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Isfahan and its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi'ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran
Sussan Babaie
This beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501–1722) explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and Perso-Shi'i practice of kingship. An immense building campaign, initiated in 1590-91, transformed Isfahan from a provincial, medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered representation of the first Imami Shi'i empire in the history of Islam. Sussan Babaie argues that since the Safavid claim presumed the inheritance both of the charisma of the Shi'i Imams and of the aura of royal splendor integral to ancient Persian notions of kingship, a ceremonial regime was gradually devised in which access and proximity to the shah assumed the contours of an institutionalized form of feasting.
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Contents
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List of Figures
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List of Plates
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Series Editor’s Foreword
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Preface and Acknowledgments
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Note on the Transliteration System
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Safavid Dynastic Chart
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Timeline of Safavid Capital Cities and Major Structures
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Chapter 1 Introduction: Conviviality, Charismatic Absolutism, and the Persianization of Shi'ism
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Chapter 2 Peripatetic Kings and Palaces: FromTabriz to Qazvin in the Sixteenth Century
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Chapter 3 Dwelling in Paradise, or Isfahan “Half the World”
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Chapter 4 “The Abode of Felicitous Rule” or the Daulatkhane Royal Precinct
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Chapter 5 The Spatial Choreography of Conviviality: the Palaces of Isfahan
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Chapter 6 Feasting and the Perso-Shi'i Etiquette of Kingship
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Chapter 7 Epilogue: The Fall of Isfahan
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Select Bibliography
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Illustration Acknowledgments
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Index
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Citable Link
Published: 2008
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- 978-0-7486-3375-3 (hardcover)