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98-404: An ancient tradition of royal audience tents representing the heavens was translated into monumental stone and brick domes due to the invention of the squinch , a reliable method of supporting the circular base of a heavy dome upon the walls of a square chamber. Domes were built as part of royal palaces, castles, caravansaries, and temples, among other structures. With the introduction of Islam in

196-646: A nave -like element with a tall arcade and clerestory . The Sasanian Empire also had a tremendous impact on the development of Islamic architecture; however, there was some overlap between the Sasanians and the Muslims making it difficult at times to determine who was influencing whom. Islamic art and architecture borrowed many Sasanian decorative motifs and architectural forms, including the iwan. Iwans were used frequently in Islamic non-religious architecture before

294-589: A trabeated manner, with post and lintel beams. However, vaulted ceilings did exist in the ancient world before the invention of the iwan, both within Mesopotamia and outside it. Mesopotamian examples include Susa , where the Elamites vaulted many of their buildings with barrel vaults , and Nineveh , where the Assyrians frequently vaulted their passages for fortification purposes. Outside Mesopotamia,

392-525: A veranda (a flat roof held up by columns rather than a vault) but is still open to the elements on only one side. By the time of the Parthian and the Sasanian Empires , the iwan had emerged as two types of structure: the old columned one and a newer vaulted structure; both, however, carrying the same native name of apadana/iwan, because both types are open on one side to the elements. Ivan

490-675: A Sasanian iwan is the Taq-i Kisra ("Iwan of Khosrau"), part of a palace complex in Mada'in , which is the only visible remaining structure of the ancient Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon . It is near the modern town of Salman Pak , Iraq , on the Tigris River about twenty-five miles south of Baghdad. Construction began during the reign of Khosrau I after a campaign against the Eastern Romans in 540 AD. The arched iwan hall, open on

588-410: A central court; however, it is not known whether these spaces were vaulted. The feature which most distinctly makes the iwan a landmark development in the history of Ancient Near Eastern architecture is the incorporation of a vaulted ceiling. A vault is a ceiling made from arches, known as arcuated , usually constructed with stone, concrete, or bricks. Earlier buildings would normally be covered in

686-535: A central dome with smaller domes on either side and elaborate muqarnas . An exaggerated style of onion dome on a short drum, as can be seen at the Shah Cheragh (1852–1853), first appeared in the Qajar period. Domes have remained important in modern mausoleums, such as the tombs of Ḥāfeẓ , Saʿdī , Reza Shah , and Ruhollah Khomeini in the twentieth century. Domed cisterns and icehouses remain common sights in

784-454: A central oculus in each dome, as at the Palace of Ardashir and as shown in the bas relief found at Kuyunjik, lighting was provided by a number of hollow terracotta cylinders set into the domes at regular intervals. Multiple written accounts from Arabic, Byzantine, and Western medieval sources describe a palace domed structure over the throne of Chosroes decorated in blue and gold. The dome

882-436: A central square or rectangular courtyard ( durqāʿa or ṣaḥn ), with the iwans aligned with the central axes of the courtyard. For cruciform mosques and cruciform madrasas , one of the iwans could be oriented towards the qibla (direction of prayer) and include a mihrab in order to serve as a prayer space. The history of the evolution of the standard four-iwan plan has been debated by scholars. The four-iwan plan

980-493: A courtyard, and Walter Andrae, a German archaeologist, suggested that it served as an administrative building rather than as a religious center because there is no evidence of inscriptions or wall carvings. Although the absence of inscriptions or carvings does not equate necessarily to a civic function, it was not uncommon for iwans to serve a secular use, as they were frequently incorporated into palaces and community spaces. Other early sites including Parthian iwans include Hatra ,

1078-589: A dome chamber almost completely covered with decorative tilework is that of the Jame Mosque of Yazd (1364), as well as several of the mausoleums of Shah-i-Zinda in Samarkand . The development of taller drums also continued into the Timurid period. The mass killings by Mongol and Timurid troops impeded developments in geometry between 1000 and 1400. The mathematician al-Kashi (1390-1450) further developed

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1176-551: A domed throne room. Chahar-taqi , or "four vaults", were smaller Zoroastrian fire temple structures with four supports arranged in a square, connected by four arches, and covered by central ovoid domes. The Niasar Zoroastrian temple in Kashan and the chahar-taqi in Darreh Shahr are examples. They are numerous throughout the province of Pars , possibly starting from the early Sasanian empire, and are known to be part of

1274-544: A funerary association with the domed form. The area of north-eastern Iran was, along with Egypt, one of two areas notable for early developments in Islamic domed mausoleums, which appear in the tenth century. The earliest known Islamic domes in Persia, such as the Great Mosque of Qom (878) and the tomb of Muhammed b. Musa (976), seem to have continued the rounded Sasanian form. Domed mausoleums contributed greatly to

