Islamic Architecture in Iran: Poststructural Theory and the Architectural History of Iranian Mosques 9780755695287, 9781788310451

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To my mother and father

Illustrations

2.1 Jewish, Armenian and Islamic tiles 73 2.2 Chess and backgammon 75 2.3 ‘A school scene’ and a ‘nomadic encampment’ showing similar patterns of using space in sedentary and nomadic settlements79 2.4 The daily movement of the sun and schematic plan of an Iranian house 79 2.5 The typical outline of grand Qajār mosques. 80 2.6 The quadruple plan of a garden 81 2.7 A garden carpet 82 2.8 The negative and positive of tile patterns 84 2.9 Two schematic illustrations of Iranian houses 85 2.10 Different compositions of the iwan and the dome chamber 86 2.10 A set of dualities in spatial division of Iranian architecture 86 2.12 Transgression of the wall: government (the city of Hamadān) 87 2.13 Transgression of the wall: iwan and temple 88 2.14 Transgression of the wall: gate 88 3.1 Two different systems: backgammon and chess 97 3.2 An Iranian house and modern residence 99 3.3 The gradual introduction of private to public marked by walled territories 103 3.4 Community and government 105 3.5 Bazaar as a linear intersected space 106 3.6 The hierarchy of privacy in a spatial unit of Madrasah108 3.7 Darband 109 3.8 Bazaar and mahallahs 111 3.9 Tikyah (plan and section) 111 3.10 A schematic map of mosques, squares and bazaars in Yazd 113

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3.11 A tent functioning as a mosque 117 3.12 The mosque as praying room 117 3.13 The centre of the mahallah 118 3.14 The mosque as piazza (Jāme’ ‘Atīq, Isfahan) 119 3.15 Mosque and miydān (Imam Mosque, Isfahan) 119 4.1 The circle of Sharī’ah, Tari’qah and Haqiqah 129 4.2 The Shāzdah Garden in Mahan 141 5.1 Generic spatial units in Iranian architecture 168 5.2 The process of design in Iranian houses: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (after Mulavī)171 5.3 Elevation design (after Mulavī) 172 5.4 The plan of a residence showing the multiple rooms in a mansion173 5.5 Irregular spaces: alleys 173 5.6 Irregular spaces: corridors 174 5.7 The model of performance in Iranian music. The central is not necessarily at the centre 175

Note on Transliteration

I have used the Library of Congress system to transliterate words from Persian (Farsi). This is given in detail at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/ romanization/arabic.pdf

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the University of Shāhrūd, whose support has allowed me to undertake this research. I would also like to thank those at the Centres for Cultural Heritage in Khorāsān Razavī, Simnān, Zanjān, Qazvīn, East Azerbaijan, Marāghah (Mr Babaei in particular), Isfahan and Yazd, who generously provided me with opportunities to access their materials. Furthermore, I am deeply thankful to those friends and colleagues who in the final stages of my work helped me in editing and correcting my chapters: Margaret Graves, Oliver Little, Rachel King and Anne Kirkham. I thank copy-editor and typesetter Matthew Brown for his patience in preparing proofs of the book; and Jenna Steventon and Maria Marsh of I.B.Tauris who helped me throught the commissioning and production stages of this book. I would like also to thank Mohammad Ghorbani for helping me to prepare the images. Needless to say, without the patience and support of Dr Emma Loosly and Professor Timothy Insoll this work could not have been achieved. Finally, I would like to thank my friends Combiz Moussavi-Aghdam, Masoud Khalili and Masoud Shirbachah for their help throughout my studies.

Introduction

Climbing up the minaret of the Il-Khānid mosque in Oshtorjān, a small town near Isfahan the origin of whose name is lost in ancient history,1 one of the two local children accompanying me while I was taking pictures of the dome asked me with a scornful smile, ‘What is the point of taking pictures of this ruined building (kharābah)?’2 He wanted me to photograph something worthwhile, to take pictures of the farms and gardens stretching across the skirt of mountains surrounding the town. Instead of taking the trouble to explain, because of his childish comments and self-confidence I replied with the same look and smile. Lack of education was the first explanation that crossed my mind for his ignorance of history and heritage, in this case ignorance not just of distant ideas found only in books but also of the treasure that lay on his own doorstep. Nevertheless, while lack of education has its place here, the gap between our two mutually derisive smiles, between an academic’s view from his ivory tower – here, ironically, a brick minaret – and a child’s perspective, raises deeper concerns about the place of history in Iranian culture. More than simply a gap between two people, it is comparable to the various ruptures between a puritan Muslim and a nationalist concerned with a country’s heritage, between the pragmatic view of a normal citizen and the supposedly sentimentalist curiosity of an academic, and, finally, between a modernist and a traditionalist whose historical tendencies are viewed as backward. While this kind of philosophical questioning may appear comparatively futile to many architectural historians who ‘prefer to get on with the real job’3 and to search for historically ‘objective’ accounts, within the Iranian context the search for a method which finds a solution by transforming these ‘why’ questions into ‘how’ questions is an indispensable effort to bridge this gap. The questions, method and structure of this book have crystallised in

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the process of looking for answers to the interrogative ‘How’: ‘How should we approach Iranian architectural historiography?’ Generally speaking, there are two opposing tendencies in the architectural historiography of Iran. On the one hand, there are ‘objective’ accounts of buildings, bound to archaeological findings with a common methodology of examining similarities and differences, which eventually arrive at ‘causal’ or ‘evolutionary’ explanations on a larger scale. Aiming to be empirical, and discouraged by the postmodern rejection of generalisations, the only transcendental categories they embrace in these studies are either formal classifications or borrowed concepts of dynastic or provincial divisions. Few and far between, a fact which in itself weakens any further analysis, their rejection of theoretical frameworks leaves these studies in a void, without any sensible connection to the sociopolitical and ontological life of the culture. On the other hand, there are studies that use modern, invented terms like ‘Islamic’, ‘Iranian’, ‘eastern’ or ‘traditional’ to frame Iranian architecture as the object of anachronistic concepts. Born out of a need for cultural definition in the steadily changing course of modernism, these plastic abstractions are the result of reactionary responses and quick and simple self-definitions rather than positive engagement. They are apparently the only possible response to changes so extreme it is impossible to grasp any sense of them. As with the first group, these conceptual frameworks fail to construct a basis for cultural dialogue with history but in a different way. It is necessary to establish a middle ground between these two extreme points, by breaking down the abstract totalitarianism of the latter group and by building a theoretical bridge by which to link the former group with transcendental frameworks for Iranian architectural history. The possible functions for such a middle ground will be strategically defined with regard to the two mentioned approaches to Iranian architectural history. The first and foremost function is the ‘formation’ of this history, since it is its lack of form – historical form here means some sort of conceptual categorisations – which permits intangible generalisations. These generalisations, in themselves strategies for a culture that lacks conscious self-definition and faces conditions it is unable to wholly interiorise, face resistance since any plural classifications are seen as a threat towards these artificially homogenised identities. The forms proposed by this middle ground are potentially the first step towards changing this reactionary policy and moving towards positive interaction with surrounding conditions. A second function is to be found in the ability of this historical account to form a basis on which to connect micro-scale studies to a higher level of

Introduction

3

cultural debate. It is here that history, as the stories of the past, and for a culture fractured between tradition and modernity, transforms into a channel for debating contemporary affairs. The postmodern fear of generalisations as tools that can be abused by ideology and power must not lead cultural historians to ignore the primary issue: that their absence encourages more the misconduct of powers and ideologies. Nevertheless, the strategic definition of this middle ground in itself is a situational solution rather than an ahistorical method of historical interpretation. This historical account has two aspects, not necessarily definable in the same category. Firstly, a deconstructive method must be employed to show the contradictions inside supposedly enclosed abstract identities. In exterior space, it breaks the exclusive lines of separation between the realms of those supposed identities, and in interior space it reveals homogeneity as a misconception upon which singular identity narrations are based. Since this can be seen as an absolute diffusion and endless differentiation, secondly, a structural method must be used as a counter-policy in order to localise ideas. The quasi-structural methods employed in interior spaces construct functional divisions between spatially established identities, while establishing conceptual connections between defined forms and functions which surpass particularities. This policy creates stability and duration, as well as functional divisions which avoid ahistoricism. The strategy in this interpretation is to propose time as an alternative for space-based definitions which tend towards rigidity in history and, concomitantly, to suggest space as an alternative to structuralise notions which are lost in time. Notably, within this context both poststructural critiques of structuralism and so-called postmodern theories might be applicable; nevertheless, the situational claim of this method avoids accepting or rejecting any of these views exclusively. These issues point to the need for a conceptual history, or for theories that will lead to this.4 In the case of Iranian culture, its transformation from a society based on the unconscious patterns of life – named as tradition or possibly as habitus in Bourdieu’s terminology5 – to one which demands consciously articulated cultural narrations happened in two ways above all. The first way, based on the colonial division between master narrations and ‘others’ and accepting and re-articulating this otherness, became the tool for grasping a self-consciousness. In it, historical material was re-articulated in such a way as to fill the vessel of an already built narration based on a binary opposition between us and the other, for Iran, mainly as the one who cannot possess the master narrations. In many situations, originally negative definitions were transformed into a positive otherness in order to construct identity. In the second, the forms and attributions of hegemonic culture

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were juxtaposed in such a way as to refashion culture in line with preferred narrations. The absence of parallel sociocultural patterns in the host culture, in which cultural differences had not been defined, rendered these juxtapositions superficial (re)forms and applicable only by means of power. These processes have been mentioned not to judge them negatively as a passive reaction to modern conditions, but to show them as positive responses albeit towards frequently unbalanced conditions. While these should not be rejected wholeheartedly, new cultural and historical narrations based on indigenous notions of difference are needed in order to refashion Iran’s cultural history. Both endeavours to build different narrations of identity are based on relative understandings of the self. Although, as a universal rule, having self-understanding depends on a consciously chosen position in regard to others, the difference here is between a subject’s ability to hold a position or to be positioned. In other words, holding a positive narration of the self does not mean the rejection of others and the crafting of an essential definition of the self, but rather consciously gaining an understanding of the nature of this relative identity. It is worth mentioning that relative identity, especially when it is based on binary oppositions and supposedly permanent spatial positions, is in itself a source of crisis. In this respect, an emphasis on relative identity is to first reject essentialism as the main source of fundamentalism and also to relativise those relative definitions which are ossified in space. In the former case, essentialism, as self-centred identity definition, considers the cultural zone as an enclosed space based on interior properties. This illusion may be primarily based on a rigid relative definition, like the traditional/modern division in Iran. Tradition, connoting roots and being at home, while it is considered to be self-sustaining, is based on positions or oppositions in regard to others. Relativity in itself, while being based on the spatial positioning of identity by emphasising the temporality of these identities, rejects permanent positions and illusions of independency. Thus, this relativity is somewhere between relative, but atemporal, structural identifications and unrooted and endless differentiations. The middle-ground account of history searches for the same characteristics. A major challenge for this middle-ground account, in order to take Iranian history out of a dead-end historicity, is to break the insuperable barrier of the modern/traditional division. Casting its shadow over contemporary accounts of Iranian history, whether those of modernists who criticise tradition in favour of their modern accounts or those of traditionalists who praise a tradition distinct from alien modernity, this division has created two separated territories without any possibility of interaction. Both parties act

Introduction

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as puritans: for modernists if there is crisis it is due to remnants of the past; for traditionalists it is due to modern corruptions. Nevertheless, history – not as stories of the past but as the trained patterns of life for a culture – cannot be cast away from its contemporary existence. There are a number of genuine efforts to break this barrier. For instance, Zarrīn-kūb’s monographs on Iranian scholars6 or Bāstānī Pārīzī’s books on different historical themes7 transform these subjects to existential matters by employing themes of storytelling for history, and thereby make them the concern of modern people. Poststructural methods of reinterpreting historical themes and figures are important in breaking this barrier. Dabashi’s deconstructive approach to historical themes and figures, for example his re-writing of Eyn al-Qozāt’s life,8 demonstrates one method for transcending this duality. Yet, especially in visual culture, the lack of proper theories has left the ground unprepared for the formation of history as a ‘language-game’ which controls time and space in modern culture. In the architectural domain, while individual creativities by practising architects have shown signs of reinterpretation, written texts are relatively few and in looking back into history have fallen into the traps either of revivalism or of nostalgia. Compared to the work of Dabashi, which uses case studies and implicitly deconstructs grand-scale structures, the approach of this book is directly concerned with grand-scale narrations themselves. Although poststructural critiques of such macro-scale narrations have led to their rejection, emotional reaction has sometimes resulted in their re-appearance in different forms or contexts. Political contexts which entrench positions, and occasionally fundamentalism, as a reaction to supposedly post-identity culture have urged the cultural historian to re-investigate these structures. In addition, to investigate the nature of these grand-scale cultural narrations demands the same scale in approach; consequently the accounts in this book have a certain level of abstraction. In contrast to the concrete conclusions that can be reached in research through case studies, the intended conclusion here is to achieve a ‘self-referential’ consciousness of the narrations and frameworks through which Iranian culture is represented. Because of this, and taking into account postmodern critiques of modernism and structuralism, one crucial task of this book is to remain conscious of the risks inherent in this level of abstraction and grand-scale philosophising. In constructing this relative identity, the notion of difference plays a central role. Difference, as a tool for spatio-temporal categorisation, can be employed in two different contexts: either between cultures, i.e. between whatever is considered as the spatial quasi-enclosure of a culture; or, as it is in this book, as a tool to designate categories and formal differences in

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the interior space of Iranian culture. In the former context, ‘difference’ has the potential to become a basis for the supposition of intrinsic cultural differences divided in distinct geographical zones, which, like colonial history operates on a power-based bias. By rejecting spatially defined cultural zones, as in the Derridean notion of trace, this notion of difference finds no ground for application. Notably, however, just as much as the clashes this notion of difference creates are problematic and must be avoided, so too the homogenising of the so-called global space due to the undermining of its differences is equally problematic. Nevertheless, the notion of difference can be used as a conceptual apparatus in the Iranian context to create lines of categorisation in a history which is lacking form. Like Foucault’s epistemic division of history, this notion has the potential to create an alternative which challenges the monotonous history of the essentialists, as well as formless history, as is the Iranian case. Before discussing the exact notion of difference as it is employed in this research, it must be stated that relativity, as crucial as it is in cultural definition, as Bhabha notes, cannot claim total hold in cultural definition.9 Cultural orbits create the illusion of an enclosed space for their members, that is to say, rather than encouraging comparison with exterior elements, they are produced by the interconnection of the assumed interior elements irreducible to the variation of a universal category. Although this interior– exterior division itself is a power-based division and reductionist in nature, it is a sociopolitical reality in the production of meaning. Sharing the same history and the enhanced idea of belonging together while separated from others by means of power, these are intertextual bases in the production of meaning which stand exteriorly outside relative definition. Difference in its extreme form falls into binary oppositions. While I considered the consequences of choosing dualism as the basis of differentiation, as a form of differentiation which might overwhelm small differences, dualism nevertheless, was chosen as the pattern by which to conduct this research. In order to overcome the problems it faces, concerns must be addressed. Postmodernism and postcolonialism both criticise dualism from different viewpoints. Postmodernism began with Derrida’s deconstructive criticism of dual differentiation in Western thought and his subsequent criticism of structuralism and its semiotics, and postcolonialism is critical of a power-based division between coloniser and colonised, between the master narrations and the others. While accepting the legitimacy of these critiques, the central issue here is what benefits derive from employing dualism in an architectural historiography of Iran, and how dualism can be used while remaining within the commonly accepted arguments of

Introduction

7

postmodernism and postcolonialism. Dualism, even though it can be a tool for a power-based division between uneven categories and the mainstream through which minor differences are undermined, can be useful as a channel to localise and structuralise ideas, by virtue of its Manichaean clarity (not necessarily between negative and positive oppositions but rather in its potential to facilitate clear differentiation between two relative identities). Yet dualism is not a concept newly introduced into modern Iranian cultural definitions. Divisions between traditional and modern, Iranian and Western, or Islamic and Iranian have long sustained common frameworks of differentiations. While different notions of dualism are intrinsically problematic, their ‘strategic’ use within this book is intended to break the spatial division these established forms of dualism employ. Focusing on their temporal basis as situational categories makes it possible to blur the lines of division between them in order to open the field to alternative classifications. There is, however, little point in deconstructing these already formed dualisms if the proposed alternatives also create new geocultural spatial divisions. In order to avoid this problem, the new dualism must not be formed between cultures with supposed defined zones. In other words, it must avoid any essential interiority. Importantly, while it might position lines of division as the border between defined spaces, the suggested dualism must work simultaneously as concurrent epistemic divisions within culture. Similar to the thesis and antithesis of Hegelian dialectic, this process introduces a tension which not only deconstructs the illusion of homogeneity but also, as existential differentiations, bridges history and its contemporary context. It proposes this as the first step in the construction of Iranian history built not on mere reproduction of pseudo-platonic ideas or timeless codes and images, but from forms and patterns chosen by cultural agencies in order to form their physical environment. Postmodern theories were mainly developed to challenge mainstream structuralism. Regardless of their nature, it is the tension they have introduced to crystallised ideas, structures and institutions which generates conceptual dynamism. It is the divergence between avant-garde and conservative intentions – that is to say between structural and deconstructive tendencies – which approves the simultaneous presence of both, and does not reject one in favour of the other. In the Iranian context, however, despite the popularity of contemporary French theories, these ideas lose their dialectical values due to weakness or the absence of established structural approaches. In this context, postmodern deconstructive methods are interpreted as destructive and anarchic and rejecting of any constructive attempts. The critiques of power-based spatial and organisational structures

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must not reject the totality of spatial divisions as the tool of regulating social time and space. This emphasis on structural approaches does not support a defined chronology between schools of thought – that is, that postmodernism must come after established modernism, or poststructuralism after structuralism. Nevertheless, from a pragmatic viewpoint the universal application of ideas in different contexts under the name of Zeitgeist or any other title undermines the particularities of each context. As much as the architectural historiography of Iran faces the challenge of deconstructing problematic narrations, it must also try to construct common structures as the site of collective debates. One strategy by which to suggest dualisms is to insist on the necessity of cultural narrations. The postmodern sentiment against transcendental categories as means of power ignores the greater danger that other power clusters could exploit this vague void deprived of any common structure. The research presented in the following pages should not be seen as oldfashioned in the age of micro-history, for these, even if not problematic, are no longer practical. It is noteworthy that the simplicity of fundamentalism or any other essentialist rigidity is appropriate to adopt in those contexts where differences could not spatially and institutionally take root. The dualisms represented here are kinds of alternative spatial divisions, and they are also in themselves temporal notions. In this sense, this book, in spite of dealing with abstract mega-narrations in architectural debates, does not try to propose any different form as a final answer. One of the most controversial uses of dualism as a tool for investigating the nature of the architectural history of Iran arises from the standpoint of postcolonialism. Alongside feminist critiques, one of the major themes of postcolonial studies, from Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism based on the Foucaultian notion of power to later works of Bhabha and Spivak, has been to show a power-based division of dual structures in society. The use of dualism in spite of such critiques requires a consciousness of the consequential dangers of its employment and of strategies to avoid them. Occasionally, postcolonial studies falls into a kind of academic idealism and tries to erase these unjust divisions, while neglecting the existing powers active in the formation of other sociopolitical divisions. As an ideal, it should stay within the horizons of efforts for a more ‘just’ world – not unlike Marxism – but a more realistic option is to find tools for conducting the streams of power rather than erasing them. For the societies of the contemporary global map, the supposed division of those ‘who are’ and ‘who are not’ is transforming into those ‘who can’ and ‘who cannot’; and dualism, as a suitable tool for localising ideas and conducting differences, is

Introduction

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a medium to keep those ‘who cannot’ on the map. While the ideals of new world orders seem promising, the uneven distribution of their ideals does not face up to reality, and transforms the differences into invisibles. In the context of the invisibility of those ‘who cannot’, a context in which differences are simply ignored, the representation of already existing divisions is a case of a moral choice. Nevertheless, to avoid the subsequent problem of establishing other forms of duality using it as a means of cultural division must be avoided. Rather than the assumed geocultural positioning of dual differences, dualism should target the form and meaning of differences themselves as the simultaneous factors inside cultural phenomena, here the architectural history of Iran. Instead of being a voice inside western academia which emphasises the moral responsibility of the master towards others, the reconstruction of dualism permits the other to attain identity consciousness and self-referentiality. The formless and identity-less other, as an exterior, is made evident through negativity in comparison to master narrations. The same has been true of Iranian architecture, an architecture without historiography and established theories whose modern articulation as discipline has been formed relatively, mainly as a negative differentiation from European architecture. The chosen dual differentiations employed in this book aim to transform existing dualisms, for instance Islamic/un-Islamic, Iranian/European, inside/outside, and to show them as simultaneously present forces in the Iranian context. In other words, the first step must be to deconstruct the spatial and historical positioning of the dual comparisons and then apply them to Iranian architectural history, in order to prepare the ground for its conceptual construction. Why have poststructural theories been chosen as the framework for an analysis of the notion of difference? There are alternatives, for example, feminist or Marxist studies with their established disciplines in cultural studies, the Ibn Khaldūn social division, or, with their more ontological and general divisions, the Heideggerian difference between Being and beings or Nietzsche’s Dionysian and Apollonian division. The political and specific directions of the first two represent radical steps which distance my investigation from its main target of a semi-philosophical examination of the nature and forms of difference in Iranian history and architectural historiography. The opposition which potentially arises from these notions may undermine the fundamental question of difference, which functions as the basis for further politically involved subjects of this sort. The Ibn Khaldūnian flux and influx between two models of society has been used,10 but not as a direct referential framework. Heidegger’s and Nietzsche’s notions of difference, in

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spite of the strong presence of the former in post-revolutionary Iran,11 and of the latter as a strong thematic division in classical Iranian literature,12 do not direct references to social and historical analysis due to their mainly ontological directions. The interconnection between poststructural and structural theories, as in the case of Foucault and Deleuze, who are used in this research, provides an opportunity to move between deconstructive and constructive intentions and to use poststructural theories to break the established spatial division, while simultaneously using them to form alternative categories. The seemingly eclectic structure of this book, moving between poststructural and structural theories and contemporary and Iranian classical literature, is, in itself, a strategy to challenge the established disciplines to permit alternative views. This book, rather than an exclusive debate on architecture, is a discussion through architecture. Architecture, arguably the most social art, is the major medium through which human beings make the surrounding world meaningful. Historical buildings, those which have punctuated the ever-changing course of contemporary cities, bring history from the pages of the history books to public visibility. In this sense, to talk about architectural history is not to talk about one subject among others but about the representation of culture set in its contemporary being. To objectify architecture as an isolated discipline would eliminate it as the site of broader debates. Nevertheless, this claim does not reject established art historical disciplines. While my aim is to use the notion of difference to look at Iranian architecture and architectural historiography, my broader intent is to analyse how Iranians have constructed their self-representation and understanding through history. Architecture is a channel to achieve this vision. The book is divided into two sections. First, chapters 1 and 2 attempt to rearticulate the attributions of ‘Islamic’ and ‘Iranian’. These being the two main semantic referential frameworks – witness the commonly used term, ‘Islamic Iranian architecture’ – the first stage in this investigation is to reconstruct these frameworks as the basis for forthcoming analyses. The majority of the commonly accepted, but monotonic, narrations of these two terms do not open the field for discussion of the notion of difference in an Islamic Iranian context. Second, chapters 3, 4 and 5 deal directly with the notion of difference as a conceptual apparatus in Iranian architectural history. In chapter 3 the social space and the mosque – as a central space – are viewed through the dual categorisations of governmental and independent social body, central order and anarchy, organisation and community. As in other chapters, the duality between chess and backgammon is used as a medium for conceptual comparison. Chapter 4 considers Foucault’s epistemic

Introduction

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division of history, with its focus on dual division, as a means to restructure Iranian architectural history. While this chapter aims to reconstruct epistemic categories, Chapter 5 uses the Deleuzean notion of difference to try to explain the forms of connection between particulars and supposed general frameworks. Looking at the architectural history of Iran from these two perspective generates first a process of de-construction and then of reconstruction and eventually arrives at new models of interpretation. The modern constructed notion of ‘Islamic’ as an attribution, a process which transforms Islam from unconsciously conducting the patterns of society to an Islam as a defined narration, reflects a subjective position while trying to play the role of an objective belief system. This paradoxical situation, which arises from the difficult task of carrying Islam into a transparent space of laws and regulations, highlights the fact that the homogenous space of a singular narration cannot re-articulate Islam anew. This unavoidable pluralism, although not easily acceptable, is the only possible way of translating Islam from a heterogeneous but consensual society to an individually based, organisationally structured new society. The goal of Chapter 1 is to discuss these consequences. The chapter’s first section discusses the main themes and phenomena that constitute the notion of Islam. The second section seeks to clarify the modes of connection of so-called Islamic art to these different notions, and in conclusion a critique of three different groups who give a singular narration of this attribution is revisited. The last section considers the mosque and asks this question: ‘In what manner is the mosque as a major Islamic structure and institution Islamic?’ Chapter 2 focuses on the forms of narration upon which the notion of Persianate or Iranism is based. In the first part, the argument deals with the relationship between notions of Iran and Islam and then the idea of Iran as land or people in the three different major phases of the Islamic era. The remainder of the chapter investigates the commonly accepted timebased narrations of Persian architecture. The aim is to alternate the enclosed space of time-narrated identities with a spatial one and to give Persianate or Iranism a broader meaning. In this spatial view, Iranism is articulated as a particular pattern of regulating time and space rather than solely through ethnic origins, continuity or heritagism. While this form of narration loses certain particularities that can be achieved in time-based narration since this space narration can be claimed as a common pattern of many closed cultures unable to draw clear borders of distinction, it uproots national concerns from heritage and replants them as patterns of dealing with the surrounding world which transcend historical limits. Here for the first time,

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dualism is used to break the monotonous line of enclosed narration and to reconstruct different forms through a comparison between images of chess and backgammon. Two extreme and abstract views summarise the different views of social history and public space in Iranian Islamic cities. On the one hand, there are those who see a central power as confronting a formless mass of its subjects. On the other, there are those who present a community-based public without links to a central organisation in different forms of lineage groups. Chapter 3 sets out these dual and opposite – though simplistic – views as the basis by which to investigate the nature of public space in Islamic Iranian cities. As the basis of analysis, the possible third option which emerges from these two opposite views is an appropriate ground on which to build a formal/social classification of Iranian mosques. This classification is not a morphological study but an effort to break the singular images and interpretations of Iranian mosques and to prepare the ground for an alternative categorisation. Semantically, an architectural historiography of Iran falls into abstract categories which do not open the field for the notion of change as the basis for sociopolitical classifications. The course of history becomes the mere ground for the objectification of these untimely concepts. To prepare the ground for the application of any theory, the first step is to show that the space on which these theories are based is not as homogenous as is assumed. ‘Heterology’ is the key to showing how the simultaneous presence of oppositions builds the sociohistorical space of Islamic Iran. This is possible through the substitution of space for time as the medium of identity narration. In the next part, using the semiotics of Islamic Iranian art as an example, the aim is to show a particular way of talking about form and content in this context. In the last section, by using Foucault’s methodology of studying history in The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge, an epistemic spatial division of Iranian architectural history is suggested, in order to deconstruct the common notion of continuity in history and to create forms as the ground for application of theories. Importantly this step develops a spatiotemporal division, rather than constructs a mere tool for periodisation. Finally, Chapter 5 works as an antithesis to the previous chapter. While the emphasis of Chapter 4 was on a structural identity, this chapter focuses on particular identities inside general frameworks. The first section questions the notion of ‘style’ as an appropriate concept for constructing general frameworks for Iranian art and architecture. Through this questioning the aim is to understand the meaning of particularity in this context. The next section – on the formal language of Iranian architecture – examines these

Introduction

13

ideas in practice. In parallel to other chapters which employ a duality, Deleuze and Guattari’s differentiation between nomos and polis (between war machine and state apparatus) is used to conceptualise alternative notions of individuality, structure, time, space and regulation. Through comparison with other types of Iranian art like music, these notions are applied to Iranian architecture. Finally, these new frames of interpretation are applied to periodisation, regionalism and morphology as three main themes of architectural historiography. A Persian proverb says: ‘A madman throws a stone in a well which hundreds of wise men cannot take out.’ Its aim is to emphasise the consequences of an act of madness. But (mis)reading it in reverse the proverb tells a different story. If it is only the efforts of wise men which are seen positively, it is only an act of madness which can make them move and realise that there are stones and wells in the way. It is sometimes just such acts – mindless and childish from institutionalised points of view – which show us that our kings are naked. While this book’s eschewal of the common patterns of disciplines might appear to be an act of madness, I hope it has the potential to inspire or even prepare others to pursue the problems of studying a subject like Iranian art and architecture. If the questions posed by this book cause others to pause and consider its methodology then it has succeeded, for this act of stopping and (re)thinking is potentially the most satisfactory outcome.

Chapter 1 Isl am as an Attribution

Introduction Expressions like ‘Islamic houses’ or ‘Islamic textiles’ are examples of phrases broadly used in academic literature. The adjective ‘Islamic’ is attributed approximately to cultural materials in their entirety, not only to indicate the geopolitical connection of objects to an Islam-governed territory, past or present, but also as an attribution to Islam. What does Islam have to do with the ordinary materials of Muslims’ lives? In other words: ‘How are these Islamic materials Islamic?’ Islam, or ‘surrender into God’s will’,1 not only as a religion but as a way of life,2 requests the submission of human life to God’s will and theoretically covers every aspect of life. What does this supposed totalitarian inclusion bring to the material world of Islamic culture and how does it? Addressing this general question reveals the fundament that enables us to deal with the more specific question of why mosques in the Islamic world were built in the way they were. Islam knows itself as the last religion in the chain of Abrahamic religions, yet there are nonetheless peculiarities which give Islamic culture an incomparable position in cultural material studies. One of these is the position of visual images in Islam. Functionally, the unnecessary use of any particular object to perform Islamic rituals, and the aniconic attitude of Muslims3 empowered by Islam’s view of visual images, problematises the existence of any Islamic iconography. On the one hand, ‘Islamic tradition has not distinguished neatly between sacred and secular activities in general’;4 on the other, ‘the Islamic tradition has drawn an exclusively fine line between divine initiative and human effort … between visual imagery and transcendent reality to which they allude’.5 The attribution of ‘Islamic’ to visual materials is formed between these absolutisms of rejection and acceptance. Rather than being the direct application of Islamic doctrines to visual images, any

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‘Islamic’ attribution can only be applied through the investigation of the conducting principles Islam imposes through and on the everyday life of believers. From this point of view, the attribution of Islamic is contextual.6 Any approach to answering this question with regard to the adjective ‘Islamic’ has a dual direction. On the one hand, what is sought is an ‘Islamic yardstick’7 that defines positions from which to judge visual images in regard to what is within the borders of Islamic and what lies beyond. On the other hand, the attempt is to define the spatio-temporal conducting patterns of Islam and to examine the sociopolitical process by which these outlines are applied in reality. These approaches have positives and negatives. The first view stands outside the real world of Islam and has a theological standpoint. The other looks at on the religious role with a diagrammatic nature8 and suggests that Islamisation happens through a contextualisation, at the end of which the product is not necessarily Islamic. This is the matter of Islam as ‘the ought’ to be and the ‘is’.9 The first view positions an Islam outside history,10 while the other fails to establish a rigid core in the process of Islamisation, for as in reality the outlines that represent the borders of Islamic ideals can be potentially surpassed. Questioning the definition of Islamic attribution could simply lead to a subjective interpretation. On the one hand, the desire for a homogeneous entity of Islam, and on the other the plurality which real life breathed into historical Islam calls for an interpretation which includes both. Islam, like other religions of the world, ‘integrates a multiplicity into unity … to create a religious civilisation’.11 Nevertheless, here the aim is to show how these different views were legitimated, how these differences were lived alongside, and how they materialised in the formative process of Islamic conceptions. In searching for the islamic12 essence of the Islamic attribution, semantically, and from an art historical viewpoint as well, the issue of ‘what makes Islamic phenomena Islamic’ is fundamental, whether a Muslim seeks direction for her/his Islamic concerns or an art historian searches for a ‘formative Islam’. It is a basic request which should investigate the existence of a unitary character in the material cultures of the Islamic world primarily, and thereafter investigate if Islam has been a formative feature in this unification, and if possible how. These questions have different dimensions depending on the question’s intent, be they purely art historical approach which seeks the semantics of Islamic art, to personal, ethical and sociopolitical concerns. In spite of a personal interest, the aim of this book is to find nevertheless a positive point of judgement. As a first step, I outline the main blueprints of the Islamic worldview, that is, those which influence the formation of material culture, especially



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visual images. In the second part of this chapter, different characteristics of Islamic art as shaped by these different factors are investigated. The aim of this chapter is to show how visual images reach a valuable position in the Islamic system. Finally, the goal is to suggest an answer to the question, ‘In what sense are Iranian mosques Islamic?’ The Emergence of Islam Islam as a religion came into existence when the archangel Gabriel revealed God’s message to Muhammad, a 40-year-old man from the western lands of the Arabian Peninsula, praying in a cave in the mountains of Mecca. Gabriel ordered him to read: Muhammad was illiterate but Gabriel repeated: Read in the name of your Lord who created Who created man of a clot of blood. Read! Your Lord is the most beneficent, Who taught by pen, Taught Man what he knew not.13 These statements became the first verses of a body of text – the Qur’ān, the very word of God – which was revealed to Mohammad who afterwards ‘guided his life as the messenger (al-rasul) and Prophet (al-nabi) of Allah’.14 Mohammad did not immediately proclaim his message in public. Three years later he discussed his mission with a small group of his relatives. Soon after, the ‘Prophet preaching evoked strong opposition from Meccans,’15 which finally lead him to emigrate to Medina through an agreement with the Medinans. This journey, in ad 622, is the starting point of the Muslim calendar. The Prophet established the community of Muslims in Medina with himself as their leader. Mohammad was a businessman before his Prophecy, known as Amīn because of his honesty. He married Khadīje, whose caravan Mohammad was in charge of. Now in Medina, he was in charge of a fast growing community, and also the army commander in battles between them and the Meccans and other protesters. His residential complex became the centre of the community as well as the place to perform Islamic rituals, mainly salāt or praying.16 First a businessman, then a prophet and now a politician, Mohammad embodied his religiosity in his everyday life. Following the death of the Prophet, Abū Bakr, one of the closest companions of Prophet, was selected as the ‘Commander of the Faithful’ and after him ‘Omar, ‘Othmān and ‘Ali.17 These four Islamic rulers, known as ‘caliphs in the age of the Rāshidūn’, occupy an important place in the historical

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consciousness of Sunni Muslims: ‘theirs was a transitional age from a simple community established by the Prophet to a major religious tradition that constituted an empire’.18 A disagreement about the successor of the Prophet led to two different beliefs about who was the legitimate Governor of the Islamic state, represented by the Shī’ah and the Sunni. During the fourth Caliph and first Imam’s era, major sectarian conflicts started. Khārijites (literally ‘those who go out’) are the first sectarians in the history of Islam. The succession of the Umayyads and Abbasids as the Caliphates of the Islamic world drew the conception of Islamic government into crisis. Different sects gradually emerged, with different ideas about Islamic government arising from the injustices of the Umayyads toward non-Arab Muslims, and the criticisms of Abbasids in regard to Islamic principles. Before his demise, the Prophet stated in a Hadīth (one of the statements of the Prophet) that ‘I leave you two things and as long as you cling into them, you do not be misled’. These two things were the Qur’ān and his tradition,19 and this was the main motivation for Muslims to spend a great amount of energy in gathering the sources of tradition and attempting to derive the principles of Islam and the Islamic community from them. This movement became the starting point for the formation of Islamic law or Sharī’ah. Different methods of derivation lead to the emergence of different schools of law. By the nature of its rituals and with its focus on community, Islam has a strong social dimension. Its fate is not only self-salvation in the other world but also creation of a living community under God’s wishes. From early on, Islam introduced social organisation based on Islamic mores as an inevitable part of its ideals. Sharī’ah or Islamic law helped Muslims to apply the concepts of the Qur’ān and Sunnah (tradition) in the social context. In other words, Sharī’ah was the channel through which Islam as the religion became Islam as the culture. Under the Abbasid caliphate Islam experienced a flourishing of science and philosophy, as well as literature and historiography in addition to the religious sciences. Baghdad and Khorāsān became centres in which Greek philosophy, the mystical ideas of the Gnostics, Indian medical science and Persian governance interacted. Islam cultivated the seeds of another system of thought in its soil: Sufism. While the focus of Sharī’ah was to establish a social structure on the basis of Islam, the efforts of Sufism or Gnosticism (Irfān) was to form a personal relationship between believers as Seekers and God as Sought. With its dependent institutions Sufism also had a considerable influence on the social movements of the Muslim community.



Islam as an Attribution

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Islam, with its sociopolitical aims to establish a community according to its principles, with its mystical viewpoint which seeks an individual connection to God, and with its co-existence of different branches of knowledge which do not necessarily share similar viewpoints, shows a historical existence more than an ideal reality outside its context. If the real islam exists outside the history of Islam, the reality of Islam shows a historical being. Islamic Ideals and Realities As the Qur’ān describes, Islam is not a new message but the last in a chain of revelations and Muhammad is the last prophet, from Adam to Jesus. Islam considers itself not as a religion, but as the Religion or dīn al-fitrī, which is the very centre of different religions, especially Abrahamic ones. On this basis, this out-of-time concept of islam – different from Islam with capital ‘I’ – is the core of human religiosity. God is the ultimate reality – the Absolute – greater than any description (Allāh-u Akbar-u min al-Yūsaf). Everything else is created and relative, thus incomparable to His Almightiness. Tuhīd, or the idea of God’s unity, is the central concept of the Qur’ān, and its application in the belief and behaviour of Muslims makes it the backbone of Islam. It is an unforgivable sin to share this ‘Otherness’ with others. The confession of ‘There is no god but God’, and the acceptance of Muhammad as the messenger of God, is one of the five practical pillars of Islam,20 which is the key to membership of the Islamic community. Man is part of the created world: God chose him as His representative on earth, and breathed His soul into him. He taught him all His names, a gift presented only to human beings. God offered his trust (Amānah) to the heavens and earth, they refused it but Man accepted it.21 God asked, ‘Am I not your Lord?’22 and Man answered, ‘Yes, we testify.’23 This promise brought with it the responsibility of bearing God’s trust for all humanity which he or she must fulfil while he or she is on earth. Accordingly Man enters history in order to fulfil His promises. Man’s worldly life is a phase from God to God. This is the field where its fruit marks otherworldly destiny.24 God was like a hidden treasure and wanted to be known25 – the duty of Man – and this familiarity is achieved through knowledge, which is the affirmation of God’s unity. It is the confession that there is no reality besides God which is actualised only in practice. Ideally, nothing must fill the human’s heart other than God; this is Tuhīd. It is on this foundation that Islam as a religion comes to reality. The Qur’ān as the backbone and the Prophet’s Tradition or Sunnah as the flesh makes the body of the religion of Islam. Sharī’ah or Islamic law is no more than

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the application of the Qur’ān’s doctrines and the prototype of tradition into different times and places. It is the law which tries to build a community according to divine wishes. In this social spirit, mysticism emerged to establish first a direct relationship between Man and God and second to maintain the inner core of faith. Historical Islam is the battlefield of these ideals and the real world. The Qur’ān The Qur’ān, ‘from the Arabic root “qara’a” (to read), or “qarana” (to gather or collect)’,26 is both the core and very source of Islam, and diagrammatically, the provocative element of all Islamic phenomena. As Muslims believe in Mohammad as the seal of Prophecy, the Qur’ān is also considered as ‘God’s final revelation to man’.27 ‘The basic élan of the Qur’ān is moral’,28 and its social and economical implications follow this élan.29 Belief in the uncreatedness (qadīm)30 of the Qur’ān and its inimitability (‘ijāz, which implies the miracle of the Qur’ān), both in form and content, mean that in the Islamic world the Qur’ān is not only the medium by which to convey the divine message but also the very message itself. For many Muslims, the Qur’ān is totalitarian in that it covers all human affairs, and timeless in its message.31 The Qur’ān is divided into different chapters (114 sūrihs) and verses (āyāt; the plural form of ayah means ‘signs’, ‘indications’ and ‘wonders’).32 It is also composed of 30 parts (juz’) and 120 components (hizb). ‘The arrangement of Qur’ān is neither chronological nor thematic.’33 The sūrihs are divided into two groups, Meccan and Medinan, according to their revelation, which differ in theme and tone as well as in length. Āyāt also have different occasions of revelation, which is taken into account in the interpretations of the Qur’ān. In addition to their literal meanings, some of the ayāt have further connotations which cause them to be used in different contexts.34 Phenomenologically speaking, the Qur’ān assumes the same position as Christ in Christianity:35 The word of God in Islam is the Qur’ān; in Christianity it is Christ. The vehicle of the divine message in Christianity is the Virgin Mary; in Islam is the soul of the Prophet. The Prophet must be unlettered for the same reason that the Virgin Mary must be virgin. The human vehicle of a divine message must be pure and untainted.36 ‘The “objectivity” and the verbal character of the revelation’37 makes the Qur’ān more than a book for Muslims: it is the very word of God. This gives the Qur’ānic text a unique status in Islamic culture. Schuon writes:



Islam as an Attribution

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The supernatural character of this book does not lie only in its doctrinal content, its psychological and mystical truth and its transmuting magic, it appears equally in its most exterior efficacy, in the miracle of the expansion of Islam; the effect of Quran in space and time bear no relation to the mere literary impression which the written words themselves can give to a profane reader.38 Commentary on the Qur’ān was the most honourable act a Muslim could possibly undertake. According to belief the Qur’ān has external and internal dimensions,39 where different layers of understanding achieve different layers of meaning. The division of the āyāt of the Qur’ān into Categorial (Muhkamāt) on one hand, and Allegorical (Mutashābihāt) on the other, also inspired Muslims to reach for the essence of God’s message.40 This drive to understanding the essence of the Qur’ān led into different schools of thought, from the letterist (Hurūfīyyih) movement, which interprets letters as esoteric signs, to the mystics, who introduced new dimensions in Islamic ideas. However, in the formation of some of these ideas, the Qur’ān was not the only element but also a site for the application of various conceptions. The crucial position of the Qur’ān has led to it being the subject of much superstition. Passing under the Qur’ān before travelling, positioning it on gates,41 and making a talisman or necklace of parts or the whole of the Qur’ān, are common in traditional Islamic societies.42 In funeral ceremonies the Qur’ān is variously used to bless the soul of the dead by recital or is written on the fabric which covers the corpse. In addition, the different levels of value and meaning attributed to some sūrihs and āyāt make them appropriate for different occasions and places. For instance the āyāt known as the ‘Throne Verse’ or ‘Va in Yakād’ appears in a variety of different media and locations.43 The Qur’ān also has an important formal presence in the formation of Islamic visual culture. The potential of Arabic alphabets to write differently but yet harmoniously,44 as well as the call to ornament Qur’ān manuscripts, has had a significant impact on the themes and positions of ornament in Islamic art. Ettinghausen posed the question, ‘Can it be said that an Islamic message is contained in the ubiquitous Arabic lettering?’45 Although he denies its content as essentially Islamic, the very form of Arabic lettering exemplified in the Qur’ān manuscripts has a focal position which contributes to the atmosphere of Islamic visual culture. Due to the Qur’ān, ‘sacredness became a characteristic element in writing’.46 Hence the role of inscriptions in Islamic architecture resembles that of statues of Christ and the Saints in Christian architecture.47 Significantly, the ‘compositional’

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and ‘aesthetic’ formulae of Islamic calligraphy, like the balance of blackness and whiteness (savād and bayāz) – comparable to form and background in Gestalt theory – as well as proportions and subjective metres like delicacy and fluidity are shared with other Islamic arts.48 The two-dimensional nature of Islamic ornaments and the symbolic meanings of ‘light’ and ‘colour’ in Islamic art49 cannot be unconnected to the forms and ideas that are found in the Qur’ān. In Islamic culture the recitation of the Qur’ān and music are closely connected although not in a direct relationship. This derived from the fact that for Muslims the ‘Qur’ān is not merely a book, it is an integral sensible experience’.50 The Sunnah and Sharī’ah God is the sole legislator.51 For Muslims throughout the centuries, to live by divine wish was as important as the quest for other-worldly salvation. God is ‘the ordainer whose will is law’,52 and who ‘should provide the blueprint of Muslim society’.53 The practical goal of the Qur’ān is also ‘creating a morally good and just society’.54 During his life, the Prophet was the sole religious and political guide for Muslims.55 As the model, his life alongside the message of the Qur’ān constituted the formative and enduring foundation of faith and belief.56 Indeed, God introduced Mohammad as the perfect prototype of a Muslim life.57 In his farewell speech, in addition to the Qur’ān, the Prophet introduced ‘his Sunna’ as guidance for Muslims.58 Henceforth, to grasp ‘the Prophet’s own word and action’59 or Sunnah became the Muslim ideal. Sunnah, literally meaning the ‘trodden path’,60 was already known between Arabs. Watt claimed that The attitude of clinging to the past and of following exactly all past precedents was deeply rooted in the Arabs. Probably without such an attitude men would have had insufficient confidence to meet the hardships and accidents of desert life. They thought of this as following the sunna.61 But is ‘imitatio Muhammad’62 simply a continuation of local customs, or does it originate in the necessity of a practical model in addition to the word of God? One should keep in mind here that the Sunnah of the Prophet is considered by Muslims as the actual interpretation of the Qur’ān in reality.63 After the Prophet’s death, ‘the Sunna was subsequently materially expanded to include the precedents of the first four Caliphs’.64 However, the expansion of Islam was accompanied by controversial problems the



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answers to which could not be found in the Qur’ān or Sunnah.65 Based on the Qur’ān and Hadīth,66 Islamic law or Sharī’ah emerged in order to apply the divine will to every situation in real life.67 Sharī’ah literally means ‘the path to the watering place’,68 or ‘broad path, the highway’,69 and can be interpreted as the application of God’s will, as it was expressed in the Qur’ān and Hadīth, to the changing situations of everyday life in an Islamic society. The expression ‘the Right Path’ (Sirāt al-Mustaqīm) conveys the same sense, for Sharī’ah can be seen as ‘the map for this worldly journey’.70 As such, creativity and changeability are Sharī’ah peculiarities which nonetheless operate in such a way as to adjust different situations to the Law and not the Law to different situations. Due to the integrative nature of Sharī’ah, while it hardly affects Muslim identification with Islam, no end of changes may occur.71 Alongside the Qur’ān and Sunnah, analogy (qiyās) and community consensus (ijmā’ or communal conformity) were employed as the sources of Sharī’ah to ensure the up-to-date application of God’s commands.72 In doing so, Sharī’ah ‘moves Islam from the realm of ideas and values to the realm of the social realities of an Islamic community’.73 After the institutionalisation of the different schools of Sunni Islam, paralleled as it was in many cases by governmental control, Sharī’ah lost its inner creativity. The closure of the gates of ijtihād, as channels for renewal of Islamic codes in time and space, ossified Sharī’ah as a body of knowledge disconnected from the reality of Muslim life. In the beginning ijmā’ was a vehicle of creativity; later, however, it slowed the process of change.74 ‘The gradual drifting-away of canon law from operational effectiveness … fortified the catholicity of the Muslim institution.’75 Worthy of consideration here is the normativeness of Islamic Sunnah as its integral characteristic.76 In reference to Arab conception of Sunnah Rahman claims that this has two constituents: (a) an (alleged) historical fact of conduct and (b) its normativeness for the succeeding generations.77 This attitude also became established in the conception of the Islamic Sunnah: ‘The opposite of Sunna, “custom”, is bid’ah, “innovation”, and it is the introduction of bid’ah which was seen as a great danger for the stability of the community.’78 The attribution of ‘traditional’ suggests two different interpretations of Sunnah and its presence in Islamic society. In one, the focus is on the referentiality of tradition. In this sense, a phenomenon is traditional if it reproduces

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Sunnah, either in form or content, and is conscious of both the reference and the act of referring. In the other, since the phenomenon is different in time and place, tradition is a diagrammatic blueprint which transcends the present reality. In the former case tradition works referentially; in the latter it is contextual and based on the interconnection of elements in the present system. The overlapping of the concepts of ‘shar’’ (the root of the word Sharī’ah) and ‘Orf’ (custom which does not necessarily have religious root) shows the liquid presence of Sunnah in the codification of Muslim life. In this social context, ‘traditional’ can be potentially all phenomena which are inherited from earlier generations. Ijma’ plays a central role in recognising tradition and its authentic body. With regard to social consensus, the term ‘traditional’ has a strong religious dimension and is a social entity which is in continual self-renewal due to interaction with the outside. This is further clarified with the help of a definition of ijma’. Nasr knows two conditions for ijma’: (a) if ‘the Quran and hadīth have not clarified a certain aspect of the Law’ (b) ‘it is a gradual process through which the community over a period of time comes to give its consensus over a question of law’.79 Consensus is reached over a period of time which is the time required for the adjustment of an outer situation to the ‘Islamic’ body. This indicates the procedural nature of Islamisation, based both on a time process and a social structure as an active agent for its actualisation. Again this focuses on the contextual nature of Islamic connotations. In the next part, the nature of this social structure is investigated. The Ummah: Islamic Community The establishment of the Islamic community or umma muhammadiyya80 was an inseparable counterpart to Islam, not only as its political request but also as part of the Islamic manifesto: ‘By accentuating indispensability of the community to the fulfilment of some of the basic obligations of the individual Muslim, Islam stressed the necessity of political organisation.’81 The Prophet‘s community in Medina reflects this fact. The Prophet intimated the importance of the Ummah when he stated: ‘my community will never agree on an error’.82 The immediate implication of this statement might be that ‘the community as a whole inherits the Prophet’s wisdom’.83 Under this assumption, we must ask how a collective consciousness on religious matters emerges. However this question is answered, what is significant is the social structure upon and process by



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which agreement on a legal question is formed. Theoretically, the Islamic community becomes the medium which transforms input into Islamic phenomena. To understand the nature of this medium it is necessary to investigate the process of community membership, the nature of salāt (namāz in Persian) and finally the ‘social self ’ which Islam introduces as the component of its social body. The Islamic community does not work exclusively. The Ummah makes no particular call for membership. This implies that nobody is excluded from the social life of the Islamic community simply by his or her failure to accomplish any Islamic matter.84 In other words, any process of ‘becoming’ a Muslim par excellence does not happen before but rather after membership in the community. Schimmel notes that ‘[t]he concept of inclusiveness within the community of Islam was to have far-reaching consequences for the subsequent development of Islamic society’.85 Consequently, Islamisation, from an individual viewpoint, translates to a process of becoming. The structures and institutions of Islamic society prepare the ground to make this happen. Islam makes this possible by breaking the distinction between religiosity and normal life. If we describe sacred time and place as a distinctive zone separate from the profane outside, Islam lacks this sacred zone. Where nothing is sacred, everything transcends to a level of religiosity and dayto-day life becomes the foundation for religion. Religiosity is not exclusive of the profane matters of worldly life, but rather, by attaching moral and ontological ideals to the current course of life, the Islamic community is the incarnate body of this concept of religiosity. The mosque reflects this in its position and function. ‘The heart of Islam is the salāt, which means “public worship” rather than what the word “prayers” usually connotes in English.’86 The constraints of time and place imposed by either five or three daily periods of prayer create a blueprint for social structure. The need to travel the distance between a residence and the mosque several times each day creates spatial restrictions which are a main reason for the segmentation of Islamic cities into the residential quarters known as Mahallah. Theoretically, it is the congregational prayer on Friday which creates a collective image of the city. In its centrality the Jāme’ mosque presents a different image. Quarter mosques are the gathering place for a semi-closed community formed in the course of time due to repetitive daily use and their scale, while Jāme’ is the gathering time of individuals under the abstract religious identity of Muslims and servants of God. In both cases, the mosque functions not only as a religious centre in its restricted sense but also a public place.

