In describing the arrival of Shah ‘Abbas to his capital city, Isfahan, in 1595, the court historian, Afushteh Natanzi, wrote about the marvelous architectural contraptions and other wonders that were designed by the “masters of the arts . . . artists of pure creativity, and devisers of sublime disposition” who were “assembled in the City of Kingship of Iraq [Isfahan] from all parts of Iraq and Fars” (R. D. McChesney, “Four Sources on Shah ‘Abbas’s Building of Isfahan,” Muqarnas 5 (1988): 103–134, 107). They were displayed in the main plaza, Maydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan (“Image of the World”), which represented the core of the Safavid state, surrounded as it was by the imperial palaces, mosques, and a covered bazaar linking back to the old center of Isfahan. The architectural monuments represented Safavid attitudes toward religion, diplomacy, and trade, and linked Isfahan to older Iranian and Islamic architectural history.

The Safavid dynasty was established in 1501 by Isma‛il bin Haydar (d. 1524), the descendant of the Sufi shaykh, Safi al-din Ishaq (d. 1334). He selected as his capital the city of Tabriz, which had been the seat of government of his predecessors, the Aq Qoyyunlu rulers (1378–1508). Isma‛il and his descendants appropriated the concepts of Islamic and Iranian kingship and melded them with their own unique form of messianic authority. Sufism and Shi‛ism together provided the religio-social foundation of the empire, as the Safavid shahs were believed to be both Sufis and direct descendants of the prophet, Muhammad. This charismatic form of authority was not static, but evolved over the course of the dynasty’s 220-year rule, changing according to particular political and historical contingencies.

Sussan Babaie’s Isfahan and its Palaces provides insights into the built environment of the Safavid Empire through close analyses of its palatial architecture. Babaie utilizes a semiotic approach to understand the significance of the buildings commissioned by the Safavid kings. She employs European and Persian history, poetry and panegyric, religious and architectural history, and focuses her study on Isfahan, one of the most vibrant imperial cities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In bringing together a wide array of sources, seldom used together, Babaie also analyzes the palaces in conjunction with monuments in the contemporaneous and neighboring courts of Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India, highlighting the continuities and changes that defined the architecture of the region.

The book is organized into six chapters, arranged chronologically as well as thematically. Babaie begins by setting the historical stage and suggesting the main theses of the study—namely that the Safavid state, a unique amalgam of Iranian and Shi‛i modes of authority, was displayed in the ceremonial within the palaces. She puts forward four paradigms for palaces in the Islamic world: palace/mosque complex, desert palace, citadel/palace complex, and “nomadic.” The Safavid palaces have often been viewed in secondary scholarship as evolving from Timurid (1370–1526) practices in eastern Iran (and what are now Afghanistan and Uzbekistan), which were focused on garden ensembles and tentage. However, Babaie provides a more nuanced reading by including palaces constructed by the preceding Ilkhanid and Aq Qoyyunlu dynasties.

The second chapter focuses on the early capitals of the Safavids, namely, Tabriz and Qazvin. Babaie relates the move from Tabriz to Qazvin in 1548 by Shah Tahmasb to the “transfer of the seat of rule, the signing of the Treaty of Amasya (with the Ottomans), and the issuance of the Edict of Sincere Repentance” (57). The change in policies was realized both at the new Sa‛adatabad palace quarters in Qazvin and the shrine of Shaykh Safi in Ardabil, a point that has been noted earlier by the author of this review (Kishwar Rizvi, “’Its Mortar Mixed with the Sweetness of Life: Architecture and Ceremonial at the Shrine of Shaykh Safi al-din Ishaq Ardabili during the Reign of Shah Tahmasb I,” Muslim World 90 [Fall 2000]: 323–351, 344). These two sites represented a merging of Shah Tahmasb’s spiritual and political authority, as exemplified by the encomiastic poetry of the courtier, ‘Abdi Beg Shirazi, who was commissioned to write long, descriptive poems on the palace and the shrine. (The poetry on the palace and shrine, respectively, can be found in ‘Abdi Beg Shirazi, Dauhat al-Azhār, A. M. Tabrizi and A. Rahimof, eds., Moscow: Idāra-yi intishārāt Dānