“Architectural history” in Iran began in the early twentieth century with the work of orientalists and Western archaeologists such as Herzfeld, Godard, and Pope, who adopted the prevailing approaches to art historiography of their time. From the mid-twentieth century onward, the early orientalist approach was gradually sidelined by a group of Iranian scholars, including Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1933–) and Mohammad Karim Pirnia (1920–97), who actively shaped a new nativist discourse aligned with nationalist and identity-seeking agendas. This intellectual discourse was increasingly strengthened in the years following the 1979 revolution. Consequently, by the mid-1990s, the works of the two aforementioned scholars—despite serious differences in their approachesFootnote 1—constituted the most influential discourse among students and enthusiasts of the history of Iranian architecture and art.Footnote 2 From the mid-1990s, the situation gradually began to shift, and between 1995 and 2005, a series of events led to profound changes in the field of architectural history in Iran. These changes occurred largely during what came to be known as the “reform era,” although not necessarily as a direct consequence of political reforms. The present article aims to examine these changes, as well as the role of institutions and discourse arising from the reforms.
Congress on the History of Iranian Architecture and Urbanism: A Prelude to Widespread Changes
The congresses on the history of Iranian architecture and urbanism (HIAU) can be regarded as the starting point for a series of significant transformations within the field of architectural history in Iran. These congresses were initiated and managed by Baqer Ayatollahzadeh Shirazi (1936–2007). ShiraziFootnote 3 was one of the most important figures in the conservation of historical monuments in postrevolutionary Iran, having virtually established the Iran Cultural Heritage Organization (ICHO) by articulating its articles of association and legal bill, in collaboration with Mahdi Hodjat (1950–).Footnote 4 Shirazi’s concerns regarding cultural heritage extended beyond the mere preoccupations of an executive manager, and this is what highlights his role in the developments of architectural history in Iran, notwithstanding his limited and scattered publications. For Shirazi, effective management rested on an understanding of architecture, conservation, archaeology, and history as fundamentally interconnected fields, rather than as isolated professional practices.Footnote 5 His theoretical stance in articulating the charter of the ICHO was founded on two main principles: first, he opposed the unregulated involvement of the private sector in heritage, believing that such a policy would alter the priority given to research and conservation. Second, he maintained that a new understanding of Western theories was necessary to the field.Footnote 6 Therefore, he established an independent journal and faculty with the aim of strengthening the theoretical foundation of cultural heritage. Through this endeavor, in addition to shaping a new discourse, he trained a generation of conservation specialists in Iranian architectural heritage.
Shirazi’s efforts encountered a firm obstacle beginning in 1993, coinciding with the second presidential term of Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani (1993–97). At that time, Siraj-al-Din Kazerooni—a conservative politician who, despite holding a degree in architecture, had no professional background or record in cultural heritage or the conservation of historical monuments—assumed leadership of the ICHO and steered its conservation-oriented mission “toward the development of the national economy and tourism.”Footnote 7 As a result, Shirazi, who opposed this new orientation, was sidelined in the very organization he had founded. Yet, even from the margins, he did not remain idle. Through careful planning and organizing of the first HIAU congress (1995), he founded an event that today can be regarded as one of the most significant milestones in the historiography of architecture in Iran.
The significance of the 1995 HIAU congress becomes clear when looking at the number of architectural history articles in architectural bibliographies in the 1990s.Footnote 8 A review of the bibliography contents shows that the total number of articles published on the history of Iranian architecture since the late 1930s was not substantially greater than the number of articles published in the proceedings of the 1995 HIAU congress. Planning for the first congress required more than two years, during which Shirazi personally oversaw all scientific and administrative affairs.Footnote 9 The congress was successfully convened for two further rounds (1999 and 2006), and, through Shirazi’s sustained efforts and scholarly editing, fifteen volumes of proceedings were published almost concurrently with each event.
The HIAU congresses, particularly the first, brought together an array of seasoned scholars alongside young students and researchers in architecture, urbanism, and archaeology. In this sense, the congress was representative of the intellectual capacity of Iranian architectural history up to that time. The introduction that Shirazi wrote for the proceedings of the first congress clearly reveals his awareness of the significance of such an undertaking. He also cites a selection of the congress’s consensus resolutions, which proved highly influential in shaping developments in the historiography of architecture; they can be traced clearly in the developments of the following years.Footnote 10 What made these developments possible were the broader sociocultural changes of the reforms.