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Just as the notion of community as the sole explanation for Ummah must be rejected, so too is the notion of individual problematic, as the definition of a member of Islamic society. A combination of moral codes and ontological doctrines on the individual scale, as well as spatio-temporal controlling patterns of society – in the legal forms of Shar’ and ‘Orf – form the Muslim notion of the ‘social self ’. If Islamic Ummah receives any wisdom through consensus, it is through the spatial permanency created by this social self and the social body of Ummah. Spatial permanency is the medium by which ideas of stability are combined with the slow process of change, which can otherwise only be maintained through dogmas that ossify any active connections to current patterns of life. The form of this social body is investigated in Chapter 3. In its broad meaning, if tradition maintains the Islamic doctrines in reality, it is the Islamic Ummah which through its social structure preserves the tradition in the collective mind and practice of Muslims. It is significant that the forms of Islam which operate in the public space of Islamic community through Sharī’ah or social mores are different from those of other forms of Islam such as Sufism which seeks a subjective connection to God.87 Islamic Mysticism An inner–outer dichotomy is buried in the revealed message of Islam. On one side is the objective ethos of tradition and spatial stronghold of Islamic law and on the other is the belief in the eternal message of Islam. Together they portray a twofold reality, which does not show an Islam with an indispensable association between its two sides. Additionally, the Qur’ān – the Word descended in human language – shows an exoteric and esoteric duality and an outward and inward dimension. In this context, the goals of Islamic mysticism are to gain an insight into the inner message of Islam and to function socially as a counterbalance to and as an integral critic of legal and theological Islam’s stronghold.88 The quest for a personal connection to God, in contrast to the social privileges of Islamic Sharī’ah and Islamic rituals, can be seen as having cultivated the seeds of mysticism in the soil of Islamic culture. Although a single definition of Islamic mysticism or Sufism89 is impossible, it is essentially based on the need for a direct connection to God, without denying the insistence of Sharī’ah that there must be a distinction between God’s domain and Man’s. Rather than theories which attribute Sufism to the outer influence of other major traditions on Islam, Sufism can be interpreted as the product of Islam, ‘as the mystical movement of an uncompromising Monotheism’.90



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The Qur’ān is seen as the core of Islamic mysticism and the Prophet himself as the origin of Sufism:91 ‘Man as God’s perfect work, as the Caliph of God on earth, was entrusted with the amānah, the “trust” (33: 72) that Heaven and earth refused to carry’;92 ‘[T]aking as his point of departure the pre-eternal covenant sworn by man with God … he views the entire course of history as the quest of man to fulfil that covenant and return to the state in which he was before he was.’93 For Sufis, the goal of education is the ‘Perfect Man’,94 ‘the perfect mirror of god’95 of which Mohammad is the perfect model. Sufism has been the source of many controversial ideas within Islam. Concepts like Logos, the unity of Being (Vahdat al-Vujūd or pantheism), and union with God are among ideas which have sounded in the ears of orthodoxy. From a social standpoint, the semi-monastic institutions of Khāniqāh were against Islam’s social manifesto.96 And finally, in their educational system, the supremacy of the pīr or master and complete trust in him, or the controversial idea of qotb or pole, introduces a notion of mediation between the pupil and God, an idea that undermines the direct relationship of Muslims to God. Together, the existence of these ideas would be impossible if mysticism were not limited to elites or kept secret through limited administration. Islamic mysticism does not show uniformity in its ideas and structures. It can be broadly classified into two groups: the ‘Sufism of love’, and the ‘Sufism of Gnosticism’97 or ascetic and theosophical Sufism.98 While the complicated ideas and language of theosophy restricted mysticism to an elite circle, the poetical language of ascetics integrated a sort of romance into it and encouraged a mass attraction. Chronologically, the great individual characters of early mysticism stand in contrast with later institutionalised Sufism. Sufism played a considerable social role in the history of Islam. The Khāniqāh and Ribāt of Sufis should not be mistakenly interpreted as closed monasteries; in fact they are comparatively open and have a public presence. Sufism functioned socially as an inner critic of the dogmatism of legal and theological orthodoxy and encouraged a balance between the different perceptions of Islam. It was also an important factor in introducing social morality to the masses. In the moments of social crisis, Sufism was a refuge, both internally and externally from the harsh situations of outside. Finally, mystical Islam was a great critic of the institution of government and supported the masses while theologians and men of Sharī’ah stood at the governor’s side. Sufism nonetheless has created its own controversies. First and foremost has been its approach to absolute subjectivism,99 which has weakened the

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social dogma of mainstream Islam as the main factor in the production of a collective identity. Arguably, ‘By the end of the 4th century A.H., Sufism had become a fairly rigid and definable way of life’100 and lost its creativity and the freshness of its early phase. Psychologically, later Sufism was responsible for the weakened morality of society since it became a refuge and escape from social and religious duties.101 Solitude, pessimism and anti-rational attitudes spread through late popular Sufism, and are seen as being among the main reasons for the exhausting of productivity in Islamic thought. Islamic Sects: the Shī’ah and the Sunni ‘Sunnism and Shī’ism are both orthodox interpretations of Islamic revelation contained providentially within Islam in order to enable it to integrate people of different psychological constitutions into itself.’102 While the Sunni designate themselves as ‘the people of tradition and the consensus of opinion’,103 Shī’ah literally means ‘partisan or follower’104 and refers to those who consider the Prophet’s succession to be inside his family.105 The Shī’ah believe on his farewell pilgrimage, in a place named ‘Ghadīr-i Khumm’106 the prophet chose ‘Alī as his successor and the first Imam. This is the starting point of the distinction between Shī’ah and Sunni. The Shī’ah and Sunni share the same ideas of the centrality of the Qur’ān and the Prophet’s Tradition on the basis of the core concept of God’s unity. Indeed the solid divisions of the later centuries are not discernible in the early phases of Islam. While at particular moments in history tendencies toward one of these schools have existed among specific peoples, it would not be true to propose geographical or national divisions between Shī’ah and Sunnism. To proclaim Shī’ism as a political manifesto of response by the Persian soul to Islam would be reductionism.107 The doctrine of the Imamate is the distinguishing feature of Shī’ah doctrine. It believes that the ‘Prophet has transmitted everything he obtained from God to his spiritual successors (awsaya)’108 and it is they who ‘possess the hidden, esoteric (bātin) knowledge of the Qur’ānic verses’:109 ‘According to Shī’ah, the continuity of the Muhammadan mission was ordained to be preserved through the Imamate.’110 The infallibility of the Imam guarantees the righteousness of his knowledge. Tradition passes through him which makes complete obedience to him trustworthy.111 Without transgressing the Islamic border of God’s unity, the Shī’ah concept of the Imam as the Perfect Man opens the room for a kind of hierarchical cosmology in Islam. The exoteric and esoteric division in Islam, and the position of the Prophet and Imams as its beholders, have led Shī’ah doctrine to accept a vertical line of graded beings. The ground of cosmology in



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mystical Islam is based on a combination of the ideas of Logos or ‘Haqīqat Muhammadiyya’; Imam and Walī (Walī literally means ‘friend’ but also in different readings means ‘representative’; it refers both to Imam and a Sufi rank); and a graded cosmology like the one represented in ishrāq philosophy. In addition to the legal and theological differences between the Sunni and Shī’ah, it is also their sociopolitical directions which differentiate them: ‘The most outstanding feature of Shī’ism is an attitude of mind which refuses to admit that majority opinion is necessarily true or right, and – which is its converse – a rationalised defence of the moral excellence of an embattled minority.’112 In contrast to the Sunni ‘belief in the sanctity of the consensus (ijmā’) of the community’113 Shī’ism holds an individualistic view which prioritises the righteousness of persons. This naturally gives a different political viewpoint to Shī’ism. The political viewpoint of Shī’ism is twofold. Being primarily a minority fearful of the consequences of revealing their ideas explicitly, the Shī’ah have developed taqīyyah or the concept of ‘expedient dissimulation’.114 This in some ways, has led the Shī’ah towards a neutral attitude or ‘submissive acceptance of the status’.115 Yet the Shī’ah prototype of Imam Hussein’s reaction toward the unjust ruler, which contrasts with the Sunni legitimisation of any ruler for the sake of the community, gives a revolutionary character to political Shī’ism as ‘the religion of protest’.116 Another important trait of Shī’ah Islam during its history has been its desire to establish a religious institution distinct from governmental institutions, which nonetheless, is not comparable to the church in Christianity. In contrast to the concept of history in Sunni Islam, the millennial doctrine of Shī’ism introduces a mixture of hope and anticipation and creates a paradoxical mixture of active and negative sociopolitical attitudes. Shī’ah and Sunni are two sides of the same coin. Pragmatically, Shī’ism and Sufism play the same role in the institutionalised milieu of Sunni Islam. While Sunni Islam focuses on the application of tradition through Sharī’ah, it also needs Sufism as a negative critic to maintain its interpretative balance. In the same manner, Shī’ism necessarily deployed legal Islam when it became an institutional power. Shī’ite idealism could not function socially without the controlling regulations of Sharī’ah, while Sunni without the challenges posed by Shī’ism and Sufism would become a monotonous and dry theological voice. While the elitist doctrines of Shī’ah religiosity distance it from the masses, its literature, tragedy and martyrdom inspire public Shī’ites. Its distinctive Shī’ah rituals and reckoning of annual time give Shī’ism its distinct colour. A Shī’ah philosophy of art distinctive from the mainstream of Islamic art

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does not exist but nonetheless Shī’ism has a different perspective on art. It shows this in two ways: first, through its rituals in which drama and its associate arts receive an important position; and second in the domain of visual art, where Shī’ah introduces a more humanised version of holiness in which visual representations and iconography are more openly expressed. In architecture, Shī’ah holy shrines introduce a new concept of ‘sacred place’ to Islam. The Formation of Islam ‘Men now realise that what appear to be the objective statements may be affected in various ways by subjective interests.’117 In the realm of religion this is a controversial statement, for the objectivity of religious instruction is the first and main predominant reason for belief. Although this subjectivity does not cover the entire body of religion, the distinction between an objective core and subjective interpretations is, in itself, relatively subjective. Islam as a ‘truth’ revealed by God and Islam as a ‘historical being’ inspire the believer to find her or his way in life. Watt, in opposition to Ignaz Goldziher ‘in the first chapter of his muhammadanische studien, where he contrasts the muruwwah or “manliness” of the pre-Islamic Arab with the dīn or “religion” taught by the Qur’ān’, states that In general it would seem that the Qur’ān was not innovating in this respect but simply accepting the positions toward which the better elements in society were moving as a result of recent social changes.118 In some ways, even the reformations introduced by Islam may be interpreted as local, regional solutions, and the reformation itself, considered by many a universal claim, a regional feature. This possibly opposes the Prophet’s claim to universality, that is, ‘every Prophet was sent only to his own nation, but I have been sent to all mankind’.119 This view has led critics to judge many Islamic phenomena as the mirror of local interests. Watt states elsewhere that Muhammad’s community and state could be entirely explained on traditional Arab lines. The constitution of Medina depicts a federation of the clans, which was recognisably a federation even for the pagan nomadic Arab.120 In what ways then is an Islamic phenomenon, when not in its original context, Islamic? Does the idea of Islam outside the historical and regional



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context exist? These questions stand at a point of judgement between religious idealism and realism. The probable answer, if this is an answer at all, to the question of a balance between idealism and realism, is to transcend this dichotomy in the first place and to propose that there is no idealistic Islam – although there are ideals, like the reality of the Prophet Mohammad – and historical Islam is not considered Islam par excellence. A gap separates the ideal and the reality which can never be filled. While there are blueprints of what Islam should be in the Holy Qur’ān and Sunnah – an idea of Islam outside history – any actual images of Islam must be shaped with regard to the shortcomings and circumstantialities of reality.121 Searching for purity in the form of originality is absent in the reality of Islam. This situation exists also at the level of the individual: there is an ideal in the form of the Perfect Man – al-Insān al-Kāmil – but always there is an unsurpassable distance between this and the life of an individual. This paradox is a point from which we can look at historical Islam in the course of its formation. Historical Islam is the reality of Islam with all its peculiarities and deficiencies. Even the ideal form of Islam in the Prophet’s lifetime demonstrates the challenges of reality through conflicts, protests and wars, and represents nothing other than the inevitable conditions of reality. Accepting any form of historical Islam as the proper form is reductionist in attitude and idealistic in manner. At the moment of their definition ideals are no longer ideals. There is no way out of this paradox. Any forms of narration must be conscious of the nature of this reduction and the fact that any single narration carries the seeds of its negation inside itself. Islam and Cultural Material Islam, through the core concept of the Unity of God (Tuhīd), tries to establish the right path for this worldly life and salvation for the other through the revealed Word of God, with Mohammad as both messenger and interpreter of the message. The two watchtowers of the Qur’ān and Sunnah, alongside the real goals of a Perfect Man and a Godly community, were the backbones of historical Islam; realities which were idealised to transcend the reality of Man’s life and abstracted to construct timeless diagrammatic models in order to make the continuity of the normal life of Muslims possible. Together they are the fundament of Islamic phenomena. The expression ‘Islamic phenomena’ might indicate the supervision of cultural materials in their entirety by Islam, for Islam, ideally, leaves nothing outside its territory. It is important here, however, to ask ‘how all aspects of Islamic material culture can be structured by religion’.122 Such

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totalitarianism cannot apply unless one looks at Islam beyond a limited concept of religion in which religion deals only with the sacred realm of Man’s life and excludes what remains as a profane domain. This is brought into reality through (a) the graded nature of Islamisation after an inclusive membership which (b) gives a subjective dimension to the Islam that (c) sociohistorically forms a collective objectivity. Although the subjective/ individual and objective/social divisions are problematic in themselves, an emphasis on the sociohistoricity of collective consensus rejects Islam as a set of predefined dogmas only to be performed in the course of history. This definition bases the connection between Islam and its cultural materials on a different set of conventions. Islam did not transport any particular artistic style from its homeland;123 instead it tried to merge into its formative coverage the codes and materials of other established cultures. The absence of any direct Islamic manifesto about art and cultural materials suspends any direct ‘cause and effect’ or iconographic connection between them. This is in contrast to an apparently unified character perceptible in the material culture of the Islamic world. Different expressions are used to articulate this character, for example, ‘Islamic overlying’,124 ‘amorphous but distinctively Islamic taste’125 or ‘overriding and unifying characteristics’.126 Together they discern the presence of an indefinable Islamic layer covering the entire cultural material of the Islamic world. Indeed, von Grunebaum perceived ‘in many cases assimilation by means of arabisation of Byzantine or Sassanian governmental procedures and integration in the Muslim system by superimposition of an Islamic emblem or motto on the traditional techniques’.127 To verify the existence of this unity is not to acknowledge Islam, as a religion, exclusively as its source. If an objective commonality can be assumed to exist in Islamic art, it cannot be presumed that the cause of this unity is abstract Islam as faith beyond sociohistorical agencies. Recent academic studies have made different uses of this term questionable. In terms of origins, Islamic art owes its prototypes, be they visual or technical, to the classical world. Regional privileges undermine its generality by adding the adjectives Syrian, Persian or Turkish to it. Changes through time necessitate the use of early, mediaeval and modern. Rather than being alternative definitions that reject the adjective ‘Islamic’, instead these concepts emphasise the problems which face definitions of ‘Islam’ as an attribution of cultural materials. In addition to these seemingly objective differences, the prerequisites of modern narrations of Islam revive the notion of difference. When existent but not institutionalised differences that fall under the apparently



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homogenous umbrella of traditional Islam are transferred to the space of modern narrations, a pluralism which rejects a one-note unity is inevitably created. Lines of distinction appear where paradoxically differences used to exist in a single spatio-temporal unit. In these conditions, more than the inner space and structure of narrations, a conceptual consciousness is needed to articulate the space between these newly institutionalised differences. The connections which modern narrations attempt to tie between Islam as the conceptual origin and cultural materials as the outcome are also at issue. On one hand, due to its nature, neither an iconography nor ‘theory and practice’ or ‘origin and evolution’ connections can be made between Islam as source and cultural material as outcome. On the other, environmental, social or psychological explanations necessarily undermine any Islamic definition. Once again, rather than the creation of an Islamic iconography, the theoretical focus must be on the consequences of re-articulation of history through the modern narrations. In the following sections, different aspects of Islam and their influence on cultural materials are investigated. The contrasts between social Islam and the individual focus of Islamic mysticism, and between royal institution and theological Islam as extreme poles of religiosity, are the differences which break Islam as a homogenous conceptual category when attributed to cultural materials. Consequently, these multiplications create spaces between these definitions as a new phenomenon which demands theoretical attention. Social Islam and Art The core concern of Islam is individuals, their life and their salvation, and the so-called Islamic society is nothing less than the indispensable ground for the fulfilment of this ideal. More than a political entity, Ummah, as a social structure, seeks to prepare the ground for Islam’s ideals of justice and morality. As the concepts of consensus and sanctity of commune128 suggest, Islamic community is assumed to have a collective consciousness which transcends subjective decisions. The Islamic community guarantees the presence of Sunnah in the life of the individual. Sunnah or tradition covers individual weakness and it is the community which keeps tradition alive. From the traditional viewpoint, art is not an individual expression. Instead creativity acts through a channel which is refined by the collective mind of the community through time and the consensus of the society. As such, rather than directly connecting between Islamic ideals and cultural materials via individual agencies, the Islamicity of these products is judged by abstract social mores.

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Islam does not claim specificity for its visual images; instead, it is social Islam which directs the attitude of Muslims toward a collective concept of art and cultural materials. Here common attitudes (moral, aesthetic and spiritual) take Islamic art in specific directions. The tendencies toward abstract expressions, the types of art media, the forms and connotations of spirituality, and finally the venerated moralities of the creator are all those communally accepted as ‘righteous’ in Islamic society. In these ways, any so-called Islamic phenomena were attributed as such in the course of time rather than having rigid Islamic connotations. In other words, they are collectively accepted signs of Islamic meaning. This acceptance, however, does not suggest the passivity of Islam in the creation of cultural materials, since the supposed consciousness or wisdom existing in community consensus is regarded as a link to an ‘archetypal world as the source of all earthly forms’.129 In short, Islamic cultural materials are emptied of particularity and are regarded as the symbols, not signs, of a higher reality. The lack of direct explanatory system between Islam and its visual culture and the absence of institutional divisions between different social groups overlaps with religious and other sociopolitical actions. Bāqīyāt-i al-sālihāt or ‘good remains’ are public services created by individuals for the benefit of the community, for to do so is to became blessed. They are a way of gaining social rank and honour, and as such give Islamic cultural material a double value. The main factor which differentiates the Islamic version of this common social act is the lack of clear lines of division which semantically separate religiosity from other social acts. In the case of religious buildings, where iconographical references are absent, grand scale and luxury added to common formal and architectural elements are the only media for religious or spiritual expressions. The political demands of unification also imposed a strong collective image on Islamic cultural materials. From the Seljuks of Persia to the Ayyubids or the Ottomans, to spread a similar artistic manner had political significance, first, as the legitimisation of rule and second as the expression of the unity of the kingdom both for insiders and outsiders. Various factors operated in the production of collective images within Islamic cultural materials. First, Islamic ideals, reflected in the Prophet’s life and tradition in general, were the main source of homogeneity in the life of Muslims? Second, Islamic education and mosques, as the centres of social life, hegemonised particular images and sociocultural codes as proper models throughout the community. The monarchical institutions, too, had a political interest in the manifestation of unification, as did also the international institution of the bazaar, which technically spread and supported similar artistic patterns all over the Islamic world.130



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Islamic Mysticism and Art Islamic mysticism can be seen as a synthesis between the monistic view of Islamic theology, with its negative attitudes towards the materialistic world, and the reality of normal life, with its worldly desires. Islamic art, at the junction of these two perspectives, owes much of its legitimacy as well as its iconography – if Islamic icons exist at all – to mystical Islam. In different ways, Islamic mysticism broadened the semantics of art and cultural materials. Popular literature integrated a sort of romanticism into the spiritual views of Islam. The intellectual dimension of Islamic mysticism set up different cosmological and hierarchical systems which opened room for symbolic interpretations. And, finally, Sufism became associated with moral themes with particular spiritual connotations, themes that built some of the attitudes and spirit of Islamic art. The poetical dimension of Sufi literature, with its central theme of divine love, introduced different worldly ideas such as those of beauty, pleasure and many others into the religious context of Islam, albeit coloured deeply by spirituality. These romantic views were not a means to soften dry and harsh theological dogmas but rather a merging of all aspects of life into one single theme of divine life, providing, as it were, a ladder that led to a beloved beauty. Through this poetical mysticism, lyrics, royal luxuries and pleasures gained spiritual connotations. Islamic mysticism influenced Islam’s view of art and cultural materials differently. First and foremost it introduced and made possible the idea of representation in Islamic culture. In Islam, the fact of God as the sole source of meaning and simultaneously the absolute Other rejects any intermediate as particular signifier. In this context, Islamic mysticism introduced themes and ideas without building a concrete intermediate to this Otherness, to open a transcendental phase in which the idea of representation became possible. It had also had an open attitude toward the world. Thus arts like music and dance gained a foothold in Islamic culture. The last important feature in Islamic mysticism is the concept of ‘beauty’, first as the revealed sign of the unseen beloved and second as a medium between Man and ‘the Other’. Regardless of what is actually considered beautiful, this concept gives a remarkable approach to art which otherwise, in the Islam of theologians, is unnecessary and even misguiding in the path of God. The intellectual dimension of Islamic mysticism or theosophy bridged the space between Sharī’ah and Haqīqah (Truth). On the basis of Islam’s statement that ‘there is no god but God’, the Sufi doctrine of the Unity of Being (wahdat al-wojūd), without trying to establish a ‘substantial continuity between God and the world’,131 rejected another reality beside divine

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presence. In this context of both absolute rejection and acceptance, the whole world finds a spiritual dimension, since everything is Him. The cosmological pictures of the universe drawn by this school of thought establish a philosophy of nature which first positions the material world in its conceptual system and second introduces hierarchical concepts in which, for example, form is connected to the world of ideas through a vertical hierarchy. The Ishrāq school of philosophy with its focus on light and beauty is a good example of this. It is as an inevitable part of Islam rather than as a conditional by-product that Islamic art is formed in this atmosphere, the world between immanence and transcendence or ‘tashbīh and tanzīh’. From the dominance of geometry and ornament in Islamic art, to phenomena like light, colour, numerology and material, different aspects of Islamic art were interpreted under this light. However, it must not be forgotten that the icon in Islamic art, as a conscious reference in conveying specific messages, is absent. For instance, in Islamic visual art it is not single instances of ornamental patterns but only the concept of ornament itself that can be analysed mythologically.132 The collective notions of spiritual life and attitudes represented by Sufism differed across time and place. While for a dervish poverty and nomadicism are the signs of a divine life, in the eyes of theosophy endowment accompanied by self-denial (zohd) is the sign of spirituality. Both the Khayyāmic quasi-nihilism and ecstatic view of Hāfiz had their own spiritual connotations. Islamic mysticism, depending on its sociohistorical background, spread attitudes accepted as the path toward devoted divine life. Islamic art also shared these attitudes, commonly rooted as they were in the Islamic community. In this manner, Islamic art as inseparable from its social context had both a psychological and an ethical dimension. However, considering the sociology of the decaying of Islamic mysticism, with its excess focus on esoteric ideas which put the very core of Islamic theology in danger and its individualistic manner which undermined the social spirit of the Islamic community, any single direction in the semantics of Islamic art on the basis of mystical views also ignores the total picture of Islam. It is on the edges of social Islam and from the watchtower of theological Islam that Islamic mysticism found legitimacy. Islamic or Royal? The spontaneous spread of Islam across the belt of classical civilisations did not give it the time necessary to construct its own political theories, at least in terms of putting its ideals into practice.133 Conflicts about the legitimate successor to the Prophet did not set the ground for any clear political



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doctrine. Indeed the discourses of the different sects of Shī’ism are more about ‘who’ than ‘how’. The Sunni schools of Islam also took the position of legitimising every ruler for the sake of the Islamic community. Monarchy, on the basis of the simplified scheme of so-called oriental government, became an inevitable part of the Islamic reality, as the primary sponsor of high art today marked as Islamic. In the eyes of those who seek an Islamic core within Muslim art, monarchy and its by-products are in the most crisis. But to judge this institution as secular or un-Islamic is to create an interior and exterior line of division where it has never existed and with major consequences for the semantics of Islamic art. Both the acceptance and the rejection of Islamic monarchy and its associated materials as ‘Islamic’ are equally controversial. It might be more correct to judge the institution of kingship as being secular as a matter of degree rather than of essence. Kingship was not a separate island inside an Islamic territory. Indeed, as Imam Ghazzali noted, ‘Kingship and religion are twins … religion is the foundation of kingship and kingship the protector of religion.’134 Such statements reflect the process of Islamisation as it appeared through the moralisation of this institution as well as through a pragmatic emphasis on this institution as the defender of the faith. Later, under the influence of the Irano-Sassanian tradition, kingship even found divine legitimacy. The fact that court and religious institutions in Islam did not develop their own separate trends in cultural materials shows the wrongness of presuming there to be a spatial division between secular and religious in Islam. Royal and religious in many ways were integrated phenomena: where royalty showed degrees of spirituality, religion also used royal images in its social representations. In addition to the sociopolitical profit that the monarchical body gained by building (mostly religious) infrastructures, this was also a means by which government gained internal legitimacy and created powerful representations of itself to show the outside world. The power of monarchical government was directed for the advantage of community. Government also negatively influenced the construction of the images of divinity and spirituality. The picture of government as an evil force which has been formed in certain points of the history, particularly between Mongols and Safavids in the case of Iran, gave spirituality a new connotation by rejecting royal imagery. These negative attributes were not only a reaction to power institutions but also had some consequences for Islamic cultural materials. Above all they have led to the formation of two simultaneous sides both with Islamic connotations, poverty and luxury, humble and majestic, soil and gold. Nonetheless, two different trends do not necessarily mean two separate styles.

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Theological Islam and Art Theology, the rational viewpoint of faith, found its public language in Islam through Sharī’ah. What role if any has this theological view played in the formation of Islamic art? Two answers are possible: first, it was the controller which drew the boundaries; second, it was the regulator which defined the nature of art within those boundaries. The first applies in the case of controversial arts like dance and music and to some extent in relation to visual images in general.135 But it is the second situation which best reflects the presence of Islamic orthodoxy in the process of the creation of Islamic art. Islamic theological views were not scholastic matters separate from society. Each Muslim has a general understanding of Sharī’ah regarding different legal matters. What is more, the presence of religious schools in the commercial heart of Islamic cities and their close connection to the guilds as the creators of Islamic art has brought Sharī’ah to the fore in social attitudes towards art and cultural materials. Mosques and the very act of daily preaching are important factors which have maintained Islamic Sharī’ah’s role in public discourse. Yet there are other areas in which Islamic orthodoxy is either absent or has at least an indirect influence. At the court and in folk art, especially in regions like Iran where local factors other than Islam inspire the cultural minds of society, the supervision of orthodox Islam has been largely avoided in comparison. Additionally, an absence of narrative art and iconography, and the general view of Islamic orthodoxy as the negation of art, have limited the scope of Islamic orthodoxy as an active agent in the formation of cultural materials. Islamic jurisprudence did not build institutions separate from both state and community, and therefore the religious institution which sponsors its own art is absent in Islamic society. Thus, the ideas which regulate the creation of Islamic art come from the collective public view rather than through orthodox channels. Theological Islam functioned as both negative critic and watchtower and as such drew red lines rather than defined positively what art should be. It is not then surprising that the semantics of Islamic art have focused mainly on Islamic mysticism instead of theology in the formation of an Islamic theory of art. ‘Islam decidedly does not turn its back on mundane matters.’136 And just as Brown notes, Islam did not create a sacred zone by building a religious territory inside its domain, that is, Islam did not create transcendental time or space within a profane territory. Its goal is the Homo religio who bears a graded concept of religiosity, inclusive in membership, ontological at its core and moral in the social arena. Thus, if there is indeed an Islamic objectivity, it emerges thorough the interaction of a religious being with



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the material world and sociopolitical life. Islamisation is a process, and at the centre of this objectification by its surrounding conditions, there is an agent who builds his or her environment in chosen patterns. Ideas like ‘the notion of Islam as the religion of the desert, Islam as the religion of nomadic simplicity’137 are common attributions, which first fail to see agency behind the formation of Islamic cultural materials as mere by-products of the conditions, and second fail to picture a conceptual cause for its particular formations. Schools of Interpretation The new situation encountered by Islam and by Muslims in the age of modernism, the experience of colonialism, the decline of the Islamic states, and, most importantly, the need to face new notions of a modern subject, with its appeal to reconstruct a new world quite alien to the theological world of Islam, have raised the necessity of a conceptual consciousness which defines the relative standings of Islam. In transition from an applied Islam to an Islam conceptually reconstructed to be able to take and hold positions in regard to the challenges of the new world, Islam must decentralise itself in order to reach new relative identity. Whatever the result, the new forms of narration deployed in forming this new identity, reflect Islam’s self-understanding. Used here as examples rather than as complete representations of the fullness of modern Islam, traditionalism, fundamentalism and secularism illustrate some of the problem Islam has faced in this new process of self-referentiality. Traditionalism Based on the timeless idea of a perennial philosophy,138 Sophia Perennis, with its belief in sets of values common to all traditions, the so-called traditionalist school was begun by René Guénon and attained its current form with input from art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy, philosopher Frithjof Schuon, and the later figures of Titus Burckhardt, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Martin Linger and others. In addition to a methodology derived from comparative religious studies,139 the ontological and sociocultural interpretations of this school have set a clearly formed system for the hermeneutics of the traditional world. Islam, in parallel with many other cultural traditions, has been interpreted using their paradigms. The notion of the Primordial Tradition as Dīn al fitrī140, the prototype par excellence of different traditions, is the channel for the revelation of the Absolute to the world and the mainstream of world traditions, from the religions of the Native American to Shintoism to the Abrahamic religions. The

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uniformity of the traditionalists’ view in describing the nature of man, the philosophy of nature, religion and God, and at the same time the definition of religious pluralism, represents an authentic and contemplative picture of the world. In other words, they have created a ‘should-be’ view of the world. In this view, tradition, not as a ‘certain period of history in which certain patterns of thought or forms of art happen to be prevalent’141 but as the archetypal path which transcends all human affairs, stands in contrast to the distorted image of the world shaped by the history of modern Man.142 The supra-personal and timeless nature of Tradition ensures the rightness of those who follow this path and covers their personal deficiencies. Despite being a comparatively well-structured system of thought for conceptually articulating the nature of traditional cultures and the differences between them within the paradigms of modern world, there are major deficiencies which disqualify traditionalism from playing an active role in the modern day cultural life of the cases under study. Tradition is seen as an enclosed space, represented as a perfectly structured territory distinct from the outside, which is named as the modern world. In this sense, the notion of change, regardless of its content, is essentially pictured as crisis. The insuperable barrier between modern and traditional worlds, fundamentally a reactionary representation, implicitly proposes revivalism as the only answer to this dilemma. In spite of its claim to cover the entire affairs of culture, this system of thought is idealist in nature and brackets the sociopolitical affairs of the current context as secondary affairs. In doing so, it implies that they would be systematically solved through the establishment of traditional paradigms. The other feature of the traditionalist school is abstraction and ahistoricism in the interpretation of cultural materials. Coomaraswamy, in an article entitled ‘The Christian and Oriental, or true, philosophy of art’ writes: In the text of what follows I shall not distinguish Christian from Oriental, not cite authorities by chapter and verse: I have done it elsewhere, and am hardly afraid that anyone imagine that I am propounding any views that I regard as my own except in the sense that made them my own. It is not the personal view of anyone that I shall try to explain, but that doctrine of art which is intrinsic to the Philosophia Perennis and that ‘culture’ originates in work and not in play.143 The Traditionalist method is abstract in the sense that examples of different traditions are interpreted as variations on an already formed idea, which undermines the concrete paradigm presented by particular cases. It



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is ahistorical since tradition is represented as the spatial ossification of an atemporal message. Based on a process of ‘self-orientalisation’144 and a kind of platonic transcendentalism, sanctified tradition is not a matter of debate but rather of understanding. In academic contexts, far from the multidisciplinary outlook of its founding fathers and early followers, traditionalist interpretations became superficial and uncritical semantics. In the case of Islam, on the basis of mystical views, they present a colourful image of historically unconnected issues in a pre-crafted scenario. Praising the past in addition to and in combination with hidden nostalgia and pessimism characterise the general picture of popularised traditionalism.145 Fundamentalism Fundamentalism, as the ‘strict maintenance of traditional orthodox religious belief ’,146 demands adherence to the codes of faith as they are defined. Although both are reactionary in nature, the difference between fundamentalism and traditionalism lies in the ways in which they distinguish themselves from a criticised modern world. Uprooting Islamic theology from its historical context, fundamentalism idealises an origin as such, and then supervises as a regulator of appearance to create desired codes and images. In this sense, although it seeks to revive the faith, fundamentalism functions in reality as the controller of imagery and as such lacks any sort of conceptual alternative that might be presented by traditionalism. Fundamentalism tries to draw the border between what can be named Islamic and what is un-Islamic. In drawing these red lines and eliminating any grey areas, fundamentalism remains silent about the nature of those phenomena that are actually included, and also lacks links to, or conceptual positions in opposition to, the outside matters which form the real life of its community. In this system, if it is a system at all, references considered to be original points are transformed into a set of codes and regulations which cover only a fraction of life supposed as Islamic, in the sense of being mechanical repetition of the original codes without any necessary conceptual investigation, and the rest is mutation about other affairs standing outside fundamentalism’s border lines. Depending on the extent of the borders drawn, fundamentalism can operate as a set of codes introduced into a current system, which creates an illusion of transcendence in a system that does not differ from what which has been rejected in the first place, except the conflicts appear due to regulative interruptions. On this basis, fundamentalism is able to operate on different scales, which change from totalitarian regulations of appearance to the observation of smaller scale codes.

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The major deficiency of fundamentalism is its misunderstanding ‘Islamisation’ as dogma147 rather than as a process which transfers the religious position from ‘what’ to ‘how’. While the same method of regulating representation is used as a tool of resistance, the ossification of religion into a set of codes, especially in Islam where religion without clear boundaries of religiosity was previously active in different cultural arenas, is death of religion as a positive channel of shaping life, the very goal which fundamentalism initially sought. Secularism In drawing red lines, fundamentalism and secularism are two sides of the same coin. Secularism primarily challenges the totalitarian role supposedly played in society by traditional Islam. With concern for ‘affairs of this world, not spiritual or sacred’148 secularism denies the right of religion, with the territory attributed to it, to interfere in social and public affairs. The main challenge secularism poses to the interpretation of cultural history is to define and draw the territory of religion, which in the case of Islam was never clearly defined. Although a modern phenomenon, secularism in Islam looks to history to legitimise its perception of the role of religion in society, especially in the production of cultural materials. The first point of reference for secularists is that Islam did not explicitly instruct cultural productions. In their view whatever is Islamic is produced within the territory of Islam, be it political or ideological, but not by it. The reality of the court institution as the major sponsor of art and high culture in the Islamic world is their main point of reference. Even though not institutionally separated, there was a clear distinction between court and religious and public sects. As such, the division of so-called Islamic cultural productions into two groups of religious and secular is not entirely wrong even in the traditional context. In this view, the role of art in society was as an opposition which smoothed the strictness of the religious atmosphere and theoretically stood beyond the religious borders in order to maintain a social balance. Fundamentalism and secularism are two extremes, opposing poles between strict totalitarianism and exclusion, two points which had no basis in the reality of traditional Islam. The idealism of the former in practice could find no social reality while the latter’s theoretical separation is a newly constructed institutional division. The notion of Islamic art occupies a middle ground between these two points. This middle point, however, is not the ‘graded distortion’ of Islam in the extremist’s view or the limited religiosity of a secular phenomenon. There is a contradiction in these



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assumptions since they presume a duality which simply did not exist in traditional Islam. Secularism and fundamentalism are both modern notions,149 which fail to approach Islam not in their nature but in their classification. While an apparent political necessity in the modern world, secularism is unable to propose a framework by which to look at the historical materials of Islamic culture due to its alien, and newly introduced, spatially bordered, and institutionally defined territories. Conclusion The Islamic community was a melting pot in which conflicting factors came into play to turn Islam from a revealed religion into a culture, a fact that modern narrations of Islam have failed to conceptualise. This failure was not a failure to find the right definition or definitions but rather to identify the essential transformation which modern narrations create by defining Islam as an attribution. The various narrations of Islam – be they referential, either on an evolutionary basis or that of the fundamentalist claim of repetition, or phenomenological, structural or even vaguely ontological – end up in spatial definitions of differences and the spaces between them. This is a case of construction rather than discovery. The general picture of Islamic society was of a society in which differences were not institutionally differentiated, and the first outcome of this spatial definition is to create a public space – in the sense of a space which does not belong to any particular position – a space which lacks any history of conceptual definition. Instead of being an attempt to reach the authentic definition of Islam as attribution to the cultural material, the aim of this section was to draw attention to the inevitable existence of this new space. In the next part, the ‘Islamic’ attribution for mosque is examined from the same point of view. Mosques Muslims pray five times a day, which is strongly recommended to be communally performed. Once a week on a Friday they meet for a congregational prayer. The building dedicated to the performance of this ritual is called the mosque, which literally means ‘the place of prostration’, from the Aramaic name for a place of worship. According to this definition, the mosque might be called the house of worship. Nevertheless, in its history the mosque has not only been a religious building sitting alongside other common spaces but has been also at the very core of public life. ‘Place of worship’ or ‘community public space’ as distinctive definitions of mosque only partly capture the full significance of the mosque. In a society where differences were not institutionalised, and subsequently spatial

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classification did not follow rigid lines of division, functionally narrated spaces like those which define a mosque per se are by nature reductionist. However, as the inevitable tools of theoretical investigation of history, these spatial definitions raise the need for a conceptual consciousness about the nature of these reductions in modern narrations of institutions such as the mosque. While the definition of a mosque is commonly agreed upon it is not possible to attribute its features to Islam as a faith, as the practical, narrative or iconographical bridges which connect mosque as a representation to Islam simply do not exist. Nonetheless, Islamic rituals do not occur in a vacuum and mosques are the main physical sites for the performance of salāt.150 Practical, social and political elements, as well as the architectural tradition of the context in which the mosque was built, all give particular direction to the concept and image of the mosque. From a practical point of view, no physically specific condition is required to perform salāt. Legally the location must not be qasbī (occupied without permission of the owner) and must be tāhir (clean, based on Sharī’ah concepts). Furthermore, the person praying must pray toward a fixed geographical point,151 the Ka’bah in Mecca. In communal prayer, Muslims stand side by side in parallel rows. Therefore, functionally a proper mosque is the one which can shelter long rows of people. Theoretically this is a neutral space without hierarchy. The social nature of salāt,152 its daily performance and subsequently the reckoning of time and space by it, and finally the accidental, or perhaps fundamental absence of parallel public places have led the mosque to be positioned at the centre of Muslim social life. Islam’s decision not to distinguish the religious institution from other social spaces has meant that the mosque is occasionally seen as the public space rather than as part of it. This variation of social and spatial definitions means that the mosque has ranged from a prayer room attached to the bazaar or a humble space in a residential quarter to a monumental structure functioning in the scale of a city. This may seem to characterise any religious structure, like the church for example whose role varies according to context, in the case of the mosque this variation is not only in the scale or position, but in the very nature of social definition. In the history of Islam, the idea of the mosque has developed from being an open space at the very centre of communal life to being a building incorporated into it, from an initially neutral humble space (open or closed) to a monumental structure in the grand-scale construction of imperial cities. Islam, believing itself to be God’s last revelation to humanity, through the central institution of the caliphate or other forms of government, and the



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international concept of Ummah, has had a strong political manifestation beyond the Dar al-Islam (the Islamic land). The rapid spread of Islam within and close to older civilisations especially Christianity intensified this mindset. The mosque as the central image of the Islamic state was used as the sign to express these political manifestations. This political representation, however, was not only for outsiders. Gaining legitimisation and popularity among the public was one of the main challenges for a new governor. Building new social infra-structures with the mosque as a central figure was a primarily means to attain social legitimacy. In this manner, the Umayyad mosque of Damascus, the great Abbasid mosque in the newly built city of Samara, the Ottoman mosques of previously Byzantine Istanbul and finally the Safavid mosques of the newly established Shī’ah kingdom in Isfahan, all carries a political message which surpassed the basic function of mosques as a structure for performing religious rituals. Yet, the closeness of the mosque to other socio-political structures in Islamic cities dissolved its religiosity into other civil functions. Despite its religious distinction, a fixed socio-spatial definition must not separate mosque from other social functions and spaces as a distinct territory. A clear division of common and private cannot used in the spatial analysis of the mosque, since in many cases the mosque is an extension of the basic notion of space in residential architecture. A definite image as religious place does not differentiate mosques from other civil spaces, for example the residential. A quick look at the form and function of courtyards in Iranian architecture visibly indicates the error of drawing permanent lines between closed and open space and between indoor and outdoor. This reality applies to the mosque as well since the courtyard in Iranian mosques oscillates between being a space which belongs to the mosque and a public square. Additionally, the outer wall and the lines between open space of courtyard and sheltered spaces are transparent and penetrable to such an extent that different spaces become mere extensions of one another. Finally, the religious–profane division, either in function or in semantics, does not differentiate the mosque from other civil spaces. In this manner, mosque is not a defined notion or image but is rather an event, as any generalisation of its particularity is mere a conceptual tool and phenomenologically reductionism. Chapter 3 will investigate the social meanings of the mosque as the public space. The procedure which transformed Islam from a religion to a culture, from the revealed message or primordial image of Islam in the Prophet’s time to a historical being, has coloured a phenomenon like the mosque as well. This process has been translated into a definition of Islam as an attribution

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in three different ways. In connection to a defined origin, the outline of an evolution is proposed, through which the mosque, as it is described in the Qur’ān and Sunnah, and also in the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, constructs the core concept of other historical mosques. In a phenomenological approach, a set of rules is derived from historical mosques as the proper and timeless model of a mosque, known as traditional. Finally, the mosque is described as an institution which functions in a social structure based on defined Islamic preferences. In this structural investigation, the mosque is a spatially defined entity. Together these are the patterns which tell the story of the mosque. The Story of the Mosque In the analysis of any particular type of mosque, which asks why a mosque was formed in this particular way, three different aspects come to mind. First is that local preferences are added to an original concept (original in the sense of closer to the point of emergence). Second is the historical background of the presumed original before its use as ‘the concept of what a mosque should be’.153 Third and most important is the core notion of searching at the centre of this concept. This scenario constructs a linear concept of the history of the mosque, exclusively based on the concept of originality. This constructed story can be deceptive. A local version of the mosque cannot be described as a simple variation on an original (which for many interpreters connotes distortion); rather, it is a re-interpretation of the idea of the mosque in a new context, or even an innovation. While contextualisation does not necessarily represent disconnection from previous stages of the history of the mosque, it is a process in which the final result might form a completely different image from the original point. For example, a Timurid mosque in Samarqand, or one of Sinān’s mosques, is pure innovation, although curiosity always searches for traces of an original layout common to them. Importantly, rather than being a connection to a fixed image in the past, the ‘concept of the mosque’ as a proper layout is a sociopolitically crafted notion. The existence of a unified image throughout the Islamic world depended on the central administration since the enormous cultural differences of the so-called Islamic world did not instinctively support homogeneous images. After the fall of the central Abbasid caliphate, the division of the Islamic territories into different localities was a primary reason for the appearance of separate local schools. A tendency to imitate the Prophet and codes of Sunnah unifies Muslims; however, this sense of a



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connection to the origin was not more than a source by which to transcend time and space diagrammatically. Following the unifying policies of ‘Omar, the second Caliph, under the Umayyads, a single theme but in different variations154 spread across the Islamic world. Johns summarised it thus: The concept may be described as a walled enclosure, one end of which is occupied by a multi-aisled hall aligned upon a qibla, and the rest by an open courtyard lined with porticos, in such a way that the three elements form a unified whole.155 New features of unmistakably classical origin156 came to be seen as parts of the image of the mosque in coming centuries. The minaret, mihrāb or niche, dome over the mihrāb bay, and minbar or pulpit became more or less inseparable from the image of an ideal mosque. Following the shift of Islam’s centre from Hellenised Syria to Persianised Mesopotamia, a different character prevailed within Islamic art.157 Nonetheless, as can be seen in the great mosques of Samara and Abu Dulaf or Ibn Tūlūn at Cairo, a common theme which can be called the ‘Arabic plan’158 was shared. However, a new spirit appeared from new materials, new constructional methods and new ornaments. Muslims revere the Prophet as the origin par excellence. Hence, in the case of the mosque, as with many other Islamic phenomena, it is no wonder that the Prophet’s house or the Masjid al-Nabi, as the centre of the newly established community, can be seen as the prototype of later mosques. Indeed none other than the Prophet’s house can form a single point of reference. This was a restricted area with an unbroken wall on the Qiblah side, covered spaces or zullah (shaded place) at the south, and a suffah at the north, with the Prophet’s family’s residential spaces attached to it.159 What meaning does the Prophet’s house have? The Prophet released his camel to choose the place of his house, the new community centre and the place of worship. Was this a ritual, or did the Prophet intend it as a way to avoid creating a tradition for where a mosque should be built and how its location should be selected? Does the union of the Prophet’s house and the community centre have a political manifesto or was it just coincidental that it became the model for the attachment of the Dār al-Emāre and Jame’ ? The only definite feature of the Prophet’s mosque was its role as a social centre for the new community. This proposed a novel idea for a religious structure. In its formal context, was the duality of covered and open spaces a distinction between two different spaces or was the Zullah simply protection from the harsh climate, as

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the literal meaning of the word shows? Was the southern gate a transitional point between the profane world of the outside and the sacred place of the mosque, or the border wall to define sacred territory, or solely a wall and a gate? Whatever the answer to these questions might be, in reality these features accidentally or intrinsically became the blueprint for future mosques in the Islamic world. By the era of the Rāshidūn Caliphs and subsequently the Umayyads, these features were approximately fixed. At the same, a ‘linear evolution of the mosque from the house of the Prophet in Medina to the Great Mosque of Damascus is hypothetical and may assume a far more centralised ideology and formal concern than was actually the case’.160 The problem of picturing a linear connection between an original point of reference and historical mosques is exacerbated by adding regional differences to the question. This form of narration is deficient in that it forces Islamic definition, whether visually or spatially, to be understood as an evolutionary concept. Yet, from the Indian subcontinent to the Ottoman west, even to uneducated eyes a mosque is recognisable as a mosque and not any other religious building or other Islamic building. One emblem brings all of these types of building under the same heading: mosque. This supposed universal Islamic emblem is conceptualised according to different schemes: in abstract Islamicity as a moral or ontological notion; in the architectural sense as a spatial or formal concept which presents a sense of unity (although its abstract definition does not actually picture a visual unity); or by a single narration which eliminates differences and is a tool for controlling other interpretations. The Mosque as Sacred or Spiritual Place In a Hadīth the Prophet stated that he differed from the previous prophets in five ways, one being that the entire earth had been made a masjid (the place of worship) for him, and thus his followers could pray wherever they like.161 In this way he neutralised the earth and eliminated the centrality which is the main characteristics of sacred places. Furthermore, due to the complete otherness of the sacred in Islam the objective world is demythologised. Theoretically, the Ka’bah in Mecca is the only place which holds the title of sacred place. But the position of the Ka’bah in Islam as a congregational place for the entire Muslim world is unique and the mosque as the main religious building of Muslims does not internalise any notion existing in the ritual of Hajj. The paradoxical position of visual forms in Islamic thought does not leave space for the concept of sacred place as a point of connection to the sacred



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which stands apart from the profane world. While anything can be the āyāt (signs) of God, to particularise anything as a sign of connection to the sacred is regarded as idolatry. In the same view, the recognition of the mosque as the sacred zone and as an exclusive point of connection to a higher reality or as reflection of its presence has no place in Islam. The universe is the place of God’s presence (‘ālam mahzari Khodāst). In one of his prayers, ‘Ali asked for a time at which all his deeds turn into a single word in praise of the God.162 This ideal absolutism accompanies the de-territorisation of religion and is reflected in the mosque. Through the application of moral codes in daily life, the idea of the spiritualisation of the whole life is the goal of almost entire religions, Islam, however, intensifies this by rejecting any sorts of mediation between human beings and the Sacred. This neutralisation theoretically erases the distinction between mosque and other places in Muslim life. However, salāt as a peculiar ritual demands its own place which the mosque prepares. The position of salāt in Muslim social life, its ritual, and its meaning as time dedicated to a direct connection to God has not stopped Muslims from turning the mosque into a place with a strong religious impression. Yet this does not make mosque a sacred place, but rather a spiritualised space which differs according to context. Everywhere a Muslim prays is his mosque.163 In reality, however, mosques are revered as distinct from other social structures. ‘Lo, mosques are the houses of mine on earth’,164 and henceforth their veneration is instructed.165 ‘Angels pray for one of you while you are in a worship place (Mosallā, the place for salāt) …’166 Accordingly God calls those who go to the mosque his pilgrims.167 The distinctions which separate mosques from outside spaces grew more pronounced in the course of Islamic history from the humble structure of the Prophet’s House to the magnificent structures of later mosques. In the bazaar, dirty occupations are kept far from mosques. Jāme’ mosques are generally located near Qaysariyyeh, textile markets, which are considered as a clean zone. Building any shop in the side of a mosque wall, especially the Qiblah side which is detached from other buildings is generally avoided. A pre-entrance (pishgāh in Persian) separates a mosque from the crowded places and a threshold draws a clear line between outside and inside. Meanwhile, the focus on purification before praying, as well as other rules related to prayer, suggests the unique status of the mosque. In Iranian mosques, hierarchical access coordinates the different spaces of mosques. The wall is the border line between inside and outside and the entrance and its attached spaces are the points of transaction. The twofold open courtyard and covered space are the approach to the main sanctuary. The qiblah wall, directed towards Mecca, the mihrāb, an ornamented

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surface covered with the words of God, the scale and design of the sanctuary, and the richness of colour and design in contrast to the emptiness of space are the means to transcend the presence of the worshipper. Meanwhile, the dominance of domes and minarets over the silhouette of the city polarises the horizontal line of the Islamic city. All these accentuate mosques as a distinctive place and break the horizontality and neutrality of space as it is theorised in Islam. This spiritualisation does not happen in a void. The legal differentiation of the mosque from other built environments as defined in Sharī’ah, the mystical views of Sufism which transcend the objective world, the expressive language of art and architecture employed in the formation of the mosque, and finally ‘orfī (customary) viewpoints, which are not necessarily Islamic but play a role in differentiating the mosque, all create a ground upon which the mosque became a spiritual space. However, while these are significant factors, their elevation to defining regulations of the formal language of mosques has no theoretical basis in Islam; in other words, there is no Islamic mosque per se. Conclusion The critical situation Islam faced in the age of modernism directed it to a defensive position, first due to the unknown and unfamiliar conceptual world with which it had to engage, and second due to the conceptually and politically aggressive attitude of the encounter. The degree of change needed in the modern context has raised the question about the extent to which change occur without it posing a threat to being Islamic.168 Islam lost or did not gain the ability to affirmatively debate new conditions. For those who saw Islam as a spatially definable entity, this new situation created two groups, first those who saw no potential for conducting issues of the modern world within traditional Islam, and second, those who made Islam an ossified enclosure both to preserve it and also to seek refuge within it. Islam ceased to be a culture for both groups. The primary problem for each group, regardless of their proposed solutions, was their initial presumption that Islam constituted a homogenous and enclosed space. Clearly, differences existed in historical Islam, but the source of difficulty now was to craft new forms of narration and articulate them in new contexts. A distinctive characteristic of Islam has been to cast un-institutionalised differences into single spatio-temporal entities as paradoxical rather than homogenous beings. The problem of the views mentioned above was to come to a conceptual consciousness of the consequences of transferring these differences into the spatially institutionalised space of modern narrations.



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Transparency for being able to regulate, spatial conservation to maintain durability and pluralism between different narrations were the inevitable outcome of questioning the differences which were constructing the components of traditional Islam. However, more than the inner spaces of such narrations, which focus on the construction of relationships through a theory between concepts and phenomena, it was the space between these narrations which needed the conceptual attention. The Islam of power institutions, Islam as the law-maker, the Islam of Sufism, and Islam as public piety were existing differences which, because of various unifying factors, such as the codes of Sunnah, remained spatially undefined. While such differences may be acknowledged, they provide one of the main difficulties in interpreting Islamic attribution, which resists articulation, conceptually or politically, and can, at best, represent them as variations of the same core without essential differentiations. No less problematic is the interior space of modern narrations of Islam as attribution to cultural material. An explanatory connection between Islam as concept and Islamic cultural material, especially in visual culture, does not explicitly exist. The absolute Otherness of the sacred in Islam, the unsurpassable dichotomy between zāhir and bātin (between appearance and real, between the phenomenal world and reality), and finally the aniconic attitude of Islam and Muslims mainly due to the condemnation of idolatry are the main factors which devalue any explicit Islamic semantics within cultural domains. This is despite the fact that even to an uneducated eye there is a unique character to Islamic cultural materials which is impossible to identify under any other attribution but ‘Islamic’. The primary intention in attempting to articulate the attribution ‘Islamic’ must be to provide a set of theories that can spatially define and position differences, that can construct a bridge between concepts and historical materials, and that can articulate the space between different narrations. This will bring the history of cultures like Iran and Islam out of the closed spaces which modern definitions have created. This goal is not achievable unless a conceptual consciousness can be developed regarding the transitional nature created by new articulations of ‘Islamic’ as attribution. The first step is to separate Islam from its modern crafted identity as religion. This artificial enclosure of Islam as a defined religious territory, which is accompanied by a supposedly totalitarian supervision of culture, and other spatial ossifications of history and culture such as the division between modern and traditional, places a block on cultural history preventing it from being the site of debate for current issues. The danger in defining Islam and interpreting Islamic tradition in this way is that the material world stands outside any essential

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conceptual articulation, the main step in transforming religion to ideology. Dogmatic supervision of material objects, without a conceptual position which gives an explicit status to the world of phenomena, turns religion in the social domain into a political ideology. It is beyond the scope of this book to provide a fully detailed account of these features. Nevertheless, while the main outcome of this chapter is an awareness of just how problematic it is to create a new articulation of ‘Islamic’ as an attribution, it can also be seen that a structural approach to the cultural history of Islam in general and of Iran in particular could be a first step to appreciate and spatially position differences, and, more important, to formally define the connection lines which link them into a functioning system. This is a case more of construction than of discovery, as will be seen in the discussion of Iranian architecture and mosques in the following chapters.

