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.“

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.

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.

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.

Among the many creative periods in the artistic history of Isfahan, two are outstanding: that of the Seljuqs in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and that of Shāh ᶜAbbās I (1587-1629). But, while the Seljuq period is primarily represented by one monument, the Masjid-i Jamīᶜ, that of Shāh ᶜAbbās is mirrored not only by many important buildings of great aesthetic appeal, but by the decorative arts, paintings, and drawings as well. Indeed, it presents itself in such a characteristic manner that one can readily compare it with any of the great artistic periods of Western art, such as the Gothic or Baroque ages, where architecture, sculpture, painting and the decorative arts are all unmistakably stamped with the specific imprint of the time.

Modern Middle Eastern cities, from Afghanistan to Morocco, have, in addition to an almost limitless variety of detail, some general characteristics in common. These common features include among many other things, the narrow, twisting, often dead-end alleys on which the houses in the older quarters are typically located. These houses are inward-oriented to a degree that contrasts markedly and in many ways with “western” urban dwellings. These alleys and houses are an integral part of a complex whole that also includes mosques, shrines, madrasahs, bathhouses and bazaars.

Other general characteristics of modern Middle Eastern cities are the new wide streets for automotive traffic that form networks around the old quarters and often are cut through them as well. Visually, these new streets and the new buildings that accompany them often contrast so sharply with the old that many people are tempted to assume the existence of radically different cultural patterns among their respective inhabitants, radical differences that are isomorphic with the differences in street patterns and architecture.

In their “recreation of the Persian nationality” and their proclamation of Shiᶜite Islam as the official state religion of Persia, the Safavids performed a crucial historical role. They formalized, institutionalized, intensified and politicized the Sunni-Shiᶜite doctrinal and regional schism within the Islamic world. Coming in the wake of the four centuries of Turko-Mongol invasions which had already helped to “harden the division of the Muslim lands into separate Arabic, Persian and Turkish regions between which literary communication was confined to the restricted circles of the educated,“ the triumph of the Shiᶜite revolution in Persia formalized the division of Islamic Asia into three major Muslim political entities: Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal. Safavid Persia drove wedges between the Sunni Ottoman empire, the Mughal empire and Central Asia. Safavid and shicite Persia, however, was not a monolith. It was an ethnic, linguistic, and religious mosaic.

If viewed in full historical perspective, Isfahan may reasonably claim to have been the most important city on the Iranian plateau. It is also the most studied. However, although its unique historical monuments may possibly have (compared with the historiography of other great cities) received scholarly attention commensurate with the city's historical role, relatively little attention has been paid to its social and ecological history. Why did Shāh ᶜAbbās choose Isfahan for his capital? What are the geographical factors that distinguish the city of Isfahan from the rest of the plateau? What were their implications for the social and political history of the city? More specifically, what was the role of the river, the Zayandah Rud, in the growth of the city? Is it profitable to seek a cause and effect relationship between the organization of irrigation for the agricultural base of the region's economy and the political and economic development of the city?