The Pir-i Bakran mausoleum (completed by 1312–13; Linjan, Isfahan) is considered to be a typical example of exuberant Ilkhanid architectural decoration. In the 1970s, the International Association of Mediterranean and Oriental Studies (IsMEO) undertook significant research and restoration work on the mausoleum. After their efforts were interrupted by the onset of the Iranian Revolution, restoration activities were continued by the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization. Almost four decades later, questions concerning the mausoleum’s history, function, decorative program, patronage, and craftsmen—as well as the identity of the deceased—nonetheless remain unresolved. The mausoleum’s tile and original polychrome stucco decoration also require further scholarly attention.
This article proposes a new view of the mausoleum’s decorative aesthetic and contributes to our understanding of the Ilkhanid architectural legacy. The article argues that, rather than being a haphazard application, the aesthetic characteristics of Pir-i Bakran’s revetments were determined by multiple undertakings executed according to specific decorative principles. Moreover, the mausoleum’s decorative program illustrates a rapid change in Ilkhanid decorative principles and aesthetics. I also propose a hypothetical timeline of mausoleum’s constructive and decorative undertakings, and reconsider its function and political significance.
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Paone, “Restauro,” 265; Bernard O’Kane, “Timurid Stucco Decoration,” Annales Islamologiques 20 (1984): 61–84, at 61; Ernst J. Grube, “Ilkhanid Stucco Decoration: Notes on the Stucco Decoration of Pir-i Bakran,” in Isfahan, Quaderni del Seminario di iranistica, uralo-altaistica e caucasologia dell’Università degli studi di Venezia 10 (Venice, 1981), 85–96, at 87, 91.
Rudolf M. Riefstahl, “Persian Islamic Stucco Sculptures,” The Art Bulletin 13, no. 4 (1931): 438–63; Melanie Gibson, “A Symbolic Khassakiyya: Representations of the Palace Guard in Murals and Stucco Sculpture,” in Islamic Art, Architecture and Material Culture: New Perspectives, ed. Margaret S. Graves (Oxford, 2012), 81–91; Maryam D. Ekhtiar et al., Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York and New Haven, CT, 2011), 102–4; Carl F. Riter, “Persian and Turkish Architectural Decoration,” Oriental Art 15, no. 3 (1969): 194–200; Robert Hillenbrand, “A Monumental Seljuk Stucco Panel,” in Christie’s London, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds: Including Art from the Collection of Dr. Mohammed Said Farsi. Tuesday 5 October 2010 (London, 2010), 94–100. The authenticity of these figures, with a focus on the two Seljuk figures stored at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, has been researched by Stefan Heidemann and colleagues. See Stefan Heidemann, Jean-François de Lapérouse, and Vicki Parry, “The Large Audience: Life-Sized Stucco Figures of Royal Princes from the Seljuq Period,” Muqarnas 31 (2014): 35–71. Although I have considered these objects in the course of this research, I have not referred to them elsewhere in this article due to doubts concerning their originality. This decision is also based on my examination of the three Seljuk stucco figures at the V&A and subsequent discussion of these figures with Dr. Mariam Rosser Owen (July 22, 2014). I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Mariam Rosser Owen for taking time to show me the stucco objects from storage at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Wilber, Architecture, 123–24; Brambilla, “Large Scale Building Techniques,” 21–22.
Wilber, Architecture, 100–104; “Blair and Bloom,” accessed August 10, 2016, http://archnet.org/collections/15.
Wilber, Architecture, 83–84, 121–24, 141–45, 174; Rosario Paone, “The Mongol Colonization of the Isfahān Region,” in Isfahan, Quaderni del Seminario di iranistica, uralo-altaistica e caucasologia dell’Università degli studi di Venezia 10 (Venice, 1981), 1–30, at 19.
André Godard, “Iṣfahān,” Athār-é Īrān: Annales du Service archéologique de l’Īrān 2 (1937): 7–176, at 29–35.
