Among the many creative periods in the artistic history of Isfahan, two are outstanding: that of the Seljuqs in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and that of Shāh ᶜAbbās I (1587-1629). But, while the Seljuq period is primarily represented by one monument, the Masjid-i Jamīᶜ, that of Shāh ᶜAbbās is mirrored not only by many important buildings of great aesthetic appeal, but by the decorative arts, paintings, and drawings as well. Indeed, it presents itself in such a characteristic manner that one can readily compare it with any of the great artistic periods of Western art, such as the Gothic or Baroque ages, where architecture, sculpture, painting and the decorative arts are all unmistakably stamped with the specific imprint of the time.

Nicht viele Städte der islamischen Welt haben in der abendländischen Reiseliteratur so starke Beachtung gefunden wie das safawidische Isfahan. Europäische Kaufleute, Missionare, Diplomaten und Abenteurer haben es mit den verschiedensten Motiven besucht, sich zum Teil lange dort aufgehalten und über ihre Beobachtungen, ihre Erlebnisse sowie über Persönlichkeiten des öffentlichen Lebens Berichte hinterlassen, deren Angaben bei allen individuellen Unterschieden ungewöhnlich mannigfaltig sind und zusammengenommen, kritische Verwendung vorausgesetzt, allein schon für eine Geschichte der Stadt Isfahan und mancher Aspekte der safawidischen Geschichte überhaupt ausreichen, wenn auch in erster Linie für das 17. Jahrhundert. Einem wichtigen Teil dieser Aufgabe hat kürzlich Sibylla Schuster-Walser ihre Untersuchungen zur Wirtschaftsund Handelspolitik gewidmet.

Nun war aber Isfahan auch im 16. Jahrhundert schon safawidisch. Doch ist für diese Zeit mit europäischen Berichterstattern ganz im Gegensatz zu dem folgenden Jahrhundert nicht viel Staat zu machen.

Modern Middle Eastern cities, from Afghanistan to Morocco, have, in addition to an almost limitless variety of detail, some general characteristics in common. These common features include among many other things, the narrow, twisting, often dead-end alleys on which the houses in the older quarters are typically located. These houses are inward-oriented to a degree that contrasts markedly and in many ways with “western” urban dwellings. These alleys and houses are an integral part of a complex whole that also includes mosques, shrines, madrasahs, bathhouses and bazaars.

Other general characteristics of modern Middle Eastern cities are the new wide streets for automotive traffic that form networks around the old quarters and often are cut through them as well. Visually, these new streets and the new buildings that accompany them often contrast so sharply with the old that many people are tempted to assume the existence of radically different cultural patterns among their respective inhabitants, radical differences that are isomorphic with the differences in street patterns and architecture.

My aim in this lecture shall be to situate the world of color within the traditional context of the Islamic culture of Persia; to explore the conceptual motivations that provoked its intense crystallization and saturation during the Safavid era; and to ultimately follow this world of color as it is annihilated into nothingness within the presence of Absolute Light. We will therefore witness the conceptual birth, life and death of color as a cyclical yet timeless, metaphysical expression of the Absolute within the world of phenomenal forms.

In their “recreation of the Persian nationality” and their proclamation of Shiᶜite Islam as the official state religion of Persia, the Safavids performed a crucial historical role. They formalized, institutionalized, intensified and politicized the Sunni-Shiᶜite doctrinal and regional schism within the Islamic world. Coming in the wake of the four centuries of Turko-Mongol invasions which had already helped to “harden the division of the Muslim lands into separate Arabic, Persian and Turkish regions between which literary communication was confined to the restricted circles of the educated,“ the triumph of the Shiᶜite revolution in Persia formalized the division of Islamic Asia into three major Muslim political entities: Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal. Safavid Persia drove wedges between the Sunni Ottoman empire, the Mughal empire and Central Asia. Safavid and shicite Persia, however, was not a monolith. It was an ethnic, linguistic, and religious mosaic.

If viewed in full historical perspective, Isfahan may reasonably claim to have been the most important city on the Iranian plateau. It is also the most studied. However, although its unique historical monuments may possibly have (compared with the historiography of other great cities) received scholarly attention commensurate with the city's historical role, relatively little attention has been paid to its social and ecological history. Why did Shāh ᶜAbbās choose Isfahan for his capital? What are the geographical factors that distinguish the city of Isfahan from the rest of the plateau? What were their implications for the social and political history of the city? More specifically, what was the role of the river, the Zayandah Rud, in the growth of the city? Is it profitable to seek a cause and effect relationship between the organization of irrigation for the agricultural base of the region's economy and the political and economic development of the city?

I regard the arguments about nationalism or the lack of it, and about whether or not the Safavid state can be called a nation-state, as in many ways sterile. What I am much more interested in is the question whether or not the Safavids created a state at all, in any generally accepted sense of the word. I propose in a moment to look at some of the commonly accepted characteristics of the state, and see whether or not the Safavid system possessed these characteristics. It is because I do not want to place primary emphasis on the concept of the “nation-state” that I have entitled this paper “The Safavid state and polity”--the latter meaning, of course, an organized society of which they were a part, for to Plato and Aristotle the polis was more than just a natural organism such as a herd or a hive.

