INTRODUCTION

The architectural achievements surveyed in this chapter range over four hundred years of Persian history. The first half of our period was one of constant shifts in political power accompanied by changing frontiers. Only in the second half did Persia obtain some measure of security under a single political authority. The story opens with the architectural style associated with the Īl-Khāns and its development in western and southern Persia under the successor dynasties. It was this style which was transferred to Transoxiana in the last quarter of the 8th/14th century. The part played by Timur and his house is crucial to the story in as much as theirs was the principal building effort, first in Transoxiana and then in eastern Persia – centres of Timurid power. With the political decline of the Timurids in the middle of the 9th/15 th century, the initiative in architecture returned to western Persia under the patronage of the Türkmen dynasties. Thanks to Shah Ismā'īl and his successors, the strands were drawn together and a homogeneous style was created and disseminated throughout the Safavid kingdom.

Initiative in public works was with members of the royal house and the high officers of state: many civic undertakings were due to the enterprise of local dignitaries. The religious was the most powerful of motives: for at least in the first half of our period it is only the religious foundations which survive. Apart from the public and private mosque, the madrasa and kbāngāh, the principal effort was concentrated on the embellishment of the great shrines – above all, those of the Imām Ridā at Mashhad and of Shaikh Safī at Ardabīl.

CARPETS

The finest Persian carpets are considered to be those of the Safavid period. There are two possible reasons for this. Either this particular branch of the arts in Iran reached its zenith later than any other, or else the judgment may be explained by the fact that none of the Timurid textiles have been preserved and that their evaluation is therefore based entirely on miniatures, whereas we still possess a wealth of Safavid carpets and fabrics which attest their advanced stage of technical and aesthetic development. The miniatures leave us in no doubt as to the existence of carpets in the Timurid era. Moreover, the finest surviving knotted carpets date back to the early years of the Safavid dynasty and could not have originated spontaneously. References to precious carpets are found as early as the Sasanian period. These, however, will not be dealt with in the present survey, since the evidence does not provide any clear impression of their design or technique.

Timurid carpets

Two types of carpet can be seen in Timurid miniatures, those with geometrical and those with arabesque designs. For an excellent study of these rugs we are indebted to Amy Briggs. The geometrical type is the earlier and forms by far the larger group. The geometrical carpets were replaced towards the end of the 9th/15th century by those with arabesque and floral patterns, the best examples of which are found in miniatures by Bihzād and his school. Bihzād, who lived approximately from 1455 to 1535–6, belonged to the Herat school and in 1522 he was appointed librarian to Shah Ismā'īl I in Tabrīz.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TIMURID ERA

At the time of Tīmūr's death and under his immediate successors the religious situation in Iran was characterised by two complementary processes, which were the primary determinant of – or, minimally, ultimately resulted in - that particular form of religious reality known as Safavid Shi'ism.

The first factor is the great flexibility, bordering on prevarication, displayed by the religious world in fulfilling its cementing function between the political rulers and their subjects in the most disparate alliances between successive sovereigns and the local religious (and administrative) aristocracy, even when the diversity of madhhab professed by the two protagonists would lead one to expect an at least dual missionary activity rather than a day-to-day cooperation. It is true that there was a diversity of madhhab in a slightly broader and more equivocal sense, rather than in that usual connotation of the word which restricts it simply to the canonical schools. But it is indisputable that there was a rapprochement on the concrete plane which occurred at a time when, as all scholars admit, there was a “return” to the myth of the ideal sovereign, a “true Caliph”, and consequently to a renewal of the hope in the advent of a leader in spiritual affairs and so too in religious affairs. This eagerly awaited leader was the Mahdī, a figure who was variously delineated and characterised in the different areas and madhāhib proclaiming and anticipating his coming.

The other decisive factor is a gradual trend towards Shi'ism among the “aberrant” currents of orthodoxy, including sufism, allied with the presence of strong “Twelver” elements in the movements consciously aiming at a centralist outlook, which transcended the traditional divisions of Muslim religious society.

