Esfahan, Iran

Esfahan is little known in the West, but it has some of the world’s great architecture – not only mosques, but also its palaces, its gardens, and last but not least, its fine bridges.

Published:
Period: Islamic
Location: Asia › Iran › Isfahan Province › Esfahan

In the year 1611, Abbas the Great, ruler of Iran, set out to turn his city of Esfahan into the finest city in the world. He began by laying out a great rectangular square three times the size of St Mark’s Square in Venice and today only exceeded in size by the architecturally inferior Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Originally it was a polo ground. To the left is the Royal Palace from which the Emperor could watch the game in progress. To the right is the great Mosque of Sheikh Lotfollah designed as a private mosque for the Royal family; and behind the camera is the Royal Mosque, one of the world’s great architectural masterpieces.

The Great Square, Esfahan. Originally it was a polo ground – note the two goalposts in the foreground. Royal Palance (left), Mosque of Sheikh Lotfollah (right).
Here is the great portal that forms the entrance to the Royal Mosque, fronting onto the square. The arch is flanked by twin minarets. The decoration is entirely executed in tile mosaic in a full palette of colours. The white on blue band that frames the whole arch is in fact a  text  written in the tuluth script that was the majuscule of Arabic scripts, famed for its flowing expressiveness. The inner part of the vault is filled with honeycomb decoration known as muquarnas.

But there was a problem. The square was laid out north-south, but the mosque had to face towards Mecca, that is North West- South East, so the mosque was on a different alignment to the square. 

Here in this photo, you can see the domes of the mosque, rising above the buildings to the right of the Portal. When you enter the Portal, you have to turn half-right to enter the mosque.
And when you enter, this is what faces you: the majestic arch, or ivan, that fronts the main prayer hall and its dome that lies behind.

Mosques in Persia are laid out on entirely different principles to those in the Ottoman world. The Safarids in Persia and the Ottomans in Turkey were the great rivals of the 17th century: in religion the Ottomans were Sunnis and the Safarids were Shi’ites and this rivalry extended to architecture too – the Blue Mosque in Istanbul was being built at exactly the same time as the Royal Mosque in Esfahan. But whereas the Ottoman mosques were laid out around a central Hall covered by a huge dome, the Safarid mosques were laid out round a square with huge arches in the middle of each side. These are called ‘ivans’, (or ‘iwans’) and are the great glory of Persian architecture. The word ‘ivan’ really denotes a great room that is open to one side, but they have come to denote essentially the arch that fronts the great court, and behind the ivan is the great prayer hall surmounted by a dome.

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