1. Part two of the study will appear in vol. 34 of Iranian Studies.

2. Muhammad Mahdi Arbab, for example, refers extensively to Chardin and Kaempfer, i.e. see his Niṣf-i jahān fī ta^ᶜrīf al-Iṣfahān (Tehran, 1340/1961 and 1368/1989, 178-79)Google Scholar, as well as contemporary European accounts, like Malcolm (ibid., 135-36, 180). He mentions a foreign travel account of more than a thousand bayts, that somebody had shown him, (ibid., 136-37). Other authors writing about Isfahan, like Husayn ibn Muhammad Ibrahim Tahvildar Isfahani, Jughrāfīyā-yi Iṣfahān, Jughrāfīyā-yi ṭabī^ᶜī va insānī va āmār-i aṣnāf-i shāhr (Tehran, 1342/1963)Google Scholar, have extensive references to Chardin and some mention of Kaempfer and other Europeans.

3. There is a clear line of continuity in themes and images in European accounts from the Venetian travelers of the 15th century (who had read the Greek accounts of premodern Persia) to those of the nineteenth century. Descriptions of Isfahan by European traders and explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century had a lasting impact on European as well as Persian perspectives on nineteenth century Isfahan. The growing political interest of England and France in Persia in the nineteenth century was paralleled by the intensive reprinting and republishing of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travel and country descriptions by writers on earlier missions, like the physician and explorer Kaempfer (who was in Isfahan in 1684-85), Pietro della Valle (in Isfahan in 1619), Thomas Herbert (there in 1628), Sir John Chardin (there in the 1660s and 1670s), John Fryer (1677), and numerous others. Nineteenth-century travel accounts and histories absorbed the themes and perspectives of their sources, heavily relying on these earlier works for their own descriptions of Isfahan.

4. Keith Edward Abbot, Notes on the Provinces and Cities of Southern Persia, Report, FO 251/42. Abbot's report, based on the copy of FO 60/165, has been edited with a critical introduction by Amanat, Abbas, Cities and Trade: Consul Abbot on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847 and 1866, (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

5. For example, Pascale Coste in his Monuments Modernes de la Perse published in 1867, despite the title and except for the Sarpushidah only covers the most conspicuous Safavid historical monuments.

6. Heffeman, Michael, “Representing the Other: Europeans and the Oriental City,” Recherches urbaines dans le monde arabo-musulman, Urban Research on the Middle East, Coll. URBAMA, 24 (1993): 82Google Scholar.

7. Curzon, George Nathaniel, Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols. (London, 1892), 2: 25Google Scholar. Curzon's opinions and descriptions were incorporated in Albert Houtum Schindler's article on Isfahan in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and thus profoundly influenced the popular European image of the city.

8. Bird, Isabella, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Including a Summer in the Upper Karun Region and a Visit to the Nestorian Rayahs, 2 vols. (London and New York, 1891), 1: 193Google Scholar.

9. This is a charge brought against the Zill al-Sultan by, among others, Sayyid Yahya Dawlatabadi, who when visiting his native Isfahan in 1337/1918-19 sardonically commented on the appearance of the of the city, explicitly condemning Zill al-Sultan for having systematically pursued the destruction of Safavid buildings. (See Dawlatabadi, Ḥayāt-i Yaḥyā 4: 12Google Scholar.) The supposed numbers of the buildings destroyed by the Zill's authority differ drastically. Arbab, or his editor Manuchihr Sutudeh, claims he destroyed 23 ancient buildings in one fell swoop. (See Muhammad Mahdi Arbab, Niṣf-i jahān, 36, n. 1.) Mihrabadi mentions seventy buildings and, citing Ansari and ^ᶜAli Janab, lists the Hazar Jarib; the Namakdan; the Bagh-i Farrashkhanah north of the Chihil Sutun, torn down in 1896-97; the Bagh-i Darughah, which was acquired by a nephew of the Zill; the Bagh-i Darughah-i Daftar, which went to the son of Aqa Najafi and was eventually sold piece by piece; the Bagh-i Tavuskhanah, which was given to Mirza Hadi Khan, a servant of Zill al-Sultan and was sold several times, part of it being eventually replaced by the Madrasa-i Sitarah-i Subh and another building. (See Āār-i millī, 21, 81, 36112, 675.) Bamdad lists 28 gardens and buildings by name. (See Bamdad, Sharḥ-i ḥāl, 4: 99Google Scholar.)