Architectural History in the Reform Era
The year 1997, which coincided with the rise of Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, the Iranian reformist politician, marked the beginning of a new era. One of the earliest achievements of his reform agenda was the flourishing of the press. This cultural revitalization also was reflected in the field of architecture with the emergence of specialized journals. Among these was Ravāq, a quarterly devoted specifically to the history of Iranian art and architecture—particularly the Islamic period—which was published from 1998 to 2000. The preparations for this journal began in early 1997 at the suggestion of Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti (1952–) and the efforts of Mahmoud Arzhmand and Mehrdad Qayyoomi Bidhendi (1960–). Its first issue appeared in 1998 under the editorship of Qayyoomi, supported intellectually by Mehdi Hodjat and financially by ICHO. Qayyoomi—now recognized as one of the notable figures of Iranian architectural historiography—was at that time an unknown young graduate of architecture from Shahid Beheshti University. Although he had been interested in architectural history since his student years, the first HIAU congress proved to be a “tremendous experience” that “inspired” him to leave architectural practice and devote his life to research and the history of architecture.Footnote 11
Before the publication of Ravāq, Qayyoomi had demonstrated his competence by translation of the English version of Risaleh-ye Miʿmariyyeh: An Early Seventeenth-Century Ottoman, itself a major milestone in architectural history publications in Iran. This accomplishment earned him recognition from the architectural working group that Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti had established at the Tehran municipality’s Cultural Spaces Development Company. Therefore, although Ravāq was a private journal, it received financial support from the ICHO when Beheshti was appointed head of ICHO. Unfortunately, the quarterly ceased publication after only six issues. Yet even this limited number provides a reliable measure of its scholarly caliber and the new orientation that was emerging in architectural history in Iran during that period. Ravāq not only featured works characterized by the perennialism approach of Nasr, Burckhardt, and Schuon—who represented the dominant paradigm of the time—but also engaged with historically grounded scholarship such as the works of Oleg Grabar, Reneta Holod, and Gülru Necipoğlu. In addition to the boom in the press, the flow of translations of contemporary works in the humanities characterized the beginning of Iranian reforms. The field of architectural history was not left out of this flow. The translations of Necipoğlu’s The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (translated by Qayyoomi, 2001), Islamic Architecture by Robert Hillenbrand (translated by Baqer Ayyatollahzadeh Shirazi, 2001), and The Architecture of the Islamic World by Ernst Grube (translated by Ya‘qub Āzhand, 2002) introduced new scholarly approaches and frameworks in Islamic architectural history to Iranian scholars and students.
Another influential factor in transformation of the field of architectural history was renewed restructuring of the ICHO. As noted, from the original establishment of the organization Shirazi and Hodjat sought to orient it toward the study of architectural history and conservation. However, the individual who achieved remarkable success in this regard was Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti, head of the organization during the reform era. During his leadership, drawing on his extensive experience in cultural management, particularly at the Farabi Cinema Foundation, attention to cultural heritage was not only strengthened among intellectuals but also permeated the public sphere. Through policies such as supporting journals like Ravāq, establishing archaeological and heritage research bases across the country, launching a broad national and international registration campaign for heritage sites, organizing dozens of heritage-related events nationwide, founding several new museums, involving prominent artists in cultural heritage initiatives, embedding the idea of architectural and urban heritage conservation within municipal bodies and national urban planning councils, supporting documentary films on cultural heritage, and establishing the Foundation for Cultural Memorials (1998–2004) and the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Research Institute, Beheshti contributed to the evolution of architectural history alongside internal reforms within the ICHO.Footnote 12 He did not hesitate to draw on family resources in this process; notably, several significant publications on architectural history during the reform era were published by Rozaneh Publishing House, owned by the Beheshti family.
