Il est assez difficile de traiter le sujet des palais de l'époque safavide d'Isfahan, tout au moins sur le plan typologique. Il est bien connu, en effet, qu'en Iran--et à Isfahan en particulier--il est resté bien peu des édifices que nous sommes habitués à définir “palais,“ c'est-à-dire des demeures princières ou royales. Les exemples des édifices destinés à la “représentation” sont en réalité très peu nombreux et presque tous fortement modifiés; mais nous ne savons rien sur le côté intime et familial des ensembles royaux. A la différence de ce qui se produit en Europe, ou à peu près dans chaque ville et presque pour chaque famille noble on connaît ou on conserve les demeures, la Perse safavide (et pas elle seule) ne peut nous offrir aujourd'hui presque rien d'utile pour ce genre d'étude.

Any effort to relate the plan and the structures of the royal ensemble of Shāh ᶜAbbās and his successors with the existing remains must draw on the observations of the French jeweler Chardin who was in Persia between 1666 and 1670 and between 1671 and 1677. His first stay coincided with the last years of the reign of ᶜAbbās II and his second with the early years of the reign of Sulayman I. In 1666 he and a friend, Herbert Diager, “Chef du Commerce des Hollandais,” resolved to produce an account of Isfahan, “ou rien ne fut omis de ce que feroit digne d'être sû.” Aided by two local mullas, they piled up voluminous notes, and in 1676 Chardin abridged this material to some eighty pages.

According to Chardin, “La beauté d'Ispahan consiste particulièrement dans un grand nombre de Palais magnifiques, de Maisons gaies & riantes, de Caravanserais spacieux, de fort beaux Bazars, & de Canaux & de Ruës, dont les côtez sont couverts de haut platanes.“

The splendour of Safavid Isfahan is no doubt proverbial. The landmarks that come to mind--the great Maydān-i Shāh with its stage perpetually set, the elegant Chahār Bāgh avenue, the graceful bridges slung across the Zayandah Rud--would make it appear as though the topography of Isfahan today, except for the old Jāmiᶜ, is a Safavid one. It is hard to believe, however, that the ages have not left a deeper mark, that the patterns of life generated in the pre-Safavid past did not affect profoundly the course of subsequent development.

Consider for example the curious orientation of Shāh ᶜAbbās’ imperial centerpiece, the Maydān-i Shāh. The two imperial mosques built to the south and east of the Maydān, the Masjid-i Shāh and the Luṭfallah Mosque, awkwardly twist on their axes in order to face the proper direction for prayer, the qiblah.

Before 1600 few Europeans visited Persia. But with the advent of the seventeenth century there was a marked change from several causes: first, the awakened interest in Eastern trade; the East India Company of London was chartered on 31 December 1600, the Dutch East India Company less than two years later; second, the common enmity against the Turk shared by Persia and Western Europe; third, a by-product of that, Shāh ᶜAbbās’ tolerant and even encouraging attitude to Christians; fourth, the freeing of Persian Gulf ports from Portuguese domination; fifth, reports filtering back to Europe of the wonders of Persia and particularly of its splendid new capital; sixth, more Europeans with the means and urge to travel.

And so we have, passing through Isfahan or settling there for long periods, a motley band of Europeans--ambassadors and adventurers, monks and mountebanks, traders and travellers, including combinations of each. Some could scarcely read or write, others wrote volumes--some went on writing about it for the rest of their lives.

The accession of Shāh ᶜAbbās I to the Safavid throne in 1587 does not mark an immediate, abrupt departure from earlier traditions of royal patronage. Instead, it is a culmination of forces at work throughout the second half of the sixteenth century which come together to alter both the nature of painting and of patronage during his reign. In part, these modifications of previous practice are due to the monarch's own aesthetics; in part, they are the result of the social and economic transformation of late sixteenth century Iran. In some ways the shah's patronage of painting would seem to be more catholic and less determined than that of his predecessors Ismaᶜīl I and Ṭahmāsp, and during his long reign it moves in several different directions and develops at least two divergent styles.

In the Safavid period the concepts of miniature painting, already fully established in the Timurid period, still prevailed with certain modifications and changes in emphasis. Timurid painting in its turn had expanded and refined an art which had developed in the course of the fourteenth century into the “kind of painting,” as Dūst Muḥammad wrote in the mid-sixteenth century, “which is current at the present time.” Although Persian miniature painting achieved its first stage of maturity under the Jalā'irid sultans in the second half of the fourteenth century, the development was uneven. During the Jalā'irid and subsequent Timurid periods illustrations were produced which were markedly different from each other not only in concept and purpose but also in their stage of artistic development and degree of sophistication.