2 Iranism

Introduction In the course of the Nīm-i Sha’bān ceremony (mid-Sha’bān, the birthday of the twelfth Shī’ah Imam), a combination of fire, water and greenery (mostly fronds) is displayed on the streets of Iranian cities, to signify the return of the Shiites’ twelfth Imam.1 This is known also to have been a Zoroastrian ritual, which represented the apocalyptic coming of the Soushiant (saviour). Similarly, the passion play of Imam Hussein in Moharram (the first month of the Arabic-Islamic lunar calendar) has a prototype in the Iranian myth of Sīyāvush.2 In architecture, Godard has pointed out that the Imam School in Yazd shares an identical pattern with Zoroastrian temples.3 In assuming there to be a historical basis for these connections, the notion of ‘continuity’ is employed in the narrations of such historical accounts. In addition, in many disciplines, whether historical, cultural or political, a distinction is drawn between western and eastern parts of the Islamic world, the latter being historically attributed to non-Arabs. More important than the mere fact of the existence of difference, it is the form of their narration, especially in an Islamic context, which enters the politics of identity. Why are these issues important? How shall we investigate them and what might be the outcome? Despite the fact that in modern times and under the various flags of nationalism and local tendencies ‘Persianate’ or ‘Iranism’ have acquired different connotations,4 the very existence of a regional identity is not in doubt. While national identity, allied to the notion of the modern state as a newly-crafted identity, bypasses naturally-based local identities (natural in the sense that is different from ideo-politically crafted nationalism) in the course of Iran’s historical development, there are bases upon which an overall semi-national entity can be detected. Although Vaziri, basing his argument on Orientalism, challenged the idea of Iran as a

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nation and see it as the product of the modern age,5 the elements of difference which helped Iranians to develop a notion of nation cannot be denied.6 The case of Iran has its own peculiarities within the identity discourse of Islamic culture. First is the reality that the search for a distinct Iranian identity existed from the early centuries of Islam, as compared to other regional features which emerged later at a time when Islam as a political hegemony had ceased to exist. The notion of continuity as the central theme in Iranian discourses of identity devalues Islam’s role as an absolute reformer and a neutral starting point. Finally, is the role of Iranian identity within the Islamic environment not that of a foreign body but rather an integral part of the trends which have shaped Iranian Islam or even, in many cases, Islamic phenomena in general. Iran as an idea7 and Iranism as an identity are concepts which already existed in the Islamic Era, albeit not as well-defined notions. Indeed, a consciousness of the idea of Iran as territory continued through the Islamic era. While ‘Iranians’ as the people of a nation barely existed, elements such as the Farsi language as cultural medium, consciousness of – and attribution to – a past heritage, and a semi-autonomous governmental administration combined to construct an idea of distinction greater than merely local divisions. This was in addition to an exclusive identity gained through confrontation with others as a vital way of giving peoples of different local identities the overall idea of membership of a greater body. It must be considered, nevertheless, that the multi-ethnicity of the peoples grouped under the name of Iran worked against any easy gaining of nation status beyond its modern context. Although the peoples of Iran shared the same cultural codes in governmental scale, local identities were strong enough to undermine this. Even the role of the Farsi language as a means of unification must not be overestimated. Farsi, as the dominant cultural language, was in circulation among the elite, as is the norm in traditional societies. The attribution of ‘Iranian’ beyond the modern context of nation was no more than a vague collection of inclusions and exclusions based on temporal sociopolitical conditions. In attributing Iranism to architecture, and in this case the mosque, we must ask whether architecture was considered at all to be a medium of Iranian identity, whether there was a historical consciousness of this, and finally, whether this reflected sociopolitical intentions. In this context, our question deals primarily with the constructed forms of narrating architectural history. In the first section of this chapter, I aim to explain the implications of ‘Islamic identity’ as the context in and alongside which Iranism existed. The

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following pages draw a picture of what the concept of Iranism may have meant for different groups in the course of history. It focuses on three decisive periods of identity crisis in Iranian history: first, the early age from the arriving of Islam in Iran until the Mongol era; second, the period between the Mongol invasion and the dawn of the Il-Khānids; and, finally, the Safavid era in which Iran entered its modern age. Outside a political context, Iranism or Persianate gain different meanings, for example, when attributed to art to produce an expression such as ‘Persian art’. On this basis, Iranian architecture is investigated as a potentially spatial phenomenon. After discussing the issue of Iranism in architecture and the concept of continuity, we will explore the four-iwan patterns – considered to be the classical style of Iranian architecture – to propose an alternative definition of Iranism in architecture. Islamic Identity Our exploration of Iranism, within the subject of Islam as it is dealt with here, looks at the models via which these concepts are represented. Before investigating the nature of these two entities, however, it is helpful to outline the suppositions which direct the discourse. ‘Originality’ and purism are the ideas which are used to build closed and distinct semantic territories. The assumption that Islamic and Iranian attributions are distinct, defined entities sets up a dualism which leads only to conflict and the rejection of one in the favour of the other. For example, Islamists, claiming the supremacy of Islam as such, exclude others and differences as outsiders. Conversely, pro-Iranists search for an exclusive idea of Iran, where even Islam is seen as an intruder. It is noteworthy that none of these groups can be purist, and their exclusive categories present a number of paradoxes. There are historical grounds for a dichotomy between Persian and Islamic, and an awareness in Iranian society – at some times in Iran’s history at least – of this difference. Rebel movements in the first few centuries of Islam, the presence of elements of pre-Islamic Iran in the consciousness of the people, the pro-Arabism of the Umayyads especially and the reaction of Iranian minds to it, and the reality of the Farsi language, together created a strong Persian presence in the early Islamic life of Iranians. ‘Iranian Islam’, ‘Islam in Iran’ or ‘Islamic Iran’, though they share similar connotations, also signify different responses to this presence and its nature. An initial answer to the problem of Iranian identity can be found in the connotations of the Islamic attribution. ‘Islamic world’ is a key phrase. This implies an trans-regional Islam called the Islamic Ummah. Islam brought

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about a conformity that can be seen as being influenced by both inner and outer factors. The Qur’ān and Sunnah of the Prophet8 are the two main sources of homogeneity in the Islamic world, and shape the core of tradition. Codes of behaviour, supported by an educational system of religious institutions that disseminate proper attitudes, and sociopolitical conformity under Islamic organisations, whether governmental or economical, are outer homogenising forces in the Islamic context. Together, these paved the way for the production of Islamic phenomena. A hidden agenda inside Islamic attribution is that of resistance against historicity. This ahistorical tendency, arising from a need for objectivity politically empowered by institutions of power, draws lines of interiority and exteriority and separates the Islamic domain from outsiders. As a twosided phenomenon, its negative side rejects any idea of Islam’s historicity and consequently becomes an atemporal yardstick measuring according to value judgements and intending to suppress the supposed exteriors. Problems appear in regard to Iranism in the Islamic context, when this Islam as supra-territorial and atemporal idea is defined through certain images. The resistance apparent in this Islam expresses notions of difference and change negatively when they do not fit into its defined images. As discussed in the previous chapter, as well as the referential significance of Islam, Islamic identity is a contextual phenomenon. Between referential and contextual Islam, a middle ground must be investigated in order to deconstruct the rigid exterior and interior markings without deterritorising Islam. This will gain a strategic definition of the Islamic attribution with a consciousness of its spatio-temporality. Iranism Zygmunt Bauman comments, ‘It is common to say that “communities” (to which identities refer as to entities that define them) are of two kinds. There are communities of life and fate whose members (according to Siegfried Kracauer’s formula) “live together in an indissoluble attachment”, and communities that are “welded together solely by ideas or various principles”.’9 While the conception of ‘nation’ supported by the power of the state is a modern formation, the question here is how an identity which surpassed the boundaries of local circumstance was created in the pre-modern era. Ideology, language and governmental administration are among those ‘ideas and principles’ which helped to create a sense of belonging through an ‘indissoluble attachment’. ‘The idea of “identity” was born out of the crisis of belonging.’10 In critical situations in which alternatives exist, the question of belonging is

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brought into consciousness. Different strategies of inclusion and exclusion are employed to create a group of ‘us’ against the ‘others’. Images of this identity are crafted out of the historical memory of ‘who we are’, an approach which is eclectic, due to the nature of the confronted situations. It is a creative way of dealing with history and its products (language, material culture and ideologies) by the mechanisms of power which address political interests in regard to others. In addition to the political motivations of identity, societies search for their meaningful position in the world. This is first to find a basis for the conscious question or unconscious feeling of ‘Who are we?’, and second to predetermine patterns, even though not rigidly, by which to instruct the members of society in their approach to the world beyond their own. On the one hand, individual members of society require a map by which to conduct their interactions at moments of confrontation, be this with the wider world, those areas of which they have no knowledge, or with which they have no direct involvement. On the other hand, society requires an overall definition in order to bind its individual components together. What was the nature of these so-called critical situations at which the question of identity was raised in the Iranian context? What are the representational elements identified by Iranians in reference to their own self-images? How were they shaped in new contexts? The search for an identity took two routes: the first had a political direction, and the second had a social interest. While inseparable, these two viewpoints nonetheless formulated different approaches towards the identity dilemma. The question of Iranian identity is necessarily preceded by another: ‘Did an entity named “Iran” or with any other name ever exist in the time and place of our concern?’ Here the problem of why an ultra-local identity was built belongs to the politics of identity, and the question of how this notion was constructed is a social investigation, which searches for the constructive elements of this image – elements which derived from the historical memory of beholders. It is noteworthy that identity, here Iranism, is a construction and is a historically-based concept with different contents and purposes, although similar themes frequently represent it through the course of history. As Gnoli argues, ‘the idea of Iran’ is a politically carved image of the Sassanian period (the third to seventh centuries ad). Through an obscure idea of Persian history (Pishdādiyān),11 racial awareness and the establishment of the Zoroastrian church,12 the Sassanian central government constructed an image of Iran, which fed this idea in coming centuries. Gnoli believes that

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Up till the end of the Parthian period we can therefore only reconstruct, with difficulty, a ‘prehistory’ of the idea of Iran. The history of this idea, that was to be an acquisition of fundamental importance for the history of the civilisation and culture of the Iranian or Iranised world as a whole right up till our time, begins with the Sassanians.13 With the arrival of Islam, Iranian identity entered a new phase, which defined its future. First, Iranian territory lost its political independence. This factor clearly affects the ability to construct an overall image of government/ nation. Significantly, even emerging local dynasties did not gain sufficient autonomy to reunite divided localities. The new religion, which with its supra-national manifesto was quite in contrast to local Zoroastrianism,14 subordinated regional heritage to its universal message. The final and probably most important factor was the nature of Zoroastrianism’s encounter with Islam in comparison to Islam’s encounters with other religions such as Christianity. Although it had an active presence in Iran’s territory as late as the Mongol invasion,15 Zoroastrianism failed to maintain its powerful position and to foster notions of Iranian identity as a homogeneous entity, in other words, it lacked both governmental autonomy and any status as official religion. In the following centuries, one encounters a number of ‘homeless’ – at home – features of Iranian identity. Accepting Islam as the hegemonic religion by majority, Zoroastrian and other Iranian religions could not provide a point of reference on a national scale.16 Just as the archaic literature that emerged in later centuries was reconstructed and reinvented, antiquarianism in its pure form could not continue to exist. Over time, this became a unique peculiarity of Iranism, which was forced to represent itself through the new Islamic institutions rather than to opposing them as an outside force. However, different notions of ‘Iran’ continued to exist in the Islamic era, mostly empty of ideological connotations.17 The concepts were attributed by newcomers, for instance ‘Ajam (non-Arab) and ‘Ajamistān (the land of the non-Arabs),18 Fārs19 and Bilād-i Fārs (the land of Persia) or Mulk-i Furus (the territory of Persia), Bilād al-Mutavāze’īn (the land of the humble – an attribution applied to Iranians through a mistranslation of the word ‘Iran’),20 as well as ideological attributions like gabr, zindīq and rāfizī,21 which together suggest the perceived image of the Iranian people and territory in the minds of its confronters. Vaziri in Iran as Imagined Nation writes: It seems that the term ‘Ajam became definable for the Arabs in terms of broad geographical and cultural differences from them, but from

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the so-called ‘Ajami point of view it is questionable whether the nature of these differences was understood and agreed on by each and all of communities involved.22 This notwithstanding, Iranians adapted these images in a process of distinction exclusively their own through a reflective process and reconstruction of remaining Sassanian ideas. The geographical territory of Iran was not a perfectly defined concept during the Islamic era. The Sassanian territories23 were divided into four component parts, namely Iran, Khorāsān, Sistān and Bākhtar: [T]he wise-men divided the world in accordance with sunrise and sunset … and they divide all into four parts, Khorāsān and Iran (Khavaran) and Nimrouz and Bākhtar; whatever is at the north, is named Bakhtar, and whatever at south, Nimrouz, and the middle is divided into two parts, whatever at east is Khorāsān and the west, Iranshahr.24 The traces of this idea can be seen in Ferdowsi’s notion of Iran25 or in Tarikh sistān26 in which Iranshahr is part of greater Iran. Istakhri, following early writers like Biruni, divides the world into the four parts as Rūm (Rome), Hind (India), Sin (China) and Iran-shahr. He says that ‘Babylon is the pole and the main part of this region and it is named Mamlekat-i Pars (Persian Territory) and the borders of this territory in ‘Ajam and Jahiliyyah time were defined’.27 Yakut al-Hamavi (Al-Rumi) makes another division. He knows one of the four as Fārs; this is the area between the Balkh river and Forāt (Tigris) river.28 This was the idea which made up the old territory of Iran. According to another completely different concept, Iran comprises one of the seven ancient divisions of the world. And while this division is founded on latitudinal division of the earth rather than a division into political territory, a mixture of ethnic-political divisions also contributed to the idea. It is striking that even in this division far apart and separated territories might be grouped under the name Iran.29 This concept is represented in two ways, first as horizontal strips in which Iran forms the central line, and second through circles, in which, Iran is the Fourth and central one, surrounded by six other circles. This image is located on the periphery of myth and geography, the boundary between which is not clearly delineated.30 More than Iran, it is the concept of Iranians which is a point of debate. Iranian as a concept is used rarely compared to the expression of Iran, and

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mostly in epic literature like the works of Daqīqī, Firdawsī and Nizāmī, where the term Iranian, in the context of the pre-Islamic era, was juxtaposed with others such as the Tūrāniāns or Romans. The expression Farsiyan (Persians) is also used, but is either a term used exclusively against others (Arab, Turk or Hindi) or applied where language was the source of this communal identity. ‘Ajam cannot be considered as an expression of Iranian self-identity, as it is an exclusive category used by Arabs, although Iranians used it also exclusively for self-definition. Iran as a point of reference, with its elements of language, history and territory, was always critically assessed by those who sought to attribute it to themselves. Thanks to Iran’s geopolitical situation, always facing the presence of others, crisis seems to be a continual component of Iran’s history.31 This has been exacerbated by commerce as the major basis of the economy, which brought the presence of others to the consciousness of the people, as well as strong local and ethnic divisions. These have made the definition of pre-modern Iranism an unending dispute. The Pre-Mongol Era Following the first two centuries of Islam,32 signs appeared of new movements in Iranian territory which seem to have sought both independence and revival. Importantly, while such movements can be summarised as socalled ‘identity requests’, which aimed to re-construct connections with the past, they cannot be simply attributed to a political desire for identity, as they do not share the same intentions and approach towards it, depending on the cultural medium (literature, architecture and so forth) and particular historical circumstance. In other words, these movements must not be categorised simply as Iranian nationalist movements.33 The Shu’ūbiyyah movement is one that can be considered as a purely Iranian nationalist movement. Shu’ūbiyyah literally means ‘sectarian’.34 It was mainly a literary movement which was formed in reaction to the hegemony of Arabs in the Umayyad period. Called ‘Shu’ūbiyyah va Ahl-i tasvīyah’35 (the peoples of equality), it began in the second century ah and continued until the sixth century ah, and aimed to reject Arab hegemony and show the superiority of ‘Ajam culture over the Arabs. Different aspects of cultural heritage, the royal past and even race were their reference points. In this process they were attempting to re-invent a new self-image on the basis of heritage and awareness of difference. Ibn Qutaybah said: ‘Surprisingly everybody you see from Ajam is proud of the crown and throne of Kasra and the Glory of Parviz, and know themselves as the descendents of them. Are all the Ajams children of Parviz? Are they all princes? What happened

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that they all became princes and offspring of Marzbān-ān and Savār-ān? If they are all princes and the elite, where are the ruffians of Ajam?’36 Although only fragments of Shu’ūbiyyah literature remain, they significantly influenced the literature of later centuries, Ibn-Muqaffa’ being among the most notable. Mansūr, the second Abbasid caliphate, said he had not seen any text in Zindīq literature in which traces of Ibn-Muqaffa’ could not be seen.37 Ancient literature and historiography were the two main subjects which the Shu’ūbiyyah movement influenced, even if indirectly. For example, the translation by Ibn Muqaffa’ of Khodāy-Nāmak from Pahlavi into Arabic was a source of inspiration for historians of ancient times.38 Two different trends emerged: first was Shāh-nāmah literature, in which Firdawsī was preeminent, which brought the refashioned memory of the past to the public;39 second were historiographers, who tried to match Iran’s pre-Islamic history with the biblical history of the Qur’ān.40 In their accounts, the history of the world from Kiomarth (the First Man, in Iranian myth) to Muhammad is an evolution of human life to the ultimate point, Islam, and thus Islam was shown as the inevitable outcome of the end of history.41 In this way, Iranism and Iranian history were not detached from the Islamic being of contemporary Iranians. Heritagism, in addition, underpinned by the heroic literature of the Shāh-nāmah and other Iranian epics themselves influenced by the Shu’ūbiyyah became a source of differentiation for Iranians. It is the images represented by these literatures which were a source of renovation in the crafting of a self-identity for Iranians in later centuries. Alongside these literary movements, political and ideological rebellions were shaping Iranians’ desire for independence in the Islamic era, such as Mokhtar’s rebellion42 and, later, Abū Muslim’s movement which brought the Abbasids to power. Because of their Iranian origin and their challenging of Umayyad pro-Arab policies these are regarded as supporting Iranian national interests. Meanwhile, the political breakouts of the Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids and Buwayids led to the semi-independence of the Iranian territory from the central administration of the Caliphate. The patronage of these local dynasties, in contrast to the Ghaznavids and Seljuks, who did not show any particular support, encouraged the Farsi language and inspired affection towards the Iranian heritage. Mardāvich, the founder of the Ziyarids, for example, plainly chose Iranian monarchs and their court life as his direct model. The literature of the ‘Mirrors for Princes’ (Nasihatol Muluk), Qābūs-Nāmah for instance, reflects this royal image of Islam.43 While these movements took place within the Islamic community, others can be considered to be anti-Islamist. The rebels of Māzīyār, Ustādsīs and Bābak, of which the latter were a considerable threat to the Abbasid court,

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were inspired by the Iranian religions of Mazdakism and Manichaeism as well as by Zoroastrianism. Under the name of Khurram-Dīnān (Those of the joyous religion), Bābak saw Islam itself as the main threat to his identity.44 Others, like Bu-Dalf and Afshin,45 were more circumspect about their interests.46 In the views of these groups, a pure Iranian culture was the point of reference, which was extremely difficult at that time in the Iranian territory. Highborn Iranian families in the court of the Caliphate also preserved their cultural heritage. After their conversion to Islam, the Dihqāns, well respected people of high standing in Sassanian social ranks,47 were instrumental in keeping Iranian cultural codes alive. The Barmakīd and Nou-Bakhtī families were two examples who Iranians viewed as supporters of Iranian interests at the Abbasid court. The caliph’s eventual massacre of the Barmakīds was consequently a cause of great disappointment for Iranians.48 Some commentators consider Shī’ism, though it did not become the state power in Iran until the Safavid era, as the Iranian response to Islam, in other words, as a connection between Shī’ism and Iranism. To interpret a religious viewpoint as a political manifesto is reductionism, but pro-Shī’ah movements under the Umayyad pro-Arabic policy, the attachment of segregationist movements, such as the Shu’ūbiyyah, to Shī’ism, support from within Iranian elite families for the Shī’ah,49 and finally, the rebellions of some Shī’ah sects like the Isma’ilites, due to their close attachment to the Iranian soil, can suggest the importance of the Shī’ah as a channel through which Iranians exercised their national interests. In addition, the similarity between some aspects of religiosity in Shī’ism and other Iranian religions has led some interpreters to see traces of Iranian archetypes. Corbinism,50 as a trend in the interpretation of Iranian Islamic material (for example, Shī’ah philosophy, Shī’ah sects like Isma’īlism and prominent philosophers like Suhrawardī) as the conveyors of prototypes of Iranian patterns of thinking, became a method for interpreting the Shī’ah through notions of continuity. We are principally led to look for a continuity of themes in the religiosity of Iranians in Iranian mysticism. Its significance is enhanced by its attachment to the Iranian soil and Persian language. The Sufi view of Islam as the essence of religiosity, and their introduction of a theme which melds all religions together in a quest for the reunion of Man and God, was influential in the introduction of new themes to the religiosity of Islam from the ecstatic views of Mansūr and Mulavī to the scholastic views of Avicenna or Suhrawardī. Additionally, the romanticism which entered Sufism through the media of the Farsi language served first to popularise their views and

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second to bring Iranian cultural codes into the religiosity of Islam. The Farsi language was crucial to the formation of the Iranian view of Islamic religiosity. Language, here Farsi, has a multi-sided presence in the identity discourse of Iranians. First, to have a local language in the global environment of early Islam was a controversial but crucial choice for Iranians. Second, and more important, are the implications Arabic language has in the context of Islam. As the language of the very word of God, where the Word and the Message is the same, Arabic in Islam is more than a medium to convey the message.51 Debates surrounding the Tafsir and translation of the Qur’ān into other languages reflect the position of Arabic in the religiosity of Islam. In this context, to write in a local language was considered to be more than the continuing use of a communicational medium and carried religio-political significance.52 Abu-Hanife was the first to accept the reading of the Qur’ān in Farsi and accordingly was accused of ‘Majūs-gerāyī (pro-Zoroastrianism)’.53 Different religio-cultural themes were attached to Arabic and Farsi which, in part, explain the centrality of the Farsi language in Iranian identity discourses. While Arabic in the Iranian domain was restricted, because of its technical richness, to the scholastic environment of religious schools, Farsi was attached to the poetical views of popular literature. Therefore it might not be wrong to discuss Arabic and Farsi thought in parallel to this usage. After the Mongol invasion and the increasing separation of Iran from the rest of the Islamic world, enhanced in the Safavid era, Farsi language became the major medium for the shaping of Iranian Islamic viewpoints. In this linguistic context, Islam did not acquire attributions of externality but became a local phenomenon. In addition, because of the connection of the language with the court as the major producer of high culture, Farsi became an intermediary through which to build a collective cultural image in Iranian territory in spite of local differences. As a final point, regional autonomy played a significant role in revival movements in the course of Iranian Islamic history. A primary source for Iranian consciousness of Iran’s endangered heritage was the detachment of some of its regions from external influences. For example, the marginal states of Sistān and Diylamān, unlike Jibāl and Khorāsān, were at the centre of the third and fourth century revival movements. The key element that separates the first centuries of Islam in Iran from her later history is a direct historical awareness of the past. If the term ‘renaissance’ can ever be used in an Iranian context, it is from the late second century ah until the arrival of the Seljuk dynasty, when a desire for revival accompanied a consciousness of points of historical reference. The

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establishment of the Ghaznavid and Seljuk dynasties, and a gradual fading of direct historical memory, alongside the crystallisation of its remaining traces in the present context, combined to produce the basis for identity in Iran’s later history. In conclusion, a number of trends are visible in the notions of identity of the Iranian early Islamic era. First is historical consciousness as the motivational source for directing cultural codes. Second is an archaic interest, which becomes an imaginary source by which to construct identity images – a model which existed from the Sassanids until the modern era. Third are identical themes which appear at different times and in different contexts. The Farsi language was central to the communication of all three: historical consciousness, archaic past and identical cultural themes. In other words, these three subjects must be investigated in any identity discourse on Iran: first and foremost we must be able to trace a historical consciousness of the subject. The answer to this question transforms the subject of continuity from the domain of customs to that of political choice. Second, we must explore the possibility of an archaic or antiquarian motivation as the point of reference; and finally, we must ask if any similarities exist between this subject and other material culture in different times and media. It is notable that continuity is only perceptible in identity discourse when there is consciousness of alternatives, since in traditional societies, the continuity of an idea or image may be a simple matter of continuity in customs. Having taken these issues into account, the word ‘national’ as an attribution must nevertheless be revised. While all were sources of differentiation for Iranians, to craft a ‘nation’ out of the people who created these events can be misleading. Not only is their consciousness of belonging to the bigger world of Islam a reality – a view which was at the heart of the Islamic message as well as its political demand – but also regional identities were strong notions inside this total image. Due to their comparatively natural origin and occasional lack of governmental supervision, these undermine state homogeneity. It is noteworthy then that despite identical tendencies and patterns in the search for identity among Iranians, identity is a historical phenomenon which in necessity and approach is conditioned by time. For instance, Arabism in the early Islamic period as the central point of the Iranian identity crisis lost ground in the Ghaznavid and Seljuk eras. Iranian history before the age of modernism has two other crucial episodes in the formation of its identity. These are the Mongol and Safavid eras.

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The Mongol Era The Mongol invasion opened another phase in Iranian history. After the struggles of the first centuries, and in spite of their Turkish origin, the Ghaznavid and Seljuk eras were a time of comparative stability in Iranian territory. While the identity concerns of the first few centuries and religious conflicts between different groups persisted, there was no identity crisis comparable with that of the first few centuries of Islam. The newcomers, the Mongols, created new conditions, through widespread destruction, through the removal of the governmental centre from Khorāsān to Azerbaijan, and finally through their new administrative policies, which changed the image of Iran. The depredations of the Mongols, especially in Khorāsān, the main cultural centre of Iran after Islam, wiped the page and caused a major decline in cultural production, particularly in literature. It was, nonetheless, an opportunity to carve out new and revise old images, for power had been centralised and provincial centres weakened. The homogeneity that Mongol hegemony brought affected Iranian culture in various ways. Above all, the destruction of local powers combined with the centralisation of administration by the Mongols throughout Iranian territory54 contributed to the formation of a concrete concept of ‘Iran’, in place of the older and vaguer image that had been in place under the Seljuks. A comparison of Mongol and Seljuk historiographies shows this dramatic change: Iran Zamīn, Mulk-i Irān Zamīn, Mamālik-i Irān, Shāhanshāh-i Irān Zamīn and Pādishāh-i Mamālik-i Irān Zamīn (Jāmi’ al-Tavārīkh, Tarīkh-i Jahān-goshāy-i Jovaynī, Tārīkh-i Banākatī and Tārīkh-i Ūljāytū) are new expressions which have no parallel in historiographies of the Seljuk era (Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī, Rāh·at al-s·udūr va Āyat al-surūr and Zubdat al-Tavārīkh). These are terms which only have their counterpart in chronicles like Shāhnāmah with its antiquarian attitude. In spite of these, the use of the term ‘Iranians’ to refer to a people is absent. Mongol literature and historiography re-establish the geographical picture of Iran after its demise in the Islamic era. Iran’s separation from the western world of Islam and connection with the east through the Mongols were instrumental here in. While it would be wrong to suggest that this picture did not exist before, Iran as a geographical notion found a physical reality through the central administration of the Il-Khānids, which contrasted starkly with the vague images of previous geography and literature. The decline of local powers as the primary supporters of culture opened the way to crafting a central and homogenous image of Iran.

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The introduction of new themes to Iranian Islamic visual arts from painting to architecture, while connections to the western Islamic world weakened, enabled the differentiation of Iranian territory from the rest of Islam. These themes, which reached their expressive peak in the Timurid era, were one of the causes of Iranian material culture’s distinctive identity. Nonetheless, the main crisis of the Mongol and Timurid era was the destruction which threatened the very point of Iran as sovereign culture and territory. Though it might seem unrelated to the subject of identity, the psychological consequences of the Mongol invasion were important in transforming the cultural atmosphere in Iranian territory, which consequently gave it a particular identity. The changing direction of Sufism accompanied by the decline of civil aspects of Islam in theological form and attributed civil institutions directly impacted the connotations of religiosity in Islam not only in Iran but also across the Islamic world. The Safavid Era The Safavid era represents a high point in the history of Iran, because of the re-shaping of Iran after the Mongol destruction, because Iran had lacked a central administration after the turmoil of the Timurids and their successors, and because the Safavid religious/state policy reunited and re-branded previously detached elements of the culture through the introduction of a central state and religion. It was under Safavid rule that Iran’s Islamic material was re-invented by the new central religion, Shī’ism as Iranism, a process which shaped the image of modern Iran. Under the Safavids, new ideas appeared and old ones re-appeared.55 A new concept of kingship, similar to Sarbidārān of Khorāsān in manner, was introduced by Shah Ismā’īl. He represented the same concept of Sufi-King, but this time on a national scale. Though it seems that later the institutution of kingship returned to its traditional form, particularly by the time of Shāh ‘Abbās I, traces of it remained since it brought the king into association with a newly shaped religious sect in the public space of the state. Government also presented a new face through the desire to craft Shī’ism as the official religion. This naturally needed the direct support of political power. Alongside the more general Mongol centralisation, the particular central administration that came into existence led to the disappearance of local governors who had previously maintained a pluralistic voice under the hegemonic power. As the official religion, Shī’ism was used as a tool to construct Iran, as both the territory of Shī’ism and of the Shī’ah people.56 Within this construction, all Persianate images were incorporated into the new state religion

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in order to represent a united entity.57 On the one hand, Shī’ism found the cultural ground on which to build an image of itself, and on the other, Iranian cultural materials found a new brand to represent themselves as a distinctive entity. In a process of renovation, Iranian cultural materials signified new identity features, just as the Iranian domain also found a distinctive basis for representation. Indeed, the archaic memory of the Persians no longer motivated the quest for identity. In the pre-Mongol era this memory had been a tool for Iranians to distinguish themselves from others within the global cover of Islam. For the Il-Khānids, it had been a medium for constructing an appropriate selfimage for the public;58 in the Safavid era this referential strategy of identity was no longer useful.59 Though an antiquarian trace remained in the production of cultural materials, it was without historical reference. This was mainly because the fragmented territory of Islam provided a ready ground of distinction from others; also, Shī’ism, the new interest, already had sufficient intrinsically distinctive features to use as the basis of self-identity. In a metaphorical comparison, Rustam was replaced by Ali. The sociopolitical structure of Shī’ism under Safavid rule shaped the forthcoming religious character of Iran in the public arena.60 One of its principal features was the ‘emerging of a group with an exclusive access to Sharī’ah knowledge’.61 This new sect, although theoretically open, was also a distinctive group. The formation of a religious institution with both political and economic power was new in Islam.62 Shī’ism built a church-like institution which participated in political decision-making and worked as an intermediary between public and state. The Shī’ah devotion to the Imams and their descendents, publicly displayed through a variety of rituals and the veneration of their tombs, a tradition that had been socially established in the Timurid era, was a major tool in introducing Shī’ism to the public arena. The idea of the imamate in Shī’ism introduced a new concept of ‘holiness’ in Islam, reflected in Shī’ah religious objects and holy shrines. The royal art of the Timurid court was a suitable ground for Shī’ism to produce its expressive religious images. The grand holy shrines at Mashhad and Qom are good examples of this. Persian Art Iran as territory and Iranians as the occupants of this territory are the notions which lost ground in the definition of Iranian or Persian art. Generally speaking, the absence of central capital in the Iranian territory which would have created an interdependence of centre and periphery to mark a geopolitical terrain, and the ideo-political detachment of Persian cultural

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materials from any particular sects, allowed provincial centres to participate in the production of high cultural material without being undermined as marginal or peripheral. The Timurid architecture of central Asia, the Farsi poems of Mogul India, and the miniature paintings of the Ottomans testify to the elements which enable Persianate to be defined as an attribute beyond Iranian territory as it was known in those eras. The reality is that Islam per se, as a universal religion, cannot picture Persian art as a variation of a central theme. Despite Islam being the main ground for the cultural production and the inaccuracy of understanding Persians as exterior to a supposed Islamic boundary, Persian culture cannot be defined in sole relation to Islam. If there could be a single source for Persian cultural materials, it would be literature that occupied the public imagination. Yet, under the notions of ‘origin’, ‘evolution’ or ‘continuity’, Persian pre-Islamic culture cannot be described as the only cause of differentiation from Islam. The lineal narration of Persian cultural history, time-based with certain points of origin, either under Islam or in the preIslamic era, creates a closed space and has no other use in current debates other than crafting identity banners. In order to reduce the spatial difference between ‘ethnic’ (or ‘particular, in Hegelean terminology) and ‘universal’, a spatial approach to defining Persianism might help to deconstruct the monotonous space which the time-based narration creates as ethnic. Rather than being the repetition of certain codes as they have appeared at points in history, Persian art and cultural materials can be presented as a system of codes which through its functionally identifiable elements, regulates social time and space. As such, we can justifiably repeat Coomaraswamy’s idea about the existence of a Persian concept of art.63 In the case of architecture, it is an attempt to spatialise history. What follows is intended to open up this issue in the context of Iranian architecture. Iranian Architecture Any question of identity in architecture must be preceded by the question: ‘Has architecture ever been a medium of identity in the Iranian domain?’ That is to say, were architectural elements or patterns a conscious choice with regard to their sociopolitical references. In short, the question is about which elements construct the image of Iranism in the architectural domain and why they are specifically chosen as the particular mediums of identity. Like the general problem of identity, the subject of continuity lies at the centre of this question. As mentioned so far, the struggle to maintain selfidentity in the form of continuity within sociocultural codes, specifically

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during moments of crisis, is either political or social. Intentional references to some cultural codes can be made a point of difference with others in order to build an exclusive self-image, or to obtain a position in the changing social space. For example, in the context of Iranian Islamic architecture, continuity can carry the double meanings of revivalism, as a political choice to re-connect with the spatio-architectural codes of a certain point in history, or of reconstruction of a meaningful space, using the familiar codes of architecture in newly changing contexts. The third and fourth centuries of Iran’s Islamic era show widespread movements across different domains, which can be interpreted as a ‘Persian renaissance’, following the interruption of Islam which broke the continuous line of Iranian culture and, politically, deprived Iranians of the institutions of power. Ideological revolts, political movements, and intellectual discourse all internalised or transformed new ideas and materials in order to apply them to local contexts. In relation to language or court life the concept of renaissance can be adjusted to fit the particular context; the problem is whether it can be legitimately applied to architecture. Is there any evidence that Abu-Muslim’s mosque in Nīshābūr paralleled his political views, or was it in competition with the Umayyad grand mosque of Damascus? Was Mardāvīch concerned about a particular style of building in parallel to his direct reference to cultural codes of Iranian monarchs? Was the re-appearance of the iwan and chārtāq64 in Islamic architecture of Iran, in the third and fourth century ah (i.e. the ninth and tenth centuries ad), a conscious return to what were considered as Persian architectural codes? While both iwan and chārtāq are connected to Sassanid architecture, it is the intention rather than their mere reappearance which shows their real meaning, for they are now elements in a new context. Lack of archaeological evidence means that constructing a clear image of early Islamic architecture in Iran is not possible; nonetheless, revision of the theoretical frames and historical narrations which try to fill this historical lacuna is equally if not more important. In this context, the invented narrations reflect sociopolitical interest rather than historical facts. Interpretations of Iranism Iranian culture during the third and fourth century ah is commonly described as undergoing a ‘Persian renaissance’.65 This implies the reappearance of Sassanid themes and images albeit this time in the new context of Islam.66 Renaissance as an expression arguably has two implications. First, it implies that a range of phenomena existed which connoted Persian-ness in the minds of those who created the renaissance. Second, it suggests that

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there is a sociopolitical act of ‘returning to roots’ per se. While evidence legitimises the use of the term ‘renaissance’ in the third and fourth centuries of Iranian culture, what is at issue here, however, is whether this Persian connotation and conscious act of returning is applicable in different contexts, for example architecture. The act of returning can interpreted in different ways. It can be variously a political decision by institutions of power; a movement in society to recreate a meaningful environment by reusing the familiar cultural codes in a new context; and a simple continuity of custom which existed but momentarily disappeared from recorded history.67 Last, but not least, an important issue in terms of using ‘renaissance’ as a term is the role of the new context, the interval phase between the original and the reprise. Is renaissance a suggestion of a neutral interruption, or a negation in a dialectical process, or is it a third option, separated from previous phases by unique features? The same issues are relevant to the employment of the term renaissance in the context of Iranian architecture. A number of interpretations show the ‘difference’ as it exists in the cultural environment of Iran, or more generally, eastern Islam,68 but not in the form of revivalism or renaissance. Ettinghausen, for example, remarked that The reason for this East–West split is still rather obscure. We can only surmise with caution that the more rational mind of orthodox Islam apparently preferred a straight, more rigid, and calculated style, while a mystic orientation, as that of Iran, adopted an abstract, undulating approach which nevertheless seems in its orderly manner to represent the rationalisation of an ineffable inner experience.69 Difference as identity is attributed to geographical determination or to the aesthetic tastes of people who reject any sociopolitical intentions in the construction of difference. In a more extreme view, difference becomes a local variation of Islam as an already defined concept and therefore is only a formative element of so-called Islamic phenomena. In this pan-Islamic view, regional differences in fact create and also emphasise the universal message of Islam itself; difference is reduced to different accents of the same language. The ‘Islamic’ represented by the pan-Islamists is either a predefined category which resists any change or difference, or is an abstract notion without materiality and worldliness. In both cases, a debate on the notion of difference has no basis. Other interpretations look for similar themes or forms in Iranian material culture which transcend the boundaries of time and place and reappear

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in different contexts. Religious themes,70 sociopolitical structures, aesthetic prototypes and other features indicate the stability of cultural codes in the Iranian context. While the maintaining of similar patterns during the dramatic changes experienced in Iranian history is an important issue in itself, the over-emphasis on spatio-temporal stability ignores the historicity of cultural features which deal with conditional changes. These identical features seem to be unattached to historical changes, able to exist in different or even contradictory contexts, and to be possibly kinds of local archetypes. Interpretations of Ishrāq philosophy in particular are good examples which show stability in Iranian patterns of thinking.71 In the case of architecture, evidence allows us to apply any of these interpretations. Among interpretative expressions are the Iranian or Persian architectural renaissance, the Iranian codes of Islamic architecture, the Islamic architecture of Iran and elements or patterns of Iranian architecture – without historical reference. The rehabilitation of Sassanid buildings as Islamic structures, the continuity of constructional methods, the reappearance of the pure Iranian architectural elements of dome chambers and iwans or combinations of these, and finally the peculiar Iranian version of Islamic architectural codes, for example, the four-iwan patterns of Iranian mosques, cylinder-form minarets or brick and tile ornaments, are all codes for the definition of Iranism in the architectural area. These expressions find their concrete connotations in their immediate sociopolitical context. The variety of pre-Mongol provincial architectural styles suggests historical links to the formal language of local architecture. It may be that the so-called Arabic style of mosques probably resulted from an inability to separate this form from the meaning and ritual of mosque; however, from the third and fourth centuries ah, when political autonomy was accompanied by a cultural consciousness distanced from the pre-Islamic ideologies, at least in the governmental domain, in which Iranians gained the opportunity to separate their material culture from its ideological attachments, a space opened in which Iranian and Islamic phenomena could be rearticulated together. In other words, Islam was re-invented through local/national elements; or Iranian material cultures were reintroduced to the Islamic context. Sāhib-ibn ‘Ebād described the Būyīds as ‘the ruler of this reign whose manner was to renew independence and renovate the customs, traditions and habits of ancient Iran and who spread Arabic knowledge and literature more than others’.72 He portrays the Būyīds not as revivalists but as attempting to form a bridge between Islam and Iranism. The Ghaznavid and Seljuk eras, despite their firm support for orthodox Islam and lack of any particular affection towards an Iranian heritage,

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witnessed the blossoming of efforts made by the previous dynasties due to their policies on provincial powers and thanks to their wise viziers. Iranian culture, in all its aspects, reached a zenith following the crisis of the early Islamic centuries. Yet there is a weakening of historical consciousness in the later period as opposed to earlier centuries, and references start weakening. The Mongol destruction, together with the weakening of local powers and the introduction of central administration by the Il-Khānids, who were now the sole sponsor of high culture in the vast imperial region, brought a formal homogeneity to the art materials of the Iranian territory. A change in aesthetic tastes, due to the adoption of eastern artistic techniques and styles, also represents a turning point in Iranian visual arts. In architecture, the bodily architecture of the Seljuks turned to surface ornamentation, and woven motifs in brick turned to the aesthetics of paintings. These new trends reached their expressive heights in the grand architecture of the Timurids, with its endless use of tile and ornament on a gigantic architectural scale. Safavid architecture, the royal architecture of Isfahan excepted, returned to building social structures on a more humble scale. With regard to the existence of historical memory, we can investigate Iranian Islamic architecture in the pre-Seljuk era through the notion of continuity of pre-Islamic codes of architecture or renaissance. In comparison, in later centuries, because of the fading of direct memories of the pre-Islamic architectural language, a referential explanation cannot illuminate the ideas underlying architectural forms. Iranian architecture after the Seljuk era shows changes and variation of elements and compositions within an established formal and functional context. The Notion of Continuity While Browne has argued for continuity between an old Persian and a new Persian language,73 continuity might also represent a synthesis between languages and cultures in their ancient and contemporary settings. Thus the Persian language and its associated culture could be considered ‘signs of the emergence of a new culture’.74 Here the difference is between revivalism, indicating the neutrality of a new setting, and the new as ‘third space’, a space which is neither old or new nor a mixture of them.75 Even though the idea of continuity is accepted in the forms mentioned above, different hypotheses may also explain the intentions underlying their formation. For instance, was continuity in architectural style a political choice or simply a continuation of cultural conventions? The continuance of pre-Islamic architectural codes in the Islamic era might be also interpreted as the stability of aesthetic taste, or of constructional techniques and

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Figure 2.1 Jewish, Armenian and Islamic tiles

their associated formal language but without any sociopolitical manifesto. Although there is explicit evidence of ideo-political choices to continue or revive pre-Islamic cultural codes, are these the sole explanation for the notion of difference and distinction across different times and mediums? The notion of continuity as a political choice is intensified by the selection of codes which carry ideo-cultural connotations into the new context. For instance, before any discussion of the intentions behind the use of Zoroastrian Chārtāq in mosques, we must ask if Chārtāq actually convey Zoroastrianism or whether they were simply a constructional, formal element which was used in temples as well; similarly, does the iwan imply the royal architecture of Sassanids or was it more simply an aesthetically preferred architectural element? neither Zoroastrianism nor any other Iranian religion was a point of reference in the later history of Iran, except in earlier centuries and by a small portion of society. Meanwhile, the peculiarity of Sassanid cultural materials was that they did not have strong religious or ideological connotations, compared with the material culture of the Indians to the east and of Byzantium to the west. This characteristic lent Iranian visual art and cultural materials a considerable potential for their transfer to different contexts. The only structure of Sassanid Iran which retained its historical ties in the mind of Iranians was Tāq-i Kasrā or Iwan Madā’in in ctesiphon. Ya’qūb lais Saffār, the founder of the Saffarid dynasty, sought to restore it to its past glory. Ali-Shah, the Mongol vizier built his gigantic mosque on the model of Tāq-i Kasrā. Many historians and geographers compare contemporary buildings with that of the eywān of Kasrā.76 Taken together with frequent reference to this building in poems and myths, for instance the story of Imam Ali’s visit to it,77 or Khāghāni’s famous Qasīdah on Iwan Madā’in,78 these show a clear historical consciousness of this building in the mind of Iranians. even the attempts of the Abbasids to destroy this particular building indicate the strong historical consciousness invested therein.79

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Such illustration of the continuity of a pre-established tradition, or the idea of Islam as an interruption, followed by a perceptible renaissance, is to construct a linear, monotonic history broken only at some points. To break the enclosure of this type of narration, alternatives must also break the linear notion of time and represent differences as essential components of overall image rather than as interruptive of a homogenous space. The Four-Iwan Pattern The four-iwan pattern is considered to be the classic style of Iranian mosques, as well as of many other buildings. Evidence shows that accidentally80 at some point in the architectural history of Iran this pattern became the common blueprint for spatial formation, surviving because of the conservative nature of art in the Iranian environment. From the Seljuk era onwards, the four-iwan was the common pattern of Jāme’ mosques, as well as residences, caravanserais and schools, that is, for all Iranian buildings with a central open space. As a quadruple division of space, even garden kiosks and other closed spaces like the chār-suffah spaces in residential architecture and palaces share the same formative outline. While the origins of this pattern can be traced back to pre-Islamic Iranian architecture, for example to the Parthian palace of Ashūr, Kūh-i Khājeh,81 or to Sassanid palaces, a referential explanation which seeks the point of its origin and line of its evolution cannot explain, either functionally or formally, the common application of this pattern. First and foremost, the lack of evidence as well as other problems already mentioned, are not conducive to the drawing of a satisfactory picture of continuity. In addition, the common use of this pattern, beyond the practical context of each building, demands a broader explanation than simply referencing to a point in the past. In other words, this pattern must be considered as a cultural theme which transends the temporal political interests or confined parameters of a single function, be it religious, governmental or residential. This must be added to the lack of iconographic or symbolic references, such as the cross in Christian churches or Indian temples, which necessitates other approaches to the semantics of Iranian architecture. The four-iwan pattern can be seen variously as the pattern of a single building, as a quadruple outline for the arrangement of four separated façades or spatial units around a central space, or as the blueprint of a multispace complex. Each of these views affects the general framework to be used in the interpretation of this pattern. Through architecture man builds a meaningful image of the world by regulating time and space. This punctuation of the continuity of time and

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space gives a culturally meaningful definition of the universe in the language of place. What points of reference in Iranian architecture give meaning to this quadruple pattern of the formation of space? This question is at the heart of the following pages which discuss ‘the notion of time’ and ‘the geography of space’ and their correlation to the image of place. The Notion of Time and the Image of Place In a fictitious story from the fifth century ad, when the vizier Bozorgmihr was first introduced to the game of chess, he said he would devise another game – backgammon – which would show the forces of the universe and man’s life in a better way: 82 In it I will liken the board to the holy earth; its thirty days and nights; fifteen white pieces to fifteen days and fifteen black pieces to fifteen nights. I will further liken the throw of the dice to the heavenly bodies and the revolution of the earth … In this manner, the invention of backgammon will be a recreation of the world by God [Urmazd] and the movement of the pieces will be the same as the existence of people in the world: they collide with each other and leave the world. The next arrangement of the pieces, after the board is cleared once, is like the Resurrection day when all dead come to life again.83 Both the games of chess and backgammon (Figure 2.2)represent life in a miniaturised battlefield. Backgammon, or, as it is known in Persian, takht-i nard, literally means ‘battle on the board’ – although two different concepts

Figure 2.2  Chess and backgammon

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construct the frame of action within them. Whereas chess represents the Manichean concept of inevitable conflict between light and darkness; the battle of good and evil (Ahora and Ahrīman), backgammon reflects the colliding of people on their life turn. The battle of chess takes place on a chequered, neutral, black-and-white ground, signifying days and nights of a linear conception of time, whereas backgammon represents an asymmetric, cyclical turn through time with an end point that returns to the original position. In contrast to chess, in which the use of quantifiable strategy in predictable situations defines the destiny of the battle, in backgammon destiny is defined only by knowing how to navigate through the movements of the heavens, or in other words by negotiating with fate. The games represent two different conceptions of space-time. Both chess and backgammon are ‘games of state’; however, they signify different strategies through two different conceptual organisations.84 In chess, movements take place through built positions, which are represented by the signs of corner castles, but in backgammon, holding position occurs through movement. In the former place is the frame of the action, in the latter time. These two games symbolise two different models of the social system, with their particular definitions of individuality, community and, in a sense, dwelling, occurring within a defined time-space frame.85 Nevertheless, rather than viewing them as representations of two separate states or societies, they can be seen as simultaneous but situational frames of action in the same society. In this section, the possibility of using the image of backgammon to construct a notion of place is the subject of investigation. Destiny or fate – defined by heavenly bodies or, rather, by the outer forces of the universe – and the cyclical conception of time are two distinctive features of the microcosmic image of backgammon. Two different conceptions of time exist here: absolute time or destiny, and the limited time or cyclical turn. As Corbin has noted, ‘[t]he Mazdean cosmogony tells us that time has two essential aspects: the time without shore, without origin (Zervan-akanarak), eternal time, and limited time or “the time of long domination”… essentially a time of return’, 86 which has the form of a cycle. In reference to these two concepts in popular culture, the former is personified as a god-like being, the latter is visualised in a reckoned circular voyage. First, we must consider absolute time as the determining force. The Arab pre-Islamic view of time, or dahr (long duration), although it contradicted the new religion, continued to exist in the Islamic world. It was personified as a being causing good and also bad fortune: ‘[t]ime has the connotation of Fate, which is not quite correct, since time here is conceived as the determining factor, not as being itself determined by some other power’.87 On

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the other hand, in Zarvanised Mazdeaism,88 ‘before anything existed, the heavens or the earth or any creation, Zervan or time existed’.89 According to a short treatise in Persian, Olamā-ye Islām, ‘it is revealed that with the exception of time all the rest is created, while time itself is creator’.90 Zervan holds a twofold meaning of which the first and the main meaning is that of destiny (bakhsh).91 In popular literature this notion of time is characterised as a playful spinning roulette that marks the destiny of human beings through its unpredictable moves.92 The terms al-falak e-‘dawwār in Arabic and charkh-i gardūn in Persian, literally meaning ‘whirling wheel’, are the image of this model of time in popular culture which indicates ‘fate’ and ‘the heavens’.93 The second conception of time is the cyclical one. To quote Corbin, this ‘is not a time of an eternal return, but the time of a return to an eternal origin’.94 It is this notion of limited time or cyclical time that finds visual and spatial expression in the built environment. The cyclical conception of time can be attributed to different sources. One of these is the millennial cycle of the universe or age of the world. According to Mazdean and Ismā’īlite beliefs, the cycle of the world is composed of twelve millennia that involve four different eons: ‘[d]eriving from the eternal time it [the returning time] returns to its origin’.95 Another source of the cyclical conception of time can be seen in the moon’s cycle, which forms a month of the lunar calendar; this is in turn composed of four supposedly sequential steps in the voyage of the moon, which form the four Semitic weeks of the month.96 The last and the more important source for the image of cyclical time, which has a more direct application in the cognition of place, is the annual cycle of the four seasons: this cycle is naturally most present in an agricultural environment. This seasonal cycle shaped the Iranian solar calendar. The Iranian calendar is based around the seasonal changes of the Iranian plateau and central Asia. The beginning of the year is marked by a natural phenomenon: the arrival of the sun at the vernal equinox.97 Nawrūz (literally meaning ‘new time’, new year) is celebrated as the rebirth of the universe at the beginning of spring after a complete cycle of the seasons.98 This seasonal conception of time is composed of four asymmetrical phases, which make the cycle of time heterogeneous; a quarterly reckoning of time which connects the abstract notion of time to the visual domain. The common modern experience of a primarily sedentary life eliminates the notion of time from dwellings. Built space, with its connotations of permanency, stillness and borders is actualised only by bracketing time as an influential factor in the formation of space. In this sense, change as the measure of time is translated only into flexibilities of an already defined

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territory. Time is linear and predictable. On the other hand, nomadic notions of dwelling represent a different possibility for the definition of time and space.99 Here the relation of time and space is reversed; it is space that is defined temporarily. The dwelling place is built with consideration of changeable elements of the environment such as the season, sun and weather conditions. Consequently, nomadic living space, rather than enclosing a defined space in order to create a stable, desirable condition, is opened to the chosen conditions. The nomadic notion of camping represents the creation of a neutral space, one that is transportable to desired locations. Transportability and temporality are the basis upon which this notion of space is constructed. The first thing catches the eye in most of the traditional houses of Iran and Central Asia100 – though it is not exclusive to those areas – is the lack of any specific furniture: this is indicative of the lack of functionally divided space. While conventional understanding of an architectural complex would nowadays refer to the combination of functionally different spaces, Iranian traditional houses are fabricated of functionally parallel spaces that differ only in their form and spatial quality. Spaces are not named for their functions, since these are not definable, but are instead named after their form, their position within the complex, or, more importantly, their annual or seasonal time of use: summer or winter house, spring and autumn space, moonlight (night) place, and so on.101 In the large complexes of the wealthy, a family spends a part of the year in a section of the house: in other words, their movements inside the house are defined according to seasonal changes (Figure 2.3).102 Here we may use the contradictory expressions ‘sedentary nomads’ or ‘nomadic citizens’.103 This fact deconstructs the common notion of a sedentary ‘taking place’, which is the building of a permanent position. Moving in harmony with the forces of nature or the universe, which can carry a negative suggestion of fatalism, can also represent an affirmative understanding of the outer world. In an analogy, this is like the more general but not completely controllable image of backgammon, rather than the snapshot of the universe shown in chess. As well as being affected by seasonal changes, the daily movement of the sun gives the geographical sides of the house different qualities. Based on this, the movement inside the house takes place on the basis of four different ‘geographical zones’ (Figure 2.4). The extreme coldness of winters in comparison with the hot summers, and the pleasant weather of spring and good but decaying climate of autumns – all of these are accounted for, in combination with the daily movements of the sun. The daily journey of the sun gives the north side of a courtyard house a permanent sunshine

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Figure 2.3  ‘A school scene’ and a ‘nomadic encampment’ showing similar patterns of using space in sedentary and nomadic settlements

Figure 2.4  The daily movement of the sun and schematic plan of an Iranian house

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and the south a permanent cool shadow; from the west comes a pleasant morning sun and from the east an unbearable afternoon heat. These factors drive the movement within the house to take place on a circular playground of four geographical zones. Even nowadays Iranians call their traditional houses ‘four-season houses’ (chār-fasl), which implies courtyard buildings with proper space for all of the seasons of the year. Indeed, it would not be too much of an oversimplification to say that a quadruple reckoning of time cycles has left its imprint on Islamic Iranian traditional houses. The four-iwan or quadruple pattern is one of the major themes in Islamic architecture from Iraq to central Asia (e.g. Figure 2.5).104 This layout is common in different types of architecture, as is demonstrated in the Persian names of those architectures: chār-soffeh (four-platform), chār-tāq (fourvaulted-roof ), chār-sū (four-sided), chār-eywān (four-iwan) and chār-bāgh (four-garden). This last is the layout of many royal gardens; a rectangular walled garden quartered by two streams intersecting at the right angle, with a lofty pavilion at the centre.105 The extraordinary frequency of this quadruple theme suggests that a source for this type must lie outside the practical considerations of each individual building. There are various interpretations of the common use of this four-square pattern in Iranian material culture. In some interpretations, inspired by the Hindu and Buddhist mandala, a cosmological meaning has been attributed

Figure 2.5  The typical outline of grand Qajār mosques. I thank the Cultural Heritage Office in Tehran for the original drawing.

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to it.106 In other suggestions, through analogy with the traditional concept of four primary elements, a structural view of the world is attributed to this four-square image. elsewhere, a symbolist account of the image of the cross tries to assimilate this quadruple outline as an archetypal image, one that is broader in scope than merely regional interests.107 There are several deficiencies in these theories. First, the cross as an icon barely exists in Islamic material culture if indeed it exists at all; neither is there anything in regional culture and literature that might support such a theory. Second, explanations which draw comparisons with the Hindu temple or the christian church (which comes from a broader cosmological view of the cross with the body as its referential ground), do not particularise the relationship of this four-square image to the spatial language of architecture in the IslamoIranian context. At the very centre of Islamic aesthetics, we find the garden (Figure 2.6), a ‘liquid image’ if we can name it as such,108 which moves from the theme of ‘paradise as a garden’, with its otherworldly connotations, to that of the simple place of pleasure, especially significant for a culture of arid climates. From the face of the beloved which ‘resembles a garden’, to the background of paintings where celestial or worldly lovers meet, it is the place of unification. Mulavī (rūmī) narrates the story of an ant walking on the page of a book and imagining itself in a rose garden, words as the flowers of this garden.109 In the same manner, ‘The rose Garden’ is a popular name for books in Persian literature.110 The garden is a dominant cultural theme, rather than just an image.

Figure 2.6 The quadruple plan of a garden

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Figure 2.7  A garden carpet

As places, gardens are the heterotopias of Islamic culture, paradise on earth (Ferdos bar rūye Zamin),111 representing a domain outwith worldly limitations. It is the very place in which the notion of time as decay and change is challenged. While the daily architecture discussed above reflects this supremacy of time in a human life, which forces one to follow its moves and changes, the notion of the garden works as an antithesis toward these changes represented mainly by the image of time. In fact, it is only in the garden and the cemetery-garden – both atemporal places, one with the concept of death as a departure from the temporal at its heart, and the other an illustration of the changeability of temporal life – that the human is positioned at the centre of an open space. In an analogy with residential architecture, the garden, as exemplified in the chār-bāgh, also represents the quadruple outline, but in a different arrangement. If the geography of the cosmos is symbolised in daily architecture through a ‘whirling wheel’ of movement within the four-square plan, the geography of paradise on earth is visualised with a man at the centre of this wheel. Gardens represent a wheel of time in which the human is the pole, the axis mundi or the ‘centre of the universe’ in Eliade’s terminology; however, this universe is viewed not as a mytho-geography, but as a whirling wheel of time.112 The terms ‘chār-bahār’ (‘four-spring’; chābahār, the name of a city in southeast of Iran) and ‘evergreen’ (‘hamīshe bahār’, a flower) are the antithesis of the destructive changes and the anxiety wrought by the unpredictability and impermanence of nature.113 In addition to architecture, many other Islamic cultural materials share this image of cyclical time. The image can be compared to the throwing of a boomerang, which after a cyclic turn would come back to the same place. Poetry, music and even Sufi thought are among the examples in which the traces of this image can be detected: Recent studies have suggested that the tripartite structure of the classical Arabic ode reflects the three phases of the rite of passage, namely,

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separation, liminality, and transformation, and [the fourth phase] return to community. As adapted by mystics, the principal theme became some variation on the relationship of seeker to sought (God).114 This mystic strain traditionally represented the paths of spiritual odysseys through mystical stories.115 Traces of this notion can also be seen in music and Sufi dance (Sāmā’).116All of these cultural phenomena share a concept of the voyage, in which time works as a category of measurement, on a whirling or circular theme. It is this idea of cyclical time that constructs an overarching image within Islamic, particularly Iranian, culture: a cyclical image that is expressed through different media. Any symbolic interpretation necessarily brings up the question of the validity of hermeneutics. Within the area of Islamic studies, the lack of direct iconographic references means that this issue becomes the central challenge of the semantics of Islamic art.117 Two groups, the symbolists and the formalists, each face difficulties in contextualising their ideas. The former, working from esoteric ideas of Islamic mysticism, introduce symbolic systems that need an encyclopaedia to discover supposed hidden meanings. They fail to explain the common grounds of understanding found in traditional art, and especially public architecture. The latter group also faces problems in its reduction of the function of art to a beautifying phenomenon, simply ornamental art, which lacks any connection with the intellectual domain of culture.118 The interpretation presented in this chapter is based on a cultural theme that is founded on popular literature and beliefs. A cultural theme of this type analogically functions like a Kantian category, considered to be the necessary condition for any possible experience, although the subject of discussion here is of course an observable cultural theme, and not a universal a priori category. This cultural specification of a supposedly universal notion like time, theoretically reducible to the scale of individuals, is the very point that helps us reject abstract generalisations. It is only through this type of thematic analysis within cultures that we may bridge safely the gap between universals and specifics. On one hand, it gives the particularities of other cultures the power of abstraction to transcend from the close space of ethnicity and locality, and on the other, it helps the formation of the space between ethnic and universal which neither should be dismissed nor be represented as unsurpassable. Of course, it follows that the generalisations in this paper are questionable from the same logical point. There are always going to be enough exceptions to make the general conclusions presented here conditional perspectives at best.