1372-747: A further development at the shrine of Shaykh Abd al-Samad in Natanz, Iran. The architecture of Syria and the Jazira includes the widest variety of forms in the medieval Islamic world, being influenced by the surviving architecture of Late Antiquity , contemporary Christian buildings, and Islamic architecture from the east. There are some muqarnas domes of the Iraqi type, but most domes are slightly pointed hemispheres on either muqarnas pendentives or double zones of squinches and made of masonry, rather than brick and plaster. The domes cover single bay structures or are just

1470-627: A hollow, open half-cone (like a funnel) laid horizontally; or a small half-dome niche. They are designed to spread the load of a dome to the intersecting walls on which they are built. By bridging corners, they also visually transition an angular space to a round or near-circular zone. Squinches originated in the Sassanid Empire of Ancient Persia, remaining in use across Central and West Asia into modern times. From its pre-Islamic origin, it developed into an influential structure for Islamic architecture. Georgia and Armenia also inherited

1568-544: A network of small domes and windows to provide light to the interior. Palace gardens included open-plan domed pavilions. Safavid examples were expanded or imitated, as in the golden domes at Qom , Ray , and Mashhad . The movement to modern architecture meant less innovation in dome construction. Domes were built over madrasas, such as the 1848 Imam madrasa, or Sultani school, of Kashan , but they have relatively simple appearances and do not use tiled mosaics. The covered markets or bazaars ( tīmcās ) at Qom and Kashan feature

1666-613: A number of extant vaulted structures stand, including many examples from Ancient Egypt , Rome , and the Mycenaeans . For example, the Mycenaean Treasury of Atreus , constructed around 1250 BCE, features a large corbelled dome. Ancient Egyptian architecture began to use vaulting in its structures after the Third Dynasty, after around 2600 BCE, constructing very early barrel vaults using mud bricks. Iwans were

1764-667: A part of larger constructions. Syrian mausoleums consist of a square stone chamber with a single entrance and a mihrab and a brick lobed dome with two rows of squinches. The dome at the Silvan Mosque, 13.5 meters wide and built from 1152 to 1157, has an unusual design similar to the dome added to the Friday Mosque of Isfahan in 1086-1087: once surrounded by roofless aisles on three sides, it may have been meant to be an independent structure. The congregational mosque at Kızıltepe , with its well integrated dome of about 10 meters,

1862-412: A pilgrimage site. This did not occur and it became his own mausoleum instead. The dome measures 50 meters high and almost 25 meters in diameter and has the best surviving tile and stucco work from this period. The thin, double-shelled dome was reinforced by arches between the layers. The dome has been proposed as an influence on the design of that of Florence Cathedral , built a century later. The mausoleum

1960-503: A short barrel vault. In 1088 Tāj-al-Molk , a rival of Nizam al-Mulk, built another dome at the opposite end of the same mosque with interlacing ribs forming five-pointed stars and pentagons. This is considered the landmark Seljuk dome, and may have inspired subsequent patterning and the domes of the Il-Khanate period. The five-fold geometry of this design, a spherical dodecahedron , has led to speculation that mathematician Omar Khayyam

2058-505: A side and was assembled from tall wooden masts stayed by ropes, with silk curtains between them. The tent had four archways and was surrounded by a lower attached portico or gallery on all four sides. A miniature painted at Samarkand shows that bulbous cupolas were used to cover small wooden pavilions in Persia by the beginning of the 15th century. They gradually gained in popularity. The large, bulbous, fluted domes on tall drums that are characteristic of 15th century Timurid architecture were

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2156-453: A third conical shell over the existing two domed shells. The domes of the Safavid dynasty (1501–1732) are characterized by a distinctive bulbous profile and are considered to be the last generation of Persian domes. They are generally thinner than earlier domes and are decorated with a variety of colored glazed tiles and complex vegetal patterns. A popular feature of Safavid architecture was

2254-636: A trademark of the Parthian Empire (247 BC – AD 224) and later the Sassanid architecture of Persia (224–651), later finding their way throughout the Arab and Islamic architecture which started developing in 7th century AD, after the period of Muhammad ( c.  570 –632). This development reached its peak during the Seljuki era, when iwans became a fundamental unit in architecture, and later

2352-413: A wooden dome. The room "contained a portrait of Mithradates II and, along with other structures at the site, hosted some sort of cult activities connected to the memory of the kings of kings." The Sun Temple at Hatra appears to indicate a transition from columned halls with trabeated roofing to vaulted and domed construction in the first century AD, at least in Mesopotamia. The domed sanctuary hall of

