Salmiya

The most significant building in Na’in is certainly its more than 1000-years old Friday mosque, build in 960 CE. Its single minaret without any ornaments has an octagonal ground plan and tapers. It is built on a small hill somewhat outside of the old city’s center. Nearby, a guard will open the doors of a small museum which is part of a Safavid traditional house with a small sunken garden. The mosque itself, one of the oldest in Iran where still Friday prayers take place, is Abbasid/Buyid, as the remains of the Jurjir mosque in Esfahan. Brickwork and carved stucco especially of the mihrab and surrounding bays are superb and well-preserved. There is no iwan , which is in fact a development of the later Seljuq rulers of Iran. The bazaar in the old city is a museum, too. The shops had been closed long time ago when the owners moved to the modern part of the city.

Older than what is now visible in Esfahan’s Great Mosque (although the first mosque there was built in the 7th century) is what has remained of the Jurjir Mosque . The fragmentary façade of the Jurjir Mosque had been discovered during restoration work at Masjed-e Hakim in 1955. The fragment had been hidden for centuries behind a mud wall. The beautiful Hakim mosque itself is a Safavid mosque from the 17th century. The Jurjir façade is the only remains of a 10th century mosque which was commissioned by the Buyid (Buwayhid) vizier Al-Sahib ibn Abbad (d. 995), a Mutazilite scholar. The Buyid Dynasty, who ruled in Iraq and Iran, effectively brought the Abbasids era in Baghdad to an end. Although the Abbasids retained the caliphate, they were deprived of all secular power. Buyids were originally Zaydi, or Fiver Shi'as. They later began to lean closer to the nowadays dominating Twelver Shi'a branch of Islam. In general tolerant in religious matters, the Buyid rulers in Baghdad even ...