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The Geography of Space Despite geometrical abstraction picturing the common understanding of architectural phenomena, there are frameworks, either cultural or universal, which give this abstraction representational significance. The microcosm– macrocosm correspondence is one channel which lays the ground for significance in architecture. correspondences between the larger scale of geographical schemata of the world and their microcosmic images in architecture are one example. While the quadruple image in the previous section was mainly analysed using the concept of time, spatial concepts could also form the basis of the investigation. In fact, the division of time and space is an artificial device for the purpose of theoretical analysis, and both time and space participate in setting the framework of this image. These theoretical categories are not rigid frameworks through which a particular case is objectified but generic outlines that conduct rather than define formation. In this context, differences are not exceptions but evidence that these theories do not define the formation process rigidly but simply provide it with a loose framework. A key to understanding the principles which makes the act of building a process of signification, of giving meaning to the world, is the interaction between form and space, in other words, between what is created and the context. A phenomenological approach suggests the peculiar relationship of these two zones in Iranian architectural and visual culture. Savād and Bayāz (which mean literally ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’) is a compositional principle in calligraphy, which is also the ability to control the balance between figure and ground, if this duality can be attributed here at all (Figure 2.8).119 The same principle exists in architectural ornaments, whether geometrical patterns or arabesque (eslīmī), where the formation of the ornaments and the void in between is simultaneously formed in a frame. Due to the

Figure 2.8 The negative and positive of tile patterns

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immateriality of the forms in the first place, either because of the lack of perspective or owing to the colour and form of the void, rather than the duality of form and background, a maze of colours and forms is created which eliminates surface materiality. The frame here is not merely the neutral border of creation, but is active in form and space of created ornaments. The main argument here is that the same relationship exists between form and space in Iranian architecture. The iwan and the wall are at the centre of this discussion. What is the iwan? As a singular space or attached one, the iwan is a halfopen space literally the extension of open space into the built space. The iwan and the terrace are fundamentally different, in that an iwan can also be an autonomous living space. In fact the sharp distinction of closed space, iwan and open space, either formally or functionally, does not apply in Iranian architecture. Rooms with dar-panjirah (a ‘door-window’, a window extending to the ground that can be walked through) and orossī (large sash windows which cover the front side of the room completely) pragmatically are iwans with a removable transparent side. In this sense, Iranian houses are a walled territory surrounded with iwans. The juxtaposition of two schematic illustrations of Iranian houses shows this point (Figure 2.9). The iwan in Iranian mosques exists in different forms and compositions. The iwan might stand free or in combination with a closed space, either shabistān, room or dome chamber. The combination of iwan and dome chamber became an important element in Iranian mosques from the Seljuk period where it exists in different forms (Figure 2.10).120 Here the iwan can be prominent, like the mosques and iwans of Khorāsān, or relegated to the dome chamber, or of equal importance to the dome chamber.

Figure 2.9  Two schematic illustrations of Iranian houses

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Figure 2.10  Different compositions of the iwan and the dome chamber

iwan masculine public open, outdoor coolness, refreshment stage, representation

shabistān feminine private close, indoor warmth, protection intimacy, veil

Figure 2.11  A set of dualities in spatial division of Iranian architecture

In the latter, the iwan, in both formal and constructional sense, is a half dome. Metaphorically, the other half of the iwan is the open space, marked by the walled courtyard.121 Certain dualities form this complex. For example, the iwan and the miydān in Shāhnāme has the iwan as a public stage. Meanwhile, the iwan and the shabistān have a gendered, interior division in which the iwan connotes sublimation and power, while the shabistān connotes shelter and a warm interior (Figure 2.11).122 Because of these differentiations, and the attribution of some kinds of anthropomorphic meanings to architectural form, social and semantic

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borders can be drawn according to which these dualities divide and differentiate the space. However, another element, the wall, changes the parameters of signification in the context of these forms. As the ‘level zero’ of signification, the wall marks the border between the territory in which representation is allowed and the absolute exteriority in which representation is out of context. Here the border is not between differences but rather marks a division between ‘the territory of differences’ and a ‘non-place’ in which the very notion of definition is lacking. ‘Exterior’ here is not the negative of ‘interior’ but is the negativity itself. In this way, any form of categorisation, from social or gender point of view is eliminated. The space beyond the wall is an absolute otherness, or alterity, from the interior standpoint. It is only defined if it is encircled by another wall. The only social form which this model can represent is atomism. There is a sharp contrast between the indoor space of the wall and the outdoor. Inside, the space of representation is regulated geometrically, while the outside, from a formal point of view is an anarchical combination of walls. This anarchical atomism is not the by-product of an accidental and negative situation, but the logical categorisation of walled territories in the expense of creating a well formed indoor. These are parallel existences of the same social entity and two sides of the same coin. This common space, the space ‘in between’ walls resists formal ordering and definition. Any organiser or regulator is a foreign agent in this context. The wall is transgressed or disappears in three circumstances where the form and patterns of signification are applied to the space of ‘exteriority’. Government is the first instance where the wall is challenged. The wall does not give any cling or pattern to the government as the ‘centre’ and the ‘organiser’ to form and geometrise the quasi-anarchical ‘in between’ space. Nonetheless, even if the government fails to break through the wall and to transform the blank page of walled elements to representational objects, it can nonetheless create a different form of space in which the involved elements appear through difference and identity (Figure 2.12).

Figure 2.12  Transgression of the wall: government (the city of Hamadān)

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Figure 2.13  Transgression of the wall: iwan and temple

Figure 2.14  Transgression of the wall: gate

Fire temples, the tombs or iwans of dervishes, are also cases which the wall, as a physical object, does not define the space. In the cosmological definition of space, as in the case of fire temples in the form of chār-tāq, and in connection to the cardinal directions, space comes into significance without the necessity of a wall. Both the tombs and the iwans of dervishes belong to distinctive ‘subjects’ who exclude themselves from social space, by the concept of death and by chosen solitude respectively. The distinctive personality and absence of others means that a wall is made superfluous (Figure 2.13). The wall appears in the expense of social life. Finally the gate also transgresses the wall’s continuity (Figure 2.14). Gates in Iranian cities frequently take their name from the city towards which the road running through it heads. The spotted wall, through the nominal

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connection to the city of its destination, defines the space in between. Although numerous gates were a sign of wealth, the four-gate city was the ideal form as the designed cities of Firūzābād and Baghdad show. In these cases, we see again a quadruple marking of space, this time in external form. The roads between cities, spotted by manzils (temporary settlements) and caravanserais, define the spatial vacuum between cities. The form and space division in Iranian architecture does not present a clear division between foreground and background in which each functions equally. The wall as division devalues the very notion of a representational connection between two sides. That is not to say that beyond the wall is an arbitrary and un-regulated space. Yet, at the same time, its definition is not a relative identity between private and public, or interior and exterior. Social and territorial division is the subject of Chapter 3; at this point, therefore, it is possible only to conclude that alongside the structural differences of interior/exterior, private/public and feminine/masculine other dualisms exist: between interior and absolute exteriority, between the representational domain and the absolute other, in the formation of social space. Here, exteriority is not the case of a relative definition; rather, it is an exterior space within social borders through which two different agents function. We are facing an Iranian – yet temporal and not exclusive – definition of the geography of space. Conclusion Identity as the representation of difference can range from the sociopolitical construction of distinction to the conscious or unconscious formation of particularities alongside efforts to build a meaningful environment. As a constructive process rather than an intrinsic quality, identity depends on the spatio-temporal structure of the narrations which are employed to articulate history. Whereas at one end of the spectrum, different policies of inclusion and exclusion, origin and continuity are employed to build representations which are projected to others, at the other extreme, a conservative policy spatialises the differences in order to regulate temporal changes and to build a meaningful position. In the first case, an enclosed space is created by drawing a line between belonging and exclusion while the question of identity as a socio-ontological understanding remains bracketed, although a comparatively controlled entity is achieved through the chosen representations. In the second case, however, there is the possibility to articulate and regulate patterns of being which are free of the exclusive lines that distinguish one entity from another, although the danger that these spatially crafted articulations will became ossified is ever present. The first is primarily based on

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an eclectic and linear narration of history, while the second brackets temporality and reduces it to movements between spatially defined stages. This chapter has proposed the latter as an alternative means to deconstruct the closed space of time-based narrations of Iranism. Iranism is a liquid concept (to use Bauman’s term), shaped by different elements. Different notions of race, geopolitical divisions, historical memory, language, sociopolitical conventions, and art and cultural materials prepare the ground for identity debates. The conventional method looks for the origins of images and themes and uses the notion of evolution or continuity to create an exclusive linear space. The main difficulty with this is its chronological nature, and the lack of a spatial definition of differences in the construction of historical categories. History is eliminated as a site of debate and as a means for attaining an understandable image of the surrounding world. This linear narration is not a dialectical or teleological history but one which proposes repetition as a method for maintaining identity. History, rather than the set of familiar patterns through which a social group achieves the ability to regulate its environment, becomes stories of the past detached from the pragmatic concerns of contemporary culture. Although the alternative this chapter suggests cannot cover all aspects of identity, a structural and spatial definition of differences helps nonetheless to elevate the issue beyond the closed space of linear narration. However, without indigenous theories as the tools for gaining cultural self-consciousness, any spatial narration of culture and history would become an isolated enclosure, as has been the case with ‘tradition’. Cultural consciousness cannot be achieved where the identity space is not relativised. This is a necessary stage for a culture like that of Iran to understand itself in the presence of others. It demands the conceptualisation of difference not as intrinsic qualities but as relatively positioned differences. The following three chapters introduce the conceptual understanding of difference as a notion in the context of Iranian architecture. By defining Iranian architecture as patterns through which space is regulated, the border between past and present is crossed and through a structural approach the closed linear space becomes ripe for the application of theories. A formless history of dynasties, people, places and dates will end in itself as stories of the past. By way of comparison, although their time boundaries also represent the possibility of spatially imprisoned cultural phenomena, it is the different categories of medieval, renaissance and enlightenment, as well as the notion of style, which enable European architecture to claim the necessity of studying history in order to

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understand the contemporary context – since contemporary is a relative position in regard to the patterns of history. It is significant that Iranian architectural history lacks any genuine categorisation – apart from the division between traditional and modern division, or abstract notions of Islamic or Iranian – and that history is thereby eliminated as a necessary step in the understanding of current architectural debates and a tool for the regulation of time and space.

3 The Mosque as Public Space

Introduction The intention of the previous two chapters was to attain a fully explicated awareness of the forms of narration deployed in the construction of Islamic and Iranian attributions, and either to suggest alternatives or at least to deconstruct the stronghold of rigid definitions in order to create room for the subject of difference. Without establishing such parameters, the legitimacy of further investigation into the supposed forms of difference is subject to challenge. By emphasizing the relative nature of spatial definitions and their temporality – which does not necessarily reject the possibility of a truth beyond these spatio-temporal perspectives – the notion of difference is presented in this and the following chapters as the undeniable parameter in the construction of any supposedly closed and atemporal definition. The employed notion of differences deconstructs the illusion of homogeneity in interior and autonomy in exterior space. Under investigation in the next three chapters are the forms of difference in these presumably different spaces, within the three conceptual contexts of ‘public space’, ‘history’ and the relationship of ‘universal’ and ‘particular’. The question posed in this chapter is this: in what sense can an Iranian mosque be considered to be a public place? This question can be alternatively expressed, either as ‘What does Islam require of a mosque, with respect to its social concern?’ or as ‘What was the response to these requirements in the Iranian context?’ While at first glance these seem to be the same question although stated in different words, in fact they lead to two different approaches. Answers to the former question may easily become trapped within an idealistic view which searches for the ‘righteous’ definition of a

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mosque’s social aspects; in consequence any actual historical example either is idealised or is represented as a distorted example of an idealised model. This problem emerges from efforts to obtain an atemporal answer to this question. With no other source than the Holy Qur’ān and Sunnah of the Prophet and the early Islamic community as the primordial models, the difficulty arises from a referential judgement – paradoxically, those who insist on this referential judgement themselves define the ‘right’ forms of reference. The latter question, however, phenomenologically investigates the social structures according to which Iranian mosques are built. The contextual analysis of this method stands beyond any value judgment. Yet from the religious viewpoint it endangers any objectivity in the definition of social Islam. Two different views of history are essentially the backbone of these two questions. The key words in this chapter are ‘public’ and ‘place’. ‘Public’ raises the question of the dual conceptual territorisations of private–public and individual–communal. Not universal notions, these are the particular connotations of individualism and collectivism as they are represented in the Islamic Iranian context. Combined here with the term ‘place’, the principal concern of the discussion is the differences which distinguish the private and individual arena from common space, as well as the lines of division and the forms and patterns of transaction between these spaces. A particularly tricky aspect of this investigation is its use of concepts of individuality and privacy as a basis, for these are universal terms according to which borders are drawn between private and public, individual and communal, as pre-existing notions with defined positions. Attempts to render these notions universal, for example with home as a private place and outdoors as the public space, while having to a certain degree a basis for application, ignore the minute differences which explain local particularities. The starting point therefore is the re-definition of these concepts and divisions to make them phenomenologically closer to the subject society, in order that they may be interpreted sensitively in a reverse process of semantics. As a first step, this chapter tries to establish the sense that ideas of individualism and collectivism have within an Iranian context. Following this, with the help of examples three levels of the built environment – home, residential quarters (mahallah) and city – are used to explore the concepts of individuality, community and organisation. The notion of representation – as the bridge between social concepts and the built environment (and the image of city) is examined thereafter. Finally, the notion of mosques as public space and different formations is investigated.



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Individualism and Collectivism When questioning the concept of public place in an Islamic Iranian context, some issues should be noted in order to permit, to some extent, an objective position in dealing with the subject. First, as already mentioned, it is important to have an appropriate sense of the concepts of individualism, collectivism, public and private territories and the boundaries that shape them in a particular society. Common notions of these concepts ignore the probability of other social structures which may give meanings to particular visual and spatial contexts. It should be borne in mind that the values and patterns which create the meanings of public space and individuation may have different forms and ways of representation. The concept of representation itself must be considered. This bridges the world of concepts and visual and spatial images, enabling the interpretation of signified concepts. Misrepresentation has led interpreters to attribute ‘out of context’ meanings to social signs, or in a reverse process of design, to propose improper representations of the accepted social values. Here, an example is appropriate. A residence surrounded with impenetrable high walls, as in the case of Iranian residential architecture, receives various interpretations: as retreating from public space (social and civil structures);1 as separating haram and women from the outside (gender issues);2 and finally, as defending from invaders (political crisis).3 While there are grounds for all of these interpretations, it is the common sense of wall as the sign of division and separation, as the logical and natural interpretation, which leads to these conclusions. Persian literature and public culture show another side of the wall’s story. The wall is the beginning of neighbourhood, and having a shared wall – hamsāyah-yi dīvār-be-dīvār – symbolises closeness. Khānah-yi bī dar va piykar – a home without door and body, which implies wall – is the sign of chaos, undefined territory and crisis of identity. Chār- dīvārī Ikhtiyārī 4 – enclosed wall and freedom – is one of the common definitions of home. These draw attention to a set of social and psychological attachments, in which an object like the wall becomes a local concept but which lose their minute differences, even in the simple act of translating divār as ‘wall’.5 The example of the wall leads us to the third point: the idea of universalism. The complex of ideas through which we construct our common sense of the surrounding world, under the name of ‘universal’, or, on a smaller scale, ‘communal’, surpasses spatio-temporal boundaries, and is attributed to ideas and objects at a distance,6 which belong to other times or geographical zones. While they are the basis upon which communication is made possible and investigators are able to formulate ideas in other historical and

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geographical contexts, they potentially lead them to place ‘differences’ from parallel variations into the hierarchical stages of a universal norm. The notion of difference as one which forms the distinction between ‘universal’ and ‘ethnic’ is another source of difficulty. In contrast to the former notion, ethnicity is a closed, space- and time-bordered entity, which is represented either as an essential category that rejects any other forms of relative existence or as being hierarchically positioned in an evolutionary system. The first step is to provide alternative representations of differences as parallel singularities.7 Thus, at the heart of this chapter is the issue not of why Iranian mosques give a different image of public space but of how they are public places in the first place. Two comparative examples indicate how to approach this question. Chess and backgammon, as was discussed in the previous chapter, signify two different spatio-temporal systems and social structures. The elements of each game, their functions, and their forms of interaction represent two distinct concepts of individuation and collaboration. While in chess the elements have different functions, and interact to make a collective complex composed of heterogeneous elements, in backgammon the elements are the same and without specific function: their interaction is simply gathering around to occupy the space first as settlement and second as protection against occupation by opponents. Whereas chess is based on a functional and structural definition of members, backgammon lacks any definition of its elements. The difference between the images of these two games can be projected analogically to two different types of society defined by Ibn Khaldūn8. Ibn Khaldūn’s account of social mores (asabiyyah as the backbone of communal structure, functionally unclassified members, and the idea of leadership) in a tribal community stands in contrast to his image of civil society.9 Nizām al-Mulk, on the other hand, believed – and in this he was following the Sassanian theory of state – that each person had his own particular function and it was the duty of the government to keep everybody in his proper place.10 Together in accompany with a central administrative government, this functionalism represents society as organisation rather than community. These two images of society can be compared through the notions of individuality, collaboration and public space as it is represented in these two games. The distinct feature of chess is its functionally divided elements and consequently, their hierarchical arrangement as a group. Backgammon, however, lacks the very idea of definition as the basis of classification. The circle, the shape of the backgammon pieces, is the most perfect shape and



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Figure 3.1  Two different systems: backgammon and chess

due to this perfection, characterless. It signifies functionless elements. No hierarchy, no function: how can backgammon pieces be defined? The feature that gives backgammon its distinctive character is the microcosm/ macrocosm correlation between elements and the whole system. In chess, pieces divided by function do not signify the whole system and the system is imperfect without any of its divisions. But in backgammon, both the overall image of system and the pieces are circular; their complete shape signifies a closed system. As long as a position is occupied by two pieces, the lack of players does not affect the overall situation.11 The illustrations in Figure 3.1 help to illustrate this aspect. While chess pieces signify an individual or a class in society, the pieces of backgammon, due to their microcosm/macrocosm correlation, can be a person in a family, a family in a neighbourhood, a neighbourhood in a city, or towns in a political territory. Each division is self-sustained, close, and inward looking which seeks to get close to others in order to make a stronger group. This is plurality and oneness, community and individuality at once. The different definition of the elements in both systems leads to two fundamental concepts of organisation and public space. The collective function of the members (the pieces) in chess is composed of positional arrangements of members which leave an active space beyond the singular positions for attack or defence. While the function of each single element has a linear extension towards outer space, the overall function is to make a space in between which forms through the collaboration of these external extensions. In chess, as a structural organisation, using the terminology of Gestalt theory, the collective image is more than an addition of each element separately. Backgammon in contrast exhibits a lack of overall interaction,

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for the elements have no functional specification to organise or regulate common space. The sole quality which forms a communal image is being together and occupying of close positions.12 Yet the absence of formal organisation in backgammon should not be interpreted as the lack of public interaction. Both games represent two concepts of God. In the former, God (player) is Logic, the rational organiser; in the latter, God is fate marking destiny,13 and is an absent and unpredictable force represented by the thrown dices. There are two players in backgammon; one who throws the dice as the agent – or better the channel – of marking destiny, and one who as the navigator through destiny looks for the best strategy to gain the most in the given conditions. In short, the absence of form in relationships, to classify and to regulate, is the main feature which differentiates the social image of backgammon from that of chess. Public space, meanwhile, as a space exterior to the private zone of each element, made through collaboration, is evident in chess and formally absent in backgammon. Chess pieces have a functional exteriority as their sole definition which is regulated through defined patterns of movement in a chequered space. Functionally divided members and regulated space create a collaborative public space managed by a logical organiser (which might be seen as government). In backgammon, in contrast, elements are outwardly characterless, and interaction in spatial sense seems to be absent. In fact, free space between the rows is often a point of weakness and to occupy spaces close together is the sign of a stronger community. However, there is in backgammon another public space with an absolutely different meaning. Pieces circle around an empty space which does not belong to or depend on any particular members, which is not formed by collaboration but simply exists.14 This is public space without public function. It is noteworthy that the identity of elements, the patterns of their interaction, and the forms of governance are interconnected aspects of these two games. In backgammon, the absence of formally defined lines of communication according to which the movement through space is regulated is associated with the lack of identity of members, unregulated space, and absence of management and rationality in the sense of the predictability of the future according to the patterns of the present, since the future, in the case of chess, is the extension of the present. Negativity as the only way of describing different aspects of backgammon arises from the lack of any formal or representational definition of differences. Any direct comparison between chess and backgammon and any social structure is potentially misleading since these two models cannot purely exist in reality. Indeed the difference between these two models is not an explanatory model



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Figure 3.2  An Iranian house and modern residence

for two separate societies, nor are they analogous to different stages in a hierarchical model for proper social structure; they are instead simultaneous patterns which form social structure. We see something similar if we are to consider Iranian architecture. Iranian houses, though not exclusively Iranian, are basically described variously as a closed wall which defines the land boundaries, an inside/outside connection via a gate or more complex transitory spaces, and finally a series of rooms assembled on different sides of an open courtyard. Solid walls without any opening to outdoor, a courtyard, and rooms which open inwards through a transparent side are general aspects of this architectural model. This is approximately a converse image of conventional modern residences (Figure 3.2).15 In these a set of private rooms without visual opening inside, a communicative line, and a common room, are all packed into a box facing outwards as the social space. With some juxtaposition between these two spatial organisations and their context, an insight into the formative patterns of these two models can be achieved. Bracketing the matter of scale and social differences, there is a considerable resemblance between the inner structure of typical modern residences and a section – either a quarter or smaller divisions – of Iranian Islamic cities. Imagine residences in these cities to be private rooms, alleys to be corridors, and the neighbourhood centre to be the common room. In this comparison, an individual private territory replaces a family residence in an Iranian city. What do we gain from this juxtaposition and what do the similarities demonstrate? What is immediately striking about the morphology of Iranian cities is the lack of geometrical arrangement of the residential blocks: a lack of hierarchy maintained by the image of uninterrupted solid walls shaping identical narrow alleys, and their lack of formally distinguishable public spaces. Surprisingly, the excessive sensitivity in geometrical design visible in the

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interior space of individual buildings is replaced in public arena by a sharply opposite attitude which invites the formal definition of chaos. Are they the product of the same people or culture and if yes, what theories can explain such a pronounced difference? A lack of geometrical positioning of the elements implies a lack of interest in maintaining a position, be it formal or social, in regard to other members. The result is a neutral context,16 in which spatial preferences are absent. The concept of closeness is the only positional preference set by subjective connections. Why, too, is there a lack of adequate open space in the public realm – as might commonly be expected – when at the same time people have created massive courtyards in their residences? The possible answers to these questions shed light on the social structure upon which this morphological outline draws, as do they also on the subject of concern here, the concept of public space in Islamic Iranian cities. There are interesting results if we transfer the same questions to the context of modern residences. The communicative lines inside houses, i.e. corridors, are not a space for their own sake, but spaces secondary to the primary functions, that is to say rooms. Why do not these communicative lines form a major space in their own right, and why do not rooms necessarily hold a defined position in regards to each other, by for example gathering, grouping or facing toward each other? This type of arrangement appears unnecessary in a family context regarding the kind of relationship between members. Moreover, why do not rooms have windows which open to the indoor space? This seems a bizarre question, as it undermines the primary function supposed for a room, of privacy and separation between individual spaces. What then are we to conclude? Family members and their close attachments set a different ground for the function of social signs. In families, due to the nature of relationships, which relatively are neither functionally nor formally defined, and because of the physical presence of members in communication, signs as representative signifiers are emptied from their representational function when compared to the social arena. If we project this fact onto the social structure of Iranian cities, at least in the smaller scales of the residential quarters, the type of social relationships which are also based on the close attachment of members indicate the same. This may explain the faceless image of Iranian houses and lack of distance between them.17 Nevertheless, these could be a point of misinterpretation where this social structure and its built environment are interpreted as signs of collectivism and the undermining of individual identities. The absurd suggestion that rooms in modern residences might have windows which open onto the interior space is actualised in Iranian houses.



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Virtually the entire living space has a completely transparent façade which opens onto the common space (courtyard). Though they can be isolated by curtains, the very formal language of the house implies that there is no place for isolated individual space. From this comparison between Iranian residences and modern ones, we can discern the existence of the same concepts but ones drawn on a different outline. In making it, we replace a family in an Iranian city with an individual in a modern family, and a section of city, for example, a Mahallah,18 with a family residence. Doing so might repeat the conventional view of Muslim societies as family-oriented, lacking individuality, where lineal connections are the sole factors for constructing a social structure. Such a division of societies into a dual classification of those based on individualism and those based on collectivism19 can be misleading, for all that it provides a means of conceptualising social differences. However, this juxtaposition does proposes a reasonable explanation for the segmentation of social and urban structure which is common in the entire Islamic context.20 In the next part, therefore, we investigate the nature of this segmentation in Iranian Islamic cities. Home, Mahallah and City Regarding the concepts of individuality, community, and organisation, the aim of this section is to find the blueprint whereupon these concepts shape a public space of which the mosque is a major constituent. While in the later section, ‘The Image of the City’, the focus is on the formal language, here the emphasis is on the social dimensions expressed through that formal and spatial language. The discussion in the intermediate section, ‘Representation’, provides a connection between these two parts. The final goal is to construct a model for investigating the formal language of Iranian mosques based on the dual analytical categories of community and organisation. The referential attribution of ‘Islamic’ in a social sense conceals a major conflict. On the one hand, those who in the social structure of the Arabs of the jahiliyyah see Islam as a reform represent it as a negation of the tribal organisation of that society. In this view, Medina in comparison with Mecca represents a community of believers who, regardless of any lineal connection, individually and equally carry out their duty towards God and other believers. Mohammad is seen as a reformer who breaks the tribalbased connections of members and the larger scale of tribal confederation by introducing an ideal ambition of equality between members and individuality in relation to God. On the other hand, there are those who see the social structure of Islamic society from its inception as an extension of the tribal structure

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of pre-Islamic Arabs: not only, in many cases, as a historical contradiction inside the ideal vision of Islam, but also at the very core of Islam itself. The socio-lingual structure of the Holy Qur’ān, the early Hadīth, the meaning of Ummah and the governmental structure of early Islam are all interpreted as the mere transformation of existing concepts and social structures in the name of the new religion. In addition, the later history of Islam shows the reappearance of those social codes which were condemned by early Islam.21 A major deficiency of these views is their over-emphasis on the referential meaning of the Islamic attribution. To cling to either of these ideas exclusively as the only explanatory model of social structure is to ignore the historical and geo-cultural heterogeneity in which the attribution of Islamic became more than an ahistorical point of reference. Regarding the ideas of individuality and collectivism, while they may be shown as ‘the opposite poles of one dimension’22 other views ‘suggest that the two can coexist and are simply emphasised more or less in each culture, depending on the situation’.23 The situational aspect of social behaviour indicates the possibility that different selves exist,24 and this suggests in turn the possibility of different roles in different social borders, for the heterogeneous nature of society cannot be conceptualised through a single narration even at a particular point of history. Residential architecture is the logical point at which to begin an analysis of the social and subsequently spatial structure of Islamic Iranian cities. While solid walls indicate a sharp separation of indoor and outdoor in Iranian houses, the hierarchical privatisation of space inside Mahallah indicate that it is wrong to interpret this separation as a private/public dichotomy. Bracketing the case of gender division, a sliding scale of public relationships connects individuals to outside communities. The concept of ‘outside’ depends on one’s point of standing – i.e. family, immediate neighbours, a section of Mahallah, Mahallah and finally city. As a result, representing residential space as a private zone in contrast to a public space, and the subsequent interpretations raised by this sharp division, ignores the intense social connections and minute differentiations in the formation of territories inside Mahallahs and the city. A wall rather than simple sign of division, marks stages of transition between territories of gradual differences (Figure 3.3).25 The Mahallah is, to some extent, the main component of the social body in entire Islamic cities.26 Different explanations have already been suggested to justify this subdivision in Islamic cities.27 Among them are tribal origin, community-based social structure and lack of municipal association. Principal among them was the notion of scale in structuring the society.



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Figure 3.3  The gradual introduction of private to public marked by walled territories

The time reckoning of Muslims’ call to prayer, five or three times a day, subsequently creates a spatial reckoning. Gathering repetitively in a place during the day necessitates that a manageable distance is maintained. The other proposition is that the Mahallah as a social structure is mainly based on community rather than organisation, where the close subjective connections of members limit the scale. Nevertheless, we can only equate community and Mahallah with caution. An over-emphasis of the lineal connection of subjects as the only explanation for the formation of the Mahallah ignores the organisational aspects which created the notion of scale and subdivision. While Mahallahs in their origin might have been based on a familial, tribal or occupational interconnection, their growth over time and their scale, simultaneously established them as an organisational division in Islamic Iranian cities. According to this view, the Mahallah can be seen both as an indigenous organisational entity which resists central power, and, in the absence of resisted central power, as an anarchical body which manages internal issues on a certain scale. The Mahallah can be seen as the first step of association between individuals and groups with their communal connections. The functional division of members in order to manage public affairs, the appearance of representatives, men of either religion or power, and, finally, legal agreements, though mostly unwritten both in Sharī’ah or the ‘Orf, are the features which reveal organisation in the conduction of Mahallah affairs. However, assumed as the basic elements of associational organisations, these dimensions do not ascribe or reject individualism in this context. Although taking part in social affairs is usually as ‘a member of ’, a strong sense of individualism is nonetheless involved. Through their close connection,

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members are not as the beholders of abstract social rights but rather physically present. Individuality therefore is not a right to be bestowed but something to be achieved. The contrast between the notion of individuality as a physico-emotional presence and as a player in a socio-historical structure has characterised the notion of historiography in Iran.28 The wall so characteristic of Iranian houses also metaphorically surrounds any group, and marks both a lack of representation beyond it as well as a detachment from the inside in outdoor presences. While individuals are subjectively connected to different social groups, the wall signifies breakage in exposing these connections to the outside as ‘a member of ’.29 As representation’s blank canvas, the wall devalues any semiotic connection between sign and reference, and form and content. It is a blank page of signification which must be taken into account if we are not into the convention of attributing certain signified to signifiers. Two concerns must be flagged here. First is the overall image of the city despite the inner segmentation. Second is the nature of the state where there are autonomous and segregated social sectors. How does centrality (as a description of the nature of the state) come to play in a society which is mainly constructed on the basis of subjective connections in the form of isolated social and spatial clusters? It is the problem of finding persuasive answers for these questions which in themselves suggest negative pictures of Islamic cities in general and Iranian cities in particular. On the one hand, they are represented as a combination of separated segments without any overall connection; on the other, the social body in the Islamic city is represented as a passive unorganised mass confronting a central monarchy. In a way, both of these views are geometrical preconceptions projected on the interpretation of social and spatial structure in Islamic Iranian cities. In the former, the city is represented as a combination of independent Mahallahs which fails to embody any centre, and in the other it is based on the neutral horizontal image of urban fabric which shows neither constitution nor subsequently hierarchy in its structure in order that central power is connected to the social body.30 Key to resolving this seemingly irresolvable duality is the discovery of a link, social or formal, between government and semi-anarchic social sections. On the one hand, communal social sections fail to address any government in its proper sense unless the government is represented as an extension of them in the conduct of social affairs.31 On the other hand, government is defined as an absolute power which rules a powerless mass. Here a solution would be to find a hierarchical model which binds smallscale communities to the larger scale of central administration.



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Figure 3.4  Community and government

Figure 3.4 illustrates the nature of social structures in an Islamic Iranian context. On one side is a semi-anarchical social body which does not address the need for a governmental administration, and due to its assumed community based structure is dysfunctional in the context of bigger managerial scales. On the other, there is a government with a central position, which stands beyond the reach of municipal organisation, whilst simultaneously confronting an autonomous and flat civic body. The intersected space as the heterogeneous space of community and organisation is crucial here. In reality, the individual definition of citizenship on the basis of abstract rights has never existed in an Islamic Iranian context. Individuals are socially present by taking part in the community which is a social structure based mainly on the intersubjective connection of members. Since the individual can adopt different social selves, an individual can at different levels, be a member of different communities. A family member is a member of the Mahallah, probably a merchant member of the bazaar and if wealthy and powerful, a member of the local or royal court, for example. Each of these community parcels is more or less self-sustained and closed. Any influence on a community from above is possible only through direct contact with the elite of that community. These elites, by means of power, wealth or religion, although not through official selection, are accepted as the representatives of the community by consensus.32 This abstract image, based on the exclusive notion of community, internalises the notion of government as an essentially community institution.33 To picture government as an administrative organisation, however, disturbs the homogenous image of community-based explanations. Instead, the bazaar, as the institution which connects the community-based civic body to the administrative organisation of the government, is key in our attempt to solve the duality which arises from this intrusion. In spite of reducing the monarchy to a community organisation, the bazaar by standing at the

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Figure 3.5  Bazaar as a linear intersected space

edge of these two social entities connects them together. In this manner, on one hand, the bazaar is first connected to the social body of Mahallahs and on the other, represents an administrative organisation which is based on association connected to the government institution. The characteristics of bazaar organisation have been the subject of many discussions, for example its legal administration and the existence of guilds,34 since it is the focal point for the explanation of the nature of Iranian cities. The duality between a structural organisation, as it was pictured through chess with representational elements, functionally defined regulations and clear border divisions which make administration possible, and community in its different possible forms, as it was pictured through the analogy of backgammon with identity-less members, absence of functional, territorial and administrational divisions, and ‘wall’ as the border line between microcosm and macrocosm rather than between two functionally defined territories, has the potential to conceptualise spatial differences in Islamic Iranian cities. This duality proposes the reassessment of available categories, for instance public–private divisions or defined functional classifications, as they are used in the analysis of the social and spatial structure of Islamic Iranian cities. Only then will there be room for alternative explanations. Representation The main characteristic of the picture presented by backgammon is its lack of representation. That is to say that other than physical presence the pieces



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do not have a fixed functional or spatial identity durable through time. The circle as the most perfect shape, as the same figure for all the pieces, signifies an identity beyond any immediate functional definition. This creates a double-sided phenomenon. In the formal sense, there is stillness, repetition of an elemental form, for it first lacks the notion of history with change as the central theme, and secondly lacks socio-functional signification due to the absence of any pattern of change connectable to any socio-functional cause. In the functional sense, there is fluidity describable only by anthropological investigation, without any formally transcendent conclusion. Semiotics loses the ground since the sign – the circle – is nothing more than a detached frame for internal affairs. No notion of history can exist, since there are no fixed states to formalise change as movement between them. The general picture, then, is an unsurpassable division between form and function, signifier and signified, between Zāhir and Bātin. In this sense, semiotics, the manner in which signs refer to the signified, if at all, does not happen through representation. In a culture based on Logos (the Word) meaning is always postponed, since it is inexpressible. Meaning is everywhere and yet nowhere. The meaning of signs is not the one they formally express. Meaning is expressed through this inability of expression; as an absence, it is the one which is not there. While at a first glance this absence belongs to the religious domain of culture and the very point of God as the absolute Other, it is also a general mechanism in the semiotics of the social realm. The enclosed entity of communities or members is always surrounded by a wall and reveals nothing to the outside. Behind the wall, there is a garden, a beautiful house and a family, and behind the hijāb (veil) a feminine beauty. The wall is neither the suppression nor the covering of representations, but reflects the absence of the notion of representation in the first place. The most significant difficulty in this context is to search for the signified on the basis of common paradigms. One such common paradigm in cultural interpretations is the assumed interconnection between space, on one hand, and culture/society, on the other. The border is drawn between socio-cultural clusters through their spatial territories. While the very point of the spatialisation of a socio-cultural phenomenon on a structural basis is questionable in itself, the main concern here is the universalisation of these culture-space territories. To locate socio-cultural meanings on the basis of commonsense can lead to misjudgement. The private zone, public place, worship house and city centre are among many examples where their application in the Iranian context must be preceded, besides the questioning of their contextual meaning, by locating them culturally.

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The Image of the City If the features employed to define something or recalled in a person’s memory are considered to mirror a phenomenon, then the image of a city comprises those elements which create the personal schema of the city for its inhabitants. Though the word ‘image’ refers directly to formal features, it is in fact a combination of social events and individual experience which elevate the built environment to a narrative of civil life and make it memorable. The possibility of a collective image (or images) arises where common life is shared by interacting members and where this life through a level of abstraction becomes limitedly collective. In what follows we explore a possible logic which is capable of connecting social events on the one hand and the built environment on the other.35 The common conception of an Iranian house is based on the notion of gathering: divided spaces, potentially autonomous, share an open space which in extended families is shared between connected families. The hierarchy of privacy is based on a line from centre to depth (Figure 3.6). An important characteristic of this architecture is its lack of direct connection between space and functions. It follows therefore that this lack of representational connection between place and its function is an important key in the interpretation of any space in Iranian architecture. So too is the image-less outer wall which has already been discussed. The result is the absence of outward clues by which other buildings can be relatively positioned, for there is no positional definition.36 The only factor to connect these boxes is proximity. It is a subjective rather than formal connection which due to the density of the space in between turns it into a private

Figure 3.6  The hierarchy of privacy in a spatial unit of Madrasah



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Figure 3.7 Darband

place.37 In many Iranian cities, houses which group about a dead-end alley transform it into a private place by closing it with a gate, called a darband, or cul-de-sac (Figure 3.7). Here again we are reminded of the comparison between the inner structure of a contemporary house and a section of the Iranian city. Home is the nucleus from which the image of the bigger world is built. As mentioned previously, an Iranian house is based on gathering around or facing an open space, defined by a solid wall and accessed through complex entrance spaces or a simple gate. As much as the wall shows separation and negation of the outside, it also signifies the absence of distance.38 The narrow space which connects the houses must be considered in the light of the open space of the courtyard within and the complex function of the house which cannot be confined solely to a place of residence. The transformation of function in respect of time and event positions the house in a more complex social context than a simple family residence.39 Traditionally, during daytime men leave the Mahallah,40 and it is transformed into a relatively feminine territory, in which the patterns of spatial divisions are changed. Doors are generally left open during the day and alleys and courtyards are transformed into public gathering places for women and playgrounds for children. Roof access is commonly used for direct contact between neighbours in towns and cities. At times of ceremony, for example during religious or wedding ceremonies, houses become a public place.41 As the suffix of -Khānah (house) in Farsi reflects, it is the general term for place rather than residential place. A house might be the location for weekly religious ceremonies, and meanwhile also a residence.42

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In this context the sense of location is attached to the owner of the house, and indeed the neighbourhood is mapped through layers of historical ownership which remain in the collective memory of its inhabitants. In this manner, the formal image is unable to be abstractly referred to a particular social function; rather, time and events interact to build the collective image of place. Yet a functional flexibility does not imply that formal language is neutral in creating the meaning of place. Instead they can be seen as a diagram for the conduct of social affairs, and in order to reach concrete conclusions these must be anthropologically contextualised. Although there are other subdivisions based on the close relationship between individuals and families, Mahallahs can be considered as the primary social segment in Islamic Iranian cities. It is mistaken to explain the Mahallah exclusively on a communal basis or through lineal connection of its inhabitants. Due to their scale, seemingly like villages within cities, new dimensions of constitution are introduced into a Mahallahs’ social life. While occasionally historical and familial connections can be traced back to the original members of the Mahallah, in their present situations the Mahallah is more an organisational entity rooted in the social life and social relationships of Islamic Iranian cities. In their fabric, Mahallahs are a neutral context without any explicit geometrical connection between the segments. In them, a combination of personal attachment to small groups inside the Mahallah, its centre as the main space of social and religious gatherings, and finally an exclusive sense of belonging and distinction from others, which is passed to the new generations as part of their socio-historical memory, all play a role in creating the collective image of a Mahallah. A shared competitive spirit between Mahallahs was a source not only of their exclusive identity, but also a motivation for improving the quality of life. What then does centre mean in this socio-morphological fabric? There are two different types of quarter centres: first are those centres which are at the edge of the main bazaar and which connect Mahallahs through the commercial line to other segments of the city. Second are those centres which are separated zones, each with its small-scale public spaces like mosque, bath (hammām) and small shops (bazaar-cheh) (Figure 3.8). Once again, as we have seen elsewhere, there is no formal or positional logic in the connection of the centre to its attached neighbourhood. In what follows, social and formal parameters are used to illustrate the way in which bonds are constructed inside a Mahallah. In Iranian cities the Tikyah or Husseyniyah is the official place for Muharram ceremonies. During the first ten days of Muharram, the first



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Figure 3.8  Bazaar and mahallahs

Figure 3.9  Tikyah (plan and section)

month of the Arabic calendar, this is the nightly gathering place for all the members of the Mahallah. Figure 3.9 shows the inner regulations of a Tikyah in one of the towns of Isfahan, Sidah (Khomaini-Shahr). Like the Madrassah or the house, the spatial organisation is based on the notion of gathering, each single room dedicated to one of the family of the Mahallah. While ceremonial functions are divided between families, it is each family’s responsibility to host the guests who are sitting in front of each Iwan.43 Each family is historically responsible for the preparation of one part of the ceremony in and out of the Tikyah. The space in the Tikyah is divided by gender. In it the male section on the lower level is divided between families; the upper or female section, however, has no division at all.44 This form of organisation recalls the structure of Mansūr’s Baghdad, a round city in which each section of the ring was dedicated to a tribe or clan. This also resembles the collective form of Hojrah, the spatial unit

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in religious schools and Khānah, the spatial unit in Sarā (house). This microcosm–macrocosm relation between smaller scale complexes, like the relationship of the house and the Madrassah to larger scale entities like the Mahallah or the city itself, reflects a structural principle in Islamic Iranian cities. Nonetheless, the geometrical abstraction and formal appearance of the Tikyah as the representation of a community structure has no parallel existence in the urban morphology of Islamic Iranian cities.45 Gatherings can only be objectified geometrically at the presence of a wall which signifies the inclusive gathering of those who already have social connections. Scale and gender are central factors in this formal gathering. In families, women and men take part in the geometrically well-formed entity of courtyard houses; in Mahallah, as was seen in Tikyah or squares in residential quarters, only males, signifying the paternal classification of family. And finally in the city, despite it being a defined territory, there is no geometrical gathering of spatial units, although the idea of Miydān (public square) is based also on social gathering. The segmentation created by divisions between Mahallahs makes it difficult to illustrate the total image and meaning of a city, which overcomes this segmentation and constructs a collective image. In the eyes of most writers on Islamic cities, from Weber onwards, an integrated social body active in the administration of the town or city is absent due to the lack of what is called municipal organisations.46 This dilemma essentially undermines the notion of the city, but significantly the bazaar provides a link which both connects these autonomous segments together and to the bigger scale of city administration. The labyrinthine bazaar is the backbone of almost all Islamic Iranian cities. Unless seen from a bird’s-eye view (Figure 3.10), the bazaar does not reveal its formal structure from any single point. Indeed, it is only through the course of time and changes in events that the bazaar can be experienced thoroughly. This is an experience which does not happen in a continuous timeline, for each user deals with only a section of this mega-structure, while remaining aware of his or her connection to a bigger complex. The organic growth of the bazaar form,47 without any overall supervision in conducting its form, reflects the dependency of its existence and progress on temporal factors. This implies the impossibility of creating or administrating its complex through a single centre and at a fixed time. The flexible, linear image of the bazaar reflects the plural existence of the power centres which conduct its total existence.48 The bazaar is not a neutral line. Centres, independent but hierarchical, polarise the spaces within the bazaar. The linear formation of the bazaar



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Figure 3.10  A schematic map of mosques, squares and bazaars in Yazd

is the product of different socio-economic and administrative factors: for example, it is connected to city gates in order to allow trade to be conducted without interrupting the daily life of inhabitants in residential sections. For outside traders, then the bazaar is experienced as an autonomous structure independent of the urban fabric, while formally part of it. It is also influenced by the plurality of the Mahallahs which, without the desire to gather around a single centre, diffuse through the city attaching themselves to its commercial life. The functional division of the merchants, and the plurality of commercial centres and their attached political powers, are among the reasons for which the bazaar is simultaneously a single commercial body and a plural entity. The administration of the bazaar has been a major point of dispute in discussions of the nature of Islamic cities, particularly the question of the existence of guilds. Scholars have questioned whether there was an autonomous power capable of resisting governmental hegemony and if there was legislation to conduct the administration of the bazaar. These points lead us to consider the connection of the social body to the central power of the monarchy. There are two structures which particularly reflect the presence of government in Iranian cities; one is the citadel and its administrative

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attachments and the other the Miydān (square). Citadels can be both the royal residential palaces and administrative offices. Miydān, meaning literally ‘open space’, can be both a governmental and a communal space with regard to its form, location and function. These are the two spaces which a hierarchical and community-based interpretation of social structure, whether of residential units, Mahallah or the bazaar, cannot explain, since they are spaces built by a power from above and beyond the community. Citadels, either those built upon Islamic prototypes as the attachments of Jame’ mosques or later variations, follow two models. First there are those structures which hold a central position in the city as the sign of power outside the fabric of the community. The central position of early Dār al-imārah or the later Iranian models are examples where the royal institution in attachment to the public square holds a distinctive central position. There are furthermore those citadels which are a close-walled castle (Arg in Persian) and which work mainly as the royal residence. The expression of centre is hardly applicable to this type. Like other residential structures in the city, they are based in a neutral urban fabric, distinguished only by the scale. Like the residential community in which the hierarchy through classification is not mirrored in the built environment, it is only the subjective position of the ruling family which places them atop of the hierarchy and gives them the right to conduct non-institutionalised administrative jobs. This is the model for community based government. While the visualisation of these two models is based on pre-figured geometrical conceptions, they nonetheless have the potential to articulate the notion of difference and unite together the distinct models of Islamic Iranian cities either as community organisations or absolute monarchy. Royal Miydāns in Iranian cities are the only spaces where formal design in the civil space is eventually conducted on a larger scale. From the Mongol era onwards,49 a model of mosques appeared, which was not central to royal structures in cities but was attached to a greater scale of construction in which the Miydān was the central space. The land reform after the Mongols which handed administrational power to the monarchy exclusively made gigantic constructions possible in the heart of Iranian cities. This opportunity was occasionally used to spontaneously transform urban structures. Timur’s Samarqand and Shah Abbas’s Isfahan are examples of these reforms. The types of Miydāns and garden names appear after the Mongols, mainly in the Timurid and Safavid eras: Naghsh-i Jahān (the image of the world) and Jahān-nimā (the mirror of the world) for example, show the symbolic meaning of these structures in the empire.50



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This type of construction was used to transform the city centre in the wake of dynastic changes, to erase the memory of previous dynasties and to craft new images of the city. We can see this as a cause of the historical layering of a city.51 Isfahan, Yazd and Kirmān are examples of this historicisation of the urban fabric. In the new square of Isfahan, the change was particularly great. In the old square (Miydān Kohnah) the mosque was the centre, and the square the attachment to it, according to the early Islamic tradition of there being open space near a Jame’ mosque. In the new square (Naghsh-i Jahān), however, the mosque is appended to the bigger structure of the square. The old Iranian model of exposed monarchical presence came back to the city, not in caste-classified city structure this time.52 On the basis of this discussion, let us then turn now to some models for differentiating mosques, structurally and historically. The Mosque as a Public Place On the basis of the analysis thus far, a classification of Iranian mosques in their socio-historical context is possible. The aim of classification is to reach a more contextualised picture of Iranian mosques rather than to produce typological classification. There are two models of mosque classification: first are those who diachronically look for probable changes of mosques in the course of history, and second are those who synchronically analyse mosques, based on their contextual function in the urban context. One of the common classifications of mosques, based on the former notion, is to categorise mosques on the grounds of dynastic alterations and the subsequent socio-political changes which affected their form and meaning. Abbasid, Seljuk and Safavid are widely used terms which connote the specific characteristics of mosques during particular periods of history. Grabar, in an interesting analysis, classifies mosques in four different phases. In the first phase, early mosques are viewed as a space and as the centre of the entire community life, which in the second phase becomes transformed into a building.53 In the third phase, ‘the mosques in the very large cities became partly dissociated from the secular authorities and developed as specifically religious symbols’.54 Finally, in a fourth phase ‘the twelfth-century mosque replaced an earlier hypostyle mosque and reflected, therefore, a conscious formal change. Instead of the large space of the hypostyle hall with its endless possibilities of movement and growth, there is an interior courtyard (and not merely the open part of a single area).’55 Significantly Grabar’s method considers both space and time in his investigation. However, while he bases his discussion on a spatial analysis, time remains the main grounds for his classification. Due to the level of abstraction and little presence of

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local preferences in analysis, Grabar’s division can hardly be used as the ground for a concrete analysis of the mosque. A second model, drawn from structural analysis, classifies mosques on the grounds of spatial differentiation in their urban context. Neighbourhood or Jame’ mosques and tribal or royal mosques are the examples of this kind of division. This type of analysis, due to its rejection of temporal considerations and changes of the structure over time does not lead to satisfactory generalisations. Indeed, only in case studies of a particular urban structure – in other words, bracketing the time –can this method be used in formal analysis of mosques. Instead a spatio-temporal framework which takes into account both the structural differences and changes in the idea of mosque in the history, either Islamic or local, is needed. There are several reasons why the study of a mosque might employ a combination of these views. A single structure can find different social functions and meanings in the course of history. For example, a Jāme’ mosque can become a neighbourhood mosque due to changes in urban zones. In this case, a structural view and a fixed classification as the model of a particular time would be reductionist. Additionally, the very meaning of the mosque in itself can be seen as a temporal concept. If we accept the abstract definition of mosques as the place of performing salāt – communal praying as the primary function and its other attached social functions – then the meaning of mosques changes on the basis of the social context in which mosques work as the adjacent structure. During Ramadan, a tent in a newly built part of the town (Figure 3.11), a shop in a big shopping mall, a store room in a department or the carpeted concourse of a bus terminal can be became a mosque. In this manner, any model of classification can be applied only diagrammatically as the framework for the analysis of the real structure. The aim of the forthcoming discussion is to draw out this timely and contextual diagram for Iranian mosques. On a smaller scale, two different models of mosque can be observed. One is the group of mosques which are properly called praying rooms or namāzgāh (Figure 3.12). This sort of mosque is generally the adjacent element of a bigger structure, mainly bazaar or residential quarters. The designation of centre is not appropriate in their respect. The majority of mosques without open space belong to this group. A second group of mosques belongs to the subdivision territories of residential quarters. These do not belong to the neighbourhood centre but are of simple structure, with a courtyard and a pool or a small place for ablution, and more or less resemble the residential type. In the urban fabric, like residential buildings, they exhibit no preference as to their position,



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Figure 3.11  A tent functioning as a mosque

Figure 3.12  The mosque as praying room

which would permit their classification as a public place. Other structures are rarely built close to these mosques, as is true of the centre of Mahallahs. In Mahallah centres, the mosque is one of the major spaces, if not the only one. Here other structures are added to mosques to make a bigger complex, for example an open space (vāshudgāh),56 small shops and probably other structures like a bathroom or tikyah. There are a group of Mahallah centres which are literally at the edge of the neighbourhood, and which act as the point of connection to the larger-scale structure of the bazaar. The centre of a Mahallah is the first place in which the Miydān, not only as a simple open space but also as an autonomous space, may appear in Islamic Iranian cities (Figure 3.13).

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Figure 3.13  The centre of the mahallah

Jāme’ mosques, the congregational or Friday mosques, operate in larger social areas than simple neighbourhood segments. It is noteworthy that the Jāme’ as the single congregational structure of the city ceases to exist at a certain point in history in most Iranian cities. The common character of the majority of these mosques is in a way they attach to the bazaar. On a morphological basis, these types of mosque can be divided in two groups. Directly attached to the bazaar complex, without any major space in between, are a group of mosques which basically function as the urban Miydān. Like the courtyard in residential architecture, the whole open space of the mosque functions as the courtyard of the city. With multiple entrances, like the similar but smaller husseyniyah, which combine a small square and a religious place, these mosques, apart from their main role as religious centre, function as a social and ceremonial place, an ‘access through’ and even as a place for rest. In a way, the closed space which surrounds a courtyard can be seen as the religious attachment of a more social space, though religiosity remains its main function. It is mainly mosques remaining from Seljuk and pre-Mongol structures that represent this model. Shīrāz, Qazvīn and Yazd Jāme’ mosques are good examples of this type.57 Even the Grand Jāme’ ‘Atīq Mosque of Isfahan with its attached Miydān can be placed in this category (Figure 3.14). Following the tradition of early mosques with an open market with the mosque as the central feature, Miydān Kohnah (the ‘Old Square’ in contrast to Naqsh-i Jahān square as the ‘New Square’) is a secondary space which works mainly as an open market attached to the central



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Figure 3.14  The mosque as piazza (Jāme’ ‘Atīq, Isfahan)

Figure 3.15  Mosque and miydān (Imam Mosque, Isfahan)

structure of the mosque. It stands in contrast to a later example, the Imam (Shah) mosque in Naqsh-i Jahān square, in which the mosque is a structure attached to the central space of the Miydān (Figure 3.15). The Mīrchamāq complex in Yazd, Rīgestān in Timurid Samarqand and Naqgh-e Jahān in Safavid Isfahan represent this model of mosque. Land reforms after the Mongols enabled royal institutions within a short period to construct massive structures at the heart of cities or adjacent to them.58 The Miydān appears at the centre of these complexes; mosques remained

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as a major element but attached to the central Miydān. In the case of Mīrchamāq, the Miydān appears in the form of a Shi’ite Husseyniyah. Even in the case of Ganj-‘Ali khān in Kirmān, which is a square without a mosque, the mosque lost its centrality in the city by transferring the city centre from the Jāme’ mosque to a new Miydān. In these cases, a religious zone is separated from the social and commercial centre and mosques became a mere building.59 Nonetheless, the social meaning of mosques cannot be reduced to morphological investigations. Different features come into play, which led to large-scale mosques being built close to each other, or to two different models of mosque appearing in the same context. This type of analysis functions primarily to produce spatial diagrams which conduct a social analysis of particular case studies in their historical context. Conclusion It seems that, regardless of the outcome of experimental case studies, an unresolved dialectic shapes discourse on Islamic cities in general and Iranian ones in particular. On the one hand, there are those interpretations based exclusively on community as a social concept without traces of municipal organisations or administrations. On the other hand, there are interpretations that imagine a monarchy with no form of public participation or resistance. One way to bypass this dead-end dialectic is to take parts of each of these interpretations into the formation of a third mode of discourse. This may appear to play with prefigured geometrical abstractions. However, in taking into account that both of these interpretations have a basis, even if partial, in the reality of Islamic Iranian cities, the distance between idealism and empiricism diminishes in this newly formed discourse. Nevertheless, this third way is more than simply a mixture of already formed terms and subjects. Most importantly, it looks with caution at the terminology and concepts, under the different categories of universal, common sense, and so forth, which have shaped that dialectic. The common borderlines of definitions, such as private–public and functional–institutional distinctions, which shape the categories used in debates on the mosque as a religious place, and the representational conventions, for example, which connect certain images and spaces with some social functions, are all conjectures that mislead the interpreter into judging differences negatively. In the case of the mosque, despite the fact that mosques were formally coded, at least in certain phases of history, as well as the conservatism which preferred stability in these codes, the lack of clear symbolic, iconographic and historical references devalue any defined functional or representational distinction. This issue



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does not claim there is a lack of any general framework in the analysis of the mosque but demands new methods of investigation. The lack of institutional differences makes any structural investigation problematic, since there are no functional or spatial definitions which pertain to mosques. Yet this lack of definition devalues any exclusively temporal narrative, there being no guarantee of predictable changes between stages which have no intrinsic connection to the notion of the mosque. A spatiotemporal framework is needed to declare which type of mosque is preferred in different historical periods, and at the same time to distinguish between structurally and functionally different types of mosque. The main outcome of this investigation is to attain a socio-historical view of mosques regardless of efforts to explain the Islamic city and mosque exclusively in terms of Islam or any other abstract notion.60 Uncovering patterns of difference is the first step by which the historical material can become subject to theorising, in order to transform formless historical data into the material of cultural capital.