2450-399: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Iwan An iwan ( Persian : ایوان , eyvān , also romanized as ivan or ivān / īvān , Arabic : إيوان , ’īwān ) is a rectangular hall or space, usually vaulted, walled on three sides, with one end entirely open. The formal gateway to the iwan is called pishtaq , a Persian term for a portal projecting from

2548-720: Is an alternative form of the name, used in Iran, reflecting the Persian pronunciation. Many scholars, including Edward Keall, André Godard, Roman Ghirshman, and Mary Boyce, discuss the invention of the iwan in Mesopotamia, the area around today's Iraq . Although debate remains among scholars as to how the iwan developed, there is a general consensus that the iwan evolved locally, and was thus not imported from another area. Similar structures, known as "pesgams", were found in many Zoroastrian homes in Yazd , where two or four halls would open onto

2646-469: Is found only in Mosul from the beginning of the thirteenth century. It has a brick pyramidal roof, usually covered in green glazed tiles. Of the five preserved examples, the finest is the shrine of Awn al-Din, which used tiny colored tiles to cover the muqarnas cells themselves and incorporates small muqarnas domes into the tiers of muqarnas supporting the large eight-sided star at the center. This design led to

2744-639: Is the masterpiece of Artuqid architecture. The Mausoleum of Fakhreddin Razi  [ tk ] in Konye-Urgench , Turkmenistan , was built with a discontinuous double-shell dome with an outer conical shell. After the disruptive effects of several Mongol invasions , Persian architecture again flourished in the Ilkhanate and Timurid periods. Characteristic of these domes are the use of high drums and several types of discontinuous double-shells, and

2842-518: Is the only remaining important building to survive from Öljaitü's capital city. Tower tombs of this period, such as the tomb of Abdas-Samad Esfahani in Natanz , sometimes have muqarnas domes, although they are usually plaster shells that hide the underlying structures. The tall proportions of the Jameh Mosque of Varamin resulted primarily from the increased height of the zone of transition, with

2940-596: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus . The hall was used by the king for passing judgments and was decorated with a mosaic of blue stone to resemble the sky, with images of gods in gold. It may have been an audience tent; Philostratus described the ceiling as "constructed in the form of a dome like the heavens." Caravansaries used the domed bay from the Sasanian period to the Qajar dynasty . The Persian invention of

3038-524: The Apadana palace at Persepolis , where king Darius I declares in an inscription: "I, Darius, ... had this apadāna constructed". In this case, the word denoted a type of structure, the iwan proper and not the palace. The term in Old Persian means "unprotected", and the design allows the structure to be open to the elements on one side. At Persepolis, however, the apadāna takes the form of

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3136-748: The Blue Mosque in Tabriz (1465) had its interior covered with "dark-blue hexagonal tiles with stenciled gilding". The palace of Ālī Qāpū includes small domed rooms decorated with artificial vegetation. The removal of thousands of Armenian Christians to the Isfahan suburb city of New Julfa by Shah Abbas resulted in the "unusual sight of Ṣafawid-style domes topped by a cross" in that city. The dome of Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in Isfahan (1603–1618), perhaps "the quintessential Persian dome chamber", blends

3234-653: The Buzjani method for creating a variety of dome configurations using practical geometry. His book, Key of Arithmetic , included five methods of drawing an arch profile and he created methods to calculate the surface areas and volumes of dome shells. They were frequently used in dome design. In the Timurid period, taller domes were built, often as double-shell domes, and melon domes were built in Samarqand , Herat , Balkh , and Kirmān . Muqarnas features held in place by "slats and scaffolding anchored by mortar" were used in

3332-463: The Islamic world the iwan was especially important in the architecture of Central Asia and Greater Iran , but it was also adopted into the local architectural traditions of other regions. It was highly adaptable and it appears in a variety of contexts and in different configurations. Iwans could be placed along the sides of the interior courtyards of buildings, as they were in many madrasas , or on

3430-574: The Mughal architecture . The form is not confined to any particular function, and is found in buildings for either secular or religious uses, and in both public and residential architecture. Although some scholars have asserted that the iwan form may have developed under the Seleucids , today most scholars agree that the Parthians were the inventors of the iwan. One of the earliest Parthian iwans

3528-870: The Palace of Ardashir , the Sassanid king, in Firuzabad , Iran, is the earliest surviving example of the use of the squinch. After the rise of Islam, it remained a feature of Islamic architecture , especially in Iran , and was often covered by corbelled stalactite-like structures known as muqarnas . It was used in the Middle East and in eastern Romanesque architecture , although pendentives are more common in Byzantine architecture. The Hagia Sophia features both squinches and pendentives, in combination. It spread to

3626-584: The Tigris . The mausoleum of Ali in Najaf , built by the Hamdanid governor of Mosul before 930, had a high dome supported by columns and had entrances on all sides. Reportedly, Buyid dynasty kings built high domes over their tombs and the tombs of minor princes had lower domes. Free-standing domed pavilions are known from Shiraz and Bukhara in the tenth century. An octagonal domed pavilion built in 999 under