The establishment of the Academy of Art of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1999 marked another significant step in shaping the evolving historiography of art and architecture in Iran. The first president of the academy was Mir-Hossein Mousavi (former prime minister, 1981–89). Mousavi belonged to the first generation of revolutionary political figures in Iran; he was an architectural graduate with both modernist and nationalist interests, and he transformed the academy into a focal point of the “modern” and “indigenous” artistic movement. Various specialized groups within the academy were formed in the early 2000s and began organizing seminars and scholarly meetings on various topics, including those related to art history. The Specialized Group of Traditional Arts focused on certain aspects of Iranian art, and the Specialized Group of Architecture and Urbanism pursued initiatives related to the history of architecture and urbanism. Members of the latter group included Mohammad Beheshti, Baqer Shirazi, Kambiz Haj-Qasemi, Kambiz Navaei, Seyyed Mohsen Habibi, and Jalil Habibollahiān, with Mehrdad Qayyoomi serving as its secretary. Among the activities of this group, aside from planning the academy’s architectural events, were drafting of regulations for architectural competitions and the preparation of a document on Iranian Islamic architecture.Footnote 13
In the spring of 2002, the first specialized journal of the academy, Khiyāl, was published under the directorship of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the editorship of Mehrdad Qayyoomi, an affiliated member of the academy. The journal was launched with the stated aim of addressing “general theoretical issues of art or those pertaining to any of its branches,” and it was promised that “in the long term, a diverse collection of journals will be prepared for various audiences.”Footnote 14 The quarterly Khiyāl adopted a theoretical approach toward art grounded in Iranian, Islamic, and Eastern artistic traditions.Footnote 15 From its first issue in spring 2002 until its discontinuation in 2010, Khiyāl published numerous valuable articles, including several significant contributions to the fields of art and architectural history.
In 2005, the academy fulfilled its earlier promise to publish journals tailored to different scholarly audiences by launching the first specialized journal devoted to the history of Iranian art and architecture, Golestān-e Honar, with the same director and the same editor as Khiyāl. In the first issue the editor wrote, “When we say that no specialized journal on this subject [the history of Iranian art] has existed until now, it does not mean that no publications inclined toward the history of Iranian art have been available. What is meant is the absence of a journal that declared its aim and primary concern as the very subject of art history itself, rather than anthropology, archaeology, codicology, and the like.”Footnote 16 Accordingly, Golestān-e Honar featured articles ranging from studies of the architecture of corporate new towns in Abadan to analyses of the artistic development of ancient Iranian rock reliefs. Although publication of the journal ceased after four years, its articles undoubtedly remain invaluable sources for research in art and architectural history—especially Iranian art and architectural history—to this day. Beyond the articles themselves, one of the enduring impacts of journals such as Ravāq, Khiyāl, and especially Golestān-e Honar was their deliberate effort to cultivate a new generation of writers in the field of Iranian architectural and art history. Indeed, several current contributors to these disciplines, such as Valiollah Kavousi, Mahdi Golchin-Arefi, Beeta Pourvash, Mahdi Sahrāgard, and Mohammad-Sadegh Abolghasemi, among others, produced their first written works in these journals.Footnote 17
Despite their significance in shaping the historiography of Iranian art and architecture, the approaches, objectives, and outcomes of these journals have yet to be systematically examined. Overall, an initial review reveals key characteristics of the architectural and art historical scholarship in these journals. For example, the gradual diminishment of the perennialism approach, accompanied by the publication of articles adopting alternative approaches, offers a clear indication of broader intellectual shifts in the field. As well, although the subjects of these journals’ articles were predominantly rooted in local contexts, their methodological orientations were often drawn from prevailing global frameworks within the disciplines of art and architectural history, such as neo-orientalist, regionalism, and postcolonial studies.
Another major initiative of the Academy of Art was the organization of the international symposium on the Isfahan school in 2006. Alongside this event, several important studies related to Isfahan were translated and published, including the two-volume collection Isfahan in Iranian Studies, edited by Reneta Holod. In the same year, the most significant knowledge database on the history of architecture in the Iranian cultural sphere was established under the title Encyclopedia of the Architectural History of Iranshahr (Iranshahrpedia), alongside the academy’s research group on art history. The encyclopedia was the innovative idea of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who believed that an independent and comprehensive engagement with the shared culture of the Iranian world—particularly in the realms of art and architecture—was essential. The encyclopedia, originally intended for print publication, upon the suggestion of Beheshti was transformed into an online platform. Its editorial board also prepared an occasional publication titled Documents of Iranian Architecture.Footnote 18 Two issues of this series, edited by Emadaldin Sheikhalhokamaee and Iraj Afshar (second issue only), were released and offered a valuable collection of Iranian historical architectural documents, including waqf deeds and property records. Additionally, the encyclopedia published a book titled A Lexicon of Iranian Architecture in Persian Sources, compiled by Farhad Nazari and Abdollah Moazzen-zadeh-Kolvār under Beheshti and Bidhendi’s supervision.Footnote 19
In addition to the academy, the activities of several other academic and cultural institutions played a significant role in shaping and advancing the field of architectural history during these years. The University of Art, by organizing two conferences on mosque architecture (1997 and 1999), not only facilitated the systematic publication of research on this important type of Iranian architecture, but also created a platform for introducing new perspectives and interpretations in the field. This effort is still considered an important research precedent in the architecture of Iranian mosques.Footnote 20
Another important initiative in this domain was the Panjareh (Window) conference series. The first event was sponsored by the Ali-Qoli Agha Bathhouse Museum, affiliated with the Municipality of Isfahan (2006). For these events, a special organizing body was created at the Academy of Arts called the Center for Architectural Events of Iran, which went on to hold several Panjareh workshops in various cities across the country.Footnote 21 The main body of articles for these events was authored by architecture students, particularly undergraduates, and the evaluation and peer review were conducted by a group of well-known and respected scholars in the field of Iranian architectural history and theory. In this way, instead of serving merely as a platform for showcasing the work of experts, the conference series aimed to gather and cultivate the experiences of emerging voices, effectively initiating a bottom-up movement. In addition to introducing undergraduate students to the field of architectural history and connecting them to prominent scholars in the field, another significant outcome of these conferences was the formation of a network among the students themselves. In the years to come, this network linked active contributors to the field beyond academic institutions and across various professional contexts.