This long period of 120 years was a troubled one. Tīmūr's attack on Iran, which began in 782/1380–1 with the invasion of Khurāsān and Sīstān, terminated the pre-Timurid interregnum in a period characterised by sudden alarms. Even after the conqueror Tīmūr's death, except for the comparatively peaceful reign of Shāh Rukh (807–850/1405–1447), conditions throughout the land remained unsettled; his successors could not be at peace one with another; government was the plaything of turbulent rivals. Besides numerous princes of the Timurid dynasty, there were other leaders on the scene, such as those of two Türkmen dynasties, the Qarā Quyūnlū and Āq Quyūnlū, who had established themselves in the regions of Āzarbāījān and western Persia, with occasional inroads into the eastern regions of the country. Eventually this state of affairs was ended in the east by the Shaibanids and in the west by the Safavids.

Disturbances that can be dated back to the Mongol invasions, and which finally developed into the disruption and disorder of the period after Shāh Rukh's death, occasioned a serious decline in civilisation and deterioration in thought. At the beginning of this period a few of the scholars, poets and writers of the interval between the Mongol Īl-Khāns and the Timurids were still alive and affording contributions to science and literature. But apart from these few, and with the possible exception of those who had gathered at the court of Sultān Husain Bāīqarī at Heart and who were didactic rather than original, we hardly hear of any important or justly celebrated men of learning or science until the latter part of the 9th/15th century.

One of the great experiences in Iran is a visit to Shīrāz and the delightful garden that is laid out around the tomb of Hāfiz; to enter under the white marble baldachin that covers the tombstone on which some of the poet's verses are engraved in elegant nasta'līq, and to open the Dīvān-i Hāfiz to look for a fa'l, an augury, according to well established rules that have been followed for centuries. During such a moment the visitor may perhaps recall the beautiful lines written by the “last classical poet” of Turkey, Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1881–1958), who uses one of Hāfiz's central concepts, that of rind (“vagrant”), in his poem Rindlerin ölümü:

THE LAST CHINGIZIDS

The end of the Il-Khanid empire resulted in Persia, if not in the creation of a vacuum, at any rate in a dilution of power, which worked in favourv of various forces contending for authority in the state. The rivals involved in the struggles which now began fall into three categories. The most obvious of these were princes from several lines of the dynasty of Chingiz Khān, who looked to a restoration of centralised Mongol rule. They set about their task partly on their own initiative and partly as mere figureheads put up by legitimist groupings in the background. A second group was the representatives of local dynasties or highly placed families, who had served the Īl-Khāns as generals or senior servants of the state, and also the leaders of powerful tribal associations. And there were, finally, other groups for whom what mattered was not dynastic or aristocratic considerations but religious adherence to Shī'ī or extremist movements.

The power struggles that went on within or between these groups lasted for half a century. Though one or other of the rivals might for a time contrive to establish a certain measure of political and economic stability in his area of effective control, none had any lasting success, and there was no question of their unifying the country alone and unaided. Whatever the hardships Persia suffered as a result of divisions and chaotic conditions, even greater sacrifices were demanded of the people when, at the beginning of the eighties of the 8th/14th century, reunification was finally achieved: imposed, in fact, from outside by the conqueror Tīmūr.

Politically, this period extended from the death of the last great Īl–Khān (736/1335) to the accession of Nādir Shāh (1148–60/1736–47). It encompassed the rise and fall of two powerful dynasties, the Timurids (771–911/1370–1506) and the Safavids (907–1135/1501–1722), as well as of a number of lesser houses.

From a purely literary standpoint the era falls into two phases. The first, comprising roughly a century, was a turbulent period of wars, struggle for power, and widespread destruction, culminating in the sweeping conquests of Tīmūr and ending with his death in 807/1405. Its literature is best considered a continuation of that of the previous period, which witnessed the ascendancy of lyrico-mystical poetry (the 'Irāqī school). Beginning in the 12th century, this style reached its zenith with Hāfiz in the 14th.

The second phase, stretching from the 15th to about the middle of the 18th century, may be said to have begun with the succession of Tīmūr's son Shāh Rukh in 807/1405 and his long and relatively peaceful reign, and continued to the fall of the Safavids and the rise of Nādir Shāh. What marks the division between the two phases is the emergence of a new school, whose style is called the Indian style. This school, which had its origins in the Timurid period, produced a great deal of Persian poetry, not only in Persia, but also in adjacent countries – Ottoman Turkey, Iraq, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and especially India. The appeal of this style continued for Persian poets in these lands long after it had lost impetus in Persia.