3724-454: The chahar taq dome chambers of Sasanian Fire Temples and consisted of three parts: the load-bearing system, the transition tier, and the dome itself. Double and triple shell domes had considerable space between the shells or could be connected and the outer shell could be conical, onion-shaped, or bulbous, with bulbous shaped domes being the last and most influential development. The transition tiers used squinches or pendentives, and beginning in

3822-423: The squinch , a series of concentric arches forming a half-cone over the corner of a room, enabled the transition from the walls of a square chamber to an octagonal base for a dome. Previous transitions to a dome from a square chamber existed but were makeshift in quality and only attempted on a small scale, not being reliable enough for large constructions. The squinch enabled domes to be widely used and they moved to

3920-511: The 1420s. The tomb of Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash in Bust has a dome that used exposed brick placed in alternating bands of horizontal and vertical orientations for decorative effect. Mausoleums were rarely built as free-standing structures after the 14th century, being instead often attached to madrasas in pairs. Domes of these madrasas, such as those of the madrasa of Gawhar Shad (1417–1433) and

4018-491: The 7th century , mosque and mausoleum architecture also adopted and developed these forms. Structural innovations included pointed domes, drums, conical roofs, double and triple shells, and the use of muqarnas and bulbous forms. Decorative brick patterning, interlaced ribs, painted plaster, and colorful tiled mosaics were used to decorate the exterior as well as the interior surfaces. Persian architecture likely inherited an architectural tradition of dome-building dating back to

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4116-698: The Ayyubid and Mamluk periods of Egypt and Syria the four-iwan plan was prominently used in the architecture of madrasas, with the most monumental example being the massive 14th-century Madrasa-mosque of Sultan Hasan . In some more distant regions, like the Maghreb , the four-iwan plan was not commonly adopted for mosque architecture, but it most likely influenced the axial designs of local madrasas that began under Marinid and Hafsid rule. In early Ottoman architecture , particularly as it developed in Bursa around

4214-476: The Buyid dynasty was later incorporated into the Jameh Mosque of Natanz . The original free-standing structure was a central dome on eight piers surrounding by a vaulted ambulatory on eight outer round columns, open on all sides. A sixteen-sided zone of transition was used below the dome. The southern half of the dome is made of stone, indicating repairs after a partial collapse. The date of the original construction

4312-542: The Byzantine Emperor Justinian , suggest that the correct date for the construction is around 540 CE. The 540 date suggests that the construction of the Taq-i Kisra, and perhaps Justinian's “help” was in response to the victory of Sasanian king Khosrau I over Antioch in 540, which is depicted in the mosaics decorating the interior of the Taq-i Kisra. The Taq-i Kisra was finally demolished for

4410-656: The Great after his conquest of the empire, and the domed baldachin of Roman and Byzantine practice was presumably inspired by this association. The remains of a large domed circular hall measuring 17 meters in diameter in the Parthian capital city of Nyssa has been dated to perhaps the first century AD. It "shows the existence of a monumental domical tradition in Central Asia that had hitherto been unknown and which seems to have preceded Roman Imperial monuments or at least to have grown independently from them." It likely had

4508-589: The Jazira, dated from the middle of the twelfth century to the Mongol invasion . The use of stucco to form the muqarnas pattern, suspended by a wooden framework from the exterior vault, was the least common in Iraq, although it would be very popular in North Africa and Spain. Because it used two shells, however, windows were restricted to the bases of the domes. They were otherwise used frequently in this type. In Iraq,

4606-621: The Parthian and Sasanian iwans were often elaborately decorated with inscriptions and sculpted reliefs including scenes of hunting, vegetal motifs, abstract, geometric patterns, and animal scenes. The reliefs’ style shows a blend of influences including other Near Eastern cultures, Roman , and Byzantine decorative traditions. For instance, the rock-cut iwan at Taq-i Bustan features Roman style figures, Eastern-inspired vegetal patterns and crenellations, and wide-eyed, stylized Byzantine-esque angels and mosaic interiors. The most famous example of

4704-403: The Parthian ruins at Dura Europos , and Uruk . The Sasanian Empire also favored the iwan form, and adopted it into much of their architecture; however, they transformed the function. The Parthian iwan led to other spaces, but its primary function served as a room itself. In contrast, the Sasanian iwan served as a grand entranceway to a larger, more elegant space which was usually domed. Both

4802-807: The Romanesque architecture of western Europe , one example being the Normans' 12th-century church of San Cataldo, Palermo , in Sicily. This has three domes, each supported by four doubled squinches. The word may possibly originate, the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, from the French word escoinson , meaning "from an angle", which became the English word "scuncheon" and then "scunch". This architectural element –related article

4900-523: The Seljuks. The Jabal-i Sang was built as an octagonal domed mausoleum with an innovative interior arrangement. One of the largest Seljuq domes, built over the site of a Sassanian Fire Temple, was that of the Jameh Mosque of Qazvin with a span of 15.2 meters. Dating from 1155, the dome interior is decorated with small pieces of turquoise tile set among carved plain brick. The Gunbad-i Surkh in Maragheh

4998-655: The Shah Mosque was built from 1611 to 1638 and is a discontinuous double-shell 33 meters wide and 52 meters high. The octagonal mausoleum of Khwaja Rabi (1617–1622) uses the oldest version of the Safavid onion dome type. The tomb of Amin-edin Jabrail  [ fa ] , begun in 1380, was completed around 1700. Fath-Ali Shah Qajar built a series of mosques named "Masjid-i Shāh" at Qazvin (1808), Zanjan , Semnan (1827), Tehran (1840), and Borujerd . They include

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5096-466: The Timurid era. The dome of the Amir Chakhmaq mosque (1437) has a semi-circular inner shell and an advanced system of stiffeners and wooden struts supporting a shallow pointed outer shell. Notably, the dome has a circular drum with two tiers. Another double shell dome from the early Seljuq period at the shrine complex of Bayazid Bastami was changed in the Timurid period in 1300 by the addition of

5194-547: The Timurid period the curved surface was divided by a pattern of intersecting arches called an "arch net", or rasmi sazi , which had its culmination in the Safavid period. Persian domes from different historical eras can be distinguished by their transition tiers: the squinches, spandrels, or brackets that transition from the supporting structures to the circular base of a dome. Drums, after the Ilkanate era, tend to be very similar and have an average height of 30 to 35 meters from

5292-458: The addition of a sixteen-sided section above the main zone of muqarnas squinches. The tomb of Hamd-allah Mustawfi was built around 1340. The 7.5 meter wide double dome of Soltan Bakht Agha Mausoleum (1351–1352) is the earliest known example in which the two shells of the dome have significantly different profiles, which spread rapidly throughout the region. The inner and outer shells had radial stiffeners and struts between them. An early example of

5390-522: The appearance of madrasas, which also began with the Seljuks, and he further argued that the layout was derived from the style of domestic architecture indigenous to Khorasan . The details of Godard's origin theory have not all been accepted by other scholars, but it is widely-attested that the four-iwan layout spread to other regions with the subsequent proliferation of madrasas across the Islamic world. In some regions it also spread to other building types such as caravanserais and bimaristans . In

5488-484: The building to a ziggurat suggests that it may have been used for religious preparations or rituals. It could also indicate a palatial building, as it was common for the ziggurat and palace to be situated next to one another in the Ancient Near East. What seems to be a palace courtyard had iwans on each side, which remained a common features well into Islamic times. The second iwan building is located across

5586-602: The ceiling, which corresponds to Buyid burial customs described in the 14th century. The Seljuq Turks built tower tombs, called "Turkish Triangles", as well as cube mausoleums covered with a variety of dome forms. Seljuk domes included conical, semi-circular, and pointed shapes in one or two shells. Shallow semi-circular domes are mainly found from the Seljuk era. The double-shell domes were either discontinuous or continuous. The continuous double-shell domes separated from one another at an angle of 22.5 degrees from their base, such as

5684-476: The countryside. The Melik Gazi tomb in Turkey was built in 1200. Squinch In architecture , a squinch is a structural element used to support the base of a circular or octagonal dome that surmounts a square-plan chamber. Squinches are placed to diagonally span each upper corner where the walls meet. Constructed from masonry, they have several forms, including: a graduated series of stepped arches;

5782-473: The culmination of the Central Asian and Iranian tradition of tall domes with glazed tile coverings in blue and other colors. The Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi , situated in southern Kazakhstan was never finished, but has the largest existing brick dome in Central Asia , measuring 18.2 m in diameter. The dome exterior is covered with hexagonal green glazed tiles with gold patterns. In Afghanistan, Timurid ribbed domes with glazed tiles began to be built in

5880-428: The development and spread of the dome in Persia early in the Islamic period. By the 10th century, domed tombs had been built for Abbasid caliphs and Shiite martyrs. Pilgrimage to these sites may have helped to spread the form. The earliest surviving example in Islamic architecture, the Qubbat-al Sulaibiya  [ ar ] , was an octagonal structure with a central dome on a drum built around 892 in Samarra on

5978-429: The development of triple-shells and internal stiffeners occurred at this time. Beginning in the Ilkanate, Persian domes achieved their final configuration of structural supports, zone of transition, drum, and shells, and subsequent evolution was restricted to variations in form and shell geometry. The construction of tomb towers decreased. The tomb of Ala al-Din was built in 1289. The Shaykh abd al-samad shrine complex

