Salmiya

As Oleg Grabar has stressed many times in his book about Esfahan’s Masjed-e Jomeh , the mosque itself is perfectly embedded in the fabric of the Old City. There are no well-defined boundaries of the huge, 170 by 140 meters, complex. The main entrance is rather hidden at the eastern side of the building. Only helicopters and birds (or angels) may get an immediate impression of the huge dimensions of the mosques. I asked the officer near the ticket seller whether I was allowed to climb to the roofs. He declined, of course. It was very early in the morning, the sun had just risen and the glazed tiles on the mosque’s façades were glowing like gold. It reminded me of the spectacular photos taken by Henri Stierlin . Pigeons were sitting on the South Dome and warming up in the sun. When entering the courtyard, the two domes of the mosque are not visible at first sight. In particular, the northern dome is not visible at all from here, one of the main reasons for having neglected this masterp...

The old Dardasht quarter near Esfahan’s Friday mosque hides another gem caught in time. The stunning Islamic art with an incredible degree of complexity has fascinated the West for a long time. Beautiful mosaics cover the dome, the minarets and the pillars of mosques. It was hold that the strict geometric star-and-polygon ornaments in, what is called in the West medieval, Islamic architecture was conceived as a network of zigzagging lines where the lines were drafted directly with a straightedge and a compass. Henri Stierlin writes in his monumental work about Islamic Art and Architecture (2002) about decorations of the Timurid era: "The determination of this splendour-loving dynasty to give religious buildings a special grandeur and lustre led to rivalry between architects as to who would produce the most perfect work, the design that was most unified while fully exploiting a variety of motifs, and a multiplicity of techniques including brick, glazed surfaces, mosaics, pierced s...