The final significant and influential development in this period was the establishment of the program of Iranian architectural studies at the Architecture School of Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran in 2005. Since the founding and evolution of this academic program is the subject of a separate article in the present roundtable, it is not addressed in detail here.Footnote 22 It suffices to note that the establishment of this program constituted the last link in a chain of events which, over the course of a decade from 1995 to 2005, transformed the field of architectural history in Iran from a secondary marginal topic in architectural curricula into a primary, independent academic program.
Epilogue
Architectural history became an independent field of study in Iran largely during the reform era. This development resulted from the efforts of reformist statesmen such as Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti, through institutions shaped by the reform movement, such as the Academy of Arts. Also contributing indirectly were the press and discourse that emerged from the broader reformist climate. For this reason, the current strengths and weaknesses of the field cannot be examined in isolation from the strengths and shortcomings of the Iranian reform movement.
The heavy dependence of these developments on governmental support meant that with a change in state policies a considerable portion of earlier achievements was halted, diverted, or even reversed. Conferences such as the HIAU congress were discontinued in the early years of the subsequent administration under the pretext of preventing unnecessary expenses, and the publication of journals such as Khiyāl and Golestān-e Honar was likewise halted after only a few years. With the removal of Mir-Hossein Mousavi from the Academy of Arts following the political unrest of the Green Movement (2009), which effectively marked the end of the reform era, the academy embarked on a trajectory that saw its research approach undergo a noticeable change and decline, as it gradually eliminated influential events, journals, and individuals. Perhaps the best symbol of this decline can be seen in the strange research contract that the academy recently concluded with an Iranian filmmaker on the subject of “the influence of jinn on ancient Egyptian civilization,” which caused a lot of buzz in the Iranian media! Footnote 23
Nevertheless, the intellectual capital generated during these years did not entirely vanish. As it shifted into nongovernmental and civic spheres, gradually new scientific networks among scholars active in the field were formed. In the author’s view, the digital platform Āsemāneh (Asemaneh.com) is one of the most important networks. Established in 2015, under the guidance and planning of Mehrdad Qayyoomi, it is now considered one of the most active online platforms for architectural history in Iran. Āsemāneh became a model for several subsequent web-based initiatives, such as Nowruzgan, Koubeh, and Ghobar, all of which operate today as specialized, nongovernmental groups in the field of art and architectural history. Therefore, it seems that the center of gravity in the transformation that took place during the reform era has shifted from government to civil society. This is a new stage in the trajectory of architectural history studies in Iran, fostering new ideas, approaches, and discourses in this field, which has aligned with international academic discourses of the last few decades (such as postcolonialism), but has its own theoretical and thematic concerns, and can be called a kind of “Iranian historiography” in the field of architectural history. Finally, the aim of this article was simply to express the interplay of events between developments in the field of architectural history and sociopolitical trends during a specific period of contemporary Iranian history; examining the presence or absence of a causal relationship between them requires separate research.
Acknowledgements
The translation of this article into English was made possible with the cooperation of Seyedeh Sadiqe (Matin) Mirgozar-Langroudi, assistant professor at Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz branch, to whom I express my thanks.
Ruhollah Mojtahedzadeh (born 1978, Ahvaz, Iran) is an associate professor of architecture at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz. His research focuses on the history of Iranian architecture (especially the Islamic period) and urban studies with a focus on the city of Ahvaz, the capital of the historical province of Khuzestan in southwestern Iran.