Throughout the four centuries preceding the rise of Tīmūr, science had been actively cultivated in many parts of the Iranian plateau by practitioners who were in the forefronts of their respective disciplines. The dissipation of political power which attended the breakup of the ‘Abbasid empire entailed also a dispersal of the scientists concentrated at Baghdad. But lines of inquiry opened by them were pursued by scholars supported at the various later dynastic centres. During this time trigonometry emerged as an independent branch of mathematics. The foundations of geometry were repeatedly re-examined, and steps were taken towards generalising the concept of number; solutions were given for extensive classes of algebraic equations. Advances were made in mathematical geography, and in astronomy, both in theory and in observation. In optics, a start was made in explaining the phenomenon of the rainbow. It is the object of this chapter to give an account of the extent to which these activities were continued during the century and a half between, say, 1350 and 1500. In point of fact, most of what follows describes the accomplishments of one man, Jamshīd Ghiyās al-Dīn al-Kāshī (d. 832/1429), working at one place, Ulugh Beg's Samarqand observatory, and in one subject, numerical analysis. The names of a number of other scientists at Samarqand are known, and many more can be assembled from other localities, but only the writings of Jamshīd transcend competence and are contributions to knowledge.

Tīmūr's advances from Transoxiana into the Near East radically transformed conditions in Iran. The resulting changes were not confined to political affairs or to the structure of the state but also affected to a considerable degree the ethnic composition of Persia, the economic and social situation in the country and its cultural development.

In the decades following the demise of the Īl-Khān Abū Sa'īd the state of Iran was fragmented and there was widespread evidence of the collapse of national power. In itself, this might well have aroused the expansionist appetites of neighbouring states much earlier, but with the exception of the Golden Horde they simply lacked the military strength to take advantage of the situation. The Ottoman empire, as yet in its early stages, was just one of countless Anatolian principalities and constituted even less of a threat to Iran than any of the Türkmen tribal groups, such as the Qarā Quyūnlū, that were still struggling to obtain a political status. Nor is there any record of military advances by Egypt into Iran. The vast distances and the almost insurmountable geographical barriers involved make it unlikely that even the Mamlūk sultans contemplated such invasion plans, and certainly any hopes the Muzaffarid Shāh-i Shujā' may have entertained when he granted recognition to the token caliph al-Mutawakkil 'alā'llāh Abū 'Abd-Allāh Muhammad of Cairo were to remain unfulfilled. The situation was quite different, however, as far as the Golden Horde was concerned. At the court of Sarāī a keen interest was shown in events in Persia, and the ruling khans of the period were greatly attracted by the idea of gaining influence there.

One of the most distinguished European travellers drawn to Persia in Safavid times, Sir John Chardin, records a native saying in these terms: “Le doute est le commencement de la science; qui ne doute de rien n'examine rien, qui n'examine rien ne découvre rien, qui ne découvre rien est aveugle et demeure aveugle”. And he goes on to place both Persian and Chinese science next to that of Europe in achievement, qualifying his statement by adding that certain theorems which are regarded as new in the West are, in fact, to be found in the Persian and Arab books. But Chardin was impressed by the legacy of the past, for Islamic science, which had a strong Persian element, reached its zenith with Ibn Sīnā, al-Bīrūnī, 'Umar Khayyām, al-Khāzinī, and al-Tūsī, and, apart from a late burst of activity in Timurid times attributable to Ulugh Beg and his school, was then in decline. Medicine alone continued to make new advances.

There are, nevertheless, several influences which go to make this period in the history of science one of peculiar interest. Persia was a place of exchanges in ideas rather than a focus of original discovery. The protracted and bitter struggle between the Safavid monarchs and the Ottoman Turks, in the course of which the Persians became familiar with embassies from European courts, and Anthony Sherley is said to have suggested to Shah 'Abbās I an alliance with the Christian powers, not only generated an interest in technology, for the shah's armies were initially deficient in the heavier weapons of war; it also enabled Persia to know something of the scientific revolution which was gaining in momentum and influence in western Europe.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Persia, wrote Thévenot, the French traveller in the 17th century, was like a caravansarai: merchants travelled in from many directions. This was particularly true of the period from the Timurids to the end of the Safavids. Routes criss-crossed the Iranian plateau linking east and west, the steppes of Central Asia and the plains of India with the ports of the Mediterranean and north and south, down the rivers of Russia to the shores of the Persian Gulf carrying trade from the East Indies, India and China to Europe. Along the roads were strung the main towns, their sites determined as much by geographical and economic factors as political. It is notable that the major trading routes, whilst fluctuating in importance, remained almost constantly in use throughout this period, though from the Mongol ascendancy to the collapse of the Safavids the state of Persia and those of its neighbours in Asia were remarkably transformed.