10. See Olmstead, A. T., History of the Persian Empire (Chicago and London, 1970), 20Google Scholar, 226 and Ernst E. Herzfeld, Archeological History of Iran (London, 1935), 12Google Scholar, 46, 53.

11. The fortress of Tabarak was built during the governorships of Mu^˒ayyid al-Dawla and Fakhr al-Dawla Daylami in 976-77. Under Ilkhanid rule it was also used as a prison. It was destroyed by Shah ^ᶜAbbas, when the citizens of Isfahan petitioned him in protest against the extortions of Ahmad Beg Girampa, the commander of the fort. (See Hunarfarr, Lutfallah, Ganjīnah-i āār-i tārīkhī-yi Iṣfahān, (Tehran, 1350/1971) 37–40Google Scholar and, Munshi, Iskandar Beg, Tārīkh-i ^ᶜālam-ārā-yi ‘Abbāsī, ed. Afshar, Iraj (Tehran, 1334/1955), 438Google Scholar. In the nineteenth century it had disintegrated into a vast field of ruins at the eastern fringes of the city.

12. Most writers quote Khusraw's, Nasir-i: Safamāmah-i Ḥakīm Nāṣir-i Khusraw Qubādyānī Marvazī, ed. Siyaqi, Dabir (Tehran, 1369/1990), 167–68Google Scholar, for information on the city's prosperity at that time. Also see: E. G. Browne: “Account of a rare, if not unique, manuscript history of the Seljuqs Contained in the Schefer Collection lately Acquired by the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1901): 411-46, 661-68 and (1902): 567-610, 849-87. The manuscript is based on a translation of Mafarrukhi's history of Isfahan (written 421/1030) by Abu'l-Riza al-Husayni al-^ᶜAlavi ca. 729/1329. It was presented to the British Royal Asiatic Society on May 19, 1827 by Sir John Malcolm. A more recent and emended version of the manuscript was transcribed in 1315/1897-98 for the Schefer Collection from a manuscript in the Zill al-Sultan's library. See: Browne's postscript, ibid., 691. For the editions of the Arabic text and a Persian translation see Spuler, Berthold, Iran in Frühislamischer Zeit, (Wiesbaden, 1952), 554Google Scholar. On the Persian translation of ca. 729/1329 by ^ᶜAlavi, see Storey, C. A., Persian Literature: A Bio-bibliographical Survey (London, 1970 reprint), 349Google Scholar and Storey, C. A./Iu. Bregel, E., Persidskaia Literatura: Bio-bibliogaficheskii Obzor, (Moscow, 1975), 2: 1011–12Google Scholar. There also exist the Arabic biographies of the scholars and other prominent figures of Isfahan by Abu Nu'aym Ahmad al-Isfahani (d. 1038/430), The Dhikr Akhbār Iṣfahān, ed. Dedering, S. (Leiden, 1931)Google Scholar. Also see Barthold, W., An Historical Geography of Iran, trans. Soucek, Svat and edited with an introduction by Bosworth, C.E. (Princeton, 1984) 169–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a description of the geographical and social conditions of Isfahan from early times to the end of the Safavid period also see Ghulam Riza Varahram's important article, “Dār al-Saltana-i Iṣfahān,” Majalla-i ^ᶜilmī-yi pazhuhish 7, (1371/1992)Google Scholar.

13. al-Faqih, Ibn, Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. de Goeje, , (Leiden, 1885), 254, 1–2Google Scholar. Comparing Isfahan to Baghdad was a prominent theme in medieval times. Such comparisons were underscored by stories about the ^ᶜAbbasid caliph al-Mansur's alleged idea of making Isfahan his capital.

14. Under the rule of Malik Shah (1072-92), Saljuq Isfahan reached its cultural and political zenith and emerged as one of the chief centers of Sunni theology in the Islamic world. This was also a period of architectural activity. Malik Shah's vizier Nizam al-Mulk (1018-92) established the famous theological madrasa, the Nizamiyya, in the Dardasht quarter. Numerous official and private buildings and mosques were built, including the masjid-i jāmi^ᶜ and the Saljuq maydān. Tha Saljuqs also built large royal gardens like Baghati Chaharganah (Fourfold Gardens) outside the city, Bagh-i Bakr, Bagh-i Karan, Bayt al-Ma^˒ (Water House), Bagh-i Ahmad Sayyah, Bagh-i Dasht-i Gur (Garden of the Plain of the Onager), as well as the forts Qal^ᶜa-i Shahr, and Qal^ᶜa-i Diz Kuh. See: Browne, E. G.: “Account of a rare manuscript history of Isfahan,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JRAS) (1901): 597Google Scholar. Expenses of Saljuq buildings in Isfahan were mostly paid by Sultan Rukn al-Din Tughril Beg Abu Talib Muhammad b. Mika'il the Saljuq (1037-63) (ibid., 667).

