STUDIES ON KASHAN
Year:2022 | Volume:14 | Issue:2 (27)|Papers Count:7

The preparation of two memorial tiles in the early Safavid era for a tiled minbar in the Jami’ Mosque in Kuhpayeh, a small town near Isfahan, has raised questions and leads into ambiguities. One of these tiles is a lustre ceramic plaque which was produced in Muharram 935/September in 1528 in Kashan; the other is a blue-and-white tile that was produced eight months later in Ramadan in 1528in Qomsheh. The content of the first tile depicts radical (Ghulat) Shiism, and the second indicates a moderate Islamic tendency about Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Prophet’ s Houshold. This article through an introduction of architectural and artistic elements of the Jami’ Mosque of Kuhpayeh, based on a field study, seeks to analyze the content of the tiles installed in the minbar and mihrab of the mosque. Based on the cultural and religious setting of central Iran during the reign of Shah Tahmasb, this paper proposes a new theory about the reason for the preparation of two memorial tiles for a single minbar. The findings show that the main reason for ordering the second tile is the customer’ s anxiety about the phrase “ Hu al-A’ li al-a’ la”--used for Imam Ali and some leaders of the Hurufi movement--at the top of Kashan’ s lustre tile Since it was considered an extremist and illegitimate slogan. Therefore, in Kuhpayeh, which was one of the Nuqtavi centers, and some of its elders such as Abu al-Qasim Amri were blinded by this accusation, the patron of the minbar, Haj Iskandar, ordered another tile with a moderate content. Also, these two tiles reveal the industrial and artistic relations of several cities such as Kashan, Qomsheh, and Kuhpayeh in the center of Iran that are influenced by Shiite beliefs of that time.

So far more than 40 historical farmsteads around Kashan have been identified, 28 of which have been examined in more detail. These farmsteads have formed small biological complexes in different historical eras. Furthermore, Economic and productive incentives have played an important role in their creation The main point about these farmsteads is a lack of knowledge about their physical characteristics and their distinctions from other biological complexes such as villages. This research raises two questions: a) based on what physical characteristics have historical farmsteads been formed around Kashan? b) What was the role of dependent physical elements in the survival of farmsteads around Kashan and on which factors their maintenance and protection depended? The aim of this research is to introduce the physical characteristics of farmsteads around Kashan through analyzing a case study called Bala Abbasabad Farmsteads. To this end, an interpretive approach and historical interpretive strategy have been deployed. . Available studies have discussed there are three zones in each farmstead including physical, cultivation and customary buffer. The physical zone had an area of 2 to 15 hectares, and dependent physical elements were located in this zone. Cultivation zones with an approximate area of 15 to 30 hectares were formed, and the main theme was the production and creation of economic added value. The customary area was also allocated to pastures, and its extent was determined based on customs. Currently, these three zones are in four conditions: destroyed, under reconstruction, rebuilt and changed to the village.

During the Qajar period, one of the influential painters was Mirza Ali Akbar Khan Natanzi, known as Mazin al-Dawlah, a resident of Kashan. Mazin al-Dawlah, a student of the great artist of the Unger era, was educated at Paris School of Fine Arts. Due to Mazin al-Dawlah’ s significant role and teaching in Dar al-Fonun as well as his upbringing of students such as Mirza Abutrab Ghaffari, Ismail Jalayer, Musur al-Molk and Kamal al-Mulk, his life and works are worth discussing. To this end, first the teaching of academic painting in Dar al-Fonun in the Qajar era and Mazin al-Dawlah’ s role are examined. The purpose of this study is to find out the role of Mirza Ali Akbar Khan Mazin al-Dawla's teaching in Dar al-Fonun as well as the mentioned artists. The research question is: what was the role of Mirza Ali Akbar Khan Mazin al-Dawlah as a teacher and painter in the Dar al-Fonun school? Research deploys a descriptive-analytical method involving library resources and museum samples. The results of this study show that the Dar al-Fonun school and the teaching of painting have played an important role in the development of Qajar art, and Mazin al-Dawla-as a manager, teacher, and talented artist-has proved so important to this growth. He, as a master in the field of landscape painting and artistry, has been influenced by European academic art and accordingly trained a brilliant generation of Iranian painters. He established the Western style of academic painting in Iran in the Qajar era. His teaching and management experience in Dar al-Fonun as well as his training of the brilliant generation of painters along with his teaching of French and of music have made this artist a legendary figure in the Qajar period that is unrepeatable