André Godard, “Iṣfahān,” Athār-é Īrān: Annales du Service archéologique de l’Īrān 2 (1937): 7–176, at 29–35.
Grube, “Ilkhanid Stucco,” 85–96; George Douglas Pickett, “The Efflorescence of Persian Kashi: The Glazed Architectural Decoration of Islamic Iran in the Mongol and Muzaffarid Periods” (PhD diss., University of London, SOAS, 1980), 124–30.
Pickett, “Efflorescence,” 124–30. See also Douglas Pickett, Early Persian Tilework: The Medieval Flowering of Kāshī (Madison, NJ, and London, 1997).
Paone, “Mongol Colonization,” 1–30. See also Hardy-Guilbert, “Mausolée de Pir-i Bakran,” 187–98.
Bernard O’Kane, “The Bihbihani Anthology and Its Antecedents,” Oriental Art 45, no. 4 (1999–2000): 9–18.
Tehnyat Majeed, “The Role of the Qur’anic and Religious Inscriptions in the Buqʿa Pīr-i Bakrān, Isfahan: The Shīʿī Reign of Öljeytü Khudābande in Īlkhānid Iran,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 10, no. 2 (2008): 111–23. See also Tehnyat Majeed, “The Phenomenon of the Square Kufic Script: The Cases of Ilkhanid Isfahan and Bahri Mamluk Cairo” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2006).
See also Edgar Knobloch, “Pir-e Baqran: Sanctuaire islamique du XIVe siècle,” Archéologia 371 (October 2000): 42–47; Haji-Qassemi, Ganjnameh, 11:200–207.
Blair, “Ilkhanid Shrine,” 5–15. See also Jonathan M. Bloom and Sheila S. Blair, eds., The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture, 3 vols. (Oxford and New York, 2009), s.v. “Natanz.”
Lisa Golombek, “The Chronology of Turbat-i Shaikh Jām,” Iran 9 (1971): 27–44, at 28, 31. See also Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. “Aḥmad-e Jām,” by H. Moayyad.
Honarfar, Ganjīna, 263; G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, The Muslim and Christian Calendars: Being Tables for the Conversion of Muslim and Christian Dates from the Hijra to the Year A.D. 2000, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 1977).
Paone, “Restauro,” 274, 277. The bedrock underneath the mausoleum was documented by the IsMEO team during the restoration interventions. See Archivio fotografico del Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale, Fondo IsIAO, negatives no. 11876/9 (Rosario Paone, 1975) and 10923/2 (Rosario Paone, 1974).
Godard, “Iṣfahān,” 30, 32; Pope and Ackerman, Survey, 3:1077–78; Blair, “Ilkhanid Shrine,” 49.
Morgan, Mongols, 225. See also Charles Melville, “The Itineraries of Sultan Öljeitü, 1304–16,” Iran 28 (1990): 55–70; Charles Melville, “Pādshāh-i Islām: The Conversion of Sultan Maḥmud Ghāzān Khān,” in History and Literature in Iran: Persian and Islamic Studies in Honour of P. W. Avery, Pembroke Papers 1, ed. Charles Melville (Cambridge, 1990), 159–77; Charles Melville, “History: From the Saljuqs to the Aq Qoyunlu (ca. 1000–1500 C.E.),” Iranian Studies 31, no. 3–4 (1998): 473–82.
Lisa Golombek, “The Cult of Saints and Shrine Architecture in the Fourteenth Century,” in Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy, and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles, ed. Dickran K. Kouymjian (Beirut, 1974), 419–30, at 429–30. See also Sheila S. Blair, “Sufi Saints and Shrine Architecture in the Early Fourteenth Century,” Muqarnas 7 (1990): 35–49; Sheila S. Blair, “Patterns of Patronage and Production in Ilkhanid Iran: The Case of Rashid al-Din,” in The Court of the Il-khans, 1290–1340, ed. Julian Raby and Teresa Fitzherbert (Oxford and New York, 1996), 39–62.
Paone, “Mongol Colonization,” 15–16. See also Haji-Qassemi, Ganjnameh, 11:218–21.