15. Browne, E. G., “Account,” JRAS (1901): 23Google Scholar.

16. Shirvani, Khaqani, Dīvān-i Afżal trans. Muhammad ^ᶜAbbasi (Tehran, 1975), 317–21Google Scholar.

17. To understand the evolution of Isfahan as urban and political center as well as the city in the Safavid period, more research is necessary on the city's development under the Saljuqs and Mongols and their successors using both textual and archaeological sources.

18. Lord S. of Alderly, ed. Travels to Tana and Persia by Iosafa Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, (London, 1873), 72, 131Google Scholar.

19. The motives and timing of the move have been extensively discussed. Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 189 says the decision was made in 1005/1596-97 but the development of the city as capital took place over the period 998-1008/1589-1600. Stephen Blake recently re-opened the debate; see Blake, S., Half the World: the Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 1590-1722 (Costa Mesa, CA, 1999)Google Scholar, a review of the work appearing in this issue.

20. Lockhart, Laurence, The Fall of the Safavid Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge, 1955), 169Google Scholar. These are the numbers given by the standard primary and secondary sources.

21. The decisive number remains Chardin's claim of 600,000 inhabitants in the midseventeenth century. For a critique of the general demographic descriptions, which were heavily influenced by personal predilections and usually suffered from a lack of background information, see Christensen, A., The Decline of Iranshahr (Copenhagen, 1993), 33–34Google Scholar.

22. Darāmadī bar tārīkhchah-iḥṣā^˒ī-yi nufūs-i Īrān bī tamām-i natā^˒ij-i āmār-i Iṣfahān (unpublished ms.), 128-63.

23. Shirazi, Bagher, “Isfahan, the Old: Isfahan, the New,” Iranian Studies, 7 (1974): 588CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McChesney, R. D., “Four Sources on Shah ^ᶜAbbas's Building of Isfahan,” Muqamas, 5 (1988): 103–34Google Scholar, and idem, “Postscript to ‘Four Sources on Shah ^ᶜAbbas's Building of Isfahan,'” Muqamas 8 (1991): 137–38Google Scholar.

24. Isfahan had decisive geo-strategic advantages. It was closer to the eastern borders and the Persian Gulf than Qazvin or Tabriz and it was still close enough to the western frontiers, which were occupied by Ottoman troops. Hafez Farmayan stresses the origin and tradition of Isfahan as an old Iranian city, pointing to the fact that choosing Isfahan as capital was also a sign of the Iranization of ^ᶜAbbas I's regime. Hafez Farmayan, F., The Beginnings of Modernization in Iran: The Policies and Reforms of Shāh ^ᶜAbbās I, 1587-1629 (Salt Lake City), 1969Google Scholar. The motives and time of ^ᶜAbbas I's decision to make Isfahan his capital has been extensively discussed.

25. Munshi: Tārīkh, 831. Notions of space, territory, and the theoretical system behind Safavid rulership were unified and exposed in the quadripartite formation of the city's topographic design, royal gardens and architecture. The quadripartite delineation of Safavid Isfahan denoted the hierarchical order of the cosmos, mapping the position of the world and the shah within it. The city was at once the creation and the reflection of the king's domain. Abbas I's conception of Isfahan perpetuated the function of garden as an allegorical and symbolic political order on multiple levels. It centered in the internal space of palace courtyards and from there expanded to the level of the walled palace and government gardens of the Bagh-i Naqsh-i Jahan, to the next level of the city with its axial center from where it extended to the level of the province, and after that to the expanse of the empire's domains. This pattern can be seen to perpetuate itself beyond the territory of the empire, encompassing the globe and reaching from there to the metaphysical world of the universe—to the seven spheres of heaven, and ultimately to the ‘arsh, the throne or seat of God. An excellent visualization of this structure is the diagram of Wescoat, J.: “Gardens versus Citadels: The Territorial Context of Early Mughal Gardens,” in: MacDougall: Garden History: Issues, Approaches, Methods, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture XIII (Washington, 1989), 347Google Scholar.