The study of the various factors that influenced the development of the art of the book in Iran is a vast subject.

Almost nothing of monumental painting in the Islamic world survives. Speculation about its existence and its original appearance has long taken the place of the study of existing monuments. One consoled oneself with the consideration that at least part of the immense loss of monumental Islamic painting is compensated for by the fact that the surviving miniature paintings--or where those are lacking, paintings on pottery, glass, and ivory--in all likelihood reflect both in style and iconography the destroyed wall-paintings which had decorated the palaces of the rulers, princes, and wealthy.

This assumption was supported by the close correspondance between the few fragments of wall-painting surviving from the Seljuq period in Iran and the mina'i and lustre-painted potteries of the time. It was finally substantiated by the discovery of the Varqah va Gulshah manuscript in Istanbul, illustrated with paintings in a style corresponding closely to both the surviving fragments of wall-paintings and the painted potteries of the period.

Shortly after the year 1000, Abū Nuᶜaym al-Iṣfahānī (948-1037), the author of a historical study about his hometown, called a ten volume work on Muslim hagiography with a poignant title, Ḥilyat al-auliyā, “The Ornament of the Saints.” At that moment, the learned and pious author, grandson of a noted aesthetic, could scarcely foresee that Iran would indeed deserve the epithet of being “decorated by saints” during the centuries to come even more than before Abū Nuᶜaym's lifetime. Therefore, it seems not improper to take this charming title as a starting point for some deliberations about the religious situation in early Muslim Iran.

Abū Nuᶜaym was one of the numerous disciples of Ibn Khafīf, the great saint of Fars who died, a centenarian, in 982 in his hometown Shiraz. We may single out this mystic for our purpose to give a short survey of pre-Safavid religious life in Iran.

The history of Iranian metalwork has yet to be written. Published material is scanty compared with the number of pieces on record in public institutions, not to mention private collections. But no period has been so blatantly neglected as the Safavid period and the half century of Timurid rule during which the foundations of much of Safavid art were laid.

The first substantial body of material was if not published stricto sensu, at least illustrated in the Survey of Persian Art. Fourteen bronze, brass, and tinned copper vessels, plus a number of “steel” implements and weapons, a couple of bronze ensigns and astronomical instruments which will not be considered in this paper, were dealt with in a short text of general content. Alas not a few errors, which crept into the text as well as the brief captions, marred the reader's pleasure. There was no attempt to read the Persian and Arabic inscriptions except for dates.

The fact that has put Isfahan among the lasting cities and guaranteed its survival has undoubtedly been the permanent co-existence of the old and the new. The confrontation of old and new has brought about that necessary dynamism which has caused its growth, expansion and enrichment. Isfahan's favorable location in the central Iranian plateau and its plentitude of water and fertile land drew particular attention to it in times of political and cultural movements that have more often been constructive than destructive.

As far as we know, with the onset of Islam there occurred a new phenomenon that can be characterized by urban settlement and Isfahan began its dynamic development. This was also the time when local authorities, attempting to become autonomous, tried to create cities outside the borders of Mesopotamia raking with Baghdad. In the region of Isfahan, the first Islamic nucleus was established in fehe southern neighborhood of Yahūdiyyah and in a village called Khushīnān. As settlements began to grow around this new nucleus, the first real center of a town called “Isfahan” was formed at the juncture of the new and the old settlements.

The most common classification of Persian literature is the classification according to geographical divisions. The literary style sabk carries the name of the geographical area in which it reached its climax. The boundaries of these divisions, however, are very flexible.

The three main literary styles which follow each other consecutively are known as: Khurasani, ᶜIraqi, and Hindi. The time spans of each style are equally flexible. Within these broad geographical divisions we then come across certain “literary schools” which reflect regional peculiarities and idiosyncrasies and are identified with smaller entities like provinces or towns. For example, there are: the Azerbayjani school, the Tabriz school, or the Shirvan school. This paper deals with literature in Isfahan in pre-Safavid times.

Isfahan has enjoyed a central geographical position and played a very important role in the history of Iran. It is, therefore, natural that in the history of Persian literature we come across The Isfahan School of poetry.