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6076-417: The dome of the Friday mosque in Ardestan , whereas the discontinuous domes remained completely separate, such as those of the tower tombs of Kharrqan. This pair of brick tower tombs from the 11th century in Kharraqan, Iran, are the earliest known masonry double shell domes. The domes may have been modeled on earlier wooden double shell domes, such as that of the Dome of the Rock . It is also possible, because

6174-418: The dome. Cylindrical or polygonal plan tower tombs with conical roofs over domes also exist beginning in the 11th century. The earliest example is the Gonbad-e Qabus tower tomb , 57 meters high and spanning 9.7 meters, which was built in 1007. Although no burial has been found at the site, the Ziyarid ruler was purported by a 16th century Arab historian to have been in a glass coffin suspended by chains from

6272-450: The domed enclosure in front of the mosque's mihrab , which would become popular in Persian congregational mosques , although domed rooms may have also been used earlier in small neighborhood mosques. The domed enclosure of the Jameh Mosque of Isfahan , built in 1086-7 by Nizam al-Mulk , was the largest masonry dome in the Islamic world at that time, had eight ribs, and introduced a new form of corner squinch with two quarter domes supporting

6370-475: The earliest Mesopotamian domes. In Central Asia, mudbrick domes have been documented as far back as the late third millennium BC. Buildings with domes made of un-fired bricks have been found at fourth century BC sites at Balandy 2 and Koj Krylgan kala in Khorezm . Due to the scarcity of wood in many areas of the Iranian plateau , domes were an important part of vernacular architecture throughout Persian history. Persian dome chambers in mosques were derived from

6468-468: The exterior of buildings, as at the Taj Mahal and other Mughal mausoleums. Under the Ayyubids and Mamluks , who ruled Egypt and the Levantine region, it became a common feature of madrasa architecture, although in Cairo the vaulted iwans of earlier periods were replaced with flat-roofed iwans in the later Mamluk period. Starting in the late 13th and 14th centuries, the word iwan in Mamluk Egypt itself seems to have been become more restricted, on

6566-458: The facade of a building, usually decorated with calligraphy bands, glazed tilework, and geometric designs . Since the definition allows for some interpretation, the overall forms and characteristics can vary greatly in terms of scale, material, or decoration. Iwans are most commonly associated with Islamic architecture ; however, the form is pre-Islamic Iranian in origin and was invented much earlier and fully developed in Mesopotamia around

6664-408: The facade side, was about 37 meters high 26 meters across and 50 meters long, the largest vault ever constructed at the time. Early photographs and 19th-century drawings show that the remaining part of the hall has reduced since then. The dating for the Taq-i Kisra has been debated throughout history; however, a variety of documents detailing the arrival of Byzantine sculptors and architects sent by

6762-407: The first century CE. The first patrons to incorporate this layout into mosques were the Seljuks, with the first example probably being the Seljuk modifications to the Great Mosque of Isfahan in the early 12th century, though the layout also appears in other mosques in Iran built or renovated by the Seljuks around the same time. André Godard attributes both the origin and spread of this design to

6860-466: The forefront of Persian architecture as a result. The ruins of the Palace of Ardashir and Ghal'eh Dokhtar in Fars Province , Iran, built by Ardashir I (224–240) of the Sasanian Empire, have the earliest known examples of squinches. The three domes of the Palace of Ardashir are 45 feet in diameter and vertically elliptical, each with a central opening or oculus to admit light. They were built with local stone and mortar and covered with plaster on

6958-484: The form from the Sassanids, where squinches were widely employed in buildings of all kinds. They are heavily featured in surviving or ruined medieval Christian churches of the region. An alternative approach to the structural problem of translating square space to round superstructure is the pendentive , much used in late Roman Empire and Byzantine architecture. Domes built in the Roman-influenced world utilised separately-evolved construction methods. The dome chamber in

7056-550: The ground. They are where windows are located. Inner shells are commonly semi-circular, semi-elliptical, pointed, or saucer shaped. The outer shell of a Persian dome reduces in thickness every 25 or 30 degrees from the base. Outer shells can be semi-circular, semi-elliptical, pointed, conical, or bulbous, and this outer shape is used to categorize them. Pointed domes can be sub-categorized as having shallow, medium, and sharp profiles, and bulbous domes as either shallow or sharp. Double domes use internal stiffeners with wooden struts between

7154-498: The inclusion of symmetrical pairs of key elements, including dome chambers. Extensive and colorful tilework was used in this period, including floral and arabesque patterns on dome exteriors, enabled by the use of less expensive large square underglaze -painted tiles that were not dependent on firing special glazes at the optimum temperature in order to achieve the coloration. Small scale domes were included in palace architecture, utility structures, and caravanserais . The dome of