Blair, “Ilkhanid Shrine,” 24–25; Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. “Boqʿa,” by Hamid Algar.
Golombek, “Cult,” 420, 422–23, 425, 427. See also Bernard O’Kane, “Naṭanz and Turbat-i Jām: New Light on Fourteenth Century Iranian Stucco,” Studia Iranica 21 (1992): 85–92.
Paone, “Restauro,” 273. IsMEO interventions on the mausoleum have been extensively documented. These documents are now part of the Fondo IsIAO (IsIAO deposit) of the Archivio Fotografico (photographical archive) at the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale ‘Giuseppe Tucci’ (MNAO) in Rome.
See Majeed, “Role,” 114; Rosario Paone, e-mail messages to author, September 20 and 29, 2016.
Rosario Paone, “C’era una volta, ad Esfahan, un museo,” Museologia 7 (1980): 65–76, at 66. See also the website of Christie’s, Islamic and Indian Art Including Property from the Heidi Vollmoeller and Theodor Sehmer Collections, London, South Kensington, April 30, 2004, lot 70: “A Kashan molded turquoise glazed window tile, central Iran, 13th century”; and ibid., Indian and Islamic Works of Art, London, South Kensington, April 7, 2006, lot 366: “An octagonal turquoise glazed tile, Kashan, 12th–13th century.” One of these tiles is in the possession of the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah in Kuwait and some other such tiles are kept in the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens. Another perforated tile is at the Museum of Islamic Art in Bamberg. The current location of the rest of the tile revetments belonging to these separation grills is unknown, but I hope that it will be clarified in the course of my doctoral research.
Blair, “Ilkhanid Shrine,” 25; Shani, Monumental Manifestation, 154.
See also Godard, “Iṣfahān,” 32, 35; Honarfar, Ganjīna, 253–66.
Honarfar, Ganjīna, 253–66; Freeman-Grenville, Muslim and Christian Calendars, 36.
Shani, Monumental Manifestation, 65, 76, 85–87, 93–94, 96–97, 141, 177–79, 271; Korn, “Saljuq Dome Chambers”; Korn, “Masǧid-i Gunbad”; Lorenz Korn, “Architecture and Ornament in the Great Mosque of Golpayegan (Iran),” Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie 3 (2012): 212–36, at 214.
Wilber, Architecture, 83, 153; Charles Kyrle Wilkinson, Nishapur: Some Early Islamic Buildings and Their Decoration (New York, 1986), 117, 126, 202.
Golombek, “Cult,” 429; Blair, “Ilkhanid Shrine,” 52; Brambilla, “Large Scale Building Techniques,” 5; Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlullāh, Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh, in Classical Writings of the Medieval Islamic World: Persian Histories of the Mongol Dynasties, vol. 3, Jami‘u’t-Tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles, trans. and annotated by Wheeler M. Thackston (London, 2012), 480–533.
Wilber, Architecture, 83, 141–45, 174; Paone, “Mongol Colonization,” 19; Golombek, “Chronology,” 32–34.
Wilber, Architecture, 141; George C. Miles, “The Inscriptions of the Masjid-i Jāmiʿat Ashtarjān,” Iran 12 (1974): 89–98.
Kakhki, “Introduction,” 238. Note: my recent examination of the mihrab of the Farfan Friday mosque in May 2016 suggests that the mihrab was executed in two stages. Salehi dates the mihrab based on his stylistic comparison of the mihrab’s upper lunette to the stuccos of the Haftshuʾiya Friday mosque, Ashtarjan Friday mosque, and the Pir-i Bakran mausoleum. My examination of the mihrab’s joints leads me to suggest that this lunette was not part of the original mihrab; it was a later modification. If so, it is not possible to date the entire mihrab to ca. 1320. Until further evidence is found, it must be assumed that the stucco lunette was executed around 1320, but that the mihrab is earlier. Additional evidence in favor of this suggestion is the disparity between the carving techniques and depth of the stucco reliefs of the mihrab and its upper lunette.