26. Very little has been published either about Qajar architecture or the construction of secular and religious architecture in the nineteenth century in general. For a general study on palatial Qajar buildings see Scarce, Jennifer, “The Royal Palaces of the Qajar Dynasty: A Survey,” in Bosworth, C. E. and Hillenbrand, C., eds., Qājār Iran: Political, Social and Cultural Change, 1800-1925 (Edinburgh, 1983), 329Google Scholar.

27. For the most complete overview of Isfahan's buildings from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis, see L. Hunarfarr, Ganjīnah. For a tourist guide version of the descriptions in Ganjīnah see idem, Āshnā^˒ībā shahr-i tārīkhī-yi Iṣfahān (Isfahan, 1372/1993)Google Scholar.

28. See: Abu'l-Qasim Rafi^ᶜi Mihrabadi, Āār-i millī-yi Ifahān (Tehran, 1352/1973), 81–82Google Scholar. To what extent this is an extension of the Safavid Haft Dast, is unclear from Mihrabadi's reference.

29. Bagh-i Naw (“New Garden”) was a favored name for the gardens built by the Qajars, to contrast them with the gardens of the Safavids and Zands, many of which carried more portentous, traditional names. The adjective naw carried the deliberate insinuation of a thing contemporaneous, new, and progressive. It indicated reform and implied a departure from un-modern conventions. It was also an expression of self-definition with a conscious emphasis on the contemporary. The Qajars employed both naw and jadīd as a means for deliberately placing themselves in a new era. It was also partly a rhetorical attempt to equalize the unsolvable tension between traditionalism and the need to advance in a rapidly modernizing world.

30. Kirmanshah was known by the epithet “Dar al-Dawla” (Abode of Government); Burujird as “Dar al-Surur” (Abode of Happiness); the title of Yazd was “Dar al-^ᶜIbada” (Abode of Worship). Shiraz, held the title “Dar al-Mulk” (Abode of Sovereignty), and also, for its safeguarding the tombs of Sa^ᶜdi and Hafiz, the title “Dar al-^ᶜIlm” (Abode of Learning), an epithet Isfahan, as the center of Shi^ᶜi theology, would have liked to claim as well.

31. See Tārīkh-i Guzīda or Select History of Hamd'ulla Mustawfi-i Qazwini, Compiled in A.H. 730 (A.D. 1330), ed. Browne, Edward Granville (Leiden and London, 1910), 449Google Scholar. (This was also the epithet of the Mughal city Shah Jahanabad at the time of Babur.)

32. “Dar al-Saltana” was also the title of Samarqand under Timurid rule. Tārīkh-i Guzīda, 449.

33. In order to distinguish Tehran from Isfahan as the residence of the shah and the first city, as well as in political competition with the Ottoman capital Istanbul as seat of the caliphate, Tehran, which under Fath ^ᶜAli Shah also held the title “Dar al-Islam,” later received the title “Dar al-Khilafa,” introduced by the Qa^˒im Maqam, as well as a third competing title, “Dar al-Nasiri,” which it later held under Nasir al-Din Shah's rule.

34. Ansari, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, 94-96. Also see Ritter, Carl, Die Erdkunde von Asien (Berlin, 1840), 6:24Google Scholar.

35. A definition used by Abu Hatim of Sistan, see Browne, E. G., “Account,” JRAS (1901): 869Google Scholar.

36. al-Din al-Isfahani, Jamal, Divān-i Kāmil, ed. Dastgirdi, Vahid (Tehran, 1320/1941), 410Google Scholar. The same qṣīda and poem (with some variations) is also ascribed to Sharaf al-Din Shufurvah. See Browne, E. G., “Account,” JRAS (1901): 678Google Scholar.

37. al-Qazvini, Hamdallah Mustawfi, Kitāb-i Nuzhat al-Qulūb, ed. LeStrange, Guy (Leiden, 1915, reprinted Frankfurt, 1993), 55Google Scholar. Also see Browne, E.G., “Account,” JRAS (1901): 414, 419Google Scholar. An anecdote regarding the favorable climate of Isfahan recounted how an Isfahan merchant was asked by the Grand Mughal in Delhi what he considered the most beautiful place on earth. The merchant, not daring to say Isfahan, answered “my house.” Prompted for clarification by the puzzled Mughal, he explained that the fourth, that is the middle of the seven climes, was the best; in it Iraq was the most beautiful province and Isfahan the first city in the province of Iraq, the quarter of Sa^ᶜadatabad not far from Julfa was the most beautiful of the city's quarters and his house the best house in it Carl Ritter, Die Erdkunde von Asien, 6: 52. (This is a variation of the Saljuq version, see Browne, “Account,” JRAS [1901]: 419-20.)

