The Original Identity of the Safavid (Mosque) In Isfahan

Abstract

Kafran is among villages of the general region of Rouydasht, at the extreme eastern end of Isfahan province, having a long past, due to it’sexisting documents. The present study, being just a part of the whole program known as development of the history of Iranian architecture, tries to uncover the identity and development of the Mosque. Todo this, and with the aid of librarian and field studies, we shall try to investigate this structure attributed to Safavid period, by representing a description of its features, through maps. These are followed by some architectural analyses, according to which it is found that the southern nave is nothing more than a later addition to the original building. This hypothesis may be proved through employing such arguments as the "non-existence of" the mentioned space in the initial design of the structure; therefore one may conclude that the initial using of the original building had not been religious at all. Other [visual] evidences corroborate our hypothesis; among them one can mention the lack of form, scale and shape proportions of the main (northern)nave for performing "prayer ceremony, unsuitability of first story spaces for usual functions of mosques, lack of historical precedence for the model in the known Iranian History of mosque building, and etc. Ultimately it should be noted that the original nucleus of Hadji mosque is very similar to Safavid pavilions, and thus one may put forward the proposal that the original nucleus of the structure might have been of "formal-ceremonial, or -administrative" type.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s6p242