Ali Shojaee Esfahani
Abstract
Sofeh Mountain is a natural-historic landscape where its value lay on all the natural and cultural components of the landscape. Thus, in order to protect and preserve the landscape, it is necessary to identify, record, and study Sofeh landscape in its entirety. The core components of the landscape consisted ...
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Sofeh Mountain is a natural-historic landscape where its value lay on all the natural and cultural components of the landscape. Thus, in order to protect and preserve the landscape, it is necessary to identify, record, and study Sofeh landscape in its entirety. The core components of the landscape consisted of mainly architectural remains of the Shahdez fortress or the Div fortress on the crest, Takht-e Soleyman Palace on the slopy part and other scattered structures on lower slope and base of the mountain up to the Zayandeh-Rud river side. The archaeological evidence point to the profound knowledge of the lands' inhabitants into the environment and geographical potentials of Isfahan. The present article is an attempt to determine the role and position of the Sofeh landscape in different historical periods by examining written sources and conducting archaeological investigations. The detailed documentation of archaeological evidence and investigating their characteristics not only help us to gain insight into the life history of the landscape but also facilitate determining its natural and historic boundaries and defining the core and buffer zones of the site that was registered as a national heritage list in 2005. The study demonstrates that Sofeh Mountain and its architectural complex is one of the concert achievements of Isfahan's inhabitants where a symbiotic relation between mountains, plains and rivers had been realized. The Sofeh mountain with its strategic location has always maintained its close relation with the city and particularly during the flourishing periods of Isfahan in the Islamic era, it was able to provide security and facilities for the city and the surrounding areas.
Ali Shojaee Esfahani
Abstract
As a part of urban planning and during the construction of the underground railroad of Charbagh Street, an excavation was carried out from February to May 2015 to detect the location of Jahan Nama Palace, which was destroyed in 1935. The excavation resulted in a better understanding of the Safavid governmental ...
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As a part of urban planning and during the construction of the underground railroad of Charbagh Street, an excavation was carried out from February to May 2015 to detect the location of Jahan Nama Palace, which was destroyed in 1935. The excavation resulted in a better understanding of the Safavid governmental house, Dowlatkhana, and Charbagh Street itself. The discovered materials belong to the pre-Islamic, pre-Safavid, Safavid, and post-Safavid periods. This article studies the architecture and artifacts, which were discovered during this excavation, of Jahan Nama Palace. Although the excavation had the usual limitations, such as time, resources, and space, it provides us with a comprehensive picture of the palace, the governmental house, and Charbagh Street. In a larger view, the results also help us locate other destroyed structures of the city more accurately. The pre-Safavid findings, which at the time were out of the city walls, represent details, which were previously unknown to us, of the suburbs of Isfahan in the middle ages. The discovery of the remains of Jahan Nama Palace, together with the maps and descriptions provided by historians and travelers, provides a framework for the planning of future investigations and the identification of related features of the city in pre- and post-Islamic era. These results demonstrate the importance of such investigations for our understanding of the historical cities of Iran. The discovery of pre-Safavid structures and pre-Islamic materials also underlines the importance of this part of the Isfahan Plain during earlier periods.
Ali Shojaee Esfahani
Abstract
On the outskirts of the old fortification of Isfahan, the Chahār-bāgh avenue was built during the expansion of the city in the reign of Šāh ʻAbbās I. At the starting point of Chahār-bāgh, the Jahān-namā palace was built by his command as well, which was the entrance monument of the Dowlat-xāneh. ...
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On the outskirts of the old fortification of Isfahan, the Chahār-bāgh avenue was built during the expansion of the city in the reign of Šāh ʻAbbās I. At the starting point of Chahār-bāgh, the Jahān-namā palace was built by his command as well, which was the entrance monument of the Dowlat-xāneh. Chahār-bāgh and Jahān-namā, like many other monuments of Isfahan, were destroyed after Safavids' collapse, particularly during the reign of Ẓel al-Solṭān, the Qajar governor of Isfahan. In some travel books of European travelers in Safavid era, and the textual and visual sources of Qajar, this district of Isfahan is mentioned and illustrated. The remaining visual sources of Safavid and Qajar era, and the documents of Dowlat-xāneh district in Pahlavi period, give us keys to find the location of the palace, and shed light on some of the architectural aspects of the complex that cannot be deciphered from textual sources. The present article is an attempt to a concurrent analysis of textual and visual sources. The extracted data helped in the development of the archaeological project of the Jahān-namā palace, and the northern and southern parts of the palace, which belong to the periods before Safavids, and after them.
Ali Shojaee Esfahani
Abstract
The cities of Jay in pre-Islamic and Yahudiya in the post Islamic period were located in a plain delimited from three sides by surrounding heights. This area, referred to in historical and geographical documents as the Rostāq-i Jay, was the most important rural district of Isfahan's khora. With rising ...
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The cities of Jay in pre-Islamic and Yahudiya in the post Islamic period were located in a plain delimited from three sides by surrounding heights. This area, referred to in historical and geographical documents as the Rostāq-i Jay, was the most important rural district of Isfahan's khora. With rising of Buyids, they decided to change the seat of power from Jay to Yahudiya and consequently the construction of the city wall. Given the complete destruction of both city,s wall, the only data available on their location are limited to the texts and few archaeological traces. Therefore, while analyzing the reasons for change of hub in Isfahan from Jay to Yahudiya, the article tries to determine the location of walls of Jay and Yahudiya in Jay district on the basis of geographical and historical texts, archeological evidence, old maps and satellite photos, and traces them on the current city,s map.