4 Difference and Iranian Architectural Discourse

Introduction When the crystal structure of snowflakes was photographed for the first time, there were sporadic references to it in academic discourses as a tool to fabricate a homogeneous semantic system for Islamic art, or to justify already existing interpretations. A natural phenomenon, which on the surface showed no trace of its inner structure, revealed well-constructed geometrical patterns in a hidden layer. Parallel analogies were employed in the interpretation of Islamic ornamentation: • Indicating hidden reality: like the underlying structure of snowflakes, Islamic ornamentation reveals a hidden reality of the objective world, rather than the superficial appearance of objects. • Revealing the rationale of objects: similarly to the geometrical basis of form in the snowflake, Islamic ornamentation connotes a logical and mathematical basis upon which reality is formed. Rather than mimesis, the designed patterns represent a deeper rationale of the world. • Representation of a different layer: analogically, Islamic ornamentation is neither representational, nor is it meaningless compositions of playful lines, but rather it represents a different layer of reality, unconnected to objective reality, a duality without an indicative bond. • Natural geometry: in this comparative view, nature and geometry are not represented as two opposing points, as is the case in the dual categorisations of thought, geometrical vs. natural, man vs. nature, and so on. The logic of geometry is the backbone of nature. Like the human rationale, geometry is not in dialectical relationship but in harmony with nature.

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These interpretations try to indicate indirectly a wisdom, supposedly formed over time and in the context of Islamic tradition, parts of which are already revealed and parts of which will be revealed in future.1 In spite of the success in building a cohesive and homogeneous explanatory scheme upon which a semantic system of Islamic art can be built, the other side of the story reveals the anxiety of a culture to find a proper place in its intellectual system for the arts and specifically visual arts. The moment the meaning of this art is attributed to a hidden side of a multi-layered reality, it loses any potential for constructing a semiotic system and probable connections to the matters of everyday life. The deficiency of explanatory systems of this type – timeless and enclosed – is their perfectionism, for they build a distinct island purified of any kind of dialectic which, firstly, connects it socially to the condition of the everyday life of the user; secondly, attaches it psychologically to the worldly desire of human beings; and, thirdly, positions it philosophically in an intellectual framework, through which it encounters the surrounding world. This perfectionism transforms art into something which is not ‘of this world’ or for people who only physically belong to this world. In this conceptual framework, aesthetics is transformed into a system of abstract beauty, which signifies transcendental matters rather than indicating sensible imaginations.2 Islamic art itself helps to create these critical conditions. Generally speaking, the non-representational nature of this art, in a system without direct theoretical references, leaves room for open interpretations. Any theoretical system that succeeds in fabricating a homogeneous explanatory framework or constructs a coding or iconographic formula can be employed in the interpretation of this art. Idealised Islamic mysticism, for instance, is one such system. Islamic art was the art of the royal institutions, employed both in the context of theological Islam and of Islamic mysticism, while working as a channel for the imagination of the public. These are differences which in most modern explanatory systems of Islamic art are reduced simply to different aspects of a central theme, which is an act of abstraction and plastic homogenisation. Any attempt to construct a semiotics of Islamic art must take into account its ability to structure social time and space. This cannot be achieved if the heterogeneity of social context is not respected or reflected in the formation of any art theory. Islamic art must withdraw from newly fabricated abstraction, for this undermines and demonises any historical reality. It is true pragmatically that the employment of an enclosed system gives Islamic culture a fixed position and consequently an ability for resistance in the ever-changing modern contexts that are considered by many as



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destructive to Islamic identity. While in a political sense it seems reasonable to hold on to a point of resistance, this nonetheless supports a reactionary attitude towards art and culture, in the sense that it builds an exclusive identity which does not take part in current discourse. It fabricates an artificial incommensurability which blocks interaction in both a positive and a negative sense. Any solution involves Islamic culture needing to broaden its own vision of Islamic attribution. This does not originate particularly from any secular desire either to broaden the Islamic borders of connotation or to limit the borders of Islamic attribution in the social arena in order to open up room for differences; rather, it is an attempt to prevent the solidification of modern interpretations of Islamic attribution. It is necessary to take the notion of ‘Islamic’ out of its linguistic borders and re-invent it in the literature of contemporary debates. While this claim might appear to threaten the objectivity expected in an academic study, this is simply the explicit expression of an already existing subjectivity which has helped to shape the semantics of Islamic art. This is an exposition of the implicit differences which build the connotation of the adjective ‘Islamic’. In fact, an insistence on objectivity can be a means of enabling the exclusion of other views. The Semantics of Islamic Art: Problems and Deficiencies Generally speaking, three major deficiencies mark interpretations of Islamic art. These are the three frameworks of mystical, ornamental and medieval through which Islamic art is represented and which are used as a basis for establishing the ‘otherness’ of Islamic art. Within these frameworks so-called ‘Islamic art’ loses its connection to other frameworks through which the social and physical world is structured. Consequently, in this context, the practice of looking back to Islamic art is either limited to its use as a banner of identity, or to its reproduction, according to the assumption that by recreating Islamic art in a new context it functions as it is believed to have done in an idealised traditional society. Since it loses any relation to the reality of social life, this abstract and isolated phenomenon is not capable of undertaking any process of re-invention that would permit it to engage with its contemporary surroundings. Mystification It is enough to enter a mosque in Yazd or Khorāsān to feel the presence of a strong spiritual atmosphere. The problem arises when one attempts to attribute a sensible meaning to this feeling. In the monotheistic religion of Islam, with no revealed connection to ‘the Sacred’, and in the absence of

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hierarchy, which leads to the homogenisation of this world in regard to holiness, a primary location in which to search for an Islamic meaning for this art is Islamic mysticism. Through its hierarchical cosmology, Sufism, which is regarded as the core of Islamicity, can prepare a basis to create symbolic particularisation in reference to holiness. Nonetheless, to restrict Islamic art to Sufism causes problems. The nature of Islamic mysticism as an individually based worldview means that confining Islamic art to its system undermines the social ground of this art and, in the case of architecture, the ability to structure civil spaces. It leaves art unable to take a critical position toward the everyday condition of society, which has no place in the otherworldly system of romanticised mysticism. The other deficiency of this interpretative system is its perfectionism. A completely homogeneous system in which any kind of change is seen as being unwarranted consequently leads to ignorance or suppression. In this manner, any kind of change, as an inevitable condition of a socially relative phenomenon, has no other recourse but to find an unofficial way of expression under this fixed screen. Finally, the definition of art primarily as the symbol of a higher reality (a reality not revealed in any sense in the formal world) undermines the phenomenological connection of art and its sensible aesthetical dimension. This abstract – not concrete – spirituality de-materialises art, not in the sense of transcending it, but detaching it from immediate phenomenological perception. Islamic organisation never was a homogeneous structure that could be expressed through a single system. However, its theoretical homogenisation in the eyes of its supporters might be regarded as an explanatory framework for looking at art transcendentally, which does not necessarily exclude the phenomenological aspects of art. Nevertheless, to create an enclosed theoretical system which considers other social aspects of art from an ivory tower leaves no active room for differences. This creates a central, monotonous system in which even minor appreciation of differences happens through a hierarchical value system.3 Ornamentalisation In a general sense, although there are sufficient exceptions to make this a moot point, Islamic art is assumed to be ornamental. This connotes the negative associations of a secondary art, which is non-representational therefore meaningless, superficial, and the product of an essentially aimless pleasure that lacks a clear intellectual grounding. Islamic art in general is not a descriptive art, that is, it does not make an immediate reference to the outside world upon which a semiotic format can be established. Since



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it does not work referentially, the first thing that comes to mind is the lack of any theoretical basis for art in Islamic thought. Here art works just as a psychological or social balance in a rigid monotheistic environment.4 The solution to this problem is to create a scheme which positions the non-representational aspects of this art in a bigger picture, that is, to link it to some reference outside its immediate physical entity. Abstraction may reference a social context and a theoretical system in which representation has no place.5 On what basis then, does art lose its descriptive ground? The common notion of the prohibition of images in Islam, which is overemphasised, cannot explain this tendency towards abstraction, since it already reflects abstraction negatively in comparison to representational art. However, abstraction on its own is insufficient to explain the whole semantic system of Islamic art. There are different code systems which make it possible to find references for particular objects of art in an Islamic context.6 Medievalisation If the division between Medieval and Renaissance that articulates the Western-Christian world is analogically projected onto the world of Islam, medieval would be the proper term for the Islamic world until the mid-nineteenth century, although without any subsequent Renaissance counterpart. The position of Christianity in medieval European society, and of Islam and Christianity as members of the Abrahamic family of religions, in addition to the geopolitical connection of these two cultures, explains Islamic phenomena within the theoretical framework of medieval society, standing potentially in contrast to a Renaissance reformation. Though there are notable points of similarity, the classification of ‘Islamic’ attribution under the name ‘medieval’ creates its own negative consequences. The main problem with such a medievalisation of the Islamic world is the rejection of any attribution which might be categorised under the heading of ‘renaissance’. Thus, since Islamic society and Islamic art are not medieval per se, there is no ground on which to look for a renaissance as its antithesis, a second phase or reformation. Medievalisation is a historicity which is locked up in history as the ‘past present’. The structural differences which shape and have shaped Islamic and Christian societies must be taken into consideration in comparative studies. Using the common narratives of history idiosyncratically leads to their representation as distorted examples of the supposed proper form. Nonetheless, the rejection of such idiosyncratic usage does not necessarily entail a kind of essentialism, looking for an intrinsic Islamic basis for the analysis of art which rejects any comparative study of Islamic art.

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Spatial History The narrative of historical Islam and its material culture has taken two major but not always separate approaches: time-based or spatial structural analyses. The first approach has two distinctive features: firstly, a teleological and linear account of history, which may be quasi-apocalyptic as in the case of Shī’ah, and secondly, an abstract definition of Islam at a specific point of history. In the second approach, of spatial and structural analyses, the focus is on the structural interconnection of different elements of a complex in one defined point of time. While time-based narratives are essentialist in their view of proper Islam or its origin, structural accounts do not give a conceptual or value-based definition of temporal change. Change from a structural perspective is the internal transformation of the functionality of elements, while from a temporal perspective it is represented as outer influences on the original point through time. This linear history has given different narratives of change from or toward or during specific points, always accompanied with value judgements. These kinds of historical views shape their definition of an abstract and idealised notion of Islam and Islamic phenomena with reference to a specific point of history, by which the present situation is judged. Paradoxically, in spite of this chronological analysis, the idealised moment stands out of historical analysis and resists historicity. The process by which different forces of history come together to build the successful moment stays out of the politically designed project; it is a force out of history.7 Even a ‘nostalgic Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft view of social development’,8 a romanticised traditional/modern dualism which seems to be based on a structural analysis of two different societies, is in fact a temporal division of history from an idealised moment to a distorted image of the ideal, a representation which resists real historical investigation. This value-based division of history, based on quasi-aeonic division, like other grand historical narratives de-activates agents of possible control over the forces of history. According to this view, while the distorted present is beyond control, the idealised past stands beyond historical analysis. The only result is either aggressive revivalism or the recreation of a plastic image of the past. The necessity of spatial analysis – space here as conceived by Leibniz as an ‘order of coexistence’9 – of Islamic Iranian history is palpable since this gives a spatial picture of the simultaneous presence of differences in building a holistic system. The practical point of this analytical method is the appreciation of differences, which in the case of Islam and in religious interpretations in general, is forgotten or suppressed in the name of religious



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Figure 4.1  The circle of Sharī’ah, Tari’qah and Haqiqah

amalgamation. The functional division of a system, in this case Islam, resists the will of homogenisation and also abstraction. There are already commonly accepted spatial representations of Islamic systems and phenomena. One of them is that of the so-called traditionalists, whose represented image of Islam is based on a centre (God, the Sacred), in which differences build the surrounding circles (Figure 4.1). Although an accepted spatial organisation in a monotheistic society like Islam, the critical problem for this image is its inability to depict a society in its entirety. The first issue concerns the arrangement of elements towards the centre, with no clear definition of the interior connection between elements building the circle. A circle is a composition of similar units in which their interrelation is the immediate result of their similar position in regard to the centre, rather than a necessary functional attachment between members. The second problem is the hierarchisation of space in regard to the centre. Again, while this is a natural spatial arrangement in a society based on relationship with the Holy, the problem of extending this system to all is the arrangement of differences in hierarchical sets of circles, the only way which categorical differences can be organised in this system. Finally, as mentioned before, there is the enclosed nature of this system. This is a narrow approach towards a complex body, which forces differences to be geometrically reduced to an element of pre-fabricated form. The system explained here is the spatial representation generally employed in Sufi literature, but it is difficult to generalise on the basis of this image. The belief in Islamic mysticism as the essence of Islam, despite its partial

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legitimacy, cannot be positioned at the centre of a structural definition of Islam. It is an idealism which ignores the complexities of reality. This ideal image, an image of ‘ought to be’, cannot be used in a description of the socio-historical phenomena of Islamic society, in this case Islamic art. Islamic mysticism itself represents the worldly issues only through contradiction, tazād, as the basis of reality in which an ideal view of union to the Sacred has no other outcome rather than destruction. Represented by the notion of Love (Ishq), the first consequence is the destruction of home, as the metaphor for any worldly attachment or safeguard.10 The other spatial model that has been used in descriptions of the position of art in Islamic culture is a positioning of differences according to the thesis/antithesis dialectic, which either potentially reaches a transcendental synthesis, or is polarised such that under an ideal condition, one position is erasable in favour of the ‘right’ one. This model presents an unstable system of opposed contradictions, always in the process of reaching a stable point, albeit through aggression. Among the examples of how differences might be pictured in this way are Islamic art as a tool of pleasure in the harsh environment of a monotheistic culture, Sufism as an oppositional force to break the hegemony of Sharī’ah, the luxury of the royal institution in a culture praising poverty,11 and finally Shī’ah–Sunni dualism from the viewpoint of their believers. The consequences of such spatial/theoretical positioning of differences are either the ultimate suppression of antithesis or an aggressive attempt to reach a synthesis. Models of spatial organisation have to accept the presence of differences as necessary counterparts of the system that is working in actuality, since without these the system loses its functionality. Both the systems presented in the above discussion are motivated by the desire to create a homogeneous system. While in the first system differences are polished or refined so as not to spoil the monotonic picture of the system, in the second, by representing differences as contradictions, the removal of the other is anticipated. Is there any visual system which represents differences as an inevitable component of spatial organisation? Rather than positioning others on a hierarchical line, the simultaneous presence of differences in space is the first step in creating a democratic space in between. Heterology Writing about the notion of Truth, Rūmī in Fīh-i mā fīh pointed out the necessity of oblivion for maintaining the continuity of social life: ‘If some people were not being made oblivious to the other world, this world would not be constructed. Oblivion provokes construction and prosperity … then



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the cause of construction is oblivion and the cause of destruction is awareness.’12 In Rūmī’s eyes, truth’s oblivion, truth as it is considered by Rūmī, is vital to construct any worldly structures; truth in the social domain is destructive. Nasafī, in his book, al-Insān al-Kāmil [The perfect man], dedicated to the explanation of different concepts of Sufism, builds a twofold structure. Alongside his sophisticated theoretical treatises on Sufism, in other minor sections he gives some practical advice to dervishes. It is striking in these sections how his tone changes in parallel with the change of the subject under discussion. These sections are no longer discussions on the abstract concepts of Sufism but simple advice on social mores, described even as the essence of religiosity towards others.13 Does not Nasafī try to indicate here the different faces of religiosity in different contexts? This section considers the concept of difference within an Islamic context, and treats ‘difference’ here as a heterogeneous element capable of constructing contextual form and meaning.14 Islam has not dealt with ‘difference’ by making a spatial division of differences, that is, a kind of dual division between public and private space. Equally, the divisions considered within Christianity as between the religious and the secular (‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’) are not significant within Islam. The issue is not one of differences but of the manner in which these are represented. The assumption that the same concept of religiosity functions in different spaces is an oversimplification of Islam’s complexity, which as a matter of reality has transformed Islam as a religion – a comparatively abstract notion – into Islam as a culture – a historical formation. Within the boundaries that divide or – to use a better word – differentiate the social space, there are different notions of Islam constituting the ground for interaction. In a supposed dual division, an individual inquiry into ‘Truth’ as the real soul of religion confronts the idea of religion as the conductor of social affairs when it came to play ‘inbetween’. In what follows I attempt to present a spatial representation of this assumed duality. On closer consideration, traces of this duality can be seen at the very core of Islamic religiosity. The different – if not opposite – Faqih and Sufi concepts of religion, the contrast between Sharī’ah and Irfān (Gnosticism), and the Shī’ah–Sunni dualism (one essentially as the religion of protest and the other as the institutionalised religion) are various instances of these differences in the notion of religion in different spaces. For example, while Shī’ah, as a critic within Islam itself, questions institutionalised religion, when it comes to power, as in the case of the Safavids, it needs to employ to some extent the same institutions as Sunni Islam in order to

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establish and conduct a social structure.15 Conversely, the Sunni School, without Sufism as a shadow religiosity which questions the hegemony of Sharī’ah, would become a shell without inner value.16 Regardless of the value judgements which put these dualities into a hierarchical imbalance, it seems that these are asymmetrical but horizontal elements interacting in the same complex. If we are to translate this form of dualism into a visual scheme, what characteristics must be considered? First, conflicts between these two elements of duality are inevitable unrests between two poles, which cannot be settled in a homogeneous entity. Neither of these notions could function in the others’ place. Looking for a transcendental state which brings these two together ignores the fundamental contradiction which cannot be compromised. Equally important and almost ignored are the interconnections and interdependencies between the elements of this dualism. Any attempt to describe the existence of one of the sides of duality as the outcome of temporal conditions implicitly suggests an idealised situation in which they exist independently. However, the reality is that this dualism is an inevitable outcome of a heterogeneous social context which renders the hegemony of a singular concept impossible in the long term. Let us return for a moment to the spatial visualisation of Islamic structure. The first one was the Truth-based central image, with other phenomena as the surrounding circles of the centre. This image is frequently used in Sufi literature to show the threefold connection of Sharī’ah, Tarīqah and Haqīqah, or ‘the Law’, ‘the Way’ and ‘the Truth’. The major deficiency of this visual system is that it situates Law and Truth – the one with a social function, the other as the ultimate individual goal – as being hierarchically but essentially the same. It is misleading in showing a continuous approach from Sharī’ah to Haqīqah, a process which does not represent the breakage which separates these two different worlds.17 Like a shell and its core, they are separate but co-existent elements of a duality which cannot be reduced to one. The homogeneity which this image represents destroys the borders as it nears the centre, which in an individual dimension demonstrates the approach toward the Truth. In contrast, the social concept of religion, as it is defined in Sharī’ah, cannot risk opening up to any subjective manifestation of religion18 as it is the basis of Sufism, since this would endanger the objectivity sought in the social context of religion. Islamic Sharī’ah does not address an intimate and personal approach toward God, as it is the central theme of Sufism. Sufism, meanwhile, is completely unable to provide the basis for a functioning social structure, whereupon it can only work for



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individuals or inside the semi-monastic institution of the Khāniqāh. This social institution represents an ideal upon which the model of Islamic society cannot be based. The other image was the contrasting representation of dualism as resolvable oppositions or dialectic. Yet the illustrated dualities in Islam perhaps more resemble the simultaneous interconnection of two poles of the same entity: one is the ideal while the other is the structure; one, the minority, questions the majority without which it cannot exist. The tensions which exist between them are not simple oppositions, nor are they synthesisable or erasable. The major deficiency of this sort of representation is evident for it ignores the interdependency of these two co-occurrent poles. This model shows a religious system in which different approaches are represented as opposite to its homogeneous system, which are suppressed in order to reach a stable situation. Even if the dual oppositions continue to exist, they are seen as dual parameters which cannot be socio-politically eliminated, yet their existence is not acknowledged. Consequently, there is always an ideal point beyond this conflict which can be reached. Islamic mysticism represents a critically destructive minority, which is, at the same time, the ideal of the established system itself. It resembles a tumour spreading through a body, a virus which tries to destroy the body while its own very existence depends on the body which it destroys. It is a paradoxical situation which transcends reality; indeed it is the condition of a lived ideal within reality.19 It leaves reality in constant anxiety, continually in a process of transcending itself. As an eternal seeker rather than a beholder of truth, the very moment a Muslim as an individual claims to hold the truth is a sign of losing the right path. From the point of view of an individual, it is a paradoxical situation described as Khuf va Rajā (Fear and Hope), a situation in between. If there is a religious attribution, it is the by-product of this constant unrest which transcends the reality of the life of a Muslim. This is a dualism which on one side leads to a totalitarian control of appearance and regulations and on the other falls into a subjectivity potentially destructive towards any objective structure in the form of law or social mores. It is the simultaneous presence of these two stances which most characterises Islamic Iranian religiosity. The key issue here is the social structure that prepares the ground for the actualisation of this paradox, which allows conflicting views of religiosity to co-exist without resort to secularism or totalitarianism. Any likely representation of this dualistic model needs to take account of this insoluble situation of the parallel existence of opposites, and to show this as a perpetual tension between two poles, transcending the present reality, rather than showing it as precursor to a settled point.

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In this dual tension, the asymmetry of opposition leads neither to the destruction of the host context nor to the overcoming of the other. It can be compared to Bataille’s concept of heterology, in which the heterogeneous factor is constantly in a critical position, to the extent that it does not accept the fabric in which, nonetheless, it is forced to produce itself; it is critical of this fabric but its criticism is by definition nonviable, its opportunities remain the critical thing. Heterology is the inscription in the logos itself of its other (heteros), an inscription that can only be sustained by insistently refusing its own mono- and homological reduction.20 It is like the paradoxical situation in which a Sufi finds him or herself, for example between tranquillity and bewilderment, between joy and sorrow, between rejection of others for the sake of the Beloved or loving everything for the same reason or between unity and pantheism. This paradoxical state reflects the social condition of introducing a religion like Islam into the social space without territorisation, the only way which social affairs can be conducted without conflict resulting in either absolutism or rejection. Bataille’s notion of heterology parallels this insoluble duality which forms the bond between Sufism and Shari’ah, Shi’a and Sunni, or the art of Islam and the religion of Islam. We see this in the relationship he posits between taboo and transgression. For Bataille, transgression ‘is not related to the limit as black to white, the prohibited to the lawful, the outside to the inside, or as the open area of building to its enclosed spaces. Rather, their relationship takes the form of a spiral which no simple infraction can exhaust.’21 The desire to give up this ‘paradoxical structure’22 for a homogeneous one ignores this paradox, for it is an unstable stability unable to be transcended to a point of reconciliation: ‘When Bataille makes clear that transgression and taboo require each other and that they are irreconcilable he is resisting any possibility of an equilibrium of the difference between these two forces.’23 As Bataille states, antagonism between transgression and taboo is neither erasable or reconcilable: ‘This difference between transgression and taboo cannot be held together in a stable arrangement nor can it be reconciled dialectically.”24Within this relationship ‘[t]ransgression piled upon transgression will never abolish the taboo, just as though the taboo were never anything but the means of cursing gloriously whatever it forbids’.25 The dialectical reconciliation is an idealised point which reduces spatial heterology to a linear time-based one, thereby eventually reaching a desired



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stability. For instance, to look at theosophy as a synthesis of Sufism and Fiqh, as it is represented in the Isfahan philosophical school, is to erase the contradiction between the objects of concern of these two systems, a contradiction which does not work in the form of thesis and antithesis. Hegel’s Dialectic is different in the way it treats difference because in treating the difference between the two sides of the limit as contradiction Hegel can introduce a stability that transgression will destroy. The difference between the two sides of the limit is absorbed within the dialectical reading: ‘difference as such is already implicitly contradiction; for it is the unity of sides which are, only in so far as they are not one – and it is the separation of sides which are, only as separated in the same relation.’ By reading difference as contradiction Hegel can hold the two sides of the limit together in a relatively stable arrangement. This is because for Hegel, ‘The resolved contradiction is therefore ground, essence as unity of the positive and negative.’26 Hegel moves from a difference which destabilises the limit to a difference determined as the difference between the two sides of the limit, and finally to this difference being a contradiction between the two sides. By determining difference as contradiction Hegel admits difference but only as a difference that is on the way to being resolved as a new ground.27 The effort of Nadir-Shah (1688–1747) to persuade Sunni Islam to accept Shī’ah as the fifth School of Orthodoxy could not have happened either for Shī’ah or for Sunni, since it ignores critical standpoints of the Shī’ah on the one hand and the orthodoxy of Sunni Islam on the other. Even it were possible the combination of these two would negate both rather than be in either’s favour. It is noteworthy that this irresolvable duality does not necessarily imply conflict but insists on different patterns of religiosity which work in a different time-space. These cannot be subsumed under a single religious narrative, even though it is not institutionally differentiated in social space. It should be taken into account that to insist on this dualism does not pursue a postmodern diffusion or ambiguity in order to undermine any probable intellectual and political position. While an idealised situation looks for the abolition of the difference between us and others, occasionally, in the reality of a political context, it is the other who tries to hold on to its

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otherness as its only graspable identity. The function of negativity in cultural politics, which is holding on to whatever one ‘wants not to be’ as the means of resistance, allows a culture to resist dissolution or absorption into the mainstream hegemony. Nonetheless, this negativity might ossify the differences which activate the culture internally. This is a two-sided policy towards the culture. The political condition of the majority of Islamic countries in the modern age has occasionally empowered this negative political view in cultural policies, and prepared thereby the ground for the interpretation of Islamic art as the ‘other’. The process of change from ‘difference’ to ‘other’ is evident in the modern semantics of Islamic art and cultural materials. However, the dualistic tension which was illustrated as something not foreign to the reality of Islam is a positive step in order to draw Islamic art out of its otherness.28 In a cultural context like that of Islam, the acknowledgement of the irresolvable condition of this paradoxical structure introduces a tension with positive effects. In the first place, it allows a yielding to social idealism. While it is possible for the isolated and homogenised spaces of personal mind and space and the quasi-monastic organisation of khāniqāh to become the ground for the application of ideals, the interpersonal space of society, a space of regulations on one side and desires on the other, cannot be homogenised as idealism might desire. In the second place, social focus moves from result to process. As already discussed, the attribution of being ‘Islamic’, rather being the outcome of a ‘cause and effect’ relationship, with Islam as the religion and cultural materials as the products, is the result of a process of Islamisation which is not necessarily Islamic in its result, according to different religious viewpoints. Tension, as a procedure, without an end in sight, is the end in itself. By giving space to this tension, the meaning of difference is transformed from that of deviations from the proper condition to the inevitable variation of social beings, without the belief in a proper state outside this space. This rejection of the proper definition is not an endless postmodern postponement of meaning but locates the possibility of meaning in the social space behind this tension rather than in a single position. In this sense, Islam as religion is not the reference point of Islamic art, since the reference is not a defined point but rather a paradoxical condition created by the introduction of Islam into social life. Thus, just as the ‘Muslim’ is not defined as a person who reaches the truth or is even sure of being on the right path,29 Islamic art is not the manifestation of an Islam as the truth, but an art which, from a religious point of view, represents the tension of introducing a never achievable truth into reality. In Sufi literature, this situation is pictured as the drowning swimmer who leaves the shore for



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a never attainable dreamland. In this, the uncertain condition of a certain believer is the promised land. Islamic art, without clear differentiation, was the art of the royal institution, which satisfied aesthetic desires of the court, while at same time were functioned as an art for the public as well as producing a strong spiritual connotation. Rather than being a direct move from Islamic doctrines to formal features in art and visual culture, Islamic art is the by-product of a social context in which Islam functions. This process moreover does not necessarily make a linear connection between Islam and material culture. The right definition is to reject definition. It is an art which breaks the borders of royal, public, folk and religious. Any definition is limited, therefore, to a category to which this art does not belong to exclusively. In the same way Islamic architecture is at the same time the architecture of mosque and palace; it is the architecture of pleasure and spirituality. The Semiotics of Islamic Iranian Art To the extent that semiotics is an abstract study of signs within their signification mechanisms, it should also be the study of the cultural forms of this process. In other words, study of the cultural differences should be expanded from semantics to semiotics and from the referred meanings to the forms of referring. In this sense, what is proposed is a potential Islamic semiotics, an attempt at reconstructing the manners of signification rather than the sources of referents, in order to construct a conceptual network connecting different aspects of Islamic Iranian culture as a means of cultural self-consciousness. Before considering this proposal, two points require attention. First, the emphasis on the notion of difference is not intended to indicate the ‘otherness’ of this art and culture; rather, it aims for an awareness of the particularities of this system in structuring its world. Second, this grand narrative which appears to cover the whole cultural system does not necessarily exclude other perspectives that might be strong enough to destroy any homogeneity and generality. What follows is an attempt to position Islamic visual culture in the context of an Islamic worldview. One of the major difficulties of Mashā’ī (Aristotelian) philosophers was to adopt the concept of Hyle or primordial material to the Qur’ānic account of creation from nothing.30 Despite the Qur’ān’s insistence on this notion of creation, in which any kind of distance between a creator, as the beholder of idea/form, and material, as the passive receiver of form or the site of creation, is diminished,31 Hyle was considered so critical in the Mashā’ī philosophical school that philosophers like Avicenna struggled to adapt it in such a way as not to undermine the unity (Ahadiyyat) and infinitude (Avval) of God32. The Qur’ān introduced another concept alongside it – perpetual creation

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(55:29),33 which appears as a complement to that of creation from nothing in the description of the story of creation. Rather than the Unmoved Mover as the First former in Aristotelian philosophy, God was introduced as the ever-creator and the world presented as in continual renewal. This idea describes a cosmos marked by continuity in which the being would disappear if the perpetual creation were to cease. Surely we must ask: is it not an inevitable change in the definition of God due to the diminishing of the site of creation? Images which are used to illustrate this notion of creation include for example the relation of waves to the sea – waves are not a separate entity beyond the being of the sea34 – or the shadow and the source of light35 – the shadow is not autonomous. These images are characterised by their inability to exist independently. An immediate consequence of this notion is the paradoxical definition of the immateriality of the phenomenon, since it is the extension of the un-definable creator and inseparable from it. Ideas are not transferred from somewhere to something,36 as a distance which generates a time-space frame of creation. Creation is described by the word kun (be); God states ‘then it will be’ (fa-Yakūn). In creation distance is absent both in time and in space. In the very moment that the notion of material as the basis of the idea is eliminated, the notion of place also disappears. The basis of creation is no longer a ‘place’ but a timeless time. Creation brings the material and place into being with it. In this sense, the Qur’ānic model is new compared with other stories of creation, for instance those from China, Mesopotamia and Greece. Their individual peculiarities aside, they share the preparation of a body/place as the ground of creation. In Plato’s Timaeus,37 the material of Chaos, as the beholder of the idea, introduces a dichotomy between an active act of creation and a passive receiver. Over time, this has become the source of a number of dualistic concepts in later Western culture.38 In addition to other features of this story of creation,39 the main aspect regarding our subject is the distance in the creation process, not a hierarchically based distance from the creator, but a horizontal-spatial division between the act of creation and the created object. This is a distance which in a reverse act of semantics calls for the necessity of marking, representation and indication in order to reach the source of meaning. This is a distance which disappears in the Islamic notion of creation. How do these abstract philosophical concepts find concrete form in material cultures? Let us compare the case of Islam to the Greco-Roman context.40 In the Islamic case, the concept of creation and its effect on the notion of form and visual semantics has seen little debate. The Islamic story



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of creation is distinguished in two ways above all: first is the absence of material as the beholder of form and the basis of creation, and second is the act of signification or in its specific meaning, the act of representation. Here material connotes those groups of things or concepts which work as the passive context of the act of formation. Soil was one of the principal materials of construction, especially in the Iranian context of Islamic architecture. Soil as the component of all earthly beings,41 and the formation process as the middle ground between – from soil, to soil – is from nothing to nothing; like a bubble on water, when the breath is gone, the material comes back to nothing. Creation has no independent existence and material does not exist outside this middle ground. It is in the process of creation that material is brought into existence. Through a poetic description, Nasr pictures abandoned Iranian cities as fulfilling the cycle of soil to soil, there is no trace of them, they return to soil, to nothing, the non-place where they came from.42 This is comparable to the human body, going from soil to soil. Soil and earth are pictured not as an entity over there but as something which comes into existence through the formation process. There is a great difference here from the common notion of nature as chaos which comes into signification through human formal and lingual systems. The concept of soil differs from chaos. While chaos connotes lack of order, soil as nothingness is not conceived of as an entity that is applicable within concepts of order or disorder. Heidegger, in Building, Dwelling, Thinking, talks about ‘being on the earth’. The bridge, he claims, by crossing the stream, makes the banks emerge as banks: ‘It brings stream and bank and land into each other’s neighbourhood.’43 The same existential gesture is deployed to describe the Parthenon on the Acropolis. The temple ‘is simply standing there’, and by this it gives ‘things’ their look: Standing there, the building rests on the rocky ground. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the obscurity of that rock’s bulky yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground the storm raging above it and so first makes storm itself manifest in its violence.44 The form, in an anthropomorphic gesture, brings a meaningless nature into signification. Unlike the concept of soil, whether as a material or a place of creation, we are now dealing with the notion of non-place in which there is nothing to be brought into signification. The notion of material/nature comes not only into signification but also into being in the act of formation.

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Like the concept of desert as absence or non-being, in the mud-brick structure the notion of material comes into being from non-being through the creation of form. The notion of sculpting cannot exist in this context since the duality of material–form does not exist in the first place. In a symbolic comparison, the Iranian qanāt is the negative of the Roman aqueducts: one is a concrete line constructed on the body of earth; the other is a negative hollow in the earth. Here, two different concepts of nature exist in both concept and praxis. A comparison between the concept of gardening in, for example, Iranian and English cultures reveals differences in the ways that nature can have meaning. In the English, geometry of design is projected onto an already existing nature. Here, garden design is an act of arrangement, projection and even deduction, while in the Iranian, geometry is not projected on something or somewhere – there is no difference between the notion of place and material here – but geometry creates the very basis of creation, outlining the created garden. Here it is a matter of ‘the geometry of creation’ rather than geometry as order and arrangement.45 The pavement in the first case is the surfaced level on the plain grasslands, while in Iranian gardens the quadruple pavement is the space between cultivated areas. There are no layers of form and context, it is simultaneous co-existence of nature and form, an opposition that is also to be perceived in the negative space in Islamic ornament, in the contrast of courtyard and built space in Iranian architecture. There is no independent existence for them, they come into being together. The perfect architect was one who used no more than the ground soil to build the house. In doing so, the necessary underground spaces are prepared and the need for transportation of materials is eliminated. The house comes from nothing.46 The absence of horizontal distance between creator and created – between Man and Nature and form and material – questions the position of the two subjects in the semiotics of visual culture, anthropomorphism and representation. In the Islamic context, representation, in the sense of a reverse semantics, based on a substitution of a representative sign for the referent signified, loses its ground. It brings up a second issue which is the human self-image, and the body at the centre, as a medium of signification. First, form does not transfer ‘horizontally’ from the creator to the material and ground of creation, and consequently human intervention or ‘human as intervention’ disappears. Representation and anthropomorphism both in the creation process and in the reverse action of semantics lose their ground. Due to the absence of the act of formal reference in the semantic process, the cosmology of form, as we see in the Platonic theory of Ideas, is replaced



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Figure 4.2  The Shāzdah Garden in Mahan

by the cosmology of material.47 God, as the Light, is positioned paradoxically at the centre of the material world which covers everything from the centre to the periphery. Water is the liquid light48 and glass the solid form, which has its definite shape in crystals. Crystal has a central position in this quasi-formal system: it diffuses the light and makes colour, as materialised light, while its structure is the basis of geometry. Crystal is the point at which material and form come into existence simultaneously. In Iranian philosophy, the world of imagination, the mediator between the world of pure idea and nature, is both a transcendental material world and a world of materialised ideas. Compared with the Platonic world of Originals, this is the world of transcendental materials rather than of forms. Belonging to this world, heavenly bodies are objects of a higher materiality, a world in which the conditions of the material world, like impoverishment and temporal decadence, do not exist. The obsession in Islamic culture about precious stones may be explained by this cosmological materialism. A stone like firūzah (turquoise) acquires a religious connotation and is thus attributed with medical power.49 In Shī’ah mythology, the soul of normal Man comprises the body of the infallible Imam. Here, even the soul is positioned in the hierarchical range of materiality.

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As we have seen, Heidegger in his account of Greek temples uses the phrase ‘standing there’, an anthropomorphic gesture which brings nature into meaning. His existential description of architecture is represented through the sculptural presence of buildings. Temples, like an individual, a territorially and formally defined existential being, polarise the surrounding space. This sculpture/architecture co-relationship is one of the major bases of the semiotics of western architecture. The sculptural definition of the form and space relationship, as form situated in empty space also, has anthropomorphic connotations of human presence in the world: Dasein.50 It appears that in the Iranian context of Islamic architecture the sculpture/ architecture co-relationship is transformed to a painting/architecture one.51 The relation of form and space is not represented through an anthropomorphic analogy, but as a space-form fabrication which does not give horizontal reference to an open, natural, exterior world. Although these seem to be the universal condition of non-representational arts, in the Western context, as Hegel put it, architecture can be described through the paradoxical expression of ‘an inorganic sculpture’.52 In this context, architecture potentially embodies an anthropomorphic geometry. At the same time, as an inorganic entity, it is sculptural with the notion of the human body at its centre.53 This difference refers to the concept of representation in Islamic Iranian architecture. Beyond their pure structural presence, forms in Western architecture carry anthropomorphic connotations which enable them to reflect the socio-psychological condition of their contexts. However, Islamic architecture seems to be based on a timeless abstract structure which does not give any mark or clue about their immediate socio-temporal context. The evolution which analogically associates architecture with social context does not have a counterpart in the Islamic Iranian context. It might be suggested that evolution as a notion of history does not exist to take architecture into the course of historical change, but that it is primarily a two-sided issue: where history does not depict a linear evolution, architecture and other cultural materials are not descriptive of any notion of change. Does this mean that Islamic architecture, as is believed of Persian painting and Persian poetry and many other Iranian cultural expressions,54 has no link to its immediate social context, and subsequently, cannot be set as the site for regulation and control of it?55 The absence of horizontal distance between the creator (the beholder of the idea) and the material and site of creation in this specific Islamic narration, creates a different context for the function of signs. While the first thing coming to mind is the widely used image of a hierarchical line between creator and created – a common image in mystical literature56 – it



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ignores the existence of a parallel image to this cosmological representation. Compared to this vertical line, a horizontal line separates the created world from the Creator, and is an idea which is neglected in an exclusively religious interpretation of Islamic culture. While in the vertical sense, a virtual line connects the Creator to the lowest degree of creation where Man stands in a higher position to the other world of animals, plants and objects, in the horizontal line, man is categorised the same as other creations. The concept of Man is made up at the junction of these two lines.57 While man is introduced as a divine agency the notion of Man as the master disappears. Here a philosophy of nature finds ground, where it otherwise in hierarchical religious connotations has no place. In this context, rather than semiotics and representation, it is the notion of praxis which connects the otherwise detached system of religious Islam to the nature and material world. Clearly, to base Islamic visual culture exclusively on a hierarchical division of Man from Nature leads to an abstract plasticity which ignores nature as a parameter in the construction of the pattern of life in Islam as a culture.58 In this view of the world, nature does not enter the conceptual system of Divine Man.59 The Mirror as the juncture of solid material and glass was frequently used in Persian literature as the image of the simultaneous existence of divinity and the material world, a juncture which makes reflection possible.60 Accordingly, the strong natural harmony in Islamic Iranian architecture, both in design and construction, cannot be achieved by an abstract view of the first cosmological view. Any attempt to describe Islamic architecture through previously mentioned abstract cosmological systems leads to an abstraction detached from any immediate connection to the outside world. The removal of Islamic architecture from this closed interpretative circle requires the homogeneity of this descriptive to be broken as well as its reinvention according to its immediate social and environmental context. This should not be seen as an effort to break or uproot the spirituality which differentiates this material culture and introduce it into the assumed exhaustive context of history (since the modern spiritual assumption is that this culture and its material have a more transcendental circle of meaning rather than dealing with this worldly context). Nonetheless, this exclusion is nothing more than an abstraction of this material culture, from which it follows its disclosure and death. Islamic Iranian Architectonic Discourse Between, on the one hand, abstract generalisation about the so-called Islamic notion within ill-defined idealised narratives and, on the other

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hand, individual case studies which reject any transcendental framework, the search for a middle ground in the interpretation of Islamic and Iranian material cultures is indispensable. In the first case, the semantic frame is ossified in predefined structures which, rather than having a base in reality, are perfect geometries projected on history. In the second, under a kind of postmodern sensibility which rejects any major narrative, the individual case studies are projected into a void without any conceptual framework which might connect them to a narrative concerning the present course of culture. In the case of Islamic Iranian history, this middle ground would avoid first those illusionary single narratives of history in the name of tradition, either Islamic or Iranian, which create an insuperable boundary between modern and traditional, and, second, those case studies which cannot give a cultural position through any common form. Although there are already defined positions, for example that of traditionalists against modernists, with their connotations of ‘otherness’ whether by holding on to the root and staying at home, they are nonetheless passive definitions which act only as a defensive presence against others. In this sense, this middle ground seeks the re-form-ation of history, a process of renovation to create history as the site of present discourses. In the case of Islamic Iranian architecture, this process should be preceded by the formation of history in the first place. The time-less or atemporal definitions of Islamic attribution and descriptions of Iranism as a kind of permanent geographical spirit are beyond history with its core notion of temporal change. Spatio-temporal history is replaced by an ahistorical concept. Where it is accepted change rather than being the site of discourse is presented as a superficial variation of appearance, as an unimportant feature of a conceptual permanency.61 Difficulty arises from atemporal definitions of these notions and, in addition, the attribution of these notions to a specific spatial formation. However, for the formation of history, as Foucault wrote, under the general quest for order, A system ‘of elements’ – a definition of the segments by which the resemblances and differences can be shown, the types of variation by which those segments can be affected, and, lastly, the threshold above which there is a difference and below which there is a similitude – is indispensable for the establishment of even the simplest form of order.62 What can this order achieve in the history and architectural history of Islamic Iran?



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This new order can be a tool for creating a historical narrative. Present historical narratives are time-based linear descriptions of history and historical materials without any spatial arrangement of elements constructing the structure of a specific point of history. They lack the spatial organisation of differences which position them as interconnected elements of a complex. For instance, the notion of difference in Iranian history in general, and Islamic Iranian architecture in particular,63 is only pictured in a lineal sequence of political and dynastical change, accompanied by the geographical shift of power zones, which subsequently fall in timeless Islamic, Iranian or traditional wrappings. These are spatial definitions of history which undermine the notion of change as the basis of any historical discourse. Tradition, a well-crafted spatial definition of history, stands outside history itself. However, to construct an historical narrative it is important not to fall into the postmodern attitude of rejecting any narrative for fear of power or ideology. Iranian history is a case of a history of others, turned into a pile of data and which cannot be used as the site of any discourse. In fact, the traditional formation of history is an affirmative response to master narratives which accepts otherness as a tool of resistance against the hegemonic discourse. Through this understandable position of resistance, history is exchanged as an active site of discourse for a passive one. Searching for a middle ground is to structure and classify history on a spatio-temporal basis in order to first bring the notion of change into a definition of Iranian history and second to give a spatial definition to the notion of change. However, in reality – the reality as it is described – the notion of change per se does not exist in Iranian context. The notion of change apprehended in the formation of history is a modern or Western notion that has no place in cultures like that of Iran.64 Nevertheless, regardless of any ground for this claim, more than finding the traces of change, this chapter attempts a conceptual history which reconstructs the patterns of change in history not merely as unchanging course of ideologies or concepts. Like the Popperian concept of scientific conjectures, the definition of historical concepts must prepare the ground for debates and possible refutations; in other words, it must make history a site of debate. It is not a call to secularisation, to break the connection between Islamic history and Islamic ideals as they are commonly defined. History as not the story of the past but as the reminiscent tool inherited through present lingual and cultural structures to engage with the world should be transformed to a site of dialogue with current affairs. This cannot happen if it is not ordered through spatio-temporal categorisations, rather than through formless sequences of dates, names and places.

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In the case of the historical architecture of Islamic Iran, two major issues must be considered in order to establish this middle ground. First, the spatial structuring of social life through architecture should be based on socio-historical theories rather than abstract religious concepts, regional identity or even ecology. From this point of view, these parameters rather than being a direct influence on the formation of social and architectural space are translated via structures which form this space. In the same direction, a sort of connection must be acknowledged between ‘man as a temporal concept’ and spatial formation in architecture. Instead of an accidental product of conditions, this connection shows social and architectural formation as the outcome of consciousness – a connection which must be created through the concepts of form, space and other physical parameters. A conceptual framework must be created to connect architectural spatial formation to socio-ontological concepts. There are traces of differences in the Islamo-Iranian context which can be used to establish different spatial discourses. One is the dual division proposed by Ibn Khaldūn between nomadic society in its regional sense and civil society as it is defined by him. This is a simultaneous dualism with a societal role. The other is the division between autonomous anarchical social bodies, in the form of self-sustained residential quarters in the city (Mahallah), and central government. Together these two lead to different ways of structuring the social space. Another case is the notion of society and its subsequent spatial structures as it exists in Sharī’ah compared with Sufism. While Sharī’ah is based on formal rituals and law, as something related to division and structure, the other is based on a tendency to unify the differences and resists differentiation, institutionalisation and structuring. The final framework is the possibility of finding traces of those changes which break the monotonous space of Islamic history, for example, the generally accepted historical division assumed between the Mogul, Ottoman and Safavid courts as modern Islamic governments, and previous Islamic dynasties. Can this division be connected to bigger differences in Islamic discourses? As in the previous chapters, we are looking for dual divisions as the basis of discussion. Foucault’s rupture of the history of knowledge into different epistemological discourses on a spatio-temporal basis has clear advantages over more traditional and orthodox approaches toward history. First and foremost, it questions familiar groupings and divisions,65 those which, in the case of Islamic Iranian architecture, give the illusion of a permanency named as tradition.66 The other factor is studying history on a spatio-temporal basis, which rather than a linear chronological history, enables the interpreter to



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give a structural scheme of constructive elements in historical discourse. However, Foucault’s is not a structural study since the exteriority of focus in the study of history connects it to the supposed outside factors which build the context of the discourse. Finally, a discursive division stands between empirical study and transcendental generalisation. While this method of studying of history avoids abstract generalisations, the level of abstraction enables the regional phenomena to surpass the closed space of ethnicity, and helps them to communicate with categories of the universal and ontological. Can we use this method in order to establish a theoretical basis for the consideration of Iranian architectural history? The history of knowledge comprises epitomes, each based on discursive formations. Discourse in Foucault’s terms ‘is made up of a limited number of statements for which a group of conductions of existence can be defined’.67 A statement, ‘the elementary unit of discourse’,68 unlike the ‘unit of a linguistic type’ which constructs the discourse of lingual construction, ‘is that which enables such groups of signs to exist, and enables these rules or forms to become manifest’.69 Foucault argues that [discursive practice] must not be confused with the expressive operation by which an individual formulates an idea, a desire, an image; nor with the rational activity that may operate in a system of inference; nor with the ‘competence’ of a speaking subject when he constructs grammatical sentences; it is a body of anonymous, historical rules, always determined in the time and space that have defined a given period, and for a given social, economic, geographical, or linguistic area, the conditions of operation of the enunciative function.70 Importantly, the discontinuity between different discursive structures suspends the presupposed unities which form the continuity of history.71 Foucault emphasises that discursive division must not be mistaken as merely a point of periodisation or of expressional differentiation of history. He writes: ‘I shall abandon any attempt, therefore, to see discourse as a phenomenon of expression – the verbal translation of a previously established synthesis; instead, I shall look for a field of regularity for various position of subjectivity.’72 In Foucault’s view, Natural history was not simply a form of knowledge that gave a new definition to concepts like ‘genus’ or ‘character’, and which introduced new concepts like that of ‘natural classification’ or ‘mammal’; above all, it was a set of rules for arranging statements in series, an

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obligatory set of schemata of dependence, of order, and of successions, in which the recurrent elements that may have value as concepts were distributed.73 A discursive formation will be individualised if one can define the system of formation of the different strategies that are deployed in it; in other words, if one can show how they all derive (in spite of their sometimes extreme diversity, and in spite of their dispersion in time) from the same set of relations.74 How then can we transfer this archaeological method of studying history to an architectonic context? Can the phrase ‘architectonic discourse’ become a concept to analyse architectural history? What does it mean? This term has different interpretations, which lead to two different but not categories of meaning. First, ‘architectonic’ may refer to the structural formation of the discourse, that is the formal system of discourse in which elements (or statements) form the discourse. While Foucault indicates that ‘discursive formations’ ‘are very different from epistemological or “architectonic” descriptions’,75 and his attempt to define statements as the ‘unit of a linguistic type’ to achieve a kind of rule of discursive formation fails, the discursive differentiations, like those in The Order of Things76 and Discipline and Punish77 are based on a structural vision of discourse. Though unsuccessful, he attempts to establish rules of formation in discourse. In rejecting the æuvre and the speaking subject as the principles of unity in constructing discourse, Foucault mentions that ‘we no longer relate discourse to the primary ground of experience, nor to the a priori authority of knowledge; but that we seek the rules of its formation in discourse itself ’.78 While this kind of structural curiosity, which looks for an inner law rather than revealing discourse as the objective context of knowledge, is possibly a contradiction in Foucault’s approach, for him Order is, at one and the same time, that which is given in things as their inner law, the hidden network that determines the way they confront one another, and also that which has no existence except in the grid created by a glance, an examination, a language; and it is only in the blank spaces of this grid that order manifests itself in depth as though already there, waiting in silence for the moment of its expression.79 In this sense, architectonic discourse can be described as the structural formation of discourse, irrespective of its exterior reference.80



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‘Architectonic discourse’ can also be understood as the condition of meaning which is made possible by a specific type of articulating discursive structure. This is another simultaneous perspective in exploring discourse; this time the focus is on the exterior references which discourse makes possible. This exteriority is understandable when studying history of knowledge, but what does this exterior attention have to do with an abstract being like architecture. Architecture as an abstract phenomenon is primarily a being in itself. Yet two kinds of references come into play which transform the abstractness of architecture into an indicator of Man and his surrounding condition. On the one hand are the temporal socio-economic conditions which make a connection between social structure and the formal and spatial organisation of architecture; in other words, architecture as ‘discursive practices’ or as ‘events’ with sociopolitical implications.81 On the other are so-called ‘metaphoric’ references which connect architecture to a wider context of psychological and ontological meaning and create a kind of sympathy between man and the built environment. In this sense, architecture is not a completely inorganic structure. In the case of Islamic Iranian architectural history, establishing architectonic discursive divisions is a possible basis by which to connect the built environment to a more sensible social and ontological context – since the discontinuity between different discourses forms a distinction between chosen social structures – rather than an abstract explanation of architectural history by dates and names or even time-less ideas. It may be a step in the formation of this history. Time remains as yet undiscussed. Foucault indicates that ‘[n]othing would be more false than to see in the analysis of discursive formation an attempt at totalitarian periodisation’.82 Nevertheless, periodisation is the inevitable outcome of the conjunction of discontinuity and history. Foucault names discourses as ‘historical a priori’. He, however, declares that ‘this a priori does not elude historicity’.83 Since the aim here is not to re-narrate history, but rather to find a method of its reappraisal, as was our concern in the previous chapter in giving priority to space, we now put time in epoche. In our attempt to form a discourse for architectural history of Islamic Iran, we describe different discourses in an abstract space without rejecting historical application, rather than putting them in the line of history, which might give the evolutionary illusion of progress or decline. This leaving time in epoche liberates the investigation from the painstaking efforts to apply these spatial discourses to a certain point of history and geography, and let it focus on investigating the rules of formation in a given discursive division.84 Foucault wondered, and we take also this as a final question, ‘what purpose is ultimately served by this suspension of all the accepted unities, if

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at the end, we return to the unities that we pretended to question at the outset’.85 As he notes, ‘[such] systematic erasure of all given unities enables us, first of all to restore to the statement the specificity of its occurrence, and to show that discontinuity is one of those great accidents that creates cracks not only in geology of history, but also in the simple fact of statement’,86 in other words, to leave the illusionary concept of continuity. Second, we must be ‘sure that this occurrence is not linked with synthesizing operations of a purely psychological [my italics] kind … and to be able to grasp other forms of regularity, other types of relations’.87 And lastly, The third purpose of such a description of the facts of discourse is that by freeing them of all the groupings that purport to be natural, immediate, universal unities, one is able to describe other unities, but this time by means of a group of controlled decisions.88 McNay notes that in The Order of Things ‘Foucault argues that, contrary to the common notion of the continuous development of the ratio from the Renaissance to the present Western thought is in fact divided into three distinct and discontinuous epistemic blocks’.89 Taking into consideration critiques of the epistemological a priori upon which Foucault builds a spatio-temporal division of history,90 we use it here as a site of possibility to reach an epistemological division of Islamic Iranian architecture. As mentioned so far, application of the frame used for the analysis of knowledge as something essentially descriptive beyond the context of architectonic divisions, cannot be without problem, however, the aim is to rearticulate it as a tool by which to re-form this architectural history. In this analogical usage of Foucault’s division, alongside the dualist basis of analysis used in the previous chapter, the focus is transferred from triple categories to the first two categorical differences, although his third category is not erased completely. ‘Up to the end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture.’91 Different forms of similitude – ‘the adjacencies of ‘convenience’,’ ‘the echoes of emulation,’ ‘the linkage of analogy’ and sympathy – made the web that held the whole volume of the world together.92 By positioning resemblance as the links between signs and what they indicate … sixteen-century knowledge condemned itself to never knowing anything but the same thing, and to knowing that thing only at the unattainable end of an endless journey.93



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As is true for knowledge, the rich semantic web of resemblance94 represented in this form of discourse represents repetition of the ‘same thing’ in its visual sense. Two issues are subjects for concern: first, the basis and the image upon which this same thing is represented, and, secondly, the fact that the nature of the resemblance is based not on – let us call them – pre-designed formal categories, but on formless subjective and emotionally based notions of sympathy. In the former, a kind of archetypal form is expected to represent the same nature of things, while in the latter a kind of atomism is the outcome of closed entities combined through formally indefinable lines of connection. Concerning the first, Foucault himself put forward an un-answered question. He asked, ‘if the things that resembled one another were indeed infinite in number, can one, at least, establish the forms according to which they might resemble one another?’95 However, Foucault, rather than the forms of resemblance, discusses the net that connects them together. He adds that ‘it is here that we find that only too well-known category, the microcosm, coming into play’.96 The statements of discourse or, in a sense, the elements of discursive structure, are endless repetitions of microcosmic elements in a web of similitude. In architecture this suggests repetitive use of archetypal forms and spatial units through a microcosm/macrocosm connection. The term ‘archetype’ indicates the transcendental image of these units, which are based on cosmological similitude rather than referring to immediate spatiotemporal conditions. Where there is no division, then there is no immediate identity and difference since every element of a statement is the same as another. It is comparable to the backgammon analogy used in chapters 2 and 3. The elements are all ‘circles’, indicating characterless existence which rejects immediate identity in order to present a wider cosmological image (the circle of time as cosmos). Iranian architecture is an endless and undifferentiated reproduction of the primary elements of iwan, chārtāq and shabistān in different forms and compositions. As already discussed, in Iranian architecture, spatial division is not based on functional identity. In this sense, to connect the very being of these elements to immediate function and condition, either socio-political or religious, is to misinterpret. Looking through the lens of this spatial discourse, a semantics of this architecture is bound to investigate why these particular images and codes are represented as archetypal images in their pragmatic context. Yet the archetypal dimension is only one semantic layer of buildings which finds its concrete meaning in association with a particular context. The interaction between elements is the different side of the same discourse. Sympathy, as a basis for the interweaving of worldly elements,

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prepares the ground for the so-called concrete conceptualisation of the world as a method of thinking.97 It stands in contrast to the abstract method of philosophy. In addition, the indefinable forms of connections, due to the emotional and situational basis of the relationship, represent a kind of atomism. This form of atomism is not a haphazard gathering of autonomous elements but a situational connection between elements with a sensible attachment, not reducible to any form of generality. There is no pattern according to which elements find their position. Formally chaotic, elements are individually positioned with no clear collective image. Like a group of people gathering in a square, there is no collective arrangement, yet there is a possible subjective connection between them. Therefore it is more than random positioning of the individuals despite the absence of collective forms. It is a form of anarchism which rejects central supervision and institutionalised organisation with a subjective basis for the formation and conceptualisation of society. Finally, referential meaning in this semantic system finds a particular form. First, elements represent an archetypal and general picture rather than a partial meaning or function, possibly with a cosmological root. In other words, an element does not reflect or represent an immediate contextual meaning. As was discussed in Chapter 2, about the image of place in Iranian architecture, the cosmological stability demonstrated by the microcosmic forms of architecture represents a level of meaning different from immediate socio-political references. In a poetical sense, architecture, like the patterns of imagination in Persian literature,98 comes into a web of poetical similarities which connects it to the wider cultural language, for example figuring a minaret as a bunch of flowers (goldastah), an eyebrow as the colonnade of the garden of the eye, the sky as the roof of a garden kiosk, and so on. This web of connections tranforms architecture from an abstract structure to a phenomenon with cultural sympathies. In the context of interconnection between elements, it devalues the common assumption of the interpretation of form follows function, since the common image carries no indication of immediate content. A common and general form is lacking which might devalue structural regulation or semiotics as prefigured forms of signification. There is no intention here to name this form of organisation as communal, nomadic, arbitrary or anarchical or any other terms to avoid the pre-judgements associated with them. In summary, this architectonic discourse can be described in three points. The spatial elements are based on archetypal similitude which surpasses immediate practical divisions. These elements or statements are organised through formless connections based on situational conditions, in which



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context the common semantic process of sign representation is not applicable. And the microcosm/macrocosm web of similitude between spatial division and between this and other cultural features constructs a rich poetical complex. In this context, abstract ideas are translated through concrete images which connect elements of culture together, since one replicates the other. As Foucault notes, in the Classical age ‘no longer resemblance but identities and differences’ become important in the field of knowledge:99 On the threshold of Classical age, the sign ceases to be a form of the world; and it ceases to be bound to what it marks by the solid and secret bonds of resemblance or affinity.100 From now on, every resemblance must be subjected to proof by comparison, that is, it will not be accepted until its identity and the series of its differences have been discovered by means of measurement with a common unit, or, more radically, by its position in an order.101 In this new episteme ‘what has become important is no longer resemblance but identities and differences’.102 From an architectonic point of view, structure appears as a set of identities and differences, that is to say, a linear formation with separated identities as elements and formally representable connective lines. In the Classical age, this linear structure is a descriptive representation of reality as it is conceived: By means of structure, what representation provides in a confused and simultaneous form is analysed and thereby rendered suitable to the linear unwinding of language. In effect, description is to the object one looks at what the proposition is to the representation it expresses: its arrangement in a series, elements succeeding elements.103 It is in this strict sense that language is an analysis of thought: not a simple patterning, but a profound establishment of order in space.104 ‘[T]he fundamental element of the Classical episteme is … a link with the mathesis’;105 analysis acquires a universal position,106 and syntax becomes the essential part of making a table of knowledge: In the Classical age, to make use of signs is not, as it was in preceding centuries, to attempt to rediscover beneath them the primitive text of

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a discourse sustained, and retained, forever, it is an attempt to discover the arbitrary language that will authorise the deployment of nature within its space.107 In other words, the microcosm disappears: ‘Representations are not rooted in a world that gives them meaning; they open of themselves on to a space that is their own, whose internal network gives rise to meaning.’108 There is no infinite repetition of spatial units with cosmological images when one looks through this episteme to architecture but spatial complexes instead. Whether a country or a ruled territory, city, civil complexes or even a single building, these are bordered places made of articulated spatial units structured for a definite function. The totalitarian image of the previous architectonic episteme is replaced by a bordered and limited functional complex. What is the difference, then, between the forms of referencing in this architectonic episteme? We can use a comparison with language to clarify the position of form and the types of reference in this system: From an extreme point of view, one might say that language in the Classical era does not exist. But that it functions: its whole existence is located in its representative role, is limited precisely to that role and finally exhausts it. Language has no other locus, no other role, than in representation; in the hollow it has been able to form.109 In the same manner, from an extreme point of view, architectural forms have no meaning in this episteme, in comparison to the imaginative net which fabricated the semantic net of the previous one. Unlike the atomism of a former system with formally expressive elements, a complex is a defined system in which elements are defined through the function they play and their position within it. In this system, an expressional representation between form and its function is expected. Elements are representatives and functionally substitutive, without any intrinsic value. The concept of classification and formal patterns of communication are what differentiate this system, where structure is defined and elements are positioned relatively. The reference point of meaning is already articulated as a function in current systems. The use of formal expressions suggests, however, that this extreme point is impossible. A web of resemblance works beneath this functional articulation by the virtue of imagination. This reality rejects the sharp periodisation of these two epistemes, as it is seen in the case of architecture.