7252-562: The interior to hide the squinches, arches, and vaults actually supporting the domes. The external zone of transition to the dome was reduced or removed, such as stepped features, polygonal drums, and galleries. Jahangir Mausoleum in Uzbekistan was built in 1400. At the Timurid capital of Samarkand, nobles and rulers in the 14th and 15th centuries began building tombs with double-shelled domes containing cylindrical masonry drums between

7350-588: The interior. At the center of the palace of Shahpur, at Bishapur, there is a vertically- elliptical dome that rests directly on the ground and is dated to 260. The large brick dome of the Sarvestan Palace , also in Fars but later in date, shows more elaborate decoration and four windows between the corner squinches. Also called "the Temple of Anahita", the building may have been a Fire temple . Instead of using

7448-428: The madrasa at Ḵargerd (1436–1443), had dramatically innovative interiors. They used intersecting arches to support an inner dome narrower than the floor below, a change that may have originated with the 14th century use of small lantern domes over transverse vaulting. The madrasa of Gawhar Shad is also the first triple-shell dome. The middle dome may have been added as reinforcement. Triple-shelled domes are rare outside of

7546-410: The majority of the domes in the Islamic periods. Although the Sasanians did not create monumental tombs, the domed chahar-taqi may have served as memorials. A Soghdian painting fragment from the early eighth century found at Panjakent appears to depict a funerary dome (possibly a tent) and this, along with a few ossuaries of an architectural nature, indicates a possible tradition in central Asia of

7644-536: The most common form was a single shell of brick, with the reverse of the interior pattern visible on the exterior. The Damascus mausoleum of Nur al-Din (1172) and the shrine of Zumurrud Khatun in Baghdad are examples. The dome of Nur al-Din was originally hemispherical and similar to those of the mosques of the Artuqids , but it has been replaced with a style of dome similar to those used in local shrines. A third type

7742-469: The most part by al-Mansur, who reused the bricks to build his palace complex. Islamic art and architecture was also heavily influenced inspired by Roman, Byzantine, and Sasanian designs, both due to the presence of extant examples and contact between cultures. For example, the Great Mosque of Damascus was built in the early eighth century CE on the site of a Roman Christian church, and incorporates

7840-555: The one hand, to secular architecture while, on the other hand, it was used in this context to denote large domed structures in addition to vaulted halls. The celebrated monumental throne hall of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad was thus called the Great Iwan ( al-Iwan al-Kabir ) even though its main element was a domed hall, not a vaulted hall. The four-iwan plan (cruciform) is one of the most characteristic floor plans of Islamic architecture, consisting of four iwans arranged around

7938-538: The palatial architecture of Ardashir I. Such temples, square domed buildings with entrances at the axes, inspired the forms of early mosques after the Islamic conquest of the empire in the 7th century. These domes are the most numerous surviving type from the Sasanian period, with some having been converted into mosques. The later isolated dome chambers called the "kiosk mosque" type may have developed from this. Pre-Islamic domes in Persia are commonly semi-elliptical, with pointed domes and those with conical outer shells being

8036-515: The shells of discontinuous double domes to provide structural stability as late at the 14th century. The large dome of Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand was damaged by an earthquake during Timur's lifetime. It was built between 1398 and 1405. An account by ambassador Ruy González de Clavijo describes a huge square Timurid pavilion tent with a dome at the top that resembled a castle from a distance due to its size. It measured one hundred paces on

8134-493: The shells, with the exception of those with conical outer shells. Although they had palaces of brick and stone, the kings of Achaemenid Persia held audiences and festivals in domical tents derived from the nomadic traditions of central Asia. They were likely similar to the later tents of the Mongol Khans . Called "Heavens", these tents emphasized the cosmic significance of the divine ruler. They were adopted by Alexander

8232-503: The shells. In the Gur-e Amir , built by Timur around 1404, a timber framework on the inner dome supports the outer, bulbous dome. Radial tie-bars at the base of the bulbous dome provide additional structural support. Timber reinforcement rings and rings of stone linked by iron cramps were also used to compensate for the structural problems introduced by using such drums. Radial sections of brick walls with wooden struts were used between

8330-584: The square room with the zone of transition and uses plain squinches like those of the earlier Seljuq period. On the exterior, multiple levels of glazed arabesque are blended with an unglazed brick background. The domes of the Shah Mosque (later renamed the Imam Mosque) and the Mādar-e Šāh madrasa (1706-1714) have a similar exterior pattern against a background of light blue glazed tile. The bulbous dome of

