the 17th century.