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This is a dual difference which can be arguably applied to the semantics of the Islamic attribution of Iranian architecture. It creates two distinctive methods of articulating Islam. In the first is imaginational Islam, as seen in Persian Sufism and its parallel social organisational of khāniqāh based on the kinship-like concept of brotherhood – a primary form of social organisation in Islamic society. In the second is structural Islam, as articulated through the law-based structuring religious and social affairs in Sharī’ah, and its attached governmental organisation of the central monarchy. There is an inevitable conflict at the border of these two epistemic blocks; for example the conflict between men of Sharī’ah and Sufi, between central power and an anarchic social body, between the language of the two brothers Imam Mohammad Ghazzali and Ahmad Ghazzali, and finally between Islamic fundamentals per se and Islamic art. It is in the context of this dual difference that the apparently similar public space of the Old Square (Miydān Kohnah) attached to the Isfahan Jame’ ‘Atīq finds a distinctive character compared to the New Square of Naqsh-i Jahān (the Image of World). While both share the same elements of bazaar, mosque and palace,110 it is the new square which can be the image of the world, since this is the one which has a form of connective social spaces between different elements, while the old is a formless void between elements in an atomistic society. This dualism might also function as an example to differentiate between the phenomena which are seen as similar and which do not show patterns of differentiation. Foucault’s third epistemological division, rooted in the modern era, is based on the notion of organic structure: Organic structure, that is, of internal relations between elements while totality performs a function; it will show that these organic structures are discontinuous, that they do not, therefore, form a table of unbroken simultaneities, but that certain of them are on the same level whereas other form series or linear sequence.111 Whereas in Classical thought the sequence of chronologies merely scanned the prior and more fundamental space of a table which presented all possibilities in advance, from now on, the contemporaneous and simultaneously observable resemblances in space will be simply the fixed forms of a succession which proceeds from analogy to analogy. The Classical order distributed across a permanent space the non-quantitative identities and differences that separated and united things: … History was to deploy, in a temporal series, the analogies that connect distinct organic structures to one

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another. This same History will also, progressively, impose its law on the analysis of production, the analysis of organically structured beings, and, lastly, on the analysis of linguistic groups. History gives place to analogical organic structures, just as Order opened the way to successive identities and differences.112 Obviously, History in this sense is not to be understood as the compilation of factual successions or sequences as they may have occurred; it is the fundamental modes of being of empiricities, upon the basis of which they are affirmed, posited, arranged, and distributed in the space of knowledge for the use of such disciplines or sciences as may arise.113 From a structural viewpoint, this third division introduces time as another dimension of organisation. Time breaks the linear division of complexes on the basis of defined identities and differences. From the architectonic viewpoint, it is the application of Non-Euclidean geometry and relativity to architectonic structures. In this episteme, knowledge can no longer be deployed against the background of a unified and unifying mathesis … that explains why all hasty mathematicisation of naïve formalisation of the empirical seems like ‘pre-critical’ dogmatism and a return to the platitudes of Ideology.114 According to this episteme and due to the organic structure of the complex, it is not possible to place divided elements in a linear functional connection to others. The notion of time reflects the architectonic bases of these three epistemes. Its three different images are those of cyclical time – as it is in backgammon; linear time – as it is in chess; and, finally, the interior time of a complex. From an architectonic viewpoint, Foucault’s archaeological method was, in fact, de-contextualised in order to allow its use as a model by which to investigate the formative patterns in the architectural language of Iran. It is however necessary to detach Foucault’s method from his cultural and contextual connections. These investigated forms help to find forms in history and to deconstruct the abstract concept through which the common views of art and the material culture of Islam and Iran are shaped. From a semantic point of view, these patterns help not to interpret Islam as a force beyond history which shapes culture, but rather a set of principles which turn into cultural materials through socio-temporal or epistemological conditions of



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possibilities. Islamic becomes an historical a priori which itself does not exclude historicity. Conclusion The transformation of Islam from an Islam which conducts patterns of everyday life to an Islam as a consciously defined attribution is a complicated process which modern narratives of Islam have failed to conceptually articulate. Confining this attribution to the religion of Islam, as a pure Muslim wishes, to a simple cause and effect, or to a theory and practice connection or to a homogeneous explanatory system are the problems which happened during the process of change from what was the tradition in Islamic society to what is now ‘modern Islamic tradition’. There is an inconsistency between the Islam of the Holy Qur’ān and the Prophet and Islam as cultural patterns in history. Inconsistency (not as disconnection) concerns the different principles which govern these spaces and the delicate process of crossing over from one to another. The aim of this chapter, was to investigate the nature of this transformation from the religion of Islam to Islam as a cultural attribution, here mainly architecture, in two social and theoretical domains. In the second part of this chapter, by switching from a time-based analysis of Islamic history to a spatial analysis, already existing differences were made to come into play in the definition of Islamic attribution which a linear narration of Islam had managed to avoid. The second step was to reject the intention to explain these differences as a variation on a single core theme. In the section on ‘Heterology’, alongside our use of dualism in looking into a cultural history of Islamic Iran, the attempt was made to show that the irresolvable dual differences in Islamic definition create a space not definable by a homogenous explanatory system. It is from within a democratic space, as well as a space of conflict, that a great deal of what is called Islamic emerges. The immediate consequence of this view is to avoid a definition of Islamic attribution by only single perspectives as these destroy the other heterogeneous space. Nonetheless, we should not reduce the conflict between these two social spaces to endless particular differences in a neutral space. The later section, ‘The semiotics of Islamic Iranian art, does not provide the answer but aimed at interweaving the attribution of ‘Islamic’ in material culture with Islamic concepts. This method of looking at Islamic material culture is not unhelpful. First it rejects the obvious explanations from which current definitions of Islam suffer, for instance, abstraction due to prohibition of images or Islamic material culture as the by-products of conditioning, be it ecological or socio-political. It proposes to reinvent

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Islamic art as the conscious product of subjects in history rather than as that of peoples trapped in their unwilling condition, a view which even though it is not explicitly expressed, is presumptuous due to the lack of any proper conceptualisation of the differences of Islamic art. Studies of Islamic cultural materials have fallen into a black and white polarisation. On one hand, abstract generalisations overlay the whole culture with a plastic unification and reject any notion of change. On the other hand, individual studies are case studies existing in a vacuum without any sensible connection to any greater cultural narratives. It is crucial therefore to find a middle ground which avoids these deficiencies. The aim of the search for this middle ground is both to form Islamic Iranian history and to find the comparative cultural patterns without which history becomes a formless pile of dates and events. Foucault’s archaeological method of studying history is key therein. In order to use it in an Islamic Iranian architectural study, Foucault was considered from a structural viewpoint. Subsequently the issue of time was eliminated. In order to use it in an architectural context, the epistemic rupture of history is used to form architectonic epistemic blocks in architectural formation. In this sense for instance, the attribution of Islamic rather than referring to an abstract definition of Islam, refers to the structural formation which forms its possibility. By this we can give sensible form to an Islamic concept in the formation of a material culture like architecture.

5 Difference and Particul arity

Introduction While the necessity of structural investigation was highlighted in the previous chapter, this structural approach brings with it new predicaments in relation to the concept of identity. In the first place, as Currie stresses, ‘the structuralist concept of difference actually abstracts the entities it analyses to the extent that they are emptied of all particularity and individuality’.1 Identity as difference creates a system with diachronic freedom of substitution, since identities are based on relational rather than individual qualities. In the second place, the structural approach to difference as binary oppositions or frozen general categories ignores minor differentiations. Finally, bracketing time in order to reach stable identities eliminates temporality and thus situational definition of an identity. Nevertheless, a spatial formation of Iranian history with emphasis on structural definition is indispensible. In addition to the approach employed so far to seek simultaneous dualisms which do not necessarily fit into a homogenous theoretical system, this chapter works as a counterweight to the previous and explores the subject of Iranian architecture from a different perspective. The aim of this chapter is to understand the notion of particularity in Islamic Iranian art and architecture. To achieve this we need first, and most importantly, an understanding of the forms of connection between individual elements and general categories through which generalisations are formed, and second, a scheme in which the notion of time and temporality are located conceptually. What links a single building with the descriptive frames of Islamic and Iranian, the historical frames of Seljuk or Safavid, or the so-called stylistic frames like four-iwan? Are these connections between ‘species’ and ‘genus’, or rather a kind of ontological Heideggerian relation of beings and Being, or of myths and their primeval source?2 Should these

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categories be rejected for the sake of obtaining a sense of singularity, or must new forms of interpretation of these frameworks be invented? The fact is that contemporary sensitivity to any kind of generalisation, seen as the means of suppression of minor differences, is at the same time a rejection of communal frames of identity and collective positions which allows the possibility of resistance to minorities. This rejection erases the question rather than finding alternative general frameworks. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that dominant ossified generalities, as essential identities, are also the very points through which particularities are suppressed. Particularisation, in this sense, is itself a form of resistance. The temporality of identity is the key which provides an object and its creator with an existential value. In the case of Iranian cultural materials, the formation of a new notion of linear history, accompanied with the master words through which these materials are framed, detaches them from temporal belonging to any particular situation be it individual or local. While, on one side, the application of a linear notion of change in history sets change as an existential value, on the other side, general abstract categorisations as the frame of interpretation of these cultural materials empty them from it, and subsequently define them as mechanical reproductions of atemporal forms. In this manner, a Persian poem is a reproduction of established forms and themes, a Persian garden is the reproduction of paradise – an out of time image itself – and Persian music is the individual performance of the same melodies. Rather than attempting to find different conclusions in the same frame of interpretation, it is the frames of interpretation themselves which must be revisited. In the case of history, the notion of difference must not return to an evolutionary programme of primitive stages of the master form, for, as Deleuze put it, these fail to consider the differences of others.3 Aesthetics and the notion of style provide the conceptual framework through which this chapter tries to analyse the notion of particularity in Iranian architecture and specifically in relation to Iranian mosques. The concept of style, as ‘the distinctive manner of a person or school or period’4 inevitably looks for common manners and lines of distinction, and traces time as the basis for changes between its defined and formal states. To use this concept in relation to Iranian architecture, with its conscious distinction of manner ‘before’ and ‘after’, has the potential to project upon this architecture notions which had no ground of application. To choose the improper frame might result in the interpretation of the objects under investigation as deficient examples of assumed proper models, for example in the case of Iranian architecture, its evaluation as lacking in creativity, individuality and temporal engagement with its context. In this chapter, aesthetics is referred



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to not as the subject but as the medium through which the semantic frameworks of Islamic Iranian architecture is deconstructed. Aesthetics and the question of beauty find a particular position in an Islamic context. ‘God as distance’5 rejects any particularity regarding the connection between God and other beings. Paradoxically, the Absolute Otherness of God, which results in a horizontal indifference of beings, brings everything into an immediate – absence of distance – relationship with God. Here we are facing an indifference between an absolute rejection and acceptance. Beauty, as an indefinable presence in beauties, is interpreted as paralleling the relationship of the Being of God and beings. Beauty is not understood as a medium of expression for particulars, as the beholders of a sacred presence, but is instead the subject of presence itself. Theoretically, in this context of absolute rejection and acceptance, any beautiful phenomenon (judged so by communal consensus) can be systematically inclusive as long as it rejects particularisation. This fact, however, in spite of this theoretical openness, does not necessarily lead to an open acceptance or rejection of any aesthetic system in an Islamic context. The conservative consensus of society and the procedure through which new things are abstracted from their particular connotations creates a slow process of adoption and change. Comparing Suhrawardī’s ‘Story of the imprisoned peacock’ in Lughat-i Mūrān [The language of the ants]6 to Plato’s analogy of the cave illuminates the particularity of the notion of aesthetics in the Iranian context. In Suhrawardī a peacock is kept in a royal garden, its body wrapped in leather and its head caged in a basket by the king, in such a way that it is blinded to reality. As time goes by, the peacock all but forgets both its identity and location other than the occasional sounds and smells of the royal garden which penetrate the basket and remind the peacock of desirable things, albeit without concrete images. These sounds and smells, in contrast to the shadows in Plato’s myth of the cave as a trace of the formal world, are immaterial, ephemeral and beyond objective definition. Both stories focus on the inaccessibility of the Real world; however, the phenomenological traces of it in Plato are visual while Suhriwardī’s focus is on the absence of the visual traces of reality. They are felt but cannot be objectively positioned or represented. This simultaneous being and not-being shows the aesthetic paradox in the Islamic Iranian context. This notion of abstraction, as can be seen in the contemporary literature of Islamic visual culture, may lead to a kind of geometrical abstraction as the manifestation of Islamic aesthetic notions. However, to accept this as a rule to be applied in the reverse process of creation leads to a sterile geometrical plasticity which, in itself, is a kind of particularisation, for abstractions

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from historical materials are defined as authentic models. What is more, in this process, all the other conditions which are not necessarily defined as Islamic but which are the very features that sensually connect objects to the contemporary imagination of the user are rejected or ignored. Islam as a potentially active ontological position becomes an appearance regulator and controller. In dealing with the issue of grasping the notion of particularity, we repeat the question posed in the second chapter: Islamic or Iranian? As was mentioned, these are not two separate identity zones and neither does ‘Islamic Iranian’ convey a mixture, togetherness or any other kind of phrase which represents already defined territories. By using the term Iranian in this chapter, the generalities given the name Islamic are rejected, and Islam as a predefined conceptual frame in the distance is substituted with an existentially objectified religion through local trends of a culture. This rejection, however, does not mean exclusion. While this statement proclaims the absence of a reality of Islam beyond the regional pattern of Islam (an idea which in its radical form rejects any notion of originality or purity) it is not the rejection of any objectivity in Islam.7 There has been always an idea of ‘proper’ Islam to signpost interpretations; but, to use Foucault’s terminology, this in itself is a historical a priori. The simultaneous existence of paradoxical duals in an Islamic context, and the proposition that if there is an Islamic truth it lies behind these paradoxes rather than being in possession of any particular possessor, demonstrates a textual plurality beyond the conceptual grasp of postmodern pluralism. Through them the religion has been able to claim the right path while holding the subjective basis of belief. The ‘right path’ is itself a paradoxical concept in Islam, which can be conceptualised neither through dogmatism nor poststructuralist plurality. Significantly however, it must not be forgotten that paradoxes stand out of any formal representation. In the first section of this chapter, by using the terminology of other arts like music, the aim is to revisit the notion of style as the universal category through which individual works are classified. It asks whether ‘style’ as a concept can be used in an Iranian context, and what the possible alternatives are. By questioning the notion of style, this chapter explores a method by which to revise the form and nature of generalities and their connection to individual phenomena, in order to conceptualise an object’s attainment of its temporal and its existential particularity. As in the two previous chapters, the investigation focuses on dualism and its definition as the main representational format of differences. Nevertheless, compared to the dualisms of the previous chapters, which were employed as a means for structural



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formation, this dualism looks to define particular identities. Deleuze and Guattari’s Nomadology provided the principal tool for this.8 The Concept of Style: The Universal and Particular The use of master terms like Islamic, Iranian, medieval, or indeed any categories indicating the commonality of individual members, is primarily based on the geometry through which elements gain their individuality in a general frame. It is this fabricated generality which gives the distance for an abstract consideration of particulars. Individual identities are based on either the variation of the general model or on the objectification of the exterior space left open for interpretation by this model. Alongside the ritualistic and mythological re-creation of a primordial event, or the ontological connection of Being and being, the relation of genus and species is generally the format through which individuality is described. In the case of man-made objects, it finds particularity in either a connection to individual personalities or in the process of craftsmanship. In the case of artistic materials, the notion of particularity is defined either, in the category of fine art as the creative production of an individual, or in handicraft as practical skills. In the case of Iranian material, due to the absence of the model of individuality, it is the category of handicrafts which set the framework of interpretation. However, the presumed universality of these two categories of interpretation, art and craftwork, artist and artisan, are also the kind of conceptual frames through which cultural particularities cannot find the representational space. The notion of style, as one of the adopted general frames of interpretation for Iranian art and architecture, is one of these categories. Style, being a historically biased concept,9 was the notion through which attempts were made to create the categories of Iranian art. But there are hidden presumptions inside this notion which make it unsuitable for use in the study of Iranian art and architecture. Above all is historicity as the self-consciousness of the individual which is used for the classification of objects. Even though it is not that of the creator, this is the presumption of the analyser who bases his or her categorisation upon this consciousness. We can add to this the nature of the relationship between style, as a genus objectively defined outside individual creations, and singular objects. Unlike definitions of genus as something not necessarily outside its instances and situation, style as genus always belongs to objectively defined categories which historically aware individual creators use as the referential frame of their creations. Finally, style involves the notion of periodical change, without which style as a consciously chosen pattern loses its basis. In the case of

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Iranian cultural materials, these presumptions of stylistic analysis have no real basis for application. In the context of Iranian art, ‘past’, as the defined category of theories and cultural codes, in comparison to what constructs the present, is absent. Past and present are not two defined and divided categories but are placed on a continuous line of change through reproduction of the same. Periodisation, therefore, as the drawing of lines of distinction between different states, loses its ground. In the case of Iranian architecture this lack of defined states is reflected in the absence of objectively defined systems of design. This does not mean arbitrary architecture. In this architecture, change does not appear in the breaking of an established system’s rules, since there is no crystallisation of rules of design in such a system.10 Change appears not as break then but as the omnipresent adoption in the process of repetition of the same. Generally speaking, notwithstanding essentialists who describe the peculiarities of a cultural system in itself and for itself, the relative definitions of differences within Iranian architecture appear either in negative paraphrases or in a hierarchically staged dualism between art and handicrafts. In the first case, difference appears as lack or absence. Here, rather than a comparison between two parallel systems with difference as its outcome, there is only one system: a system with describable characters, and another, the shadow, defined only by the absence of what cannot be articulated positively. In the second case, although negativity loses its absolute form and the alternate system finds characters, the hierarchically based comparison creates a kind of graded negativity between the two systems, between techne and poiesis,11one as the pre-stage for the other, as its primitive and immature form. This hierarchical comparison creates its own problems. One of the deficiencies that this notion entails when explaining Iranian art and material culture, as different from the categories of fine art, is that the question of the individuality of the creator is spurned.12 Creativity, moreover, is summarised as the practical ability to reproduce the same model or prototype. In this frame, the notion of change is defined as an exterior influence, which is otherwise still and the same. Change, both as a conscious choice or as movement between visual states, is absent, since both the individual as agency and defined visual systems are also absent. A graded negativity is employed to articulate the notion of difference. Let us now turn to some examples of Iranian art, as a way of re-examining the appropriateness of these frames of interpretation, and identifying the nature of possible alternatives. Persian music is pertinent to the examination of the notion of style in the Iranian context, since as a practised art, unlike other arts like calligraphy,



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which comparatively maintain their traditional framework, music has undergone modernisation. This process of change reveals where Persian music differs from what is considered modern. The introduction of written music, new methods of education, impersonalisation,13 and composition, among other developments, were new and are therefore points of exposing the differences.14 However, a deficiency emerges in the narration of these differences, where either dualities between folk and fine arts or between artisan and artist are employed, or concepts like ‘style’ are used to reformulate the history of this musical system, a music which lacks a historical archive. Neither the concept of ‘folk’ or of ‘style’ is able to reflect the notion of difference in this system, or, for the most part, the relationship of individuals and the individuality of artworks of art to general categories. The first issue is the question of individuality. Despite the existence of common musical schemes, what we encounter in this art is individual creations of those schemes which, traditionally, did not exist beyond the individual. There was no authentic version of Persian music and the common schemes were known by the performer. This individuality in itself has to be broken down, since the individual as a defined state is also absent. For not only does individuality as a defined characteristic surpass any notion of pre-defined structure, but temporality surpasses ‘individuality’, in the sense that each performance, even of the same piece, is not a variation on an established performance but a combination of momentary pieces. Every piece is performed differently, depending on the time and situation (season, time of day, or the feeling of musician or audience). While individuality in structural definition is a spatially defined status, this case is the reminder of the notion of temporality and ‘trace’ in Derridean sense, in its definition of the elements of structure. This temporal individuality, if it can be articulated in this way, has certain consequences in Persian music. In badīhe-navāzī (improvisation), for example, the artist’s decision on what to play depends on the context, a spatio-temporal creation depending on artist, audience and time. ‘In Persian music there is no always’, Zonis writes.15 In musical education, between master and pupil, an exterior definition of common schemes in written impersonal form does not exist. In this system the common idea about the absence of genus out of species or Heideggerian notion of ‘Being of being’ is actualised. This kind of apprenticeship is a tool by which to sustain temporality by rejecting a stable, impersonal definition of common schemes. Of analysing the radīf (Iranian musical system) Zonis writes that ‘there is no one authentic version of any melody; this might well be expected, considering that each gūshah [a melody type] functions only as a model for

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improvisation, not as a finished composition’.16 The same personal connection is crucial both in handicrafts and in the Sufi context. In the latter, in spite of the existence of written treatises, the study of them beyond the master–pupil relationship is considered as misleading and even dangerous.17 We can describe this situation as the simultaneous existence of common schemes or ‘generic materials’18 and the rejection of objectification. The same is true of Persian poetry, which, unlike early Arabic examples, ‘deals mainly with ‘types’ rather than individual characters’.19 To sustain this individuality, the generic frame holds a loose definition. For example, dastgāh – an ‘apparatus, mechanism, scheme or organisation’,20 or ‘unspecific nuclear models’ in Persian music – ‘are no more than broad outlines which guide the combined arts of performance and composition’.21 Gūshah (corner) as a melody type is ‘more than what a Western musician thinks of as melody. What is important is not the gūshah as a tune but, in a sense, the gūshah as generic materials for the creation of new pieces.’22 Gūshah is a ‘[c]ertain melodic shape that remains recognizable throughout the improvisation’.23 These ‘models of improvising’ create a middle ground between theory and practice for individual expression. From an abstract viewpoint, thanks to these ‘generic materials’ Persian music is considered as repetitive. In other words, from a formalist viewpoint which undermines temporality, this music is described either as ‘loose structured’ or as ‘mechanical repetition’. To summarise, the characteristics of this musical system are demonstrated in a number of ways. First is the spatio-temporality of the identities. The dependency of the definition of elements on time rejects a structural notion of identity, which insists on defined differences. In a structural system, this is a deficiency since it blurs the function/identity borders between elements. In addition, this system releases elements from pre-defined forms, which turns producers to some extent into practitioners of already existent models rather than creative agents.24 This creates a ‘theory of practice’ which rejects the binary oppositions of design–production and mind–body. In this system, there is a disappearance of the composer/designer – in other words, of the hierarchy – which leads to horizontal and neutral gatherings of elements in which each member is a designer-practitioner. Rather than an organiser/designer positioning elements/individuals in regard to the overall structure, overall harmony is achieved only through sharing the same schemes or generic apparatuses.25 Because of this, complexity – as developing professional divisions within large scale structures – stays at a relatively basic level. Nevertheless, complexity itself, rather than developing complex structures, is created through complicated individuals who, due



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to a lack of functionally pre-defined divisions, personally enrich the same simple scheme. For that reason, ornament in this system is not a decorative addition but a crucial part of the aesthetic character of the system.26 The overall system – if we can call it a system at all, since it is simply horizontal positioning of individuals – is a mixture of simple structures and complex elements. The ideal of complexity according to the structural notion is the creation of a system which represents the total reality by minor functional division of different elements,27 while in this system the ideal is creating multi-functional individuals to stand for the system itself. In a structural system, on the one hand, changes, except minor variations in the same structure, happen as a result of a breakage from an established state to another, when the system cannot accommodate changes while sustaining the same identity. In the system which Persian music represents, on the other hand, change happens not through defined episodes but through a momentary but steady habit of the system itself. Absolutism and totalitarianism cannot occur in this system since its very definition is based on undefined individual participation in the formation of an unspecified whole. Due to this individual objectification, an extra-musical bond comes into play in the unification of the parts.28 None of the points mentioned so far, however, indicates a poststructuralist particularism that rejects any communal model. The interpersonal system of education, though rejecting an objective definition of a common model, is the very medium which sustains the conservation and durability of the system; meanwhile the common model persists at a certain level of abstraction in order to leave space for temporal and individual participation. Overall, Persian music represents a position between structural universalism and poststructural particularism. Like other Iranian arts, architecture can be seen through the lens of this system. Iranian architecture is composed of a small number of generic spatial units, illustrated in Figure 5.1. Like gūshah in music, these spatial units are no more than loose generic frames for individual, spatio-temporal (regional) creations. The notion of temporality points to the dependency of space on time. A formal/spatial unit, such as the iwan, has no intrinsic quality, and in different positions – be they functional (religious, residential or palatial), or geographical (towards north, south, east or west), or at different times (season or day) – holds a completely different meaning. Therefore, conventional methods of architectural representation such as ‘formal composition’ are reductionist, for they do not take account of time in their representations. These elementary forms leave the whole story of architecture – proportion,29 composition, material and details – to individual choice, although these choices through apprenticeship and generic rules share a common basis.

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As with music, it is a mistake to look for documented models beyond the individual architect. The architect as designer of the total building in its details is absent. The carpenter, mason and decorator are not practitioners of a pre-designed totality. Like music, harmony is the product of communal conceptual frames between artisans and designers. Architectural drawings, where they exist,30 are simple conducting lines for design through construction.31 That is to say, while the overall structure is simple,32 complexity is

Figure 5.1  Generic spatial units in Iranian architecture



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called into being through construction and ornament, with a strong harmony in the final result.33 Indeed, despite ornamental complexity, simplicity and clarity are what mark a master work.34 One of the major difficulties is the narration of this system and its history through the concept of periodic change. Since the well-defined formal categories commonly sought by architectural history do not exist, this system is essentially one of variations of the same models without the trace of lines of division which correspond to sociopolitical changes. Thus modern regional or dynastic classifications of this history do not in reality show clear lines of change.35 A common feature of Iranian architecture has been the augmentation and adaptation of a building over centuries. Yet these buildings are harmonious, primarily because the notion of formal completeness as a designed totality – an enclosed formal system – is absent in this architecture.36 From a different perspective, a single structure absorbs changes organically without showing any lines of breakage because there are no defined, established forms in the way to resist change. However, since change requires the consensus of individuals and accordance with their traditional attitudes, it is naturally a slow37 procedure.38 Theoretically, like the Sunnah in Islamic sharī’ah, this system goes through an evolving renovation while retaining a diagrammatic notion of its connections to the original point and orthodoxy. ‘Historicity,’ ‘periodic change’ and ‘lines of distinction’ are projected concepts in this system; meanwhile their loose grounding does not construct historical formation as the basis for sociopolitical analyses.39 The differences represented here do not try to draw geographical lines of distinction between cultures. While it focuses on the notion of temporality, this system itself is not an attempt at an atemporal identity or conceptual framework for the investigation of Iranian culture. The lines between folk and classical (sonatī) made in the case of Persian music, and the fact that the two compared systems cannot exist purely, are enough to make this model system a temporal/situational tool of theoretical investigation. In what follows, the aim is to articulate the peculiarities of this system. The purpose is to re-articulate notions of the individual and communal and of interior and exterior, as well as the ways they regulate space and time. In the first part, the idea of geometry and space is investigated through the example of residential buildings. The second step is to find the frame in which these units are put together to form a collective image. Here, as in the previous chapter, another form of dualism is developed by which to draw spatial and social borders. If this dual difference is conceptualised using notions other than negative representation, this chapter will have achieved its goal.

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The Formal Language of Iranian Architecture Necipoglu’s comparison between European medieval and Iranian Islamic methods of design (in contrast to what she defines as a European renaissance model) is an effort to show that different notions of geometry are also a means of articulating space in these contexts.40 We can compare Deleuze and Guattari’s differentiation between Gothic masons and state architectural designers, and Shelby’s comparison between constructive geometry in medieval architecture and the metric plane of the Renaissance,41 to Necipoglu’s attempt to represent the notion of difference in an Iranian Islamic context. Here, following the evolutionary notion, this epoch is characterised as the primitive stage for a later mathematical approach toward design. Nonetheless, if this difference is approached ontologically, the medieval–renaissance categorisation within an evolutionary stage cannot articulate the notion of difference. Mulavī, in a study of the methods of geometrical drawings in Iranian architecture of Islamic period, suggests five stages in the process of design of residential architecture.42 His investigation uses a theory of design based on the sections of the circle. This is a spatial design primarily based on surface, and Mulavī identifies the following stages, as shown in Figure 5.2: 1 locating the geometrical centre or centres of the land (different methods are used to locate the centre); 2 drawing the base circles (inner or outer) upon which the protractor will be positioned; 3 positioning the protractor, regarding the preferred directions, showing a division of at least sixteen in the circle;43 4 defining the central open space or courtyard; 5 divisions of surface (both in plan and elevation), translated into three dimensions on some proportional and constructional rules. Both Mulavī’s suggestion of design on a circular basis and a grid outline, as shown by Necipoglu’s analysis of scrolls, show the similarity between the ornamental and spatial geometry of architecture. There are various consequences of this approach toward design. First is the rhythmic linear positioning of elevation. As in the case of music, elevation is a rhythmic positioning of separated spatial units, rather than a closed, single entity defined by its beginning, main body and end. In different houses examined by Mulavī the rhythm of elevation consists of 1–3-2–5-2–3-1, 1–3-5–1-3–1 or 3–2-3–2-3 door rooms (in an Iranian residence rooms are named after the number of their doors/windows) (Figure 5.3).

1  Locating the geometrical centre or centres of the land

2 Drawing the base circles upon which the protractor will be positioned

3 Positioning the protractor, regarding the preferred directions

4 Defining the central open space or courtyard

5 Divisions of surface translated into three dimensions

Figure 5.2  The process of design in Iranian houses: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (after Mulavī)

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Figure 5.3 Elevation design (after Mulavī)

This rhythmic position furthermore refers to the positioning of separated spatial units. Unity, rather than a formal supervision of differences in a holistic entity, is achieved through ‘repetition’ of the ‘same different’ elements in a plural and theoretically open system. Theoretically the linear positioning of spaces can continue endlessly while rhythm keeps the unity. These units can be made of a single room or more complicated ones (Figure 5.4). The open space is the ground whose outlines visually bring together these separated units. The focus on this visual unity must not undermine the multiplicity of these separated units. This central, inward focus of geometry is possible with a border which separates this inner space from the outside. A lack of geometrical sensitivity in two places demonstrates this central/inner looking at design. The first relates to communication lines, shown in Figure 5.5. In contrast to what can be called as over-sensitivity in the geometrical design of indoor space, the ‘in between’ space is the temporal and situational positioning of units without any formal supervision of the total. Here, this totality stands beyond



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Figure 5.4  The plan of a residence showing the multiple rooms in a mansion

Figure 5.5  Irregular spaces: alleys

definition and representation. The second is the use made of ‘in between’ architectural units, shown in Figure 5.6. Due to arbitrary positioning of well-formed units, the communication paths are no more than irregular lines which found a way through, where their formal design was not either at espouse. This arbitrary positioning of the so-called ‘in-between’ space is a major characteristic of Iranian art and material culture. In Persian classical poems, in urban morphology, in furnishing surfaces and many other examples, a sharp dichotomy exists between extensive geometrical sensitivity in arranging the interior space and obliviousness to the collective, holistic picture. A well-crafted verse is combined with a loose thematic and narrative

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Figure 5.6  Irregular spaces: corridors

connection in a poem. A floor is furnished haphazardly with richly designed carpets. Finally, Iranian cities are a maze of alleys between well-designed architectural units. This obliviousness, consciously chosen by the system to create freedom while conducting a generic outline for individuals, is a crucial factor in allowing this system to function. In the representation of this system, as was shown in the geometry of design in Iranian architecture, two aspects must be taken into account: first, that the generic geometry of interior space is not structural, and second, that there is an absence of and resistance to structural formation and representation of this ‘in-between’ space. Yet this resistance should not be interpreted as a tendency to arbitrariness. Rather than a separate vision of two sides, it is the interaction between these two features which creates the system that holds stability and durability both in time and space. Nomos and Polis Persian classic (sonatī) music is performed individually or in groups of two or more, sitting in a row with an inner curve. This allows them both to face the listeners and to see their fellow performers (Figure 5.7). Accounting for the fact that the concept of performance in its modern sense is a newly introduced concept in Persian music, the linear position of players without any particular centre reveals the peculiarity of collective organisation in this music.44 The basic notion of this music is performance by one person. Multiplication is the repetition – although not mechanical reproduction – of this singular base in different instruments. The absence of a conductor,



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Figure 5.7  The model of performance in Iranian music. The central figure is not necessarily at the centre

which results from the absence of a composer in the first place, creates a neutral space in which the overall image is more of combination rather than composition. The lack of perspective in this monophonic music, in which each musical instrument repeats the other rather than creating a different layer, represents a kind of ‘same difference’ in the definition of its members. Harmony and time management based on definitely narrated music with a structured narration from start to end is absent. This music has no meter and between each piece, there is a rupture with formally loose interconnection. As in the positioning of performers, performed music comprises the horizontal placing of separated pieces. Dārāmad, chār-mizrāb and tasnīf are each divided in the same way in different gūshahs. Well established rules in generic melodies contrast with the loose overall composition. However, rather than lack of harmony, this music simply shows the absence of a ‘formally representable’ harmony in its overall structure, which is rather sensed both by performer and listener. How can this duality between strict generic rules for individual pieces and an ill-defined collective structure be explained? On one side, in the eyes of a formalist, there is a geometry which undermines the individual creativity – although as mentioned, these generic rules are creatively objectified through individual performances rather than being rigid structures. On the other, there is an overall structure which can only be defined negatively: a lack of composition, conductor, narration, harmony, and so on. It is noteworthy that this negativity, more than the absence of any conductive pattern, indicates both the lack of representation in collective structure and its inability to be represented. In other words, the representation of the overall entity as chaotic or arbitrary comes from the inability of the analyser to point out any formal and structural pattern, and the system itself to represent any structure. This resistance against representation demands a new approach towards describing the nature of the existing structure. To reach this point,

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it must not be forgotten that the duality of the strict geometry inside a unit, and freedom ‘in-between’ them, are two poles of the same phenomenon and should not be treated in isolation. It is this interaction which characterises this duality of interior and ‘in-between’ space. As has been explained thus far, this interior geometry is not structural. The possibility of the endless repetition of a unit indicates the absence of functional division between units in a structurally narrated piece of music. Repetition means the ‘sameness’ of each unit in a neutral, horizontal position, in other words, the semi-autonomy of pieces. Not being structural means the enclosed space of each unit, interiority, and lack of formal ‘trace’ in the formation of individual identities. While in a structural system, the closeness of the overall system is made up of open units which create a functional interdependency between members, in this system each unit is a closed autonomous entity which by repetition leads to an open overall system. There is neither beginning nor end, but only repetition of the same. This autonomy might be construed as absolute freedom and individuality in regards to overall structure, that is to say the structure is negated. However, two factors set the basis for a collective coordination. First is the paradoxical definition of each unit, between the lack of freedom and individuality and the absolute freedom. Despite the strict rules of creation, there are conductive rules for each individual piece which are objectified through individual performances and by individuals. Second, a subjective definition opens the way for putting together these autonomous pieces, in an ‘extra-musical’ linkage created by a kind of ‘subjective structure’ rather than in a structurally formed narration. This contradictory expression (since structure connotes objectivity and permanency) is the very notion which characterises this system in terms of both ‘interior’ spaces of units and the ‘in-between’ space. Certainly the ‘in-between’ space characterised by the contradictory term of ‘subjective structure’ can only be represented structurally through negativity. Not only does this system not represent a formal pattern of connection in structure or durability as the basis of a structural identity but it also resists this definition. The intersubjectivity of the ‘in-between’ space, which due to formless interconnections might be seen as temporal and situational, finds permanency through time and space by rejecting any distance and intermediary between subjects. The intersubjective space creates a dense space resisting the change. This not-easily-penetrable space, despite the absence of definite structural codes, creates durability first through moral codes shared by individuals and second by generic models which conduct ideal forms of individuality. This resistance against objective interference can be compared to Sufism, which rejects education on the basis of written treatises and



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thereby eliminates any formal intersubjective space. It is this rejection of distance which also rejects the designer/organiser as the agency that creates and controls patterns of connection between functionally divided identities. This resistance is destructive when it faces a structural formation. Government, for example, is alien in this system. While the lack of a centre and organiser creates an open field for reproduction and repetition on one hand, on the other the intersubjective connection gives rise to the question of scale in order to control the space. The density of the space between individuals cannot be maintained beyond a certain scale. In this sense, a consensus is formed to control the scale while a theoretically endless number of these limited-scale units can come together to create an open system. The unavoidability of negative descriptions reflects the difficulties in conceptualizing this system from a structural point of view, in which nothing is left to the exterior. Exteriority connotes negativity since there is nothing left beyond the totalitarian definition of a structural system. One potential option in order to imbue this exteriority with positive definition is Deleuze and Guattari’s dual representation of the two systems of ‘state apparatus’ and ‘war machine’.45 In a comparison between nomos and polis in Nomadology, Deleuze and Guattari conceptualise another optional system against the structural system of the State, and not necessarily in negative terms. However, two main issues must be taken into account if we are to use the Deleuzean notion of difference in the context of our discussion. First and foremost, the notion of identity as simulacra, as described in Difference and Repetition,46 with ‘the delirious production of more and more and more simulacra, without any rootedness or ‘responsibility’,47 rejects any objectivity and stands in contrast to the ‘outlines’ already described in the definition of Persian music and other art materials, given the epithet ‘traditional’ in the modern era. The second issue is the duality of state and war machine: the latter, as the pure exteriority of the former,48 differs from the type of duality which this research represents as two forms of state. In other words, while Deleuze and Guattari reject a hierarchical division in their duality, and, rather than absolute division, consider grey areas between the two, the Deleuze and Guattari duality represents a dual system in which one side exists in the shadow of the other. In spite of their rejection of value judgements in this dual form, the space of the war machine as the exteriority between two states imparts an inevitable dependency and negativity on the definition of the other. In this manner, Deleuze and Guattari’s dualism is no more than a medium with which to form a conceptual frame for the definition of ‘difference’ in the comparative study of Persian architecture. The dual comparisons of Deleuze and Guattari are outlined below.

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Individuals In a comparison between chess and Go, one as the game of state, the other as a war machine, chess pieces are represented as coded as ‘they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties, from which their movements, situations and confrontations derive’:49 Go pieces, in contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective or third person function. ‘It’ makes a move. ‘It’ could be a man, a women, a louse, an elephant.50 The function of chess pieces is structural.51 Like Go, chess is a war, ‘but an institutionalised, regulated, coded war, with a front, a rear, battles’.52 In contrast to chess, the formless pieces of Go have ‘only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constellations, according to which it fulfils functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering, encircling, shattering’.53 In other words, one side has functionally defined identities with qualities intrinsic to their position within the structure, while the other, characterless elements reject a stable state, and are always in the process of becoming.54 Structure ‘The concern of state is to conserve.’55 Its function is based on a cluster of institutions which maintain its durability in time and space. ‘The stateform, as a form of interiority, has a tendency to reproduce itself, remaining identical to itself across its variations and easily recognizable within the limits of its poles’,56 whereas the war machine in contrast is against crystallisation, and based on ‘smooth space’ rather than a ‘striated’ one, that is to say, on ‘following’ rather than ‘reproduction’, on ‘speed’ rather than ‘movement’, and on ‘form-flow’ rather than the duality of ‘form-matter’. The war machine is based on a ‘fuzzy aggregate’57 rather than regulation and categorisation: The ideal of reproduction, deduction or induction is part of royal science, at all times and in all places, and treats differences of time and place as so many variables, the constant form of which is extracted precisely by the law: for the same phenomena to recur in a gravitational and striated space it is sufficient for the same conditions to obtain, or for the same constant relation to hold between the differing conditions and the variable phenomena.58



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The aim of royal science by the use of metric power is ‘to isolate all operations from the conditions of intuition, making them true intrinsic concepts, or “categories”’.59 From the standpoint of this system, the war machine is a ‘pure form of exteriority’,60 and thus can only be understood negatively, ‘since nothing is left that remains outside the State’.61 In the eyes of the State, the man of war ‘necessarily appears in a negative form: stupidity, deformity, madness, illegitimacy, usurpation, sin’.62 ‘The problem is that the exteriority of the war machine in relation to the State apparatus is everywhere apparent, but remains difficult to conceptualize.’63 Smooth and Striated Space ‘The primary determination of the nomad is that he occupies and holds a smooth space’;64 Smooth space is precisely the space of the smallest deviation: therefore it has no homogeneity, except between infinitely proximate points, and the linking of proximates is effected independently of any determinate path. It is a space of contact, of small tactile or manual actions of contact, rather than a visual space like Euclid’s striated space. Smooth space is a field without conduits or channels. A field, a heterogeneous smooth space, is wedded to a very particular type of multiplicity: non-metric, accentered, rhizomatic multiplicities which occupy space without ‘counting’ it and can ‘only be explored by legwork.’ They do not meet the visual condition of being observable from a point in space external to them; examples are the system of sounds, or even of colours, in opposition to Euclidean space.65 In this space, matter-flow can no longer be cut into parallel layers, and movement no longer allows itself to be hemmed into biunique relations between points.66 One of ‘the fundamental tasks of the State is to striate the space over which it reigns, or to utilise smooth spaces as a means of communication in the service of striated space’.67 Striated space is the space of ‘relativised movement’, it is a divided and distributed space, it is the space of ‘crystallised regulations’. In the State model, ‘space is counted in order to be occupied’.68 Movement and Speed The striated space of State is space of movement, whereas a nomad’s smooth space is based on speed:

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Movement is extensive, speed is intensive. Movement designates the relative character of a body considered as ‘one,’ and which goes from point to point; speed, on the contrary, constitutes the absolute character of a body whose irreducible parts (atoms) occupy or fill a smooth space in the manner of a cortex.69 The State needs defined paths in well-defined directions, which restrict speed, regulate circulation, and measure in detail the relative movements of subjects and objects.70 Number and Territory The number becomes a principle whenever it occupies a smooth space, and is deployed with it as subject, instead of measuring a striated space. The number is the mobile occupant, the movable (meuble) in smooth space, as opposed to the geometry of the immovable (immeuble) in striated space.71 These numbers appear as soon as one distributes something in space, instead of dividing up space or distributing space itself… The number is no longer a means of counting or measuring, but of moving: it is the number itself that moves through smooth space.72 Numbering number (Nombre nombrant) is a nomadic tool of organisation in smooth space based on speed, while territorisation, which uses numbers too, is the State approach toward space. As it was shown in comparison between chess and backgammon, one is based on place and territorial division, while the other on time and flow. ‘The numbering number is rhythmic, not harmonic.’73 Form–Material and Material–Flow The State model follows the form–matter model, ‘in that it assumes a fixed form and a matter deemed homogenous’.74 ‘Royal science is inseparable from a “hylomorphic” model implying both a form that organises matter, and a matter prepared for the form.’75 ‘[T]his schema derives less from technology or life than from a society divided into governors and governed, and later, intellectuals and manual laborers.’76 On the other hand, nomadic science does not employ the form–matter duality: What characterises it is that all matter is assigned to content, while all form passes into expression. It seems that nomad science is more



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immediately sensitive to the connection between content and expression in themselves, each of these two terms encompassing both form and matter.77 Thus matter, in nomad science, is never prepared and therefore homogenised matter, but is essentially laden with singularities (which constitute a form of content).78 [I]t is matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression. This has obvious consequences: namely this matter-flow can only be followed.79 The forms of resistance which the war machine shows towards State apparatus reveal the paradigms it employs for the definition of time and space. The first and the most important one is against the stratification and territorisation of space. This division of space, which finally leads to creation of a centre and hierarchy based on the functionally positioned member, endangers the war machine’s notion of freedom. While in the state system freedom on the basis of a division between interior–exterior and private– public means an individually based definition of the member inside the borders of public law and privacy of the members, freedom of movement for the war machine is a freedom of speed, transgression of the lines which conduct space. Though this freedom in its extreme form is chaotic, the temporary consensus on the ideal forms of individuality restricts this absolute form. Freedom is evident in resistance against definition, either formal or functional. This is a paradoxical situation since resistance against definition is combined with a consensus on the ideal form of individuality. The disk form of Backgammon and Go pieces suggest this paradox being both ‘the same’ and ‘characterless’. This paradox exists also in the interior–exterior division both between the members or the collective form of a war machine. On one hand, the members of a war machine are represented by a border, a characterless wall; a lack of definition which does not show any resistance against temporal definition. On the other, the openness of the overall form of a war machine theoretically shows signs of resistance in the dense space ‘in-between’ members. The common notions of private–public and interior–exterior lose their basis in the analysis of a war machine. Iranian Architecture Taking into account the danger of exclusively employing one or the other side of this dualism to explain social phenomenon, Deleuze and Guattari’s

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war machine is a medium through which the notion of difference can be articulated as a conceptual tool in the formation of Iranian architectural history. On an individual scale, members of the war machine, symbolised in the disk shape of Go pieces, are characterised by the lack of definition or ‘vagabond’, the state of becoming. Paradoxically, the permanent but characterless identity of these disks is temporarily objectified, which is represented by an enclosed interiority of an individual in an open system. In its extreme form, this atomic system, theoretically dividable endlessly, represents characterless Leibnitzean monads. Yet the conductive rules which re-create the ideal form of the individual – but which are not a reproduction on the basis of a rigid structural model – are the very basis on which objectivity and durability generated in a collective open system. Called tradition, this formless geometry, in combination with a dense intersubjective space, creates a collective and consensual consciousness, which despite its openness, resists outer forces in the form of radical changes, be they state structuralisation or individual freedom. It is the existence of a smooth space between the ‘same different’ elements, which slows the process of change in a theoretically open system. Can, in the same manner, the spatial units introduced in the previous section be named as monads of Iranian architecture; that is to say, as neutral spaces without intrinsic characteristics which are employed in different functional contexts? The courtyard complex as the case for the majority of Iranian postIslamic architecture, when compared to the dual division of iwan–shabistān (an engendered spatial division between public–private, open–closed, power–security and masculine–feminine), is a characterless entity. The solid walls indicate an enclosed interiority which separates the anarchic space of outdoors from the geometrically well-structured indoors. Nevertheless, the basic geometry of design, rather than an established style, is no more than a conductive outline for an architect/constructionist to objectify it. Through formalist eyes, mahallahs in Iranian cities are anarchic entities which cannot be described except negatively, that is, through lack of order, public space, hierarchy and so on. Morphologically, the mahallah is a flat/ neutral combination of walled territories which shape the narrow alleys between as communication lines. Even as a quasi-autonomous entity, there are no physical borders to show signs of division between mahallahs, which in themselves have the same sub-group divisions. The only means of forming a collective bond is the subjective and physical closeness of members and architectural units, which subsequently raises the issue of scale. Geometry and the agents behind its projection cannot interrupt the dense ‘in-between’ space, since they first need the distance to build formal communicative lines and subsequently define elements as functionally identified entities. This



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endangers the very definition of this social system. There is no public space, since the ‘in-between’ spaces always carry an intersubjective supervision with a degree of privacy. For making a larger scale territory, endless number of mahallahs can come together to create a town or city. The only limitation for this open expansion comes from outside, be they either governmental or environmental forces. The only means of communication with this centreless and formless system is through representatives, either chiefs as power elements or the priest/seyyed as religious leader. These representatives in exterior space either take part in the same organisations but at different levels, or come into contact with a foreign power like a government. The Notion of Time and Space Deleuze and Guattari stated that ‘the nomads have no history; they only have a geography’.80 Time, as the measurement of movement between stable statuses, can be reversed as the flow through temporary states, in which space is defined by time. History in dialectical form is absence since there are no consciously defined positions. Change as an analytical category is replaced by flow, therefore, consciously chosen positions are out of the question. Additionally, replacing the duality of form–matter with form–flow destroys the duality of intellectual and organiser or labour and information which creates history as a dialectic between consciously constructed positions. In the state system, since there are defined positions, change appears through a break between an ossified tradition and a new synthetic form or revolution. In the other case, flow is an ever becoming process which gives neither form nor lines of distinction between states, since there are no identifiable states. There is no memory, no archive, hence there is no history. In the spatial sense, while to be sedentary is to build a permanent position able to endure the conditional changes of outside, nomadic space moves between desired conditions. The former builds multi-spatial units which prepare different closed spatial units in a stable position. The latter moves a neutral open space in comparatively stable conditions. In fact, it is sedentary space which changes while the space/shelter of the nomad is the stable one.81 In this neutral space, the sharp line between indoor and outdoor space disappears. This space is functionally characterless. While a complete sedentary space is a divided complex, which gives space to different functional and environmental possibilities, in a ‘one and all’ nomadic space, division is between parallel spaces with the same nature. Nevertheless, as was shown in Chapter 2, to use this distinction in an Iranian context as a middle ground is a potential model for the analysis of space beyond ever-changing individual or small-scale collective memories.