38. al-Hukama, Rustam, Rustam al-Tavārīkh, ed. Mushir, Muhammad (Tehran, 1352/1973), 454Google Scholar.

39. Bruce to Under Committee; No. 17, 1879; Church Missionary Society (CMS) PE-O 1-4.

40. For the different meanings of navel (surra) and the various allegorical and symbolic interpretations see Wensinck, A. J., Studies of A. J. Wensinck: The Ideas of the Western Semites Concerning the Navel of the Earth, (New York, 1978 reprint)Google Scholar, passim; for qubba, see 43-45.

41. Ernst Höltzer, Beschreibung der Stadt Isfahan, unpublished manuscript, Harvard University Library, folder 4.

42. Abbot, Notes on the Provinces and Cities, report (PRO), FO251/42.

43. Buckingham, J. S.: Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, including a Journey from Baghdād by Mount Zagros, to Hamadān, the Ancient Ecbatana, Researches in Ispahan and the Ruins of Persepolis, 2 vols., (London, 1830), 367Google Scholar. This is a random quote and similar ones can be found in almost every nineteenth-century travel account. These descriptions have evolved into a set cliché, with roots in the European accounts of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, whose authors had studied the Greek and Latin historians. Herbert, for example, wrote “Gardens here are for grandeur and fragour such as no city in Asia outvies, which at little distance from the city you would judge a forest, it is so large, but withal so sweet and that you may call it another Paradise and agreeable to the old report: Horti Persarum erant anoenissimi.” Herbert, Thomas: Travels in Persia 1627-1629 (Freeport, NY, 1970), 132Google Scholar.

44. McDonald Kinneir, John A Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire (London, 1813), 112–13Google Scholar. Almost word for word the same description is found in Bell, James, A System of Geography, Popular and Scientific, or a Physical, Political and Statistical Account of the World and its Various Divisions, (Glasgow, 1832), 4:320Google Scholar. Kinneir was an officer in the East India Company's Madras Native Infantry. He was a member of the 1808-09 mission of Sir John Malcolm, his cousin, to Fath ^ᶜAli Shah's court. From 1824-30 he was the company's minister in Tehran, until his death in Tabriz.

45. Malcolm, Sir John, Sketches of Persia (London, 1849), 129Google Scholar. In an interpretation different from Malcolm's, Tahvildar Isfahani sees the ruins and the flowering or the growth and decay as coherent components of each other. For him this was a valid symmetry. He gave credit to contemporary architecture and its patterns for fitting in well with the traditional architectural and urban structures. See his Jughrāfīyā-yi Iṣfahān, 16.

46. Ballantine, Henry, Midnight Marches Through Persia, (Boston, 1879), 154–55, 157Google Scholar. Ballantine was a business agent for the New York perfume and soap firm, Lanman and Kemp.

47. Sir John Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, 129.

48. Among the Qajar gardens in Shiraz were the Bagh-i Naw owned by Husayn ^ᶜAli Mirza Farmanfarma, governor of Fare for forty years and eldest son of Fath ^ᶜAli Shah; the Bagh-i Hasht Bihisht and the Bagh-i ^ᶜAfifabad or Gulshan, both owned by Mirza ^ᶜAli Muhammad Khan, the Qavam al-Mulk; and the Divankhanah and the Naranjistan also owned by the Qavam-Shirazi family. A number of older Shiraz gardens were renovated during Qajar times, among them the Bagh-i Iram and the Takht-i Qajar known by that name since the coronation of Aqa Muhammad Shah and later simply as Bagh-i Takht. The Sa^ᶜdiya, too, until renovation in 1952, had a Qajar-style pavilion. Whereas extensive research has been done on Islamic gardens through various epochs, very little has been published about Qajar gardens. See e.g. Donald Wilber, Persian Gardens, Muhammad-Nasir Fursat Shirazi, Āār-i ^ᶜAjam, (Bombay 1313/1895), and Khansari, Mahdi, Riza Moghtader, M., and Yavari, Minouch, The Persian Garden: Echoes of Paradise, (Washington D.C., 1998)Google Scholar.