“The literature of the Safavid period is usually regarded as a literature of decline.” So Jan Rypka begins his chapter on this literature. In 1911, in a letter to E.G. Browne, Mīrzā Muḥammad Qazvīnī, the noted Persian scholar, pronounced an even harsher judgment on this period: “Under this dynasty,” he wrote, “learning, culture, poetry, and mysticism completely deserted Persia….”

The first question we must face is whether this was, in fact, the case. Did Persian poetry and prose under the Safavids sink into literary doldrums, as so many critics have judged, or, rather, was this an age of positive literary merit? And if our response should be negative, how are we to account for the decline of literature in the face of the political strength and economic prosperity of Persia under the Safavids, and for the flourishing of other arts in this period?

The Safavid period marks a definite turning point in the history of Persia and the beginning of a new phase in the history of Islam in that country. Yet, despite its distinct character and the break it seems to display with respect to the centuries preceeding it, there is definitely a long religions and intellectual history which prepared the ground for the sudden establishment of a Shiᶜite order in Persia and the transformation of the country into a predominantly Shiᶜite area. There are several centuries of growth of Shiᶜite theology and jurisprudence, the development of Sufi orders with Shiᶜite tendencies and the establishment of Shiᶜite political power--albeit of a transient character--all preceeding the Safavid period.

As far as Shiᶜite thought is concerned, the advent of the Mongols and the destruction of the major centers of Sunni political power in Western Asia enabled Shiᶜism to flower in Persia more than ever before, culminating in the establishment of Shiᶜism as state religion for a brief period under Sulṭān Muḥammad Khudābandah.

It is indisputable that the religious history both of the Safavid period and of the two centuries that preceded it remains inadequately explored. There existed in Transoxania and Anatolia, as well as the Iranian plateau, a plethora of groups and individuals with diverse tendencies and aspirations that it is difficult, in our present state of knowledge, to synthesize into a comprehensible whole. There are however a number of minor observations on Professor Nasr's presentation that I wish to make. The first is an expression of respectful disagreement, and the others are intended to direct attention to matters not mentioned in his otherwise comprehensive paper.

Professor Nasr's contention that Sufism owes its essential origin to Shiᶜism, and that therefore its suppression in the Safavid period ought to be regarded as a return to the womb that bore it, is highly contestable.

Avant d'essayer de tracer un exposé des valeurs de l'architecture safavide, il est utile d'analyser les formes géomètriques des voûtes et les systèmes constructifs. Ensuite quelques exemples significatifs de palais et de maisons seront choisis, soit en rapport avec la dialectique de l'ancien et du nouveau, soit dans les relations entre les ouvrages auliques et les demeures bourgeoises, soit dans la recherche d'une relation rationnelle entre la forme et la structure. Enfin se posera le problème irrésolu de la formation culturelle des architectes de l'âge safavide.

Le bois. Le bois, le chanār ou platanus orientalis, est depuis toujours largement employé dans l'architecture persane pour le soutien des terrasses horizontales. Les couvertures en forme de toit se trouvent rarement ẹt tout au plus aux époques qājār tardive ou moderne. On voit encore dans certaines formes modernes spontanées et paysannes des systèmes à structures de ligne homogènes, d'ascendance notoirement achéménide, par exemple dans certains ṭālārs rustiques du Mazandaran, comme celui publié par André Godard.

Between the Masjid-i Jāmiᶜ and the Maydān-i Shāh was a distance of several kilometers, dotted by minarets, mausoleums, mosques and bazaar areas which served the trade of the central plateau of Persia. They had been built over the intervening centuries since Sasanian times, the old town gradually expanding, some of the small clusters of the bazaar still remaining as satellite villages under Shāh ᶜAbbās’ reign. It was his genius which formed the new city, and it was his conception that linked the new with the old.

Today, the least known to the visitor but in many ways quite the most fascinating aspect of Isfahan is the region that lies between the great mosques: the bazaar. Built by Shāh ᶜAbbās, the entrance to the bazaar, the Qaysariyah, stands at the center of the north end of the Maydān-i Shāh. Set back from the main plaza in a fivesided recess, it forms a courtyard which once embraced a large pool.

A la fin du quinzieme sifècle et à l'aube du seizième l'Iran était déchiré par des guerres intestines résultant de l'émiettement du pouvoir des Timurides. Le pays, sur le chemin de sa perte, subissait au nord comme à l'est, les terribles pressions de belliqueuses tribus.

En ce chaos, il appartint au futur fondateur de la dynastie des Safavides, Shāh Ismāᶜīl I (règne de 1499 à 1524 A.D.), de s'imposer, grâce à l'appui d'une faction turque, établie par sa famille dans la province caspienne du Gilan.

D'un sang illustre, puisque descendant du septième imam, Mūsā al-Kāzim, ce personnage, guerrier énergique et intelligent, héritait également des vertus combattives de ses ascendants de la tribu Ak Koyunlu et de la finesse de sa grand'mère, princesse grecque. En l'absence d'un rival de même valeur, ce prince chiite, alors que les populations partageaient en grande partie la même foi, fut sans difficulté reconnu comme roi.