Isfahan and its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi`ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran

Sussan Babaie

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2008

Isfahan and its Palaces

Statecraft, Shi`ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran

Sussan Babaie

In the series Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748633760

Overview
Contents

About this book

Winner of the Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award 2009

This beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501–1722) explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and Perso-Shi‘i practice of kingship.

An immense building campaign, initiated in 1590-91, transformed Isfahan from a provincial, medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered representation of the first Imami Shi‘i empire in the history of Islam. The historical process of Shi‘ification of Safavid Iran and the deployment of the arts in situating the shifts in the politico-religious agenda of the imperial household informs Sussan Babaie’s study of palatial architecture and urban environments of Isfahan and the earlier capitals of Tabriz and Qazvin.

Babaie argues that since the Safavid claim presumed the inheritance both of the charisma of the Shi‘i Imams and of the aura of royal splendor integral to ancient Persian notions of kingship, a ceremonial regime was gradually devised in which access and proximity to the shah assumed the contours of an institutionalized form of feasting. Talar-palaces, a new typology in Islamic palatial designs, and the urban-spatial articulation of access and proximity are the architectural anchors of this argument. Cast in the comparative light of urban spaces and palace complexes elsewhere and earlier—in the Timurid, Ottoman, and Mughal realms as well as in the early modern European capitals—Safavid Isfahan emerges as the epitome of a new architectural-urban paradigm in the early modern age.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
List of Plates Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Series Editor’s Foreword Publicly Available Download PDF	x
Preface and Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Note on the Transliteration System Publicly Available Download PDF	xiv
Safavid Dynastic Chart Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Timeline of Safavid Capital Cities and Major Structures Publicly Available Download PDF	xvi
CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Conviviality, Charismatic Absolutism, and the Persianization of Shi'ism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER 2 Peripatetic Kings and Palaces: From Tabriz to Qazvin in the Sixteenth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
CHAPTER 3 Dwelling in Paradise, or Isfahan “Half the World” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
CHAPTER 4 “The Abode of Felicitous Rule” or the Daulatkhane Royal Precinct Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
CHAPTER 5 The Spatial Choreography of Conviviality: the Palaces of Isfahan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
CHAPTER 6 Feasting and the Perso-Shi'i Etiquette of Kingship Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224
CHAPTER 7 Epilogue: The Fall of Isfahan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Select Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	274
Illustration Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	292
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	294

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 320
Illustrations
- Other: 60 B/W illustrations 24 colour illustrations 24 colour and 60 b+w illustrations
Keywords: Islamic Studies

eBook

Published: July 14, 2008
ISBN: 9780748633760