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Labyrinth and Obelisk What is a bazaar? As both a space for regulation of movement and a crystallised fluid of movement itself, the bazaar is simultaneously a formed and a formative space. To the extent that the bazaar was designed to regulate the commercial circulation in a city it is formative, whereas it is a formed space as the crystallised flow of commerce. The borders between mahallahs are neither formally identifiable nor do they show signs of breaks between territories, yet they create a loose space through which the flow of commerce finds its way in the city. The bazaar represents a labyrinth as a form which cannot be comprehended from a single point. It is a conducting smooth space through the city without being primarily structured. Essentially the bazaar emerges in linear form rather than in any central form. In this context, Iranian city squares are an alien space projected by the government to geometricise and centralise a space which resists this. The struggle of Shah Ismā’īl to re-form the miydān Kohnah (the old square) in Isfahan and the public resistance which made the Safavids project a large-scale geometricisation outside the city structure (the new square) and re-articulate the flow of the bazaar are good examples of this fact.82 The reality is that both the mahallah and the bazaar resist this structuralisation, but the difference of speed between the dense space of residential quarters and the flow of commerce inside the bazaar prevent their blending into one another. Unless the centre of a neighbourhood connects directly to the line of the bazaar, the line of the bazaar cannot find a way into residential space. The comparison between public space in chess and backgammon in Chapter 3 took two different forms. Public space in chess was created by the interaction of the extended functionality of elements in the exterior, while the open space in backgammon was a hollow, like the hollow of a whirlwind, where forces of movement stir. In the first form, the centre of power is either the organiser – the absent presence – or the organisation itself through which public space is geometricised. The formless open space in the second, however, can only be objectified by the chief or man of power. As one of the others, the father of the people, he is the one who builds the obelisk to put a stable limit on the speed of time.83 The crystallisation of speed creates two kinds of resistance which results in the destruction of the war machine itself and creation of another in succession, a circular history. The first form of resistance appears through the diffusion of members into sub-groups which finally form rival groups. Resistance also comes from the system itself rather than from any particular members. The rigidified84 form of the centre in the war machine parallels with the weakening of members due to the effort to stabilise and control them.



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With their functionally undefined members, the projection of power and radiance of the centre appears through suppression rather than regulation. This is where the head of the system destroys the system itself. Losing the subjective affections which join the members together leads to the disappearance of any collective aspiration since there are no regulations to sustain the function of the system. The war machine resists two forms of centre, first the organisational one from the alien government, and the other from the rigidification of the centre by a man of power from inside. Hence the translation of the war machine as power/subjects is simplistic, since it does not represent the form of resistance which controls the power to create its own forms of freedom and the sharing of power. Iranian Architectural Historiography The notion of difference represented in this dualism demands a consciousness at the points of transition and appropriation between these two systems. Writing architectural history is an act of organisation and structuralisation of materials which, in the Iranian case, show resistance to this formation. Many of the conceptual frames and terminologies used to formulate Iranian architectural history not simply as a narrative of events, names and dates but also as a basis for dialogue with the past do not find the forms to match these frames.85 The major deficiency here is the absence of a theory of difference, which despite descending into a cultural essentialism or negativity in which difference is represented as the absence of the master or proper form, creates a relative identity through which different cultural histories are re-invented and reformulated. This is not a tool for drawing cultural borders but rather for constructing a relativity in which parallel differences are formed instead of a positive–negative division. This difference does not draw lines of division either geographically or historically. In its simplest form it creates a duality through which historical materials are structured as the temporal being between two poles of this duality, in other words, spacing history by introducing positional change in its otherwise monotonous line. This duality first deconstructs any essential interpretation of history; meanwhile its temporal existence escapes from being politically positioned in fixed positions. Iranian architectural historiography in general presents a number of challenges to attempts to structure its material. First is the absence of clear historical consciousness, in the sense that the agencies in charge of producing cultural material do not make clear connections between their ideas and forms of representation. This consciousness comes either from a descriptive visual culture which indicates signs of choice – when there is an option – or

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a clear attribution and reference to the cultural forms of a certain point in history. To avoid common sense negativity, this absence, rather than lack of consciousness in the proper sense, refers to the fact that this connection had no ground in the first place. In Iranian culture, a court culture always existed on a different plane to regional differences, though not disconnected from them; more than the sequence of historical and geographical episodes it shows a more or less stable historical image. The only period in which the evidence of a historical consciousness can be traced is during the 3rd and 4th centuries ah, known as the ‘Persian renaissance’, during which references to pre-Islamic culture can be explicitly seen. Other than during this period, atemporal images lead – or mislead – the semantics of Iranian visual culture towards mythological or psychological interpretations either as primordial religious images or geopolitical fatalism. The second major challenge is the absence of clear lines of connection between visual representations and ideological and sociopolitical states. As was mentioned in the previous chapter, the two common methods of classification of Iranian architectural history are dynastic and regional, and even if they show traces of change, they are the very frames which change as the choice or act of subjective agents is eliminated. The political struggles of the early Islamic period, Seljuk unification, Mongol destruction, Safavid ideological reformation, for example, do not necessarily go further to create transformations in visual cultures as representation of sociopolitical acts. The modern terminologies of medieval, renaissance, feudal and so forth are an application of theoretical frameworks to a context which never provides an appropriate form of use. In this manner, historiography in itself seems under question. Again this is not a question of legitimisation, it is a request for the re-invention and formation of history as a site of contemporary debates.86 Periodisation, Regionalism and Morphology Periodisation based on representational differentiation is a kind of Hegelian dialectic which anachronistically forms the course of history. This is a historical pattern which is rejected by the notion of ‘same-ness’ in Foucault’s pre-classical episteme and the ‘war machine’ of Deleuze and Guattari. This system, more than representing the difference between genuses, and genus and particulars, analogically indicates a Heideggerian ontological difference between Being and beings. This notion of difference represents neither a theological Being out there – represented in modern definitions as tradition – nor a classified division between established categories. Though beyond the scope of this thesis, a Heideggerian difference is



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potentially the only framework capable of articulating the paradoxical difference between Being and beings, which in this case are the generic frames and individual works.87 Yet, while a structural/representational re-invention of Iranian architectural history is necessary, it also raises the question of where the lines of division should be drawn. The dual differentiation employed in this thesis permits nothing more than an epistemological and epochal binary opposition, as a form which serves to incorporate Iranian cultural materials into the domain of history. This is not a modern versus traditional binary opposition playing out in a certain point of history, nor is it a binary opposition between ‘us’ and the ‘other’; rather, it is an ever present ontological oscillation inside the culture itself.88 Significantly, this duality is an analytical category which has been invented to form history, in order to make historical categories and subsequently to bridge these forms and sociopolitical theories. Regionalism is the periodisation of space rather than time. While it shares the same paradigm with time differentiation, the case of space, owing to its connection to land, and also a more direct possibility of visualisation, is more open for categorisation. A combination of geographical and climate conditions, ethnic lineages and ideo-political divisions can be put together to divide a smooth space which theoretically rejects constructed divisions. Nevertheless, these forces of differentiation are outer influences and say little about the agents. The difficulty in this case arises when the issue of belonging and identity is explained through the notion of originality. This approach assumes a historical consciousness of cultural territories through which regional identities have not and could not be represented. Zonis describes the connection of a melody to its mother dastgāh in this way: Four Naghmeh in Shur share one characteristic with their parent dastgah – a similar feeling or ethos. To describe this characteristic, Vaziri likens a naghmeh to a provincial city. In Iran, when each province tends to be distinctive, a city in any one province has the general flavour of that province, a flavour different from any other. Carrying this over to music, he states that, ‘just as the city of Meshed has the general hue of the province of Khorasaan, Bayat-e Tork has the same hue as Shur’.89 This notion of ‘hue’, like dialect in language, cannot be explained through the politics of identity, since it lies beyond a representational description. The absence of political and governmental centres eliminates the question of regionalism on the basis of political design.

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The question of morphology recalls the relationship between individual works of art and their general frames. In the Iranian context, this is a paradoxical duality between absolute individualism and ‘same-ness’, or in other words, between absolute change as flow and ‘still-ness’. This paradox compels two reactions. On one side, traditionalists try to create an authentic version,90 which crystallises a genus frame beyond individuals; on the other, we have a Deleuzean repetition, which, in looking for absolute freedom, translates historical patterns into simulacra. Moreover, the autonomy of form from function, and rejection of the form/matter duality, frees form from any immediate sociopolitical explanation. The morphological view fails to pin down any solid model to act as the basis for the interpretation of ‘originality’ and ‘evolution’. Conclusion This chapter proposed a dualism with the aim of drawing attention to the concepts and terminologies we used to narrate history. Nonetheless, the other side of the duality was not represented as an alternative for the common methods used in historiography but to break some of the universal assumptions in narrating history. It is clear that common frames are needed in order to build a notion of a phenomenon at a distance, be that a distant point of history, of geography or of other cultures. However, the overstretching of universals has the potential to result in the artificial homogenizing of time and space. Taking into account firstly the dangers of the dualism itself in classification, and secondly the creation of binary oppositions which can create conflicts, dualism is a simple method to break universal assumptions on one hand, and on the other, to shape material in such a way that it does not descend into endless pluralisation. In its critique of the notion of ‘style’, this chapter’s aim was to demonstrate the inappropriateness of the common divisions of time and space, interiority and exteriority, individual and structural as the basis for investigating Iranian art and architecture. It proposes a reconsideration of the geometry of the relationship between the general frameworks and individual members, as well as the notion of ‘change’ as the movement between defined states. Deleuze and Guattari’s comparative study of ‘state apparatus’ and ‘war machine’ is a means of forming a positive frame by which to conceptualise an alternative. Individuality, collective structure, time, space, organisation and form provided means for comparison between these two models. These notions were used as a medium to analyse methods of Iranian architectural historiography. Consequently, periodical, regional and morphological studies of Iranian architecture and mosques were revised.



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The ‘war machine’ as concept can be translated into different forms, for example a nomadic society, community, gang, clan, family or even an ideological, scientific or artistic movement.91 It can be a social or theoretical category of analysis which can be applied to the notion of difference in Iranian architecture without subjecting it to the negativity of the other or the evolutionary system.

Conclusion

A historiography of Iranian architecture in the semantic domain must necessarily tackle a number of problems if it is to become constructive. Centralisation is one of the major issues. Even if differences are accepted, centralisation reduces them to variations of a core theme. This process of centralisation is considered the only strategy by which to control the patterns and interpretations of history. Pluralism, whether in religious, national or secular views, is seen as a threat to identity itself. This centralisation and the homogeneity it seeks can be challenged by abstraction, which lifts this history out of its ethnic enclosure, as well as by pluralism, albeit without destroying the possibility of a cultural position. Abstraction has the ability to allow culture to bridge the space between universal and ethnic (particular). This space is dissolved not by simply showing the ethnic as an instance of the universal, but also showing how the ethnic, by repeating universal categories, transgresses the universal, and through this space of transgression and difference finds the chance to access the space of the universal. Pluralism, either in a structural or ontological sense, represents spatial differences which cannot be erased by the forces of dialectic, teleology and centralisation. Centralisation should not be seen as the only way to bring Iranian architectural history into the domain of identity and representation. In order to reach that conclusion the first step is to come to the point that this history does not inhabit a continuous space, and additionally, constructive narratives of culture can be built beyond that central space and without falling into a trap of absolute diffusion. Also, it should be taken into account that centralisation is made possible by the lack of transcendental categories. These categories – historical forms – which both crystallise time and represent categorical division inside history break the monotonous space of history. One of the main reasons for these problems is the lack of spatial history. To introduce the spatial, both in the sense of ‘historicizing space or [to]

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spatialize history’,1 would be to remove a phenomenon like Iranian architecture from its linear space. In architecture, the attributions of Islamic and Iranian are simply monotonous spaces which lock cultural materials into their limited monotony. Other attributions of politics and geography like Seljuk, Timurid or Khorasanid are no more than labels without the ability to create historical categories or connect cultural materials to theoretical domain. The main problem, therefore, is the creation of history itself, as a conceptual ground. As has already been mentioned particularism is not an appropriate alternative, at least as a final solution, since individual cases need a representational space that cannot be achieved by means other than general frameworks which give the culture analytical abstraction. Since the universal per se does not exist, this transcendentalism demonstrates not only that the particular can bridge the supposed universal space but also that only through a process of relative differentialism can universalism be achieved; achieved in an abstract space rather than as the difference between a group with intrinsic qualities and without transmittable and communicable ability and universals, and not in the form of political division between us and others. Only in this way can the otherness of Iranian architecture enter the spaces of difference. What is more, this spatialisation must go further than the division of culture into modern vs. traditional, as has been the principal semantic division in both Iranian history generally and architectural history in particular. This above all has deterred us from tackling the post-Safavid in Iran, where this dualism has reigned. Instead an effort has made to discuss the notion of difference beyond this division. The ahistorical view adopted in this book has suggested one way of exploring the possible forms of difference which potentially comprise an architectural history of Iran. Categories which stand beyond immediate sociopolitical history create a dialectical tension capable of introducing the idea of difference and change into otherwise linear history of Iranian architecture. A first rather than last step is to demonstrate that the alternation between a dualism’s two sides may form the bedrock for historical differences and cultural consciousness. The difference introduced in this book is not difference in a structural or dialectical sense but rather a rupture, something incapable of being structurally or teleologically pictured as a difference within a holistic totality. It is a dualism between two distinct systems, which is incommensurable and indefinable on the basis of the paradigms of other systems. The differences between chess and backgammon, between Sharī’ah and Sufism, and between government and anarchy, emphasise a shared heterology which cannot be reduced to a single thematic space. It is this fuzzy space of chance, conflict and democracy (in the sense that central control is

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resisted by an anarchic body) which resists definition or positioning. It is the tension between the two insuperable spaces of a dualism, achievable only through an irresolvable pluralism, which transcends Iranian architectural history into the space of representation. A big rupture divides the lingual and theoretical frameworks which shape the patterns of contemporary affairs and the ones which represent the Iranian past and its narratives as history. If the past is not to be kept as a talisman just to create the illusion of authenticity and identity, history should set the ground for debate on contemporary affairs. History is not the story of the past but the narration of cultural patterns which shaped the trace of today. Terms like Islamic art, Asiatic government, Persian architecture as such, community (as the social structure) and vice versa – all consciously or not define an Iranian self-image. They define a conclusion before any argument starts. To get rid of this deadlock, a radical gesture of rejecting is needed, not as a negative gesture in itself but as a means to open the room for constructing a positive space. Iranian architecture belongs to the space of the ‘other’; it is a formless space which is only defined by the relative identities of ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’, Iranian and Western, and to some extent Iranian and Islamic. The problem of a relative identity is the rule of a single criterion – always in the possession of one side – upon which differences are judged as negative or distorted. No less a problem is that the negation of a position is frequently affirmed for the sake of its negativity and not for an intrinsic quality. Nonetheless, the current anti-essentialism which shows these dual domains to have no intrinsic values must not forget the pragmatic side of the spatial definition of definite differences, which enables the other to attain a cultural consciousness. The asymmetrical spaces between these divisions do not allow particularism and endless pluralism as an answer for a more just space. The dualities which are introduced in this book operate, to some extent, in a similar way to these relative dualisms – through which the concepts of ‘traditionalism’ and ‘fundamentalism’ are shaped – but function differently. Rather than positioning the difference as a means of cultural division, these dualities bring the other inside, creating a tension but rather than in the expectation of a resolution which, for its own sake, allows a cultural phenomenon like Iranian architecture to attain the level of abstraction. In this case, the other side of dualism is not the shadowy existence of the obverse but rather a different yet representable model. It breaks up the space between a totalitarian system and the outside space as the absolute other and represents the difference between two systems which cannot be defined by the rules of the other.

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While reductionist and simplistic, the use of abstract terms in this book, like ‘West’ and ‘modern’ or ‘Islamic’ without historical contextualisation, is a strategy to reduce the asymmetrical space between ‘us’ and ‘other’. It is not a kind of ‘Occidentalism’, the creation of an ‘other’ outside of a supposed inner space, but is in fact a reduction introduced into what is considered as an interior space. This simplicity, as the outcome of general argumentation, is not a rejection of complexity (complexity is not reducible to the elaboration of a basic structure). Instead, it is a first step towards a complexity which inevitably starts from the simple standpoint of the abstract terms which form this ‘other’ space. The basic assumption that there is no longer a need for general views considers history only as a site for discovery of meaning rather than creating history as a ‘process’ of gaining cultural consciousness. The idea that postmodern particularism works in a space without general paradigms forgets that the ideologies which make this extreme particularisation possible also function within it. In this respect, the ultimate goal of this research would be to investigate a complexity which draws the history of Iranian architecture out of a central and hegemonic space and turns it into a process. Iranian architectural history and the mosque are a site on which to debate broader and in my belief more fundamental issues without which history as a conceptual ground would not take shape. This concern translates mainly into the question of how we should approach Iranian architectural historiography. Rather than having an answer for that, there have been some general outlines which shaped the blueprint of this book. The first was a radical negativity to open the room for alternatives. Then, without looking into this void as an answer in itself – the one which popular postmodern thinking presumes – or looking for an answer per se, an ‘in between’ space was needed to create a public space for future debates. This is exactly the fuzzy space which can create the basis for cultural consciousness, rather than being a single answer which those who behold it might suppose. Rather than concepts like ‘fusion’ or ‘hybrid’, ‘dialectic’ or ‘dualism’ are better means of forming this space. However, in spite of looking through a permanent position of differences, a strategic definition of them was examined, with a focus on their relativity and temporality. Beyond this, whatever is suggested in this book is an invitation for further debates and nothing more. Other efforts are needed to discipline the terms and methods used in this book. Where then, does this research stand? Rather than being strategies in themselves, the level of abstraction, the ahistorical approach and the escape from the categories of established disciplines are temporal approaches without no general claims. ‘Abstraction’, when it comes to the case studies,

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becomes the consciousness of possible narrations as the semantic frameworks of these case studies. Abstraction is a way to deconstruct established narratives and look for a new language and narrative by which to form analytical categories in whose presence the application of theory is possible. In addition, the ‘ahistorical’ approach was used to devalue other generalisations which form the closed semantic space of Iranian architectural history. It is a strategy to debate, and equally to unveil, the contradictions on which these abstract generalisations foot. And finally, rather than the taking of a clear theoretical position, the rejection of working through the established spaces of Islamic, Iranian or other social or cultural studies sought an alternative space which is reached by standing on the borders. This prevents its commodification as a fully-fledged discipline. As a postscript, one might have employed the negative form of method chosen here. Rather than be a general debate which refers to concrete examples in order to legitimise its argument, in the negative form, the study of concrete case studies would consciously refer to the general frames which represent them. While in both cases the general frame functions as the semantic space, in the latter they are made more tangible since they are mediated through the historical materials. It is not a simple inversion, but like the transgression of the universal in this research, the case studies reach a historical consciousness by transgression of the narrative frames which attempt to commodify them. The former case – as the method chosen in this book – demands self-consciousness and self-referentiality in the historical narrations; the latter already contains them.

Notes

Introduction 1 For a possible meaning for the name of this town see M. I. Bastānī Pārīzī, Khātūn-i Haft Qal’ah, Tehrān: Rūzbahān, 1984–5 [1363], p. 242. (For transliteration I have used the Library of Congress style: http://www.loc.gov/ catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf.) 2 Kharābah in Persian literally means ruined buildings, and connotes worthlessness. 3 B. Southgate, History: What and Why? London and New York: Routledge, 2001, p. 3. 4 See R. Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, trans. T. S. Presner et al., Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. 5 P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp. 72–87. 6 See, for instance, ‘A. Zarrīn-kūb, Az Kūchah-‘i Rindān: dar bārah-‘i zindigī va andīshah-‘i H . āfiz· , Tehrān: Kitābhā-yi Jībī, bā hamkārī-i Mu’assasah-‘i Intishārāt-i Frānklīn, 1970 [1349]; Farār az Madrasa: dar bārah-i zindagī va andīshah-i Abū H . āmid Ghazzālī, Tehrān: Silsilah-i Intishārāt-i Anjuman-i Āsār-i Millī, 1974 [1353]. 7 See for example: M. Bāstānī Pārīzī, Hizāristān, Tehrān: Intishārāt-i Bihnigār, 1991 [1370]; Mār dar Butkadah-‘i Kuhnah, Tehrān: Nashr-i ‘Ilm, 1990 [1369]; Nāy-i Haft Band: majmū’ah-i maqālāt-i tārīkhī va adabī, Tehrān: Mu’assasah-‘i Mat· bū’ātī-i ‘Atā’ī, 1971 [1350]. 8 H. Dabashi, Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of ‘Ayn al-Qudāt, Richmond: Curzon, 1999. 9 J. Rutherford, ‘The third space: interview with Homi Bhabha’, in J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, pp. 207–21, p. 209 10 See E. Gellner, Muslim Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 1–86. 11 Following Corbin and influential philosophers like Fardid and Dāvarī Ardakānī. 12 The division between ‘Eshq and ‘Aql, ‘love’ and ‘rationale’, in Persian literature, and Sharī’ah and Tarīqah in religiosity, could be the basis for the application of Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian difference.

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Chapter 1  Islam as an Attribution 1 A. Schimmel, Islam: An Introduction, New York: State University of New York, 1992, p. v, quoting Goethe on the meaning of Islam. 2 T. Insoll, ‘The archaeology of Islam’, in T. Insoll (ed.), Archaeology and World Religion, London: Routledge, 2001, p. 144. For a critique of this totalitarian claim see E. W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, London: Vintage, 1997, pp. xvi, xxxi. 3 R. Ettinghausen, O. Grabar and M. Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1250, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001, p. 6. 4 J. Renard, Seven Doors to Islam: Spirituality and the Religious Life of Muslims, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996, p. 40. 5 Ibid., p. 107. 6 This view of Islam, not solely as religion and as a defined set of dogmas, plays a considerable role in Sufi hermeneutics. 7 J. L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 41. 8 M. Watt, What is Islam? London: Longmans, 1968, p. 41. 9 L. C. Brown, Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics, New York: Colombia University Press, 2002, p. 3. 10 Ibid., p. 3. 11 S. H. Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966, p. 147. 12 Hodgson writes: ‘the term “islam” refers to the inner spiritual posture of an individual person of good will … in this sense, many persons who have admittedly had no part in the historical community of Mohammad have been regarded by Muslims [with capital M] as having accepted islam … It is this elementary islam, a personal acceptance of godly ideals, which stands at the heart of Islamic religion, and from which it receives its name’: M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 1, The Classical Age of Islam, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974, p. 72. 13 96:1–5. See D. Waines, An Introduction to Islam, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 12. 14 Ibid., p. 12. 15 F. Rahman, Islam, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979, p. 14. 16 ‘It is of importance in judging this problem … to note the linguistic phenomenon that Mohammed could find no Arabic word for this institution which he ordered for his community, but had to take the religious term salat from Christianity’: I. Goldziher, Muslim Studies I, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2006, p. 41. 17 The Shī’ah know Ali as their first Imam and the legitimate successor as the governor of the Islamic Ummah. 18 R. C. Martin, Islamic Studies: A History of Religions Approach, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996, p. 58. 19 This is one of the points of disagreement between the Shī’ah and Sunni, as the Shī’ah consider another version of this Hadīth in which the Prophet has left his Ummah, the book of God and his Itrat (the family of Prophet) rather than his Sunnah. See www. Al-Islam.org/encyclopaedia, accessed 20 February 2007.

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20 Shī’ah considers these five as the minor pillars; the major pillars are ‘Unity of God’, ‘the belief in Prophethood’, ‘Returning to the other world’, ‘Imamate’, and ‘belief in the judgement day’. 21 ‘Lo! We offered the trust unto the heavens and the earth and the hills, but they shrank from bearing it and were afraid of it. And man assumed it. Lo! He hath proven a tyrant and fool’ (18: 72). Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, p. 25. 22 The Qur’ān, 7:172. 23 The Qur’ān, 7:172. 24 ‘Alī: This world is the field for the other (Al-Dunyā Mazra’at al-ākhirah). 25 The Hadith of the Prophet; see M. T. Majlesi, Behar al-Anvar, vol. 86, Beirut: al-Vafa’, 1984 [1404], p. 198. 26 F. Esack, The Qur’ān: A Short History, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2002, p. 30. 27 T. B. Irving, K. H. Ahmad and M. M. Ahsan, The Qur’ān: Basic Teachings, Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1992, p. xv. 28 Rahman, Islam, p. 35. 29 Ibid., p. 35. 30 Whether the Qur’ān is created or uncreated was the subject of extensive debate in early Islam. While Mu’tazelites believed in the created Qur’ān, it was finally, in the Abbasid court, officially deemed to be uncreated. 31 M. H. Tabātabāyī, Qur’ān dar Islam, Tehrān: Dar al-kutub al-Islamiyah, 1972 [1351], pp. 3–11. 32 Esack, The Qur’ān, p. 57. 33 Ibid., p. 57. 34 For example, the āyah ‘When Zakariya entered the niche (mihrāb)’ (3:32) is used in mihrāb decorations mostly in ottoman mosques, or the ‘Light Âyah’ in the ‘Light Sūrah’ which is used in mosque torches (24:35). The āyah of Amr (Commandment) (4:59) is used in Shī’ah mosques indicating the necessity of following the commanders (Ul al-Amr) who are considered as Shī’ah Imams. 35 Schimmel, Islam, p. 75. 36 Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, p. 43. The ‘human receptivity’ in order to receive the divine word is a kind of positive passiveness. Positive, in the sense that everybody cannot reach the purified position, in order to be the channel for the Word of the God, or a tablet to incarnate it. For this reason the doctrine of infallibility (‘isma, or immunity from serious errors) is considered as the essential part of Prophecy of Mohammad. For Shī’ah ‘isma is also the essential condition of imamate. For the historical formation of this concept in Shī’ah, see H. Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shi’ite Islam: Abu Ja’Far Ibn Qiba Al-Razi and His Contribution to Imamite Shī’ite Thought, Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1993. 37 Rahman, Islam, p. 31. 38 F. Schuon, The Essential Frithjof Schuon, ed. S. H. Nasr, Indiana: World Wisdom, 2005, p. 269. 39 M. H. Tabātabāyī, Qur’ān dar Islam, pp. 20–22. He quotes a Hadīth that the Qur’ān has an external and internal dimension, and for its inner aspect, an inner core, continuing to seven layers. Nevertheless, it is not generally a shared belief. 40 On this basis, two extreme points in interpretation of the Qur’ān and Divine message emerged in Islamic culture. On one hand were the exoterists (Zaheriyye),

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who believed only in the literal meaning of God’s message. On the other were the esoterists (Batenies), who believed that the real meaning of the Qur’ān is hidden. Other ideas are located between these two extreme points, which do not reject either the presence of inner meaning or the importance of the words’ literal meanings. 41 For instance the Qur’ān Gate in Shiraz. 42 See, for instance, A. Schimmel, Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam, New York: State University of New York Press, 1994. 43 For the use of scripts in architectural decorations see Sh. Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions from Early Islamic Iran and Transoxiana, Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1992. 44 A. Schimmel, Islamic Calligraphy, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970, p. 3. 45 R. Ettinghausen, ‘Decorative arts and painting: their character and their scope’, reprinted in Islamic Art and Archaeology: Collected Papers, ed. M. Rosen-Aylon, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1984, p. 27. 46 Schimmel, Islam, p. 2. 47 Ibid., p. 4. 48 See Qādī Ahmad, son of Mīr Munshī (circa ah 1015/ad 1606), Calligraphers and Painters, trans. from Persian by V. Minorsky, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers, 1959. 49 Renard, Seven Doors to Islam, p. 26. 50 Ibid., p. 26. 51 Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, p. 62. 52 Rahman, Islam, p. 83. 53 Esposito, Islam, p. 49. 54 Rahman, Islam, p. 85. 55 Ibid., p. 43. 56 Esposito, Islam, p. 31. 57 The Qur’ān, 33: 21. 58 Rahman, Islam, p. 70. He argues that some modern scholars have raised doubt about the Prophet’s including ‘his Sunna’ as guidance for posterity on the grounds that in some earlier versions the word ‘my Sunnah’ did not appear. This is also the main source of divergence between Shī’ah and Sunni. Shī’ah believe that in this farewell speech, known as ‘Qadīr-i Khum’, the prophet nominates ‘Alī as his successor. They believe that the Prophet nominated not ‘his Sunnah’ but ‘his Itrat’ (his family members) beside Qur’ān as source of guidance. This Hadīth is famous as the Saqalayn Hadīth. See n. 20. 59 Schimmel, Islam, p. 51. 60 Rahman, Islam, p. 44. 61 Watt, What is Islam?, p. 205. 62 Schimmel, 1992, wrote: ‘One should keep in mind that imitatio Muhammadi, with its attention to all the minute detail of daily life, has given the Muslim community all over the world a remarkable uniformity’, p. 56 63 The Prophet is seen as the necessary part of understanding the message. See Nāsir Khusraw, Vajh-i Dīn, Tehrān: Kitābkhānah Tahūrī, 1969 [1348], p. 17. 64 Rahman, Islam, p. 70. 65 Schimmel, Islam, p. 59. 66 From a point in history, Sunna and Hadīth became synonymous. Rahman, Islam, p. 45.

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67 Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, p. 94. 68 Brown, Religion and State, p. 25. 69 Schimmel, Islam, p. 62. 70 Brown, Religion and State, p. 25. 71 G. E. von Grunebaum, Islam and Medieval Hellenism: Social and Cultural Perspectives, London: Variorum reprints, 1976, p. 19. 72 In some points of history, self-reasoning (Ra’y) was considered as a source of Sharī’ah. 73 R. W. Backer, Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, p. 110, quoted from Yusuf al Qaradawy. 74 Schimmel, Islam, p. 61. 75 Von Grunebaum, Islam and Medieval Hellenism, p. 444. 76 Rahman, Islam, p. 46. 77 Ibid., p. 44. 78 Schimmel, Islam, p. 54. 79 Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, p. 100. 80 Von Grunebaum, Islam and Medieval Hellenism, p. 440. 81 Ibid., p. 21. 82 Schimmel, Islam, p. 61; and Esposito, Islam, p. 82. This Hadīth has been interpreted differently by Shī’ites. See n. 19. 83 Schimmel, Islam, p. 61. 84 The question of membership and who is considered as Muslim, has been nonetheless a matter of debate in the history of Islam, from the Khārijites who excluded any sinful person from the title of Muslim, to the Mu’tazilites, who take a middle position. Beyond, this legal discourse, the reality has been that the Islamic community never acts exclusively. 85 Martin, Islamic Studies, p. 207. 86 Watt, What is Islam?, p. 185. 87 For example, see Imam Mohammad Ghazzālī’s account of different approaches to Islam and his personal view on them. Abu-Hamid M. Ghazzālī, Al-Munqidh min al-d·alā (wa-ma’ahu: Kīmayā al-sa’ādah, wa- al-qawā’id al-’asharah, waal-adab fī al-dīn, eds M. M. Abūal-’Alā and M. M. Jabir, Mis·r: Yutlab min Maktabat al-Jundī, 1973. 88 For an original account of the position of Qur’ān in Islamic Mysticism, see ‘Eyn al-Quzāt Hamadāni, Name’hāye Eyn al-Quzāt (letter of Eyn al-Quzāt), ed. A. Munzavī and ‘A. ‘Usayrān, Tehrān: Intishārāt-i Bunyād Farhang-i Iran, 1969, pp 125–31. 89 For the root of the word and its connotations, see A. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975, pp. 23–4. 90 Ibid., p. 12. 91 Ali also, in some views, is considered as the First Sufi. See S. H. Nasr, ‘Shi’ism and Sufism: their relationship in essence and in history’, in Sufi Essays, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1973, pp. 104–23. 92 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p. 188. The trust has been interpreted differently: as responsibility, free will, love, or the power of individuation. 93 A. J. Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam, London: Mandala Books, 1979, p. 57. According to Sufi interpretations, it is referred in the Qur’ān (7: 166–7).

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94 ‘A. Zarrin-kūb, Josteju dar Tasavvof-i Iran, Tehran: Mu’assesah Intishārāt-i Amīrkabīr, 1979 [1357], p. 90. 95 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p. 187. 96 The Prophet himself declared that there is ‘no monkery in Islam’ (Lā Rohbāniyyata fe al-Islam). 97 Zarrin-kūb, Josteju dar Tasavvof-i Iran, p. 169. 98 Arberry, Sufism, p. 25. 99 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p. 187. 100 Arberry, Sufism, p. 47. 101 See V. Minorsky, ‘Iran: opposition, martyrdom, and revolt’, in Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilisation, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955, p. 205. 102 Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, 1966, p. 147. 103 Ibid., p. 149. 104 M. H. Tabatabayi, in S. H. Nasr, H. Dabashi and S. W. R. Nasr (eds), Shi’ism, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988, p. 12. 105 Ibid., p. 12–13. 106 See www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/; accessed 14 November 2006. 107 Corbin even named Shī’ah as Iranian Islam. See H. Corbin, En Islam iranien: aspects spirituals et philosophiques; le Shi’isme duodémain, Paris: Gallimard, 1991. 108 M. Motaharri, in S. H. Nasr, H. Dabashi and S. W. R. Nasr (eds), Shi’ism, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988, p. 27. 109 Ibid., p. 20. 110 Ibid., p. 155. 111 For the concept of infallibility in Shi’ism see H. Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation. 112 H. Enayat, in S. H. Nasr, H. Dabashi and S. W. R. Nasr (eds), Shi’ism, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988, p. 27. 113 Ibid., p. 66. 114 Ibid., p. 67. 115 Ibid., p. 69. 116 See H. Dabashi, ‘Ta’ziyeh as theatre of protest’, The Drama Review, 49/4, Winter 2005, pp. 91–9. 117 Watt, What is Islam?, p. 211. 118 Ibid., p. 191 119 Sahih Al-Bukhari, 1. 429. 120 Watt, What is Islam?, p. 74. 121 See for instance Rūmī (Maulānā), Fīh-i mā Fīh, Tehrān: Amīr Kabīr, 1969 [1348]. 122 T. Insoll, Archaeology, Ritual, Religion, London: Routledge, 2004, p. 13. 123 If not artistic styles, it brought different attitudes which gave a united character to the Islamic worlds. See K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940–69. For a different view, see G. King, ‘The sculptures of the pre-Islamic Haram at Makka’, in W. Ball and L. Harrow (eds), Cairo to Kabul: Afghan Studies presented to Ralph Pinder-Wilson, London: Milisende, 2002, pp. 144–50; and also R. B. Serjeant, ‘Social stratification in Arabia’, in R. B. Serjeant (ed.), The Islamic City, France: Unesco, 1980, p. 147. 124 O. Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973, p. 19. 125 T. Allen, Five Essays on Islamic Art, Sebastopol, CA: Solipsist Press, 1988, p. 1.

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126 R. Ettinghausen, ‘Decorative arts and painting’, p. 22. 127 Von Grunebaum, Islam and Medieval Hellenism, p. 440. 128 The Prophet himself stated that blessing is associating the commune: ‘fa inn albarakato ma’ al-jimā’ah’. 129 S. H. Nasr, ‘The Quran as the foundation of Islamic spirituality’, in S. H. Nasr (ed.), Islamic Spirituality: Foundations. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987, p. 9. 130 See R. Ettinghausen, ‘Interaction and integration in Islamic art’, reprinted in Islamic Art and Archaeology: Collected Papers, ed. M. Rosen-Aylon, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1984. 131 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p. 267. 132 ‘One would entirely misunderstand the character of the arabesque if one were to attach to it any symbolic function’: E. Kuhnel, The Arabesque, trans. R. Ettinghausen, London: Oguz Press, 1949, p. 9. 133 Gibb wrote: ‘The nemesis of the over-rapid conquests of the Arabs – and the political tragedy of Islam – was that the Islamic ideology never found its proper and articulated expression in the political institution of the Islamic state.’ See H. A. R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilisation of Islam, ed. S. J. Shaw and W. R. Polk, Boston: Beacon Press, 1962, p. 45. 134 S. A. Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order and Societal Change in Shi’ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984, pp. 93–4. Quoted also in A. Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001, p. 21. 135 For example, for Fiqh views on music see R. Mukhtārī and M. S· ādiqi, Ghinā, mūsīqī, 2 vols, Qum: Nashr-i Mirs· ād, 1997 [1376]. 136 Brown, Religion and State, p. 60. 137 Ibid., p. 28. 138 See A. Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, London: Harper Perennial Classics, 2004. 139 See for example T. Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984. 140 The Qur’ān (30: 30). 141 Quoted from S. H. Nasr’s introduction to Schuon, The Essential Frithjof Schuon, p. 7. 142 See for instance R. Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, rev. edn, Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004. 143 A. K. Coomaraswamy, ‘The Christian and oriental, or true, philosophy of art’, in Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, New York: Dover Publication, Inc., 1956, pp. 21–61, p. 23. 144 A. Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview, 1998, p. 120. 145 As examples of this school of interpretation in architecture see S. Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005; N. Ardalan and L. Bakhtiar, The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture, Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1979; H. Bulkhārī Quhī, Mabānī-ye Irfānī-ye Honar va Mi’mārī Islāmī (Mystical Foundation of Islamic Art and Architecture), 2 vols, Tehrān: Sūri Mihr, 2005 [1384].

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146 ‘Fundamentalism’, The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, eds J. Pearsall and B. Trumble, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 147 Watt, in What is Islam?, p. 150, points out that ‘the process by which dogma becomes increasingly definite is also to be observed in the history of Islamic thought. Unfortunately there is in the contemporary occident serious misunderstanding of the function of the dogma in the life of community. This is largely due to the way in which dogma has frequently been used in the last century or so by conservative elements in a community in order to resist apparently desirable forms of adaptation to changing circumstances. In the formative stages of the life of a community dogma has an important positive function, since it is the formula according agreement reached after matters have been long disputed.’ 148 ‘Secularism’, The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, eds J. Pearsall and B. Trumble, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 149 There were seculars and fundamentals in traditional Islam, but not secularism and fundamentalism. 150 Renard, Seven Doors to Islam, pp. 43–4. 151 In contrast to Judaism and Christianity in which praying is toward a geographical direction, in Islam praying is toward a fixed geographical point. It suggests some differences: the polarisation of the earth, focus on the centrality of Ummah wherever they are, and its sociopolitical manifestation in annual gathering for pilgrimage, are among these. 152 Watt stated that ‘The heart of Islam is the salat, which means “public worship” rather than what the word “prayers” usually connotes in English’, What is Islam?, p. 185. 153 J. Johns, ‘The “House of Prophet” and the concept of the Mosque’, in J. Johns (ed.), Bayt al-Maqdis, Jerusalem and Early Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 154 Ibid., p. 64. 155 Ibid., p. 65. 156 R. Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, p. 45. 157 Through this change, some characteristics of early Umayyad art did not take root in the soil of Islamic art, like the iconography of the mosaics of Damascus mosque, or to some extent the Dome of the Rock. Ettinghausen remarks: ‘They should possibly be understood as an attempt at an Islamic iconography which did not take roots because it was too closely related to the ways of Christian art.’ Ettinghausen, Grabar and Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1250, p. 26. 158 Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, pp. 100–1. 159 See n. 162. 160 Ettinghausen, Grabar and Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture 650– 1250, p. 28. 161 Sahih al-Bukhari Hadith: 1.33, narrated by Jabir bin ‘Abdullah: The Prophet said: ‘… The earth has been made for me (and for my followers) the place for prostrating and a mean to perform Tayammum, therefore anyone of my followers can pray wherever the time of a prayer is due.’ Online at www. alislam.org/encyclopaedia, accessed 20 February 2007.

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162 Komail’s invocation: ‘I ask You by Yourself, by Your Holiness, by Your great attributes, and names, that, You make my times of days and nights alive by Your remembrance, and joined to Your service, my deeds accepted by You. So that my deeds and my remembrances all become one harmonic effort, and my (life be in an) eternal state, devoted to your service.’ Online at www. Al-Islam.org/ encyclopaedia, accessed 20 February 2007. 163 The Prophet said ‘Inn al-mu’minah majlisuhū masjiduhū’ (Lo, wherever is a believer’s place is his mosque). See Kh. Taqaddusī-nīyā, Masjid dar Āyinay-ye Qur’ān and Rivāyāt (The Mosque in the Mirror of the Qur’ān and Quotations [of the Prophet and Imams], Qum: A’immah, 2001 [1380], p. 79. Quoted from Vasā’īl al-Shī’ah, 3: 509. 164 Ibid., p. 17. 165 Ibid., p. 18. 166 A. M. Ghazzali (1058–1111), Tajumah-i Ehyā Ulūm Al-dīn, vol. 2, section 1, trans. Mu’uyyad al-dīn Muhammad Khavārizmī, ed. H. Khadīvjam, Tihrān: Bonyād-i Farhang-i Irān, 1974 [1352], p. 27. 167 Ibid., p. 27. 168 M. Watt, Islam and the Integration of Society, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, p. 193. Chapter 2  Iranism 1 This ritual is still alive in many Iranian cities, for instance, Khomainī Shahr (Sidah) a town at the west of Isfahan. 2 S. Maskūb, Sūg-i Siyāvush: dar Marg va Rastākhīz, Tehrān: Shirkat-i Sahāmī-i Intishārāt-i Khvārazmī, 1978 [1357]. 3 A. Godard, ‘Āzar-kade-hā’ [Fire Temples], in A. Godard et al., Athar-e Iran: Annales du Service Archéologique de l’Iran, vol. 1, 1987 [1365], pp. 79–84. Trans. ‘A. S. Moqaddam. 4 Persia or Iran are both regarded as the name of the country; however, in the present context the former has more cultural connotations while the latter has more political. For a brief history of using Iran as the name of the country see http://www.iranchamber.com/geography/articles/persia_became_iran.php (accessed 22 November 2010). 5 M. Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity, New York: Paragon House, 1993. 6 For a critical review of Vaziri’s book see M. Tavakoli-Targhi, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 26/2 (May 1994), pp. 316–18. 7 For ‘the idea of Iran’ see G. Gnoli, The Idea of Iran: An Essay on its Origin, Roma: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente; Leiden: E.J. Brill (dist.), 1989; S. Shahbazi, ‘The history of the idea of Iran’, in V. Sarkhosh Curtis and S. Stewart (eds), Birth of the Persian Empire: The Idea of Iran, New York: I.B.Tauris, 2005. 8 Other than the Sunnah of the Prophet, Sunnah has different connotations for Sunni and Shī’ah. 9 Z. Bauman, Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi, Oxford: Polity, 2004, p. 11. 10 Ibid., p. 20. 11 Gnoli, The Idea of Iran, p. 178.

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12 Ibid., p. 138. 13 Ibid., p. 177. For a different interpretation, see Shahbazi, ‘The history of the idea of Iran’. 14 Gnoli, The Idea of Iran, p. 162. See also his comparison between Manichaean universalism and local Zoroastrianism. 15 For a short account of Zoroastrian literature in the Islamic era, see M. T. Bahār, Sabk Shināsī: yā tārīkh-i tat· avvur-i nasr-i Fārsī, barāya tadrīs dar dānishkadah va dawrah-i dukturī-i adābiyāt, vol. 1, Tehrān: Chāpkhānah-i Khūdkār, 1942–3 [1321], pp. 25–34. 16 However, they were the sources of strong sectarian protest, which in some cases like Bābak neared a national scale. 17 Gnoli, The Idea of Iran, p. 183. 18 While ‘Ajam literally means non-Arabs, over time it came exclusively to connote Iranians. 19 For the reasons why Pars or Fars are unable to mean Iran, see Gnoli, The Idea of Iran. 20 A. A. Dihkhudā, Lughatńāmah, Tehrān: Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, Dānishkadah-’i Adabiyāt, Sāzmān-i Lughat’nāmah, 1946–79 [1325–57]. 21 In popular culture these found different connotations; for example gabr, unbeliever (kāfir); zindīgh, hypocrite (munāfiq); and rāfizīi, innovator (bid’at-âvar), in its negative meaning in an Islamic context. These adjectives are not totalitarian in their attribution. 22 Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation, p. 10. 23 On the quadripartition of the Sassanian empire see P. Gignoux, ‘Les quatre regions administratives de l’Irn sassanide et la symbolique des numbers trios et quatre’, Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 44 (1984), pp. 555–72; G. Gnoli, ‘The quadripartition of the Sassanian empire’, East and West, 35 (1985), pp. 265–70. 24 M. Bahār (ed.), Tarikh-i Sistan, trans. from Farsi, Tihrān: Zavvār, 1314 [1935], p. 23. 25 For example Kerman, Ahvaz and Sistān are those regions which are not included in this Iran. 26 Bahār, Tarikh-i Sistan, pp. 23–4. 27 Abū Ish·āq Ibrāhīm Is· t· akhrī, Masālik va mamālik, trans. I. Afsha, Tihrān: Bungāh-i Tarjumah va Nashr-i Kitāb, 1961 [1340], p. 6. 28 Yāqūt ibn ‘Abd Allāh al-H . amawī, Mu’jam al-buldān, vol. 1, Bayrūt: Dār S· ādir, 1955–7, pp. 25–34. 29 For the seven divisions of the world, see Muhammad ibn Ishaq Nadim, The Fihrist, vol. 1, Mis· r: Yutlab min al-Maktabah al-Tijārīyah ai-Kubrā, 1970; M. Sutudah (ed.), Haft kishvar, yā S· uwar al-aqālīm, Tehrān: Bunyād-i Farhang-i Irān, 1974 [1353]. For the notion of geography in Islam, see the geography section in S. H. Nasr, Science and Civilisation in Islam, Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society Science, 1987, p. 99. 30 Ferdawsī also asserts a mythical triple division of the world between the sons of Fereydūn, in which Iraj got Iran and Rūm (Rome) and Chīn (China) is Salm and Tūr’s share. 31 Iran always feels herself as a separate entity at the edge: the Semitic connection in the west – empowered by Islam – and the Asian attachment in the east give

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Iran a consciousness of defining itself in relation to others, both inclusively and exclusively. 32 Which were interpreted as the centuries of silence: see ‘A. Zarrīn-kūb, Dū qarn-i Sokūt: sargoz·asht-i h·avādis va awz·ā’-i tārīkhī-i Īrān dar dū qarn-i avval-i Islām az h·amlah-i Arab tā z·uhūr-i davlat-i T·āhiriyān (Two Centuries of Silence), Tehrān: Jāvīdān, 1976 [1355]. Nonetheless, Zarrīn-kūb changed his idea about the first two centuries as the centuries of silence afterwards. 33 Vaziri remarks: ‘Delatinization and the escape from the Church’s domination in the west were taken as an analogous form of historical expression to dearabization and the emergence of local dynasties to bypass the combination of the caliphate.’ Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation, p. 100. 34 The Qur’ān, 30:32. 35 H. Momtahen, Nehzat-i Shu’ūbiyyeh: Jonbish-e Mellī Irāniān dar barābar-e Khalāfat-e Amavī va ‘Abbasī, Tehrān: Shirkat-I Sahāmī-ye Kitābhāyah Jībī, 1975 [1354], pp. 194–6. 36 Ibid., pp. 268–9. 37 Ibid., p. 253. 38 Bahār, Sabk Shināsī, vol. 2, p. 28. 39 The Shāh-nāmah (The Book of Kings) gained immediate popularity right after Firdawsī’s demise. 40 Tavakoli-Targhi writes that ‘while early Muslim historians subordinated the Persian mythistorical tradition to the Islamicate historical discourse, the ArabPersian rivalries of the Shu’ubiyah movement contributed to diversifying the ancient Persians’ genealogical connection to biblical personage’: M. TavakoliTarghi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p. 83. 41 The inevitability, or Taqdīr, of Islam, as the last message revealed by God, became an influential explanation for Iranians, allowing them to accept and interpret their situation. 42 Although it is not considered as being Iranian, Iranians played a significant role in this rebellion. See A. Iqbāl Âshtīanī, Khāndān Nobakhtī, Tehrān: Kitābkhāna Tahūrī, 1966 [1345], pp. 61–3. 43 Kaykāvus ibn Iskandar ibn Qabus, Ùnsur al-Ma’āli, Qābūsńāmah, ed. Gh. H Yūsufi, Tehrān: Bungāh-i Tarjumah va Nashr-i Kitāb, 1995/6 [1374]. For a critical view of this book see A. Banani, ‘Conversion and conformity in a self-conscious elite’, in A. Banani and S. Vryonis (eds), Individualism and Conformity in Classical Islam, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1977. 44 S. Nafīsī, Bābak Khurram’dīn: dilāvar-i Āzarbāyjān, Tehrān: Furūghī, 1970 [1348]. 45 ‘He[ Afshin] did not cease, even as a Muslim, to read the religious books of his nation, and kept splendid copies of them, ornamented with gold and jewels, and, while he helped the caliph in his campaigns against the enemies of the Muslim state, he dreamed of the restoration the Persian empire …’; I. Goldziher, Muslim Studies, Somerset, NJ: Aldine Transaction Publishers, 2006, p. 140. 46 For a complete account of the rebels, see A. R. H . aqīqat, Tarīkh-i Nahz·athayi Milli-yi Irān: az h·amlah-i Tāziyān tā z·uhūr-i S· afāriyān, Tehrān: Intishārāt-i Kutub-i Irān, 1348 [1970]; Tarīkh-i nahz·atha-yi milli-yi Irān: az Sūk-i Ya’qūb-i ta suqūt-i Abbāsīyān (L’histoire des mouvements nationaux de l’Iran; du deuil de

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Yaghoub-Leyss jusqu’a la chute des Abbassian), Tehrān: Bunyad-i Nikukari-i Nuriyani, 1976 [1354]. 47 See Bahar’s footnote on the Dihqāns, Tarikh-i Sistan, p. 81. 48 See Bayhaqī’s account of the torture of Hasank the Vizier: Abū al-Faz·l Muh·ammad ibn H . usayn Bayhaqī, Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī, ed. A. A. Fayyāz·, Mashhad: Dānishgāh-i Mashhad, Dānishkadah-i Adabiyāt va Ulūm-i Insānī, 1971 [1350], pp. 234–5. 49 For instances of these families see Âshtīanī, 1966 [1345]. 50 Henry Corbin’s methodology in the interpretation of Iranian and Shī’ah literature and philosophy has become a trend in the semiotics of Iranian Islamic thought in Iran. See for example his introduction in H. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shi’ite Iran. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. 51 E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vol. 2, From Firdawsi to Sa’di, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1906. 52 Ya’qub Leyth Saffar replied to the poet who praised him in Arabic, ‘Why do you praise me in a language I do not understand?’ It is in this moment, in the view of the author of Tarikh-i Sistan, that the first modern Farsi poem was created. 53 Sh. Maskūb, Huvīyat-i Irānī va zabān-i Fārsī (Iranian Identity and Farsi Language), Tehrān: Intishārāt-i Bāgh-i Āyinah, 1994/5 [1373], p. 36. 54 See T. T. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands, 1251–1259, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. 55 Regarding the mutual interaction between religion and state, Safavids can be seen as following the Sassanian prototype. 56 This development of religious/national identity was fed by the reality of political conflict with two Sunni/non-Iranian powers on two fronts: in the east, Uzbeks and in the west, Ottomans. This is the point at which a centre/periphery dichotomy is established in Iran, since the people on its borders did not share exactly the same ideology with this new Shī’ah nation/religion. 57 This is the moment at which the so-called Persian cultures of part of Khorāsān and central Asia lost their cultural connection to what was now Shī’ah-controlled Iranian culture/territory. 58 In particular, following the reign of Hulagu Khan, founder of the Il-Khānids. 59 For example, in regard to the banned reciting of ‘Abu Muslem-name’ in public, the Safavids tend to erase the historical memory. See M. Zawīrī, Abū MoslimNāme va Naqsh-e ān dar Tarīkh-e Ejtima’ī Irān, Tehrān: Boq’a, 2003 [1382]. 60 See H. Algar, Religion and State in Iran, 1785–1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. 61 R. Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire, London: I.B.Tauris, 2004. 62 For a comparative study of Sunni and Shī’ah Islam, in regard to the interaction of government and religion, see L. C. Brown, Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, pp. 31–43. 63 Coomaraswamy, A. K. ‘Note on the Philosophy of Persian Art’, Ars Islamica, 15/16 (1951), pp. 125–8. On the character of Persian art see also A. Pope, ‘The significance of Persian art’, in A. Pope and P. Ackerman (eds), A Survey of Persian Art, vol. 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964–5, pp. 1–41.