Graffiti can be considered as a means of communication and a purposeful medium which informs people of what is going on in the lower layers of urban life, despite the restrictions having been imposed upon public places. Writings and pictures of the events and movements of the second half of the 14th century in Iran still remain on the city walls, through which one can get acquainted not only with the ideas and beliefs of people but also the activities of political and social groups. These murals are now a subset of the graffiti style of art. The present study examines those graffiti in Kashan which have survived from 1977 up to the late 1390s. The purpose of this developmental research is to introduce and document the graffiti of Kashan and to answer these questions: Have graffiti had an impact on Kashan’ s society? How much it has been able to influence the development around Kashan. Therefore, deploying a descriptive-analytical approach and data collected through library studies and field forms. The research has founded out that the graffiti studied include a variety of contents including ideological, cultural, political, and religious ones that can be divided into the Islamic Revolution era, the imposed-war era, and the contemporary era.

Glassaware and Ceramic Museum in Iran locates on Si-e Tir (30th Tir) Street in Tehran. It includes one of the richest collections in Iran and houses glassware and pottery artworks from different eras. The museum consists of five art exhibition halls. Among the artworks available in this museum, the potteries which are kept in the golden hall of this complex deserve special attention. Among these potteries, there are six samples of lusterware which have not been independently analyzed before. Evidences show that the origin and date of construction of these artworks have not been properly presented. Therefore, due to the importance of these works, the present study aims to review the chronology of these vessels using a descriptive-historical approach with references to library sources and case citations to other similar samples on the website of museums, which have been dated by prominent researchers and experts. In addition, it tries analyze the similarities of form and motifs with through comparative approaches via comparative tables. Hence, the most important questions of this research are associated with the time period and fabrication center of these works. Based on the present findings, from a historical and spatial perspective, the lustre pottery samples available in Glassaware and Ceramic Museum of Iran represent the style and technique of artworks fabricated in Kashan from the late sixth century AH to the early seventh century AH.

Mullah Mohsen Fayz Kashani is one of the famous people of Kashan in the eleventh century duringthe Safavid era. Fayz Kashani's life coincided with the institutionalization of the Shiite religion in Iran, and he has tried to spread Shiite teachings. He has written many valuable books in the field of Quran, Hadith, Fiq (Jurisprudence), philosophy, moral, and Ethics. Fayz Kashani has been influenced by philosophical and mystical views as well as the scripturalism of his masters. Fayz has also deployed the common traditions of Kashan and succeeded in combining these views significantly in his works. According to fayz, reason, revelation, and mysticism are compatible, and there are various kinds of philosophical and mystical teachings in the hadiths of Shiite Imams. This research through the following the works of Fayz has come to this conclusion that fayz has chosen the hermeneutic approach for resolving the conflict between hadith and mysticism.

The art of bedding is one of the Iranian arts that have been popular in Iranian architecture for a long time. Plaster molding patterns in the architecture of historical houses, at first glance, have a decorative aspect and express a visual beauty, but a deep look at these motifsreveals their inner and symbolic meanings. The variety used in the plaster molding of Boroujerdi House is very remarkable and expresses Islamic-Iranian values of its time in Kashan. The main objectives of this study are to identify and to determine the typology of plaster molding patterns of Boroujerdi House as well as to understand their inner symbolic meanings. Accordingly, the main questions of the research are: 1) what are the types of plaster molding designs in Boroujerdi House? 2) What are the symbolic meanings of the designs used in them? The results show that these patterns, which include plants, human figures, animals, and supernatural beings, sometimes imply mythical and sacred symbolic meanings. The research method is descriptive-analytical and involved field studies as well as library studies; hence, first the accurate and appropriate imaging of the beds was done, and then based on the library studies, each role was analyzed and examined semantically. In this route, through graphic software, the position of each role is specified on the house architectural plan map as well as on the images.