After the disintegration of Mongol rule, Tīmūr aspired to similar far-reaching power but after a period of violent success his empire split. By the mid-10th/16th century three states had arisen which divided the control of much of the present geographical areas of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor, Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and India between them for nearly three centuries. These were Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia and Mughal India. Across the sea first the Portuguese and then the English and Dutch companies added a new maritime dimension to the ancient trading patterns.

In discussing the economic situation of Iran from the 14th to the 18th century, it seems to us helpful to keep two essential sectors distinct from one another: on the one hand the economy of the open countryside (above all, agriculture, cattle-breeding, hunting, fishing and mining) and on the other hand the urban economy (commerce and industry). Let us turn initially to the sector of rural production, with agriculture and cattle-breeding as its predominant elements. This created to a great extent the basis for almost all the economic activities we shall encounter in the period we are to treat. Subsequently the development of the various forms and institutions of landholding will have to be examined. Thereafter we shall treat the urban sectors of the economy (home trade and industrial production), and we shall end with a description of the financial and taxation systems.

THE RURAL ECONOMY

In the framework of agrarian production we encounter above all two sharply demarcated social groups. While the settled peasants mostly devote themselves to agriculture, cattle-breeding is above all in the hands of nomads and semi-nomads. Let us first discuss some characteristic features of peasant production in our period.

The damage done to Iran's agriculture by the Mongol invasion showed its effects for centuries, and it is questionable whether the country, down to the end of the Safavid period, ever regained the degree of prosperity that distinguished Iranian agriculture from the 4th/10th to the 6th/12th century, though there were indeed regional exceptions. The reasons for this setback lay above all in the destruction of irrigation works, some of them centuries old, and in the deforestation and depopulation of the country: both of the latter were direct consequences of the Mongol invasion.

In his chapter in volume V of this series, Professor Grabar wrote of the present difficulty of coordinating the monuments of the visual arts with the events of the time. To some extent this is less true of the Timurid and Safavid periods, for two reasons; the existence of near contemporary literary sources for the art of the period, especially the arts of the book; and secondly the clearer relation of political events, changes of capital, the patronage of princes, the greater extent of surviving material.

Still, even for this period, there are striking gaps in our knowledge: the small amount of architecture of the 9th/15th century in western Iran; the complete disappearance of 15th century carpets; the lack of any wall-paintings or of portrait drawings which can be attributed with any security to the 15th century; and of any paintings from Samarqand or Bukhārā of the same period. Again, there has been far too little systematic publication, in spite of the marked progress during the past forty years; we still await definitive publication of the Bāīsunqur and the Tahmāsp Shāh-nāma manuscripts, for instance; even the work of Bihzād, the most famous painter of Persia, is not yet satisfactorily defined nor his life-history properly established. However, the history of miniature painting is well enough known during these two and a half centuries for an account to be given of the stylistic course and for its assessment in the scale of world art. For, with architecture, this is now the major artistic expression of Iran during this period which witnessed the rise and decline of its classic style.

Although historians generally have regarded the Mongol irruption of the 7th/13th century into Persia and countries further to the west as an unmitigated disaster, this calamity may be taken as a starting point for this chapter because it in fact served one purpose that can be regarded as beneficial. The Mongol armies may have been motivated solely by lust for conquest and destruction, but even out of their evil sprang a positive development when they rent asunder the veil which had for so long shut off Persia and other Islamic countries from the West. For as a result of the Mongol invasions new contacts between the East and the West became established, though at first only slowly and with all the handicaps of much ignorance on both sides. As the pioneers in establishing this contact between East and West, such as William of Rubruck, the Polos, Marino Sanuto and Friar Odoric of Pordenone, all belonged to the period covered by the previous volume of this series, there is no need to say more here than to state that their achievements were of prime importance, since they showed the way for later travellers to follow. The East was no longer a closed book to the West, but as yet comparatively few pages had been turned. It must be borne in mind when studying the development of contact between Persia and the West that the “traffic” was not merely from West to East; there were also travellers in the opposite direction.

