This article examines the discursive genealogy of meʿmāri-ye sonnati (traditional architecture), arguing that the term is not a neutral descriptive category but a modern historiographical construct. It traces the concept from nineteenth-century Orientalist surveys, which relied on stylistic classifications rather than notions of tradition, to early twentieth-century narratives of continuity advanced by scholars such as Arthur Upham Pope and André Godard. The study shows how “tradition” was later translated into sonnat in midcentury nationalist debates and consolidated as meʿmāri-ye sonnati in the 1970s. This process flattened diverse architectural histories into a single category that served traditionalist and postrevolutionary ideological agendas. By reconstructing this genealogy, the article challenges retrospective essentialism and restores the historical plurality of Iran’s architectural past.
