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Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan,1590-1722

Series: Bibliotheca Iranica: Islamic Art & Architecture Series 9
Availability: In stock
Published: 1999
Page #: x + 206
Size: 9x12
ISBN: 1-56859-087-3
plates, appendix, bibliography, index, notes

 
$65.00 $60.00

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Quick Overview

Social architecture is a theoretical approach that takes the city itself as a text. In the anthropologist’s Clifford Gertz’s words the cityscape is “a story people tell themselves about themselves.” The built environment reflects the social system and the ways in which that system is expressed, reproduced, and experienced. The defining architectural element of Safavid Isfahan was the Maidan-i Naqsh-i Jahan, the great piazza around which Shah ‘Abbas built the nucleus of his new capital. Around the perimeter of this central square the shah erected the paradigmatic monuments of the city. Like the courtyard of the mosque or the small central square of the neighborhood mahalla, the Maidan-i Naqsh-i Jahan was the focal point for the activities and institutions of the city. The Maidan-i Naqsh-i Jahan integrated space and time in Shah ‘Abbas’s new capital, showcasing the emperor’s roles as chief creator of urban space and as chief manager of the activities that defined urban time. Because of the centrality of the Maidan-i Naqsh-i Jahan, the author structures his analysis of the social architecture of Isfahan around it. After a brief introduction to Safavid Iran in Chapter I , the author turns in Chapter Two, whose subject is the founding of the imperial capital, to the relationship between the old and new maidans. In Chapter Three, which focuses on the cityscape, the maidans serve as twin guideposts, ordering and orienting the buildings of the northern and southern halves of the city. Chapters Four through Nine—on the imperial palace, great amiri mansion, garden retreat, bazaar, caravanserai, mosque, madrasa, and imamzada—begin with a monument on the maidan, often the defining example of its type. Having analyzed this building, the author moves to other examples of the type as they appeared across the city. In this way he attempts to show not only how the buildings are distributed over the cityscape but also how the institutions they embodied were reproduced throughout the social fabric. To untangle the dialectic of space and time and to chart the changes in urban space over time is to uncover the changing relationships among the political, economic, and religious institutions. This volume offers significant contributions in three separate fields: (1) it is the first comprehensive study of Isfahan, one of the great cities of early modern Eurasia (2) it contributes a significant chapter to our understanding of Iran under the Safavids, 1500-1722 and (3) it adds a great deal to the literature on cities in the Middle East and to the “Islamic city” model.

Stephen P. Blake

Stephen Blake is Associate Professor Emeritus at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. His books include Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony, and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires (2013), Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India, 1639-1739 (2002) and Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 1590-1722 (1999).

Acknowledgements
List of Figures, Maps, and Tables
Bibliographic Abbreviations
A Note on Transliterations and Dating
Preface

PART I: Background

1. Land, People, Empire

2. Imperial Capital: When, Where, Why?

3. Cityscape

PART II: Politics

4. Imperial Palace and Imperial Garden Retreats

5. Great Amiri Mansions and Garden Retreats

PART III: Economy

6. Bazaar

7. Caravanserai

PART IV: Religion

8. Mosque

9. Madrasa and Imamzada

Themes and Findings
Appendix: Mahallas and Suburbs of Isfahan
Select Bibliography
Index

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