In the summer of 906–7/1501, after his victory over the Āq Quyūnlū, Ismā' īl entered the Türkmen capital Tabrīz, ascended the throne and took the title of Shah. He thereby founded the rule of the Safavid dynasty in Iran which was to last until 1148/1736. Thus after becoming Grand Master of the Ardabīl order on the death of his brother Sultān 'Alī, he finally attained the political power in pursuit of which his father and grandfather had already lost their lives.

Whether we think of this event as marking the beginning of modern Persian history or not, it certainly heralds a new era. The historical achievement of the Safavids was to establish a strong, enduring state in Iran after centuries of foreign rule and a lengthy period of political fragmentation. Although the preceding Türkmen dynasties, the Qarā Quyūnlū and the Āq Quyūnlū, created certain preconditions of this achievement and on the surface pursued similar aims for a short time – came near, indeed, to realising them – their success was only temporary. Despite all their military and political attainments in the late 8th/14th and 9th/15th centuries – for example, the way in which they maintained their independence vis-à-vis such powerful neighbours as the Ottomans, the Mamlūks and the Timurids, or founded new states culminating in the kingdoms of Jahān Shāh and Uzun Hasan – not one of their rulers succeeded in establishing a lasting political structure. Though their rule extended deep into Persian territory, it represents from the point of view of the history of Persia merely peripheral formations beyond or on the frontiers of Iran. Not until the Safavid era did Iran witness the rise of a state similar in importance to the Ottoman empire or the empire of the Egyptian Mamlūks. For more than two centuries the Safavid kingdom prolonged the older political and cultural tradition of Persia and endowed the country and its peoples with a unique character of historic significance, which has in part endured even up to the present day. Its typical features include the revival of the monarchist tradition, the acquisition of historically justified territory, the creation of a new military and political structure, the spread of a Shī' ī creed as the state religion, the Iranicisation of Persian Islam, the continued progress of modern Persian towards becoming the language of politics and administration in modern Iranian history, and the development of a specific culture which reached its peak in architecture (still visible today), but which also produced remarkable results in the intellectual life of the Persian nation.

The empire Tīmūr left behind at his death was of vast extent. But as there existed neither an effective disposition for the succession nor a firm political organisation for the realm, its unity immediately crumbled. In spite of this, large portions of the territory remained for a long period in the hands of Tīmūr's successors, some of them ruling over independent states, some in the manner of joint rulers and local princes as governors of the individual provinces in the daughter empires which now emerged. The distinction of this period was no longer military in character, nor political; it is to be sought rather in an astonishing upsurge of cultural and intellectual life, the shaping of which involved both Persian and Turkish elements under Timurid control and largely also Timurid patronage. After some years of violent conflict for the possession of the throne, the countries of Central Asia and the Near East again enjoyed periods of relative quiet in comparison with the reign of Tīmūr. During such periods many of the old wounds inflicted by Tīmūr in his campaigns and acts of devastation were healed. Conditions in individual regions, however, varied considerably, and hardly anywhere was there any sure guarantee of tranquil life, since local risings, disputes concerning the succession and incursions on the part of warlike neighbours were a constant possibility.

The period of Timurid government in Iran extends from 807/1405 to 913/1507. Successors of Tīmūr did in fact rule long after this period, in the Mughal empire in India founded by Zahīr al-Dīn Bābur.

Safavid buildings are preserved in greater abundance than those of any other period in Iran. Yet Safavid architecture is far more imperfectly known than that of the Saljūqs, Il-Khanids or Timurids. Several factors help to explain this paradox. One is quite simply prejudice. The finest Safavid buildings lend themselves to uncritical panegyric and readily enter the unlovely category of tourist attractions, and perhaps for that very reason many of them have not been subjected to detailed scholarly analysis. Alternatively, one might cite the inadequate documentation of Safavid architecture: the relative dearth of monographs, technical drawings and theses in this field makes any general survey premature. A third contributory factor is the over-exposure of a few significant buildings in Isfahān, whose very accessibility is a snare and throws into unjust obscurity comparatively inaccessible work at Ardabīl, Māhān, Kirmān and Mashhad.

This paradoxical neglect of a richly productive period has meant that the term “Safavid” is not yet precise enough to be used safely in the context of architecture. It does not yet connote special kinds of ground plan, spatial organisation, façade composition, muqarnas, arch profiles or vaulting, though it is a widely used concept in the field of tilework. One of the objects of this chapter is to demonstrate that at least three Safavid styles coexisted and that only the function of the building – religious, palatial or otherwise secular – determined which of them should be used.