Shah Mosque (Isfahan)

The Shah Mosque (), also officially known as the Imam Mosque or Imam Khomeini Mosque, is a mosque located on the south side of Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Esfahan, in the province of Isfahan, Iran. Its construction began in 1611, during the Safavid Empire under the order of Abbas the Great, and was completed .

It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of Persian architecture in the Islamic era. The mosque is registered, along with the Naghsh-e Jahan Square and other surrounding structures, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was added to the Iran National Heritage List on 6 January 1932, administered by the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization of Iran. The mosque is depicted on the reverse of the Iranian 20,000 rials banknote.

History

In 1598, when Shah Abbas decided to move the capital of his Persian empire from the northwestern city of Qazvin to the central city of Isfahan, he initiated what would become one of the greatest programs in Persian history; the complete remaking of this ancient city. By choosing the central city of Isfahan, fertilized by the Zāyandeh River ("the ''life-giving river''"), lying as an oasis of intense cultivation in the midst of a vast area of arid landscape, he both distanced his capital from any future assaults by Iran's neighboring arch rival, the Ottomans, and at the same time gained more control over the Persian Gulf, which had recently become an important trading route for the Dutch and British East India Companies.

The chief architect of this task of urban planning was Shaykh Bahai (Baha' ad-Din al-`Amili), who focused the programme on two key features of Shah Abbas's master plan: the Chahar Bagh avenue, flanked at either side by all the prominent institutions of the city, such as the residences of all foreign dignitaries, and the Naqsh-e Jahan Square ("''Exemplar of the World''"). Prior to the Shah's ascent to power, Persia had a decentralized power structure, in which different institutions battled for power, including both the military (the Qizilbash) and governors of the different provinces making up the empire. Shah Abbas wanted to undermine this political structure, and the recreation of Isfahan, as a grand capital of Persia, was an important step in centralizing the power.

The crown jewel in this project was the Masjed i Shah (Shah Mosque), which would replace the much older Jameh Mosque in conducting the Friday prayers. To achieve this, the Shah Mosque was constructed not only with vision of grandeur, having the largest dome in the city, but Shaykh Bahai also planned the construction of two religious schools and a winter mosque clamped at either side of it.

Construction of the Naqsh-e Jahan Square, began around 1590. Construction on the Shah Mosque itself, which was part of this project, only began in 1611 (1020 AH), possibly due to delays in purchasing the land required. Based on the series of dated inscriptions around the mosque, construction was probably completed around 1630–1 (1040 AH), which is the date of the inscription on the mosque's western iwan. This indicates that construction finished in the early years of Abbas's successor, Shah Safi.

The architect of the mosque is Ali Akbar Isfahani. His name appears in an inscription in the mosque above the doorway of the entrance iwan complex. The inscription also mentions that the supervisor of the construction was Muhibb 'Ali Beg Lala, who was also a major donor to the mosque. Another architect, Badi al-zaman-i Tuni, may have been involved in its early design.

Because of the Shah's desire to have the building completed during his lifetime, shortcuts were taken in the construction; for example, the Shah ignored warnings by one of the architects, Abu'l Qāsim, regarding the danger of subsidence in the foundations of the mosque, and he pressed ahead with the construction. The architect proved to be right, as in 1662 the building had to undergo major repairs.

In the years after the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979, the mosque's official name was changed to Imam Khomeini Mosque or Imam Mosque, in honour of the Ruhollah Khomeini.

The lastest restoration project on the mosque began in 2010. Damage to the dome was discovered in 2022 due to errors in the work. In June 2024, Iranian officials announced the completion of the restoration work on the dome, including repairs to correct the previous errors.

Architecture

Layout and features

The Safavids founded the Shah Mosque as a channel through which they could express themselves with their numerous architectural techniques. The four-iwan format, finalized by under the Seljuq dynasty and inherited by the Safavids, firmly established the courtyard facade of such mosques, with the towering gateways at every side, as the most important feature of the building. The Shah Mosque was a huge structure, said to contain 18 million bricks and 475,000 tiles, having cost the Shah 60,000 tomans to build.

Because Naqsh-e Jahan Square is not aligned with the ''qibla'' (the direction of Mecca), the mosque's entrance passage makes a half-right turn in order to for the rest of the building to follow the correct alignment for prayers. Scholar Donald Wilber suggests that this general design choice could have been deliberate: because the prayer hall of the mosque is placed on a different axis, its dome is thus prominently visible from the main square, whereas if it had been on the same axis as the square the dome would have been obscured by the mosque's tall entrance portal.One of the distinctive features of a mosque is the minaret, and the Shah Mosque has four. In Persian mosques, tall minarets were considered unsuitable for the call to prayer. Instead, architects added an aedicule, known in Persian as a ''goldast'' (bouquet) for this particular purpose, which in the Shah Mosque stands on top of the west iwan.