8428-507: The temple was preceded by a barrel vaulted iwan , a combination that would be used by the subsequent Persian Sasanian Empire . A bulbous Parthian dome can be seen in the relief sculpture of the Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome, its shape apparently due to the use of a light tent-like framework. An account of a Parthian domed palace hall from around 100 AD in the city of Babylon can be found in

8526-469: The third century CE, during the Parthian period. Iwan is a Persian word that was subsequently borrowed into other languages such as Arabic and Turkish . The New Persian form is eyvān and its etymology is unclear. A theory by scholars like Ernst Herzfeld and Walter Bruno Henning proposed that the root of this term is Old Persian apadāna , but this is no longer taken for granted. The word apadāna appears in what modern scholars call

8624-426: The twelfth century, including houses, community spaces, and civic structures such as the bridge of Si-o-Se Pol in Isfahan . Furthermore, Islamic architecture incorporated the Sasanian placement for the iwan by making it a grand entrance to the prayer hall or to a mosque tomb, and often placing it before a domed space. The iwan became common in Islamic religious architecture from the twelfth century onward. Within

8722-405: The upper portions of both of the outer shells are missing, that some portion of the outer domes may have been wooden. These brick mausoleum domes were built without the use of centering, a technique developed in Persia. The dome of a tomb at Sangbast  [ fa ] has been dated to the 11th or 12th century and used brick arranged in a herringbone pattern . The Seljuq Empire introduced

8820-478: Was a mausoleum with a square base roofed with two shells. Domed mausoleums in the Greater Khorasan region used a two story cubic structure covered by domes in two dissimilar shells, with a lack of structural knowledge resulting in damage to the outer pointed dome shells. An anonymous mausoleum and the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar are examples, before conservation efforts. The largest Seljuq domed chamber

8918-512: Was already in use in palace and temple architecture during both the Parthian and Sasanian periods. The earliest known appearance of the four-iwan plan in Islamic architecture is at the dār al-imāra (governor's palace) in Kufa , as rebuilt by the Umayyad governor Ziyād ibn Abīh in the late 7th century. It only became common in mosque design in the twelfth century, long after the iwan's invention in

9016-701: Was built between 1000 and 1325. The two major domes of the IlKhanate period are the no-longer-existing mausoleum of Ghazan in Tabriz and the Mausoleum of Öljaitü in Soltaniyeh , the latter having been built to rival the former. Öljaitü was the first sovereign of Persia to declare himself of the Shia sect of Islam and built the mausoleum, with the largest Persian dome, to house the bodies of Ali and Hussein as

9114-497: Was covered with depictions of the sun, moon, stars, planets, the zodiac , astrapai, and kings, including Chosroes himself. According to Ado and others, the dome could produce rain, and could be rotated with a sound like thunder by means of ropes pulled by horses in a basement. The castle of Qasr-e Shirin had a domed chamber at the end of a long barrel-vaulted iwan. The late-Sasanian Tāq-i Kasrā in Ctesiphon may also have led to

9212-479: Was designed according to the geometric principles of mathematicians al-Khorezmi , al-Fargani , and Ibn-Sino . It dates to no later than 943 and is the first to have squinches create a regular octagon as a base for the dome, which then became the standard practice. The Arab-Ata Mausoleum , also in Transoxiana, may be dated to 977–78 and uses muqarnas between the squinches for a more unified transition to

9310-461: Was found at Seleucia (Seleucia-on-the-Tigris) , located on the Tigris River , where the shift from post-and-lintel construction to vaulting occurred around the 1st century CE. Other early iwans have been suggested at Ashur, where two buildings containing iwan-like foundations were found. The first building, located near the ruins of a ziggurat , featured a three-iwan façade. The proximity of

9408-580: Was included in a brick inscription band just below the dome, making it the earliest dated dome in central Iran . The ambulatory may have been for circumambulation , suggesting that the structure was a shrine to a descendant of the Prophet , or Imamzadeh . In the 10th century, domed mausoleums of the domed square type became popular in the Transoxiana region. The Ismail Samanid mausoleum in Bukhara

9506-422: Was involved in the design. The Jameh Mosque of Zavareh (1135-1136) is the earliest existing example of the standard Iranian mosque type in which four iwans are arranged around a courtyard, with a dome behind the qibla iwan. The layout is found in a group of mosques in the region centered around Isfahan. The use of tile and of plain or painted plaster to decorate dome interiors, rather than brick, increased under

9604-475: Was the Tomb of Ahmed Sanjar, which had a large double shell, intersecting ribs over plain squinches, and an exterior elaborately decorated at the zone of transition with arches and stucco work. The tomb of Sultan Sanjar, who reigned from 1117 to 1157, was damaged in the sack of Merv in 1221 by Tolui Khan . The tomb of Yusif ibn Kuseir was built in 1162. Most of the examples of muqarnas domes are found in Iraq and

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