History of Iranian and Islamic Architecture
This paper asks you to date and attribute buildings from formal evidence: plan type, dome construction, vaulting, ornament and materials. Learn the diagnostic features period by period rather than memorising lists.
Core rules
- Chronology: Elamite (چغازنبیل ziggurat) → Achaemenid (پاسارگاد، تخت جمشید، آپادانا) → Parthian (the ایوان emerges) → Sasanian (چهارتاقی، نخستین گنبدها، فیروزآباد) → early Islamic (شبستان ستون‌دار، مسجد جامع فهرج) → Seljuk (چهار ایوان، گنبدخانه، آجرکاری، مقرنس آغازین) → Ilkhanid (گنبد سلطانیه) → Timurid (کاشی معرق، گنبد پیازی) → Safavid (میدان نقش جهان، شیخ لطف‌الله، چهل‌ستون) → Qajar (کاشی هفت‌رنگ، آینه‌کاری) → Pahlavi.
- Vocabulary: ایوان, گنبد دوپوسته, گوشه‌سازی و فیلپوش, کاربندی, مقرنس, گره, کاشی معرق, بادگیر, آب‌انبار, کاروانسرا, حیاط مرکزی, منار.
- Climate devices are part of the history: courtyard, badgir, qanat, thick adobe, domed cisterns.
Worked example
A dome is double-shelled and bulbous, sits on a tall drum, and is covered in glazed mosaic with a monumental pishtaq below. Date it Timurid or Safavid. Compare with a single-shell brick dome over a plain interior, with a kufic brick inscription, inside a four-porch courtyard: that is Seljuk, before colour glaze became dominant. The reasoning is layered - shell construction, then surface treatment, then courtyard type - which is exactly how attribution questions are marked.
Traps
- Attributing every four-porch mosque to the Safavid period.
- Confusing مقرنس (ornament) with کاربندی (ribbed vaulting).
- Calling عالی‌قاپو a mosque; it is a palace gateway.
- Mixing Seljuk and Ilkhanid dates by a century.