Shani, Monumental Manifestation, 104–7; Blair, “Ilkhanid Shrine,” 38–39.
Wilber, Architecture, 122. See also Mohammad Ebrahim Zarei et al., “An Analytical View on the Stucco Decorations of Ilkhanid Religious Buildings: A Case Study of Pir-i Bakran, Isfahan, Iran,” Iranian Journal of Archaeological Studies 2, no. 2 (2012): 95–108, at 100, 105–7. Detailed descriptions of pigmentation traces were first provided by Hardy-Guilbert, “Mausolée de Pir-i Bakran,” 51. See Shekofte and Kakhki, “Techniques,” for a discussion of Ilkhanid stucco coloring techniques.
J. W. Allan, “Abū’l-Qāsim’s Treatise on Ceramics,” Iran 11 (1973): 111–20; Watson, Ceramics, 28–30; Mustawfī, “Geographical Part,” 2:192–99.
Cheryl Porter, “The Science of Color: Color Analysis and the Roles of Economics, Geography, and Tradition on the Artist’s Choice of Colors for Manuscript Painting,” in And Diverse Are Their Hues: Color in Islamic Art and Culture, ed. Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair (New Haven, 2011), 205–21, at 210, 213–15.
Mehdi Bahrami, “Some Examples of Il-Khanid Art,” Bulletin of the American Institute for Iranian Art and Archaeology 5, no. 3 (1938): 257–60, at 257, 259; Paone, “Restauro,” 277.
Giovanna Ventrone, “On a Variety of Ilkhanid Wall Decoration,” in Isfahan, Quaderni del Seminario di iranistica, uralo-altaistica e caucasologia dell’Università degli studi di Venezia 10 (Venice, 1981), 53–68, at 60–61, 63.
Majeed, “Role,” 119–22; Pickett, “Efflorescence,” 128; Pope and Ackerman, Survey, 3:1078. The first scholar to propose an earlier date for the mihrab was Claire Hardy-Guilbert, “Mausolée de Pir-i Bakran.” Her research suggests that the mihrab was installed during the first intervention after the shaykh’s death, which she estimates to be in 1303, based on the inscription on the shaykh’s cenotaph. As opposed to Hardy-Guilbert’s hypothesis, I suggest here that the mihrab had already been installed in the mausoleum before the death of the shaykh, which occurred on the October 25, 1303. Both hypotheses are, however, based on similar methodology.
Wilber, Architecture, 112–13. See also Haji-Qassemi, Ganjnameh, 7:154–59.
Freeman-Grenville, Muslim and Christian Calendars, 36. See also Zarei et al., “Analytical View,” 102.
See Giovanni Oman, “Il ‘cufico quadrato’: Tentativo di definizione delle tre varietà sinora riscontrate,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 16 (1998): 69–88; Giovanni Oman, “Seconda iscrizione in cufico ‘quadrato’ nella moschea mausoleo di Pir-i Bakran in Iran,” Quaderni di studi arabi 17 (1999): 147–57.
Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, 153–56; Pickett, “Efflorescence,” 125.
Honarfar, Ganjīna, 256, 259–60. See also Giovanni Oman, “Il ‘cufico quadrato’: Tentativo di definizione delle tre varietà sinora riscontrate,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 16 (1998): 69–88; Giovanni Oman, “Seconda iscrizione in cufico ‘quadrato’ nella moschea mausoleo di Pir-i Bakran in Iran,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 17 (1999): 147–57.
Judith Pfeiffer, “Conversion Versions: Sultan Öljeytü’s Conversion to Shi‘ism (709/1309) in Muslim Narrative Sources,” Mongolian Studies 22 (1999): 35–67.
See George C. Miles, “The Inscriptions of the Masjid-i Jāmiʿ at Ashtarjān,” Iran 12 (1974): 89–98.
Pickett, “Efflorescence,” 127; Godard, “Iṣfahān,” 35; Honarfar, Ganjīna, 256, 259–60.
