Isfahan and its palaces : statecraft, Shi'ism and the architecture of conviviality in early modern Iran / Sussan Babaie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Babaie, Sussan, author.

Series:

Edinburgh studies in Islamic art.

Edinburgh studies in Islamic art

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Iṣfahān (Iran)--History.

Iṣfahān (Iran).

Architecture, Safavid--Iran--Iṣfahān.

Architecture, Safavid.

Shiites--Iran--Iṣfahān.

Shiites.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 302 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Winner of the Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award 2009This beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501–1722) explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and Perso-Shi‘i practice of kingship.An immense building campaign, initiated in 1590-91, transformed Isfahan from a provincial, medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered representation of the first Imami Shi‘i empire in the history of Islam. The historical process of Shi‘ification of Safavid Iran and the deployment of the arts in situating the shifts in the politico-religious agenda of the imperial household informs Sussan Babaie’s study of palatial architecture and urban environments of Isfahan and the earlier capitals of Tabriz and Qazvin.Babaie argues that since the Safavid claim presumed the inheritance both of the charisma of the Shi‘i Imams and of the aura of royal splendor integral to ancient Persian notions of kingship, a ceremonial regime was gradually devised in which access and proximity to the shah assumed the contours of an institutionalized form of feasting. Talar-palaces, a new typology in Islamic palatial designs, and the urban-spatial articulation of access and proximity are the architectural anchors of this argument. Cast in the comparative light of urban spaces and palace complexes elsewhere and earlier—in the Timurid, Ottoman, and Mughal realms as well as in the early modern European capitals—Safavid Isfahan emerges as the epitome of a new architectural-urban paradigm in the early modern age.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Figures

List of Plates

Series Editor’s Foreword

Preface and Acknowledgments

Note on the Transliteration System

Safavid Dynastic Chart

Timeline of Safavid Capital Cities and Major Structures

CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Conviviality, Charismatic Absolutism, and the Persianization of Shi'ism

CHAPTER 2 Peripatetic Kings and Palaces: From Tabriz to Qazvin in the Sixteenth Century

CHAPTER 3 Dwelling in Paradise, or Isfahan “Half the World”

CHAPTER 4 “The Abode of Felicitous Rule” or the Daulatkhane Royal Precinct

CHAPTER 5 The Spatial Choreography of Conviviality: the Palaces of Isfahan

CHAPTER 6 Feasting and the Perso-Shi'i Etiquette of Kingship

CHAPTER 7 Epilogue: The Fall of Isfahan

Select Bibliography

Illustration Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Originally published 2008.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-7486-3376-6