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64 Chārtāq literally means ‘four-vaulted roof ’; it is a constructional unit in Iranian architecture, and is considered a spatial unit and separate structure as well. 65 This is an expression frequently used by scholars like Browne, Pope and Frye. 66 For the employment of gender in the notion of Iran see A. Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity, Berkeley; University of California Press, 2005. 67 E. Yarshater, ‘Were the Sasanians heirs to the Achaemenids?’, in La Persia nel Mediovo, Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1971, pp. 517–31. 68 This western/eastern division is applied in many accounts of Islamic culture, from political to cultural issues. 69 R. Ettinghausen, ‘Decorative arts and painting: their character and their scope’, reprinted in Islamic Art and Archaeology: Collected Papers, ed. M. Rosen-Aylon, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1984, p. 24. 70 See, for example, R. C. Foltz, Spirituality in the Land of the Noble: How Iran Shaped the World’s Religions, Oxford: Oneworld, 2004; P. Gignoux (ed.), Recurrent Patterns in Iranian Religions: From Mazdaism to Sufism: Proceedings of the Round Table held in Bamberg (30th September–4th October 1991), Studia Iranica, Cahier, vol. 11, Leuven: Peeters, 1992; H. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, trans. N. Pearson, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. 71 See H. Ziai, ‘Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī: founder of the Illuminationist school’, in S. H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds), History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 434–64. 72 H . Karīmān, Ray-i bāstān, vol. 2, Tehrān: Silsilah-i Anjuman-i Āsār-i Millī, 1966 [1345], p. 353, quoted from Sāhib-ibn ‘Ebād. 73 See E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vol. 1, London: T. Fisher Unwin, p. 8. 74 Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation, p. 162. 75 It recalls the Deleuzean notion that ‘the New can only emerge through repetition’: see S. Žižek, Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences, London: Routledge, 2003, p. 12. 76 See A. Pope, ‘Architecture in the early periods, according to contemporary documents’, in A. Pope and P. Ackerman, A Survey of Persian Art, vol. 3, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964–5, p. 979. 77 In Nahj al-Balāgheh, a prayer has been attributed to Imam ‘Ali in his visit to Tāq-i Kasrā. 78 Afz·al al-Dīn Shirvānī Khāqānī (1126–98/9), Dīvān-i Khāqāniī Shirvānī, Tehrān: Kitābkhāhan-i Khayyām, 1978 [1537], pp. 362–4. 79 See Unknown Writer Majmal-e al-Tavarīkh-e va al-Qisas, ed. M. Bahar, Tehrān: Zovvār, 1318 ah, p. 515. 80 R. Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, p. 102. 81 The four iwans in this building are not axially arranged. 82 I have opted to use the term ‘Islamic’ to cover the overarching culture under discussion, although I remain aware of the problems of this type of generalization. I owe the very point of comparing the two games of chess and backgammon to my friend Masūd Shīrbache. 83 See I. Bashiri, ‘From the hymns of Zarathustra to the songs of Borbad’, Bashiri Working Papers on Central Asia and Iran, http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/

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Zorobar/Zorobar.html (accessed 10 March 2007). This is a translation of the story as it appears in Persian in M. Bahar (ed.), Mujma’ al-Tawarikh, Tehrān: Khāvar, 1939 [1318], p. 75. For a version in middle Persian see the same volume, pp. 299–306. For the history of these two games in Iran, see T. Daryaee, ‘Mind, body, and the cosmos: chess and backgammon in ancient Persia’, Iranian Studies, 35/4 (2002), pp. 281–312. 84 Deleuze and Guattari, in a comparison between the two games of chess and go, consider only chess to be a ‘state game’, whereas, in Iranian culture, both chess and backgammon were held to be games of the court: see G. Deleuze, and F. Guattari, Nomadology: The War Machine, trans. B. Massumi, New York: Semiotexte (E), 1986, p. 3. 85 For the analogy between games and social structure in Arab culture, see F. I. Khuri, Tents and Pyramids: Games and Ideology in Arab Culture from Backgammon to Autocratic Rule, London: Saqi, 1990. 86 H. Corbin, ‘Cyclical time in Mazdaism and Ismailism’, in J. Campbell (ed.), Man and Time: Papers from the Eranos Yearbook, Bollingen Series 30/3, New York: Pantheon, 1957, pp. 115–73, p. 117. 87 M. Watt, Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam, London: Luzaq & Co., 1948, p. 21. 88 Or ‘Zurvanite Zoroastrianism’: this is a branch of Zoroastrianism which believes in Zarvān as its deity. 89 Corbin, ‘Cyclical time’, p. 129. 90 Ibid., p. 128. 91 Ibid., p. 129. 92 Khaqani in his famous poem about Eywān Madā’in says:

‫ﮔﻮﺋﯽ ﮐﻪ ﻧﮕﻮن ﮐﺮدﻩ اﺳﺖ اﻳﻮان ﻓﻠﮏوش ر‬ ‫ﺣﮑﻢ ﻓﻠﮏ ﮔﺮدان ﻳﺎ ﺣﮑﻢ ﻓﻠﮏ ﮔﺮدان‬

  It seems that it has destroyed this heavenly portal (iwan);   The whirling heaven Command or the command of heaven wheeler. See Afz·al al-Dīn Shirvānī Khāqānī (1126–98/9), Dīvān-i Khāqāniī Shirvānī, Tehrān: Kitābkhāhan-i Khayyām, 1978 [1537], p. 362. 93 For the idea of time in Islamic thought see G. Bowering, ‘Ideas of time in Persian mysticism’, in R. Hovannisian and G. Sabagh (eds), The Persian Presence in the Islamic World, Cambridge: University Press, 1998, pp. 172–98. See also L. Massignon, ‘Time in Islamic thought’, in J. Campbell (ed.), Man and Time: Papers from the Eranos Yearbook, Bollingen Series 30/3, New York: Pantheon, 1957, pp. 108–115. 94 Corbin, ‘Cyclical time’, p. 118. 95 Ibid., p. 117. 96 However, if this image signifies a vertical circle with a beginning upward movement, a peak point, subsequent descent and final recovery, it could not be attributed to the conception of place. 97 M. Prica, ‘Iranian calendar system: history and origins’, Iran Chamber Society, http:// www.iranchamber.com/culture/articles/calendar_systems_origins.php (accessed 10 December 2006). For a detailed history of the Iranian calendar, see S. H. Taqizadeh, ‘The old Iranian calendars’, Iran Chamber Society, http://www.iranchamber.com/ culture/articles/old_iranian_calendars1.php (accessed 10 December 2006).

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98 On the New Year and cyclical time, see M. Eliade, Myth and Reality, trans. W. R. Trask, New York: Harper & Row, 1963, pp. 47–9. 99 There are, of course, different nomadic patterns of life, and these cannot be categorised within one single notion. 100 For the influence of nomadic life on Iranian architecture see B. O’Kane, ‘From tents to pavilions: royal mobility and Persian palace design’, in B. O’Kane (ed.), Studies in Persian Art and Architecture, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1995, pp. 249–68. 101 There are three groups of names for the spaces. The first of these are based on the time of use: winter or warm house; summer house; spring and autumn sections. The second are given on the basis of formal features, for example: a seven-, fiveor three-doored room; orossī, a room with large slash windows; tālār, portal. The third type is based on the position of the rooms within the house, for example: zirzamin, cellar; zaviyeh, corner; tanabi, attached room. For the terminology of Iranian architecture, see S. Fallāhfar, Farhang-i Vaji-hāye Mi’mārī Sonnatī Îrān, Tehrān: Sa’īd Fallāhfar, 1999 [1378]. 102 Although the concept is most clearly realised in large, expensive complexes, this notion of time/space is common even in ordinary buildings. 103 The terms ‘nomadic’ and ‘civil’ should not be used to demarcate a sociocultural hierarchy, one term denoting a preliminary stage of the other, but as patterns of constructing the notion of space and dwelling. 104 See R. Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, p. 103. 105 See P. Hobhouse, Gardens of Persia, London: Cassell Illustrated, 2006, pp. 8–12. 106 See, for example, N. Ardalan and L. Bakhtiar, The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. 107 See, for example, R. Guénon, The Symbolism of the Cross, 4th rev. edn, trans. A. Macnab, Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004. 108 I borrowed this expression from Z. Bauman: see Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000; and Liquid Life, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005. 109 Cited in A. Schimmel, Calligraphy and Islamic Culture, London: I.B.Tauris, 1990, p. 122. 110 Most famously, The Rose Garden (Golestan) of Sa’di, composed in the thirteenth century. 111 In the cemetery of Taj Mahal is written:

،‫اﮔﺮ ﻓﺮدوس ﺑﺮ روي زﻣﻴﻦ اﺳﺖ‬ !‫هﻤﻴﻦ اﺳﺖ و هﻤﻴﻦ اﺳﺖ و هﻤﻴﻦ اﺳﺖ‬   If paradise is on earth, this is and this is and this is. 112 For the symbolic concept of centre, see M. Eliade, ‘Symbolism of the centre’, in Images and Symbols, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, pp. 27–51. 113 A common feature of this kind of garden is a central kiosk, open on four sides toward the main outlines of the garden. While in four-iwan architecture man is situated on the border facing toward the centre, here man is situated at the centre of a cycle. He is at the same time within the changing circle and beyond change; thus man reaches eternity through his release from the cycle of time.

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114 J. Renard, Seven Doors to Islam: Spirituality and the Religious Life of Muslims, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996., p. 119. 115 It is the theme upon which Mollā Sadrā based his book Asfār-i ‘Arba’ah (Quadruple Journeys). 116 ‘Charkh-i gardūn’, or the whirling wheel, has a central position in the symbolism and cosmology of Samā’ (whirling dances) and Sufi music. Ahmad Tūsi, a seventh-century ah Sufi, describes Daf (tambourine, also called dayirah – circle – in Persian) in this way: ‘The movements inside human being have two causes; it is either from inside or outside. If it is inside, it is called rapture, and if it is outside, it is called Daf (Tambourine), Niy (pipe) and Ghina (music). Daf indicates the circle of cosmos, and the covered skin indicates the Being, and the strokes on Daf indicates the mercies and divine blessings coming from “Inner In” (Bātin al-Butūn) reveals to the Being.’ See Ahmad ibn Mohammad Tūsi, Bavāriq al-Alma’ fī al-radd-i ‘alā man Yahram al-ssamā’a bi’al-Ijmā’, ed. A. Mojāhid, Tehrān: Surūsh, 1373, p. 32. This cosmic circle and the centre is comparable to the whirling dances in Mulavīyyah dervishes who whirl in a circle around their Pīr. Mulavī (Rūmī) himself described Samā’ thus:

‫ﭘﺲ ﺣﻜﻴﻤﺎﻥ ﮔﻔﺘﻪﺍﻧﺪ ﺍﻳﻦ ﻟﺤﻨﻬﺎ ﺍﺯ ﺩﻭﺍﺭ ﭼﺮﺥ ﺑﮕﺮﻓﺘﻴﻢ ﻣﺎ‬ ‫ﺑﺎﻧﮓ ﮔﺮﺩﺷﻬﺎﻯ ﭼﺮﺥ ﺍﺳﺖ ﺍﻳﻨﻜﻪ ﺧﻠﻖ ﻣﻰﺳﺮﺍﻳﻨﺪﺵ ﺑﻪ ﻃﻨﺒﻮﺭ ﻭ ﺑﻪ ﺣﻠﻖ‬   The wisemen has told these songs, are adopted from the whirling of the wheel   This is the sound of the turnings of the wheel, which peoples sing it in their throat and Tambour. See Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Kullīyat-I Masnavī-yi Ma’navī, bk. 4, eds B. Furūzānfar and M. Darvīsh, Tehrān: Jāvīdān, Daftar-r Chāhārum, 1963 [1342], p. 37. 117 O. Grabar, ‘Symbols and signs in Islamic architecture’, in J. Katz (ed.), Architecture as Symbol and Self-Identity, Philadelphia: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1979, pp. 1–11. 118 As an example of the former group, see S. Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005. The latter is the outcome of those views which treat Islamic art formally, as an isolated phenomenon. See T. Allen, ‘Horizons in Islamic art’, in T. Allen, Five Essays on Islamic Art, Sebastopol, CA: Solipsist Press, 1988, pp. 39–63. 119 See H. R. Qīlīch-khānī, Farhang Vājigān va Istilāhāt-i Khushnivīsī va Hunarhāyi Vābasteh, Tehrān: Ruzaneh, 1994/5 [1373], pp. 119–20. 120 See Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, p. 102. 121 Tāgh (vaulted roof ) of especially iwans in Iranian architectural terminology; also called āsemāneh, which means ‘sky-like’. 122 Pgiyardegiyān (the people of the curtain) and shabistān have female connotations in Persian literature, as in folk culture, where manzil (home) connotes the wife or family. Chapter 3  The Mosque as Public Space 1 Lapidus summarised these views – not a personal view – about Islamic cities as: ‘Not governing themselves, they were governed by outside regimes. Deprived of autonomy, their population, it is alleged, were not truly communities, but just dense agglomerations of isolated souls or dispersed families subject to the

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military elites, often foreign, who governed the territories in which the cities lay.’ I. M. Lapidus, ‘Muslim urban society in Mamlūk Syria’, in A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern (eds), The Islamic City: A Colloquium on the Islamic City, Oxford: Cassirer, and University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970, p. 195. Von Grunebaum also believed that ‘The unity of the Muslim town is functional, not civic.’ G. E. von Grunebaum, Islam and Medieval Hellenism: Social and Cultural Perspectives. London: Variorum Reprints, 1976, p. 147. 2 The word haram, in its different derivations, can be tahrīm (being made forbidden); harām (illegitimate); mahram (people who have connection, are part of a family and are shared in personal secrets); Ihtirām and Mohtaram, both as female names (respect); harīm (enclosure); and muharram (sacred). Haram reflects the function of the wall as the separative enclosure between inside and outside, insiders and outsiders. 3 The residential castle (khān in Persian refers both to house and castle), city castle and palatial castle are the major themes of the Islamic built environment. 4 See J. Farasat, Chār-dīvārī Ikhtiyārī, Tehrān: s.n., c. 197?. 5 This goes beyond our subject and enters the concepts of comparative studies. 6 For the idea of distance see T. Insoll, Archaeology: The Conceptual Challenge, London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 2007, p. 24. 7 The emphasis of parallel definition of differences in this thesis does not aim to devalue the hierarchical definition of them through which the idea of progress and teleological history is formed. 8 ‘A. Ibn Khaldūn, Moqaddamah-yi Ibn Khaldūn, trans. M. P. Gunābādī, Tehran: Shirkat Intishārāy ‘Almī va Farhangī, 2003–4 [1382]. 9 It is noteworthy that Ibn Khaldūn does not represent these two societies as completely separate models, but two points of a lineal evolution. On this basis, it is not wrong to represent these two models of social structures as different stages of the same society as well. 10 Quoted from Nizām al-Mulk’s Sīyāsat-Nāmih in A. K. S. Lambton, Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia: Aspects of Administrative, Economic and Social History, 11th–14th Century, Albany, NY: Bibliotheca Persica, 1988, p. 222. 11 However, the more players who occupy the positions, the stronger is the collected group. Here we recall the story of the father who represented the importance of unity to his sons before dying, by using the analogy of a bunch of sticks (arrows) which individually are breakable but when bound together are not. This is a social value based on community represented in backgammon. 12 In a comparative view, ‘Eickelman puts special emphasis on the notion of the quarter; he describes it as a cluster of households characterised by a particular quality of life – “closeness” (qaraba)- that is based on multiple personal ties and common interests and an extension on contiguous space of a shared moral unity.’ K. Brown, ‘The uses of a concept: the Muslim city’, in K. Brown, M. Jole, P. Sluglett and S. Zubaida (eds), Middle Eastern Cities in Comparative Perspective: Franco-British Symposium, 10–14 May 1984, London: Ithaca Press, 1986, p. 75. 13 As is mentioned in the previous chapter, it is represented in the image of Time. 14 It resembles the form and the function of the courtyard in Iranian architecture. See Chapter 2, ‘The Notion of Time and the Image of Place’.

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15 ‘Modern residence’ as much as ‘Iranian houses’ is a generalisation and abstraction and therefore only a useful definition in the context of current debate. 16 The hierarchical division of alleys in Iranian cities as it is represented by Kheirabadi is not valid inside the Mahallah scale. There is no hierarchical division of communication reflected in the dimension of alleys. See M. Kheirabadi, Iranian Cities: Formation and Development, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. For a detailed investigation about three forms of Greater Iranian cities see H. Gaube, Iranian Cities, New York: New York University Press, 1979. 17 There is a general tendency to suggest an ecological explanation for this form of built environment. However, ecological factors must be seen as a ground upon which human agency built its needed spaces rather than as outer forces which turn humans into objects of their conditions. 18 Residential quarter, neighbourhood. These are social sections of Islamic cities in general and Iranian ones in particular. 19 See U. Kim et al. (eds), Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Method and Application, California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 1994, p. 3. 20 On the other hand, the over-emphasis on the segmentation of the social body in Islamic cities – as well as Iranian ones – fails to position any central administration. In this view, ‘the Muslim city is too diffused to have any dominant function or dominant interest’. See I. M. Lapidus, ‘Muslim cities and Islamic societies’, in I. M. Lapidus, ed., Middle Eastern Cities: A Symposium on Ancient, Islamic, and Contemporary Middle Eastern Urbanism, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, p. 76. 21 ‘While much of what was valuable in the nomadic Arab outlook has been taken into the central core of Islam and there transformed, there would be also appear to be matters which have been given an Islamic dress without any fundamental change.’ M. Watt, What is Islam?, London: Longmans, 1968, p. 24. In a point of disagreement he wrote: ‘Opposed to that of Ignaz Goldziher in the first chapter of his muhammadanische studien, where he contrasts the muruwwa or “manliness” of the pre-Islamic Arab with the din or “religion” taught by Qur’ān … In general it would seem that the Qur’ān was not innovating in this respect but simply accepting the positions toward which the better elements in society were moving as a result of recent social changes.’ Ibid, p. 191. 22 H. C. Triandis, ‘Theoretical and methodological approach to the study of collectivism and individualism’, in U. Kim et al. (eds), Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Method and Application, California: Sage Publications, Inc., 1994, p. 42. 23 Ibid, p. 42 24 Kim remarks: ‘Unlike individualists, who have one self, in some collectivist cultures individuals may have two selves (private and public).’ If we define these selves by their social role, it can be more than two and not only a characteristic of so-called collectivist cultures and societies. U. Kim, ‘Individualism and collectivism: conceptual clarification and elaboration’, in U. Kim et al. (eds), Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Method and Application, California: Sage Publications, Inc., 1994, p. 39. 25 This statement does not try to undermine the divisions which compose gender divisions or interior/exterior distinctions, but to indicate how this black and white distinction ignores the minor differentiations which form local

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and regional cultural differences. This is one of those places where universal assumption of division between private and public has become a source of misinterpretation. 26 See I. M. Lapidus, ‘Muslim urban society in Mamlūk Syria’, p. 199. 27 Tribal origin, community-based social structure and lack of municipal association. 28 F. Adamiyat and T. M. Ricks, ‘Problems in Iranian historiography’, Iranian Studies, 4/4 (Autumn, 1971), pp. 132–56. 29 In this sense, the wall is not a sign of retreat from the public space, but is a line between different stages of communal life. 30 See S. M. Stern, ‘The constitution of the Islamic city’, in A. H. Hourani, and S. M. Stern (eds), The Islamic City: A Colloquium on the Islamic City, Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, and Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970, p. 25. 31 ‘A tribe which construct the state’, B. Badie, ‘Community, individualism and culture’, in P. Birnbaum and J. Leca (eds), Individualism: Theories and Methods, trans. J. Gaffney, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, p.112. 32 See Ibn Khaldūn on the ‘chief ’ of tribal society: ‘A. Ibn Khaldūn, Moqaddamahyi Ibn Khaldūn, trans. M. P. Gunābādī, Tehran: Shirkat Intishārāy ‘Almī va Farhangī, 2003–4 [1382], pp. 248–56. 33 ‘In these cases [the French Third Republic, Spain, and Italy], the state sought to impose individual relations of citizenship which were designed to supplant community allegiances, clientelist practices only having as their aim to reconcile or make compatible community and individualist rationales. In the Moroccan and traditional Persian cases, on the other hand, the centre draws its support from one source of legitimacy which is ultimately a community one.’ Badie, ‘Community, individualism and culture’, p. 113. 34 On guilds in Islamic cities, see A. Raymond, W. Floor and Özdemir Nutku, ‘S·inf ’, in P. Bearman et al., Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, 12 vols, Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005. Brill Online, John Rylands University (accessed 17 January 2008): http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_COM-1085. For a critical view, see S. M. Stern, ‘The constitution of the Islamic city’. 35 For a theory on the image of the city see K. Lynch, A Theory of Good City Form, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. 36 Gates and doors are the only features that give any direct outer image to the outside world, therefore are the only features which come to consideration in the positioning of the house. 37 Although this closeness is basically subjective, i.e. through the connection of the members, it is dependent on objective closeness, i.e. like the quarter structure, both social and physical. It is opposed to the view of Weber who ‘formulated the concept of “communalization” in order to point out the relevance of “a subjective feeling of the parties, whether effectual or traditional, that they belong together” … Weber thus demonstrated that the concept of community was dependent not upon objective elements constitutive of the social structure, such as neighbourhood relationship, co-residence, familial organizations, or a village grouping, but upon the significance this distribution model had for the actor.’ See B. Badie, ‘Community, individualism and culture’ in P. Birnbaum and J. Leca (eds), Individualism: Theories and Methods, trans. J. Gaffney, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 106.

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38 Nevertheless, that Iranian houses face inwards cannot be explained by a single reason. Instead a complex of ecological, religious and socio-historical causes should be employed in order to give a reasonable picture of the formation of this type of architecture. 39 The public gathering of women became a condemned act because of the modern transformation of cities, the loss of privacy in residential quarters and the introduction of a new gaze. 40 To stay at home or inside a residential quarter used to connote femininity as a negative attribution in contrast to masculinity as a social value. 41 Even today, especially in smaller towns, it is a point of qualification for houses to be able to prepare space for public ceremonies. 42 For instance, Angūristān Malik in Isfahan is between a house and a religious centre. 43 However, there is an overall supervision of the ceremony over separated family contributions. 44 This reflects the gender division of Iranian cities and paternal basis of families. 45 The ceremonial nature of the gathering which limits this to a short section of time and social space, and more importantly the gender division, are among the reasons which make this formal gathering possible only in this context. 46 See M. Weber, The City, trans. and ed. D. Martindale and and G. Neuwirth, London: Heinemann, 1960. 47 The term ‘organic’ here refers to the notion suggested by the modern American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. See F. L. Wright, An Organic Architecture: The Architecture of Democracy, London: Lund Humphries, 1939. 48 On the bazaar see M. Khansari, The Persian Bazaar: Veiled Space of Desire, Washington, DC: Mage, 1993. 49 Although only Timurid and Safavid examples have remained. 50 See S. Babaie, Isfahan and its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi’ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008, pp. 13–4. 51 For a detailed study of the historical layers of an Islamic city, see H. Z. Watenpaugh, The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Boston, MA: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004. 52 See M. Habībī, Az Shār tā Shahr, Tehrān: Intishārāt Dānishgāh Tehran, 1999 [1378 ]. 53 O. Grabar, ‘The architecture of the Middle Eastern city from past to present: the case of the mosque’, in I. M. Lapidus (ed.), Middle Eastern Cities: A Symposium on Ancient, Islamic, and Contemporary Middle Eastern Urbanism, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. 54 Ibid, p. 37. 55 Ibid, pp. 37–38. 56 This is a new term. In the traditional structure it can be a formless open space or a Husseyine. 57 Even though changes in city structures weakened their centrality, their numerous entrances and their interconnection to civil fabric reflect this fact. 58 Big structures, such as the Jāme’ mosque in Isfahan, show a gradual development over time which affects their form.

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59 See M. I. Bāstānī Pārīzī, Ganj ‘Ali Khān, Tehrān: Intishārāt-e Asātir, 1983–4 [1362]. 60 See A. H. Hourani, ‘Introduction: the Islamic city in the light of recent research’, in A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern (eds), The Islamic City: A Colloquium on the Islamic City, Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, and Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970, p. 11. There are examples which try to explain Islamic urban morphology on the basis of Islamic principles and Shari’ah. See for example S. Al-Hathloul, The Arab-Muslim City: Tradition, Continuity and Change in the Physical Environment, Saudi Arabia, Riyadh: Dar Al Sahan, 1996; H. Mortada, Traditional Islamic Principles of Built Environment, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Chapter 4  Difference and the Iranian Architectural Discourse The same view is held about the Holy Qur’ān: everything has been indicated in the Qur’ān, of which some has already been discovered, and the rest will come in the course of time. 2 Using a classification from Islamic Iranian philosophy of different types of imagination is problematic since it is a theoretical system to which Islamic art does not exclusively belong. 3 It is obvious that hierarchy is a fundamental basis of organisation in a religiously based society; however, the question is the model through which this hierarchy is represented. 4 This was a common interpretation of Islamic art, as a counterbalance in what is pictured as the harsh climate or strict society. While arguable in itself, the very point of looking at this art as ‘balance’ de-territorises assumed semantic borders, reflecting the complex nature of this art as not a simple cause and effect of Islam as religion. 5 For instance, it can be compared to the privilege of abstraction in modern idea. For a comprehensive investigation on the nature of ornamental abstraction see O. Grabar, The Meditation of Ornaments, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 1992. 6 Iconographical studies are good examples of this. See for instance A. Hagedorn and A. Shalem (eds), Facts and Artefact: Art in the Islamic World, Leiden: Brill, 2007. See also B. O’Kane (ed.), The Iconography of Islamic Art: Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. 7 The conflict between a historical view and religious ones like Islam, which reject any transcendental power in the formation of history, is predictable; however, the problem arises from a black and white definition of these two as contradictory elements. 8 See L. McNay, Foucault: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994, p. 35. 9 E. S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, p. 168. 10 This is a common theme in Persian Sufism, for instance Rūmī: 1

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‫ﺣﻴﻠﺖ رهﺎ ﮐﻦ ﻋﺎﺷﻘﺎ دﻳﻮاﻧﻪ ﺷﻮ دﻳﻮاﻧﻪ ﺷﻮ‬ ‫و اﻧﺪر دل ﺁﺗﺶ درﺁ ﭘﺮواﻧﻪ ﺷﻮ ﭘﺮواﻧﻪ ﺷﻮ‬ ‫هﻢ ﺧﻮﻳﺶ را ﺑﻴﮕﺎﻧﻪ ﮐﻦ هﻢ ﺧﺎﻧﻪ را وﻳﺮاﻧﻪ ﮐﻦ‬ ‫وﺁﻧﮕﻪ ﺑﻴﺎ ﺑﺎ ﻋﺎﺷﻘﺎن هﻢ ﺧﺎﻧﻪ ﺷﻮ هﻢ ﺧﺎﻧﻪ ﺷﻮ‬

11 On the notion of poverty in Islam see S. H. Nasr, The Essential Frithjof Schuon, Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2005, pp. 288–90. 12 Rūmī, Fīh-i mā Fīh, ed. B. Furūzānfar, Tehrān: Amir-Kabir, 1971 [1348] , p. 82. 13 See ‘Aziz al-Din ibn Muh·ammad Nasafi, Majmū’ah-i rasā’il-i mashhūr bah kitāb-i al-Insān al-kāmil, Tehrān: Qismat-i Īrānshināsī-i Instītū-i Iran va Farānsah, 1962 [1341]. 14 Difference here is being thought of in Saussurian terms. For the notion of difference see M. Currie, Difference, London: Routledge, 2004. 15 For the transformational process of Shī’ah to a state religion see R. Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire, London: I.B.Tauris, 2004. While Shah Esma’īl was an idealist king-Sufi, it was Shah Abbās who transformed idealist Shī’ah into a state religion, an inevitable procedure for a religion like Shī’ah to be institutionalised. This difference became a theme for a revolutionary thinker like Sharī’atī, who argued about two Shī’isms: Alavid Shī’ah and Safavid Shī’ah. See ‘A. Sharī’ati, Tashayyu’-i ‘Alavī va tashayyu’-i S· afavī, Tehrān: Intishārāt-i H . usaynīyyah Irshād, 1971 [1350]. 16 This is a double-sided functioning of shell and core. See F. Schuon, Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, A New Translation with Selected Letters, Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006. 17 Although the transition from bordered circles to radiance can be seen as a break, which in this case is a more correct representation. Imam Mohammad Ghazzali shows the difference of these two worlds in his personal confessions. See AbuHamid M. Ghazzali, Al-Munqidh min al-Dalāl, ed. M. M. Abu al-’Alla and M. M. Jabir, Mis· r: Yutlab min Maktabat al-Jundi, 1973 [1058–1111]. 18 Here the term ‘subjective’ indicates the personal basis of this term rather than being opposed to objectivity. 19 It is comparable to Kierkegaard’s notion of paradox. See S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, London: Penguin, 2005. 20 D. Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, trans. B. Wing, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989, p. 114. 21 Quoted from ‘Bataille: A Critical Reader’, in B. Noys, Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction, London: Pluto Press, 2000, p. 96. 22 ‘The “spiral” is an attempt to think the movement of transgression in terms of its paradoxical structure of crossing and return which cannot be exhausted by description in terms of an infraction’, ibid., p. 96 23 McNay, Foucault: ‘The relation between taboo and transgression is dialectical. The observance of taboos precludes consciousness of them. It is only in transgressing a taboo that an “anguish of the mind” is felt which signals the existence of the taboo. Taboo is not possible without transgression, or vice versa. The violation of taboos constitutes the necessary basis of human social life: ‘organised transgression and taboo makes social life what it is.’ (p. 41) ‘Taboo serves

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to protect the world of purposive rational activity from the disruptive consequences of the will to excess. Yet, at the same time, socially organised forms of transgression, the periodic release of the impulse to excess, help overcome some of the alienating effects that arise from the regimented aspects of social existence and thus ultimately reaffirm social collectivity.’ It indicates the ‘possibility of a non-dialectical style of thought.’ (p. 45) 24 Noys, Georges Bataille, p. 85. 25 Quoted from G. Bataille, Eroticism, trans. M. Dalwood, London: Marion Boyars, 1987, p. 48. 26 Ibid., p. 99; quotations are from G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic. 27 Ibid., p. 99. 28 This spatial division of inside and outside should be considered more as a figure of debate rather than an intrinsic division in cultural domain. 29 Muslims ask God seventeen times each day to guide them to the right way. 30 For Ghazzali’s critique of Avicenna see M. Ghazzali, Mant· iq Tahāfut al-falāsifah, al-musammá Mi’yār al-’ilm, Mis· r (Egypt): Dar al-Ma’ārif, 1961 [1058–1111]. 31 See D. F. Krell, Architecture: Ecstasies of Space, Time, and the Human Body, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997, p. 18. 32 For the brief account of material in Avicenna’s thought see Sh. Inati, ‘Ibn Sīnā’, in S. H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds), History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1996, p. 240. 33 On perpetual creation see T. Izutsu, Creation and the Timeless Order of Things: Essays in Islamic Mystical Philosophy, Ashland, OR.: White Cloud Press, 1994. 34 This is a common theme in Persian poetry, for example in Shah Ni’mat allāh Valī or Arāqi. 35 The best example is Suhrawardī’s Hikmat al-Ishrāq. 36 See Krell, Architecture, p. 18. 37 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 38 For architecture see M. Gelernter, Sources of Architectural Form: A Critical History of Western Design Theory, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. 39 The other elements are the original as the source of ideas, the place of creation and the demiurge ‘as a kind of community organiser’. See: Krell, Architecture, p. 18. 40 See Gelernter, Sources of Architectural Form. 41 In the old concept of four primary materials. 42 See S. H. Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, New York: State University of New York Press, 1987. 43 M. Heidegger,‘Building dwelling thinking’, in D. F. Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 139–213, 354. 44 Heidegger, M., ‘The origin of the work of art’, in D. F. Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 139–213, 167. 45 Gardening and bāq-bānī (literally means observation of garden): although the contemporary Iranian sense of gardening has become aestheticised, it reflects the basic differences these two terms denotes. 46 This only involves soil material; other materials are prepared from outside the construction site. Nonetheless, it is interesting that a good soil for construction is cultivated soil like the one in the garden, and a good soil for gardening is the one from construction sites and demolished buildings, a transposition of a soil

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47 48 49

50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

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out of which plants come out, and a soil from which man-made forms are built. Man’s formations stand alongside natural formations. For instance see T. Burckhardt, Art of Islam: Language and Meaning, trans. from French by P. Hobson, London: Islamic Festival Trust Ltd, 1976. In everyday Farsi, ‘Āb Roshanayist’ (water is enlightening) is a common phrase, connecting water to light. For example among Iranians it was believed that looking at firūzah (turquoise) has an effect on the brightness of the eye (the light of eye). On turquoise see Mohammad ibn Abi al-Barakāt Jūharī Nishābūrī, Javāhir-Nāme Nizāmī (592 ah), ed. I. Afshar, Tehran: Mīrās Maktūb, 2005 [1383], pp. 127–36. See also Dehkhoda dictionary on Firūze. Dasein, meaning existence or presence, literally means to be there/here. See B. O’Kane, ‘The Friday Mosques of Asnak and Sarāvar’, in Studies in Persian Art and Architecture, Egypt: The American University in Cairo, 1995, pp. 341–51. Translation of an inscription: ‘This is a most great mosque of carved stone; the master of this work is the famous Malikshah, he made all its decorations (nakkāshiyyish bikard) with the point of an adze, may his hand be steady (correct) and may God Preserve him.’ By naghsh, the architect does not mean the decoration, but he refers to building as the result of naghashi. See also A. Pope, ‘Architecture in the early periods, according to contemporary documents’ in A. Pope and Ph. Ackerman (eds), A survey of Persian Art, vol. 3, London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1964–5, p. 978. However the word used in Farsi for painting is naqsh, which connotes all man-made crafts. See Hollier, Against Architecture, p. 15. Nevertheless, the denial of ‘organic’ itself shows the ground of thinking about architecture as somehow connecting to organic notions. See J. Rykwert, The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. See Y. Ishāq-pūr, Mīnīyātūr-i Iranī; Ranghāy-i Nūr: Ayīnah va Bāgh, trans. J. Arjmand, Tehrān: Farzān, 2001 [1379]. This is the common approach toward Islamic architecture and Islamic art in general, which is considered as the mirror of a higher reality. See for example L. Bakhtiar, Sufi: Expressions of the Mystic Quest, London: Thames and Hudson, 1976. See R. Guénon,The Symbolism of the Cross, 4th rev. edn, trans. A. Macnab, Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004. It is not surprising that the recreation of traditional Islamic form and pattern in modern Islamic buildings creates a detached plasticity with a different spirit from the traditional one. For Islamic ideas of Nature see S. H. Nasr, Nazar-i Mutafakirrān-i Islāmī darbārah-yi Tabī’at, Tehrān: Khārazmi, 1981 [1359]. The concept of the mirror has an important place in Islamic mythology. It is a contradictory situation. Historicity is associated with secularism, and resistance to it, either because of primordial concepts existent in religion or because of socio-political conditions, seems a logical response. However, the other side of the coin is an ahistorical ossification of existence. To hold an identity, history is translated through transcendental ideas resistible against temporal changes which threaten the very differences that construct identity of

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this history. Rather than destroying cultural resistance, this historical formation aims for an operation against ossification and solidification of cultural existence. 62 M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London and New York: Routledge, 2002, p. xxi. 63 See for example M. K. Pīrnīyā and Gh. Me’Mārīan, Sabk Shināsī Mi’mārī-yi Irānī [Style in Iranian architecture], Tehrān: Sorūsh Danish, 2008 [1387]. 64 Compare with ancient aeonic history or the African cycle of time. See J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. 65 M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, London and New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 24. 66 As Foucault says, ‘tradition enables us to isolate the new against a background of permanence, and to transfer its merit to originality, to genius, to the decisions proper to individuals’ (ibid., p. 23). 67 Ibid., p.131. 68 Ibid., p. 90. 69 Ibid., p. 99. 70 Ibid., p. 131. 71 Ibid., p. 31. 72 Ibid., p. 60. 73 Ibid., p. 63. 74 Ibid., p. 76. 75 Ibid., p. 174. 76 The division in The Order of Things can be seen as three different structural formations at the same time as three different knowledge discourses. It cannot be said which one leads to the other one; a kind of simultaneous existence exists between form of discourse and we can call it content. 77 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, London: Penguin, 1991. 78 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 89. 79 Foucault, The Order of Things, p. xxi. 80 We are not going to set rules of formation – the effort which Foucault left himself – but to indicate a simultaneous existence of a structure rule in conducting discursive formation. 81 McNay, 1994, p. 36. He uses Text as Event, which we replaced it with architecture, considering the broad meaning of text. 82 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 165. 83 Ibid., p. 144. 84 Ibid., p. 42. 85 Ibid., p. 31. 86 Ibid., p. 31. 87 Ibid., pp. 31–2. In the case of modern Iranian history in general, and art and architecture specifically, there is enough evidence to suspect them of being a product of the psychological condition of society. 88 Ibid., p. 32. 89 McNay, Foucault, p. 54. 90 Ibid., p. 62. 91 Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 19. 92 Ibid., p. 28.

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93 Ibid., p. 34. 94 Ibid., p. 20. 95 Ibid., p. 19. 96 Ibid., p. 34. 97 See for example Kuang-ming Wu, On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden, New York: Brill, 1997. 98 See M. R. Shafī’ī Kadkanī, Sovar-i Khīyāl dar She’r-e Fārsī. Tehran: Āgāh, 2008 [1386]. 99 Ibid., p. 55. 100 Ibid., p. 64. 101 Ibid., p. 61. 102 Ibid., p. 55. 103 Ibid., p. 148. 104 Ibid., p. 91. 105 Ibid., p. 63. 106 Ibid., p. 63. 107 Ibid., p. 69. 108 Ibid., pp. 86–7. 109 Ibid., p. 87. 110 Qale Tabrak, as the governmental building is detached from the old square. 111 Ibid., p. 236. 112 Ibid., p. 237. 113 Ibid., p. 237. 114 Ibid., p. 268. 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9

Chapter 5  Difference and Particularity M. Currie, Difference, London: Routledge, 2004, p. 14. For the Heideggerian notion of ontological difference see R. Gasché, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 58–81. C. Colebrook, Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum, 2006, p. 19. ‘Style’, in J. Pearsall and B. Trumble (eds), The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press. See Gasché, Inventions of Difference, pp. 94–5. See S. H. Nasr and H. Corbin (eds), Majmū’ah Āsār-i Fārsī-yeh Shiykh Ishrāq, Shahāb al-Dīn Yahyā Suhrawardī, Tehrān: Anstituye Faransawi Pajohesh Elmi dar Iran, 1970 [1348], pp. 305–8. For English translation see O. Spies and S. K. Khatak (ed. and trans.), Three Treatises on Mysticism, by Shihābuddin Suhrawerdī Maqtūl, With an Account of His Life and Poetry, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1935, pp. 13–27. As it was articulated in Derrida’s famous statement that ‘there is nothing outside of the text’. See P. Deutscher, How to Read Derrida, London: Granta Books, 2005, p. 28. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Nomadology: The War Machine, trans. B. Massumi, New York: Semiotexte (E), 1986. See S. Alpers, ‘Style is what you make it: the visual arts once again’, in B. Lang (ed.), The Concept of Style, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987, p. 137.

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10 For instance, in the context of Iranian architecture, the cases of Vitruvius, Alberti or more modern theorists like Ruskin are absent. Although it is viewed as a deficiency, which has its own place, it must be asked primarily why the necessity of such treatises did not arise in an Iranian context. 11 These two cannot always be differentiated in this way. 12 This is considered as a point of virtuosity. 13 This impersonalisation is an effort to achieve an authentic version of tradition. 14 For example, see Kolonel Vasiri’s efforts in reformulating Persian music in R. Khāleqī, Sargozasht-e Mūsīqī Iran, vol. 1, Tehrān: Intishārāt Safī Alī-Shāh, 1956 [1335]. 15 E. Zonis, Classical Persian Music: An Introduction, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973, p. 99. 16 Ibid., p. 62. 17 For instance, the Hadiqat el-Haqīqah of Sanāyi is not read outside Sufi and Khāniqah circles without the supervision of a Master. 18 Zonis, Classical Persian Music, p. 46. 19 E. Yarshater, ‘The theme of wine-drinking and the concept of the beloved in early Persian poetry’, Studia Islamica, 13 (1960), pp. 43–53, p. 48. 20 Zonis, Classical Persian Music, p. 44. 21 H. Farhat, The Dastgāh Concept in Persian Music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Opening statement. 22 Zonis, Classical Persian Music, p. 46. 23 Ibid., p. 47. 24 In a structural system, individual creativity is only defined through transgression of the rules of the system. 25 Although in contemporary performances one of the players conducts the group. 26 In this context, a master is a kind of protagonist. See Zonis, Classical Persian Music, p. 103. 27 As is shown in Foucault’s concept of the episteme of the Classical age, discussed in chapter 4. 28 Zonis calls these ‘extra-musical’ associations: Classical Persian Music, p. 48. Comparatively speaking, this attribution of human characteristics to architectural forms has always existed in the Iranian context. 29 For the concept of ‘proportion’ in Iranian architecture see L. Abo al-Qasimī, ‘Hanjār Shikl-yābī Mi’mārī Islāmī Irān’, in M. Y. Kīyanī, Mi’mārī Irān (Dora-yi Islāmī), Tehrān: Sāzmān Motāli’a va Tadvīn Kotob ‘Olūm Islāmī, 2000 [1379], pp. 380–2. 30 See G. Necipoglu, ‘Geometric design in Timurid/Turkmen architectural practice: thoughts on a recently discovered scroll and its late Gothic parallels’, in L. Golombek and M. Subtelny (eds), Timurid Art and Culture: Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992, pp. 48–66. 31 See, for example, Babur and his garden design in Babūr-Nāme. 32 Pope defines Iranian architecture as simple and majestic in structure. A. U. Pope, Persian Architecture, London: Thames & Hudson, 1965, p. 00. 33 The Jame’ mosques of Isfahan and Yazd are good examples of this. 34 For the aesthetic terminology see Qādī Ahmad, son of Mīr Munshī (c. ah 1015/ ad 1606), Calligraphers and Painters, trans. from Persian by V. Minorsky, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers, 1959.

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35 For the idea of style in Persian literature see M. T. Bahār, Sabk Shināsī: yā tārīkh-i tat· avvur-i nasr-i Fārsī, barāya tadrīs dar dānishkadah va dawrah-i dukturī-i adābiyāt, vol. 1, Tihrān: Chāpkhānah-i Khūdkār, 1942–3 [1321]. In architecture, see K. Pīrnīyā and Gh. Me’mārīan, Sabk Shināsī Mi’mārī-yi Irānī [Style in Iranian architecture], Tehrān: Sorūsh Danish, 2008 [1387]. 36 During the Mongol era and afterwards there was an increase in the number of buildings constructed to be complete in themselves. 37 For the notion of slowness see Homi Bhabha, ‘Another country’, in F. Daftari, H. Bhabha and O. Pamuk, Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2006, pp. 30–6, p. 30. 38 The Qajar architecture of Tehran is a good example. See V. Ghobadiyan, Mi’mārī dar Dār al-Khilāfa Nāsirī: Sonnat va Tajaddod da Me’mārī Mo’āsir Irān [Architecture of Tehran during the Naseredin Shah period: tradition and modernity in the contemporary architecture of Tehran], Tehrān: Pashutan, 2006 [1385]. 39 However, we do not reject this application. In fact, it is necessary since this history should also function in other contexts. 40 See Necipoglu, ‘Geometric design in Timurid/Turkmen architectural practice’. 41 See L. R. Shelby, Gothic Design Techniques: The Fifteenth-Century Design Booklets of Mathes Roriczer and Hanns Schmuttermayer, Texas: Southern Illinois University, 1977. 42 See B. Mulavī, Shīveh Rasm Hindissī dar Mi’mārī Irān (Durah Islāmī), MA thesis, School of Architecture and Urbanism, Shahid Beheshti University, 1990 [1369]. On Peymūn (modular) in Iranian architecture see n. 30, this chapter. 43 There are principles of direction (rūn) in positioning the courtyard as well. See K. Pīrnīyā and Gh. Me’mārīan, Ashnāyī ba Me’mārī Sonnatī Irān, Tehrān: Dānishgāh Ilm va San’at-e Irān, 2004 [1382]. 44 Occasionally a player such as the master, plays the central role of conductor while formally, both in performance and musical structure, there is no central figure. See Zonis, Classical Persian Music, p. 47. 45 The war machine for Deleuze and Guattari does not necessarily have war as its object. See G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Nomadology: The War Machine, trans. B. Massumi, New York: Semiotexte (E), 1986, p. 120. 46 G. Deleuze, Difference and Rèpètition, London: Athlone Press, 1994. 47 G. Vattimo, The Adventure of Difference: Philosophy after Nietzche and Heidegger, trans. C. Blamires, with T. Harrison, London: Polity Press, 1993, p. 151. 48 Deleuze and Guattari, Nomadology, p. 10. 49 Ibid., p. 3. 50 Ibid., p. 3. 51 Ibid., p. 3. 52 Ibid., p. 4. 53 Ibid., p. 3. 54 Ibid., p. 3. 55 Ibid., p. 11. 56 Ibid., p. 16. 57 Ibid., p. 51. 58 Ibid., p. 36. 59 Ibid., p. 39. 60 Ibid., p. 5.

Notes 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91 1

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Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 101. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 59. Ibid., p. 18–9. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., pp. 59–60. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid., p. 97. Ibid., pp. 30–1. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 99. Deleuze and Guattari, Nomadology, p. 73. ‘Toynbee is profoundly right to suggest that the nomad is on the contrary he who does not move.’ Nomadology, p. 5. See S. P. Blake, Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 1590– 1722, Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999. See G. Bataille, Visions of Excess; Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. and intro. by A. Stoekl, trans. A. Stoekl, with C. R. Lovitt and D. M. Leslie Jr, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985, p. 216. ‘When there was Sufism, there was no name for it, where there was a name there was no more Sufism.’ See H. Katouzian, Iranian History and Politics: The Dialectic of State and Society, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, p. 9. ‘Only when we turn thoughtfully towards what has already been thought, will we be turned to use for what must still be thought.’ Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. and intro. J. Stambaugh, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, p. 41. See ‘The principle of identity’ in Heidegger, Identity and Difference. It is not a new viewpoint; see L. Bronstein, Space in Persian Painting, New Brunswick, London: Transaction Publishers, 1994. Zonis, Classical Persian Music, p. 71. Not only traditionalists, but the approach to traditional material culture in the modern era in general. Deleuze and Guattari, Nomadology, p. 121. Conclusion See S. Elden, Mapping the Present: Heidegger, Foucault and the Project of a Spatial History, London, New York: Continuum, 2001, p. 3.

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INDEX

‘Ajam 58–61 ‘Ali, the first Shī’ah Imam 17, 28, 49 ‘Omar, the second caliph 17, 47 ‘Orf ’24, 26, 50, 103 ‘Othmān, the third caliph 17 Abbasid 18, 45, 46, 61, 62, 73, 115 Abū Bakr 17 Abū Muslim 61, 69 Abu-Hanife 63 Aesthetics 72, 81, 124, 160–1 Afshin 62 al-Insān al-Kāmil 3, 131 Ali-Shah 73 Amānah 19, 27 Archaeology of Knowledge, The 12 Aristotle 137–8 Asabiyyah 96 Ashūr, the palace 74 Bābak 61,62 Badīhe-navāzī 165 Baghdad 18, 89, 111 Barmakīd 62 Bāstānī Pārīzī, Ibrāhim 5 Bataille, Georges 134 Bauman, Zygmunt 56 Bazaar 34, 44, 49, 105, 106, 110–14, 116–8, 155, 184 Bhabha, Homi 6, 8 Biruni 59 Bourdieu, Pierre 3 Bozorgmihr 75

Brown, L. Carl 38 Browne, Edward 72 Bu-Dalf 62 Burckhardt, Titus (Ibrahim) 39 Buwayids 61 Būyīds (see also Buwayids) 71 Caliph (Caliphates) 17, 18, 22, 27, 44, 46, 47, 48, 61, 62 Central Asia 68, 77, 78, 80 Change, the notion of 12, 40, 142, 145, 158, 160, 164 Chār-eywān 80 Chār-bāgh 80, 82 Chār-fasl 80 Chār-sū 80 Chār-suffah 74, 80 Chārtāq 69, 73, 151 Chess and backgammon (Figure 2.2) 10, 12, 75–6, 96, 98, 180, 184, 192 Christianity 20, 29, 45, 58, 127, 131 Continuity, the notion of 12, 54, 72, 73 Coomaraswamy, Ananda 39, 40, 68 Corbin, Henry 62, 76, 77 Ctesiphon (Iwan Madā’in; Eywān of Kasrā) 73 Currie, Mark 159 Dabashi, Hamid 5 Dahr 76 Daqīqī 60 Dār al-Emāre 47

242

Islamic Architecture in Iran

Dar al-Islam 45 Darband 109 Dasein 142 Dastgah166, 187 Deleuze, Gilles (Deleuze and Guattari) 10, 11, 13, 160, 163, 170, 177, 181, 183, 186, 188 Derrida, Jacques 6, 165 Dialectic 7, 70, 90, 120, 123, 124, 130, 137, 134, 135, 183, 186, 191, 192, 194 Difference, the notion of 177, 182, 185, 186, 189, 192 Dihqāns 62 Dīn al-fitrī 19 Discourse, architectonic 143, 148, 149, 152 Divār 95 Diylamān 63 Episteme 153–6, 186 Eslīmī 84 Essentialism 4, 127, 185, 193 Ethnicity 54, 83, 96, 147 Ettinghausen, Richard 70 Evolution 2, 33, 43, 46, 48, 68, 74, 90, 96, 142, 149, 160, 170, 188, 189 Eyn al-Qozāt 5 Fārs 58, 59 Farsi, language (Persian language) 54, 55, 61–4, 72 Fīh-i mā fīh 130 Firdawsī 60, 61 Firūzābād 89 Four-Iwan 55, 71, 74, 80, 159 Fundamentalism 41 Ganj-‘Ali Khan 120 Gestalt theory 22, 97 Ghadīr-i Khumm’ 28 Ghaznavid 61, 65, 71 Ghazzali, Mohammad 37, 155 Gnoli, Gherardo 57 Gnostics (Gnosticism) 18, 27, 131 Godard, André 53 Goldziher, Ignaz 30 Grabar, Oleg 115–6

Grunebaum, Gustave Edmund von 32 Guénon, René 39 Gūshah 165–6, 175 Hadīth 18, 23, 24, 48, 102 Hāfiz 36 Hajj 48 Hamadān (Figure 2.12) 87 Hammām 110 Haqīqah 35, 129, 132 Haqīqat Muhammadiyya 29 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 7, 68, 135, 142, 186 Heidegger, Martin 139, 142, 159, 165, 186 Heterology 12, 130, 134, 157, 192 Hijāb (veil) 107 Historiography 2, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 18, 61, 65, 104, 185–8, 191, 194 History Conceptual 3, 145 Linear 128, 160, 192 Spatial 128, 191 Hojrah 111 Hussein, Imam 29, 53 Husseyniyah 110, 120 Hyle 137 Ibn Khaldūn 9, 96, 146 Ibn Qutaybah 60 Ibn-Muqaffa’ 61 Ideology 3, 48, 52, 56, 145, 156 Ijmā’ 23, 24, 29 Ijtihād 23 Il-Khānid (see also Mongol) 1, 55, 65, 67, 72 Imam Mosque (Shah) 119 Iranism 11, 53–8, 60,61, 62, 66, 68, 69, 71, 90, 144 Irfān 18, 131 Isfahān 1, 45, 72, 111, 114, 115, 118, 119, 135, 155, 184 Ishrāq 29, 36, 71 Isma’ilites (Isma’īlism) 62 Istakhri, 59 Jahān-nimā 114 Jahiliyyah 59, 101



Index243

Jāme’ ‘Atīq of Isfahān 118, 119, 155 Qazvīn118 Shīrāz, 118 Yazd118 Jibāl 63

Miydān Kuhneh (old square) 115 Mogul 68, 146 Moharram 53 Mokhtar 61 Mongol (see also Il-Khānid) 37, 55, 58, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 72, 73, 114, 118, 119, 186 Mosallā 49 Muhammadanische studien 30 Mulavī, Hamid 170 Mysticism 20, 26, 27, 33, 35–6, 38, 62, 83, 124, 126, 129, 130, 133

Ka’bah 44, 48 Khadīje 17 Khāghāni, Afz al al-Dīn Shirvānī 73 Khānah 95, 109, 112 Khāniqāh 27, 133, 136, 155 Khayyām 36 Khodāy-Nāmak 61 Khorāsān 18, 59, 63, 65, 66, 85, 125 Khurram-Dīnān 62 Kirmān 115 Kūh-i Khājeh 74 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 128 Linger, Martin 39 Logos 27, 29, 107, 134 Lughat-i Mūrān 161 Madrasah 108 Mahallah 25, 94, 101–6, 109–14, 117, 118, 146, 182, 183, 184 Manichaeism 62 Mansūr, the second Abbasid caliphate 61, 111 Mardāvich, 61 Marx 8, 9 Mashā’ī 137 Mashhad 67 Masjid 47, 48 Masjid al-Nabi 47 Mazdakism 62 Mazdeaism 77 Māzīyār 61 McNay, Lois 150 Mecca 17, 20, 44, 48, 49, 101 Medievalisation 127 Medina 17, 20, 24, 30, 46, 48, 101 Mihrāb 47, 49 Minaret 1, 47, 50, 71, 152 Minbar 47 Mīrchamāq 119, 120 Miydān 86, 112–19, 126, 155

Nadir-Shah 135 Naghsh-i Jahān 114–15 Namāz 25, 116 Nasafī 131 Nasihat-ol Muluk 61 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 24, 39, 139 Nationalism 53 Nawrūz 77 Necipoglu, Gülru 170 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 9 Nīshābūr 69 Nizām al-Mulk 96 Nizāmī 60 Nomadology 163, 177 Nomos and Polis 13, 174, 177 Nou-Bakhtī 62 Oppositions, binary 3, 4, 6, 159, 166, 187, 188 Order of Things, The 12 Orientalism 8, 53 Originality, the notion of 31, 46, 55, 162, 187, 188 Orossī 85 Oshtorjān 1 Otherness 3, 19, 35, 48, 51, 87, 125, 136, 137, 144, 145, 161, 192 Ottoman 34, 45, 48, 68, 146 Parthian 58, 74 Periodisation 12, 13, 147, 149, 154, 164, 186–7 Persian renaissance 69, 186 Persianate 11, 53, 55, 66, 68 Pishgāh 49

244

Islamic Architecture in Iran

Plato 7, 41, 138, 140, 141, 161 Pluralism 11, 33, 40, 51, 162, 191, 193 Poststructuralism 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 162, 167 Postmodern 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 135, 136, 144, 145, 162, 194 Prophet Muhammad, The 17–20, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 36, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 56, 61, 94, 157 Qābūs-Nāmah 61 Qanāt 140 Qaysariyyeh 49 Qiblah 47, 49 Qiyās 23 Qom 67 Qur’ān 17, 18, 19, 20–2, 23, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 46, 56, 61, 63, 94, 102, 137, 138, 157 Radīf 165 Rāfizī 58 Rāh·at al-s·udūr va Āyat al-surūr 65 Rahman, Fazlul 23 Rīgestān 119 Rūmī (Mulavī) 81, 130, 131 Safavid 37, 45, 55, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 72, 114, 115, 119, 131, 146, 159, 184, 186, 192 Saffarid 61 Saffār, Ya’qūb Lais 73 Sāhib-ibn ‘Ebād 71 Said, Edward 8 Salāt 17, 25, 44, 49, 116 Sāmā’ 83 Samanid 61 Samara 45, 47 Samarqand 46, 114, 119 Sarbidārān 66 Sassanian 32, 37, 57, 58, 59, 62, 96 Savād and Bayāz 22, 84 Schimmel, Annemarie 25 Schuon, Frithjof 39 Secularism 39, 42–3, 133 Seljuk 34, 61, 63, 64, 65, 71, 72, 74, 85, 115, 118, 159, 186, 192 Semiotics 6, 12, 107, 124, 137, 140, 142, 143, 152, 157

Shāh ‘Abbās I 66 Shah Ismā’īl 66 Shāhnāmah 61, 65 Shar’ 24, 26 Sharī’ah 18, 19, 22–4, 26, 27, 29, 35, 38, 44, 50, 67, 103, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 146, 155, 169, 192 Shelby, Lonnie Royce 170 Shī’ah (Shī’ism) 18, 28–30, 37, 45, 53, 62, 66, 67, 128, 130, 131, 135, 141 Shu’ūbiyyah 60, 61, 62 Sīyāvush 53 Soil, the 37, 139, 140 Sonatī 169, 174 Sophia Perennis 39 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 8 Structuralism 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 Style, the notion of 12, 90, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 188 Suffah 47 Sufism 18, 26–8, 29, 35, 36, 50, 51, 62, 66, 126, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 146, 155, 176, 192 Suhrawardī 62, 161 Sunnah 18, 19, 22–4, 31, 33, 51, 56, 94, 169 Sunni (Sunnism) 18, 23, 28–30, 37, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135 Tafsir 63 Tahirid 61 Taqīyyah 29 Tarikh Sistan 26 Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī 65 Tikyah 110, 111, 112, 117 Timurid 46, 66, 67, 68, 72, 114, 119, 192 Traditionalism 39–41, 193 Tuhīd 19, 31 Umayyad 18, 45, 47, 48, 55, 60, 61, 62, 69 Ummah 24–6, 33, 45, 47, 55, 60, 102, 152, 164, 166 Urmazd 75 Ustādsīs 61

Vaziri, Mostafa 53, 58, 187 Wahdat al-wojūd 35 Watt, William Montgomery 22, 30 Yakut al-Hamavi (Al-Rumi) 59 Yazd 53, 113, 115, 118, 119, 125 Zāhir and bātin 51, 107 Zarrīn-kūb 5

Index245 Zeitgeist 8 Zervan 76, 77 Zindīq 58, 61 Ziyarid 61 Zonis, Ella 165, 187 Zoroastrian 53, 57, 58, 62, 63, 73 Zubdat al-Tavārīkh 65 Zullah 47