Blair, “Ilkhanid Shrine,” 39. See also A. J. Arberry et al., The Chester Beatty Library: A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts and Miniatures, 3 vols. (Dublin, 1959–62), 1:103.
Hamzavi and Aslani, Ārāyahā-yi miʿmārī-i, 100. This publication states that the Pir-i Bakran signature Muhammad Shah naqqāsh can also be found on the Ilkhanid wooden minbar of the Naʿin Friday mosque. The Pir-i Bakran signature, however, only partially corresponds to the Naʿin signature. The signature Muhammad Shah naqqāsh from Pir-i Bakran can hardly denote the same person as in the full Naʿin signature, ʿamal Mahmud Shah bin Muhammad al-naqqāsh al-Kirmani. Theoretically, but not necessarily, Muhammad Shah naqqāsh could be the father of Mahmud Shah bin Muhammad al-naqqāsh al-Kirmani. Further research should allow us to better understand the relationship between these two signatures.
See Paul Wittek, “Epigraphical Notice,” Ars Islamica 5, no. 1 (1938): 33–34; Myron Bement Smith, “The Wood Mimbar in the Masdjid-i Djami’, Nāīn,” Ars Islamica 5, no. 1 (1938), fig. 4. See also Francesco Noci, “Un Antico Minbar in Legno della Masjid-i Jum’a di Isfahan,” Quaderni dell’Istituto di Studi Islamici Serie II 1 (Rome, 1982), 1–28.
See also Paone, “Mongol Colonization,” 18–19; Kakhki, “Introduction,” 234–38.
Wilkinson, Nishapur, 116–58, 192–202, 229–42, 263, 310–12; M. S. Dimand, “Samanid Stucco Decoration from Nishapur,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 58, no. 2 (1938): 258–61; Alexander Nagel, “Colors, Gilding, and Painted Motifs in Persepolis: Approaching the Polychromy of Achaemenid Persian Architectural Sculpture, c. 520–330 BCE” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2010); Cardell-Fernández and Navarrete-Aguilera, “Pigment”; Olga Bush, “‘Designs Always Polychromed or Gilded’: The Aesthetics of Color in the Alhambra,” in And Diverse Are Their Hues, ed. Bloom and Blair, 53–75.
Shani, Monumental Manifestation, 85; Pope and Ackerman, Survey, 3:1079; Grube, “Ilkhanid Stucco,” 87. See also Raya Shani, “On the Stylistic Idiosyncrasies of a Saljūq Stucco Workshop from the Region of Kāshān,” Iran 27 (1989): 67–74.
Shani, Monumental Manifestation, 85; Pope and Ackerman, Survey, 3:1079; Grube, “Ilkhanid Stucco,” 87; Wilber, Architecture, 100–104.
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The Pir-i Bakran mausoleum (completed by 1312–13; Linjan, Isfahan) is considered to be a typical example of exuberant Ilkhanid architectural decoration. In the 1970s, the International Association of Mediterranean and Oriental Studies (IsMEO) undertook significant research and restoration work on the mausoleum. After their efforts were interrupted by the onset of the Iranian Revolution, restoration activities were continued by the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization. Almost four decades later, questions concerning the mausoleum’s history, function, decorative program, patronage, and craftsmen—as well as the identity of the deceased—nonetheless remain unresolved. The mausoleum’s tile and original polychrome stucco decoration also require further scholarly attention.
This article proposes a new view of the mausoleum’s decorative aesthetic and contributes to our understanding of the Ilkhanid architectural legacy. The article argues that, rather than being a haphazard application, the aesthetic characteristics of Pir-i Bakran’s revetments were determined by multiple undertakings executed according to specific decorative principles. Moreover, the mausoleum’s decorative program illustrates a rapid change in Ilkhanid decorative principles and aesthetics. I also propose a hypothetical timeline of mausoleum’s constructive and decorative undertakings, and reconsider its function and political significance.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1284 | 121 | 20 |
Full Text Views | 132 | 3 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 99 | 11 | 4 |