From the central courtyard, the southwestern iwan leads to the prayer hall below the main dome. The mihrab, a large marble tablet, tall and wide on the southwestern wall, indicated the ''qibla''. Above it, the Shah's men had placed a gold-encrusted cupboard of allow wood. It held two relics: a Quran, said to have been copied by Imam Reza, and the bloodstained robe of Imam Hussain. Although never displayed, the robe was said to have magical powers; lifted on the end of a pike in the battle field, the belief was that it could rout an enemy.
File:View of Shah Mosque in Esfahan.jpg, View of the mosque from Naqsh-e Jahan Square
File:Entrance iwan of Shah Mosque Isfahan 2014 (1).jpg, Entrance iwan of the mosque
File:Mezquita Shah, Isfahán, Irán, 2016-09-20, DD 64.jpg, View from below of the '' muqarnas'' over the entrance
File:Imam Mosque 3Daa.jpg, Panoramic photo of the entrance vestibule leading to the courtyard
File:Shah Mosque, Isfahan 01.jpg, The main courtyard, with its four-iwan layout
File:Shah Mosque Isfahan.jpg, The main domed prayer hall
File:Shah Mosque, Isfahan 05.jpg, View of the mihrab (center) and minbar (right) in the main prayer hall
File:Mezquita Shah, Isfahán, Irán, 2016-09-20, DD 68-70 HDR.jpg, The winter prayer hall, built in hypostyle form

The main dome

A renaissance in Persian dome building was initiated by the Safavids. The distinct feature of Persian domes, which separates them from those domes created in the Christian world or the Ottoman and Mughal empires, was the colorful tiles, with which they covered the ''exterior'' of their domes, as they would on the interior. These domes soon numbered dozens in Isfahan, and the distinct, blue-colored shape would dominate the skyline of the city. Reaching hig, the dome of the Shah Mosque would become the tallest in the city when it was finished in 1629. It was built as a double-shelled dome, with spanning between the two layers, and resting on an octagonal dome chamber.

Decoration

The mosque employed the new ''haft rangi'' (seven-colour) style of tile mosaic. In earlier Iranian mosques, the tiles had been made of faience mosaic, a slow and expensive process where tiny pieces are cut from monochrome tiles and assembled to create intricate designs. In the ''haft rangi'' method, artisans put on all the colors at once, then fired the tile. Cheaper and quicker, the new procedure allowed a wider range of colors to be used, creating richer patterns. According to 17th-century traveler Jean Chardin, the low humidity of the local enviroment made the colors more vivid and the contrasts between the different patterns stronger than what could be achieved in Europe, where the colors of tiles turned dull and lost their appearance. Still, most contemporary and modern writers regard the tile work of the Shah Mosque as inferior in both quality and beauty to those covering the nearby Lotfallah Mosque, the latter often referred to by contemporary Persian historians, such as Iskandar Munshi, as "the mosque of great purity and beauty". The architects also employed a great deal of marble, which they gathered from a marble quarry in nearby Ardestan.

The entrance portal of the mosque displays the finest tile decoration in the building. It is entirely executed in tile mosaic in a full palette of seven colors (dark Persian blue, light Turkish blue, white, black, yellow, green and bisquit). A wide inscription band with religious texts written in white thuluth script on a dark blue ground frames the iwan. The tiles in the mosque are predominantly blue, except in the covered halls of the building, which were later revetted in tiles of cooler, yellowy-green shades.

See also

* Shia Islam in Iran
* List of mosques in Iran
* Chehel Sotoun Palace
* List of historical structures in Isfahan
* History of Persian domes

References

Bibliography

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Further reading

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External links

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{{Authority control

1620s establishments in Iran
1629 establishments in Asia
17th-century mosques in the Safavid Empire
Mosques on the Iran National Heritage List
Mosque buildings with domes in Iran
Mosque buildings with minarets in Iran
Mosques completed in the 1620s
Mosques in Isfahan
Religious buildings and structures completed in 1629
Safavid mosques in Iran
Shia mosques in Iran
Tiling
Tourist attractions in Iran
World Heritage Sites in Iran