The investigation of Memorials of Isfahan's Jameh Mosque

Abstract

The Importance of Isfahan's Jameh mosque is not only for its architectural and artistic values but also for its function as a firm economic, social and religious base in its lifetime. Such considerable construction has been regarded as an encyclopedia for art and architecture by architects and historians. Although writing memorials on the walls of monuments led to their destruction, some of such manuscripts can demonstrate social, economic and religious information and reflect the historical documents and the events of their time. This essay endeavors to introduce such memorials and extract their historical information. The main questions of this research are: What kind of historical information can be obtained from these memorial and what is the relationship between these manuscripts and such religious construction? These manuscripts can not only be investigated in terms of writing method, the literary style and the content but also present the folk literature and people's beliefs. Moreover, some of them can be regarded to be a source of historical documents because of their terms. The major subjects in such manuscripts are Quran's verses and Hadiths, poetries, complex Writing, writer's name and date, requests, autobiographies, writing practice and demanding for keeping the manuscripts. There are also some memorial motifs and figures including hands images, cavalier(horse rider), patterns of human, animals, plants and geometric figures on walls and pillars of mosque. The present essay tries to examine all parts of mosque by employing field research method and precisely determining the context, the type of calligraphy and its level of manuscripts.

Keywords

• Isfahan
• Jameh Mosque
• Memorials
• Manuscripts
• Memorial Motifs and Figures