Journal of Studies on Iranian Islamic City
Year:2010 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

There is not an agreed definition for the very important term of “Islamic city.” It seems that the best and the most appropriate definition for “Islamic city” should be derived from the basic Islamic sacred texts, especially from the Holly Quran. To present the definition of such issue the first stage is recognition of its foundations, definition of its pillars, its paradigm, its attributes and classification of its principle. In regard to the comprehensiveness, eternality and universality of Islam, this article endeavors to derive the foundations, pillars, paradigm, attributes and principles of Islamic city based on the Holly Quran. The main hypothesis of the research is that there is no specific physical pattern for the Islamic city and depends on the place and time different patterns may occur but they have followed similar foundations, pillars and so on. The main headings in this article are as follows: Introduction, foundations of Islamic city, pillars of Islamic city, attributes of Islamic city, manifestation of Islamic city, Principles of Islamic Urban design and planning and conclusion.

Cities and biological communities are one of the most apparent and objective manifestations of human culture that can provide objective and perceptual of space, most intellectual and mental effective components and the results. In addition to this type of communication, urban spaces, are the culture producers and influencing it and can play effective role in shaping the mental system and community infrastructure. Muslim cities face the same challenges, too.In this paper, author has analyzed the formation of foundations and organization principles of traditional Islamic cities in order to achieve its historical antecedent of Islamic cities, physical features and the factors which affect their formation. The analysis of discipline and fundamentals is explaining the formation of Islamic cities, with plans after spiritual foundation of culture and Islamic art in the life and base of urban fabric, and the unity oriented principles of religious culture in coordinator discipline of the Islamic city is emphasized.

Endowment is an Islamic tradition based on which, the individuals and the institutes endows part or all of their properties to a public or private organization. This good and praised tradition has long roots in the Islamic ideology and has had a notable role in the development of Islamic and religious cities in particular. So in Iran, the history and role of endowment in the development of urban physical spaces has been proved. In this paper the historic role of endowment in the formation and development of physical spaces of Iranian-Islamic cities was studied and determined. The selected research method in this paper is a combination of library and field studies and its main goal is an evaluation of the effects of endowment in the development of urban spaces of Iranian cities and particularly the city of Isfahan. The results of this research show that the endowment of lands in the Islamic cities of Iran, specially the city of Isfahan leads to their horizontal growth and this trend decreases as we distant from the location of endowed lands to the periphery of the city.The endowed lands are effective on the horizontal growth of the city and they have become different from their original status during the physical development of the city and have turn into part of the urban fabric. Therefore, the endowed lands and physical development of the city have two-sided and bilateral effects on each other.

Security is the arena through which all life blessings are manifested. Elimination of security endangers other welfare issues and material and spiritual gifs of life. In an environment devoid of security, no possibility exists for a life associated with pride, comfort, and endeavour for promoting social purposes. The holy religion of Islam considers the security issue as an important principle of life and the other issues as contingent upon it. In this regard, security is the most important principe of urban dwelling. Obviously, emergence of secure city depends on elimination of insecurity from the urban domain. Countering insecurity in a city will not be realized without gaining knowledge on the causes of its emergence. The scientific advances and developments in the recent centuries have not led to any considerable success in creating security for the citizens of urban areas. Increase of natural disasters and escalation of social insecurity in the recent decades are indicative of human’s incapability in encountering insecurity. In this study, a new theory has been explained based on the firm fundamentals of Islam concerning the fact that social changes underlie natural changes and give rise to natural and unnatural insecurities in social behaviours of man, of which some will be explained by referring to religious references.

Tehran metropolitan city as a capital of the country has different functions. The interference in central fabric of this city is very adventurous, long time for doing, complicated and sensitive. This matter was interested for urban planners and urban designers. Interference in eroded fabric of Tehran city brings out the way of rehabilitation and intervention so with carrying out a project of renovation in the corner of this fabric will be diffuse to the other parts of fabric.This paper presents the strategies of rehabilitation and renovation in eroded fabric of the Shahid Khoob-bakht quarter with descriptive - analytic method. The results show that the role of exogenous factors in rehabilitation and renovation in eroded fabric is more serious than indigenous factors in the quarter.

The Rapid urban growth, as a result of industrial revolution and technological progress, significantly has effected on the old and historical textures and has disturbed the environmental and social balances. Simultaneous occurrence of numerous problems and their effects on various areas, the attention to damaged and old fabric and eliminate of their instability has become a serious and central issue and leaded the related organizations to organize and regeneration of the mentioned textures and has indicated the necessity of interference in these textures in various periods of time. Urban improvement and renewal, especially since nineteen century till now, shows that in each period, based on the conditions of that time, a Certain approach and attitude has dominated in interference in the old and historical textures and the cooperative in each time with the knowledge of each approach weaknesses, without a complete rejection attempted to correct and perfect them. Thus, the approaches of urban renovation and improvement in their way to change and evolution has been perfected from urban reconstruction, revitalization, renewal and redevelopment to urban regeneration and renaissance and in its path, it has experienced a passage from the only attention to the framework to the emphasis on social, economical, art and cultural aspects. The hypothesis of this study can be considered as the following: -The urban improvement and renovation has passed some periods of change and evolution and nowadays it is in a position which is called “urban regeneration” and its recent procedure is called “urban renaissance”.-In these periods, urban renovation and improvement are considered as an integrated performance with social, economic, environmental and framework aspects and providing proper circumstances for reaching development with sustainability and sustainable developments.This study follows two main paths: The first, the way which connects the urban improvement and renewal to urban regeneration and renaissance and transforms it to an all aspect interferer procedure which can be contemporized. The second way is the conceptualizations if urban regeneration approaches and declaration of rules, strategies and processes.

There exist some challenges between traditional urban planning and modern one during last decades. Imbalanced urban growth, lack of urban spatial organization, vacant lands around the cities, disproportionate per capita of land, improper urban population density, lack of coordination, low neighborhood’s security, increasing urban transportation costs and uneconomic nature of some of urban-infrastructures are being considered as most prominent urban problems. This in turn, requires the investigation regarding traditional urban planning as well as modern one in order to fully rehabilitate Iran-Islamic urban planning.The major objective of this study is to investigate as well as to analyze Yazd’s urban planning patterns, with emphasis upon traditional patterns toward indigenous modern urban pattern corresponding with Iranian-Islamic culture.As a matter of fact modern urban planning is based on traditional urban planning. This fact has been ignored in modern Yazd’s planning.This in turn, has led to high energy consumption level, environmental pollution, lack of social coherences, lack of urban security as well as lack of identity in urban spaces. The research method of this study is based on descriptive-analytical and survey approaches. In addition, Holder’s model and quarter distribution will be applied. This study suggests that, modern urban planning not only is not against with traditional ones but also, they possess complementary nature toward indigeneuity and sustainability. In order to ameliorate urban problems, we have to stress on Iranian-Islamic structures.This enhances the cultural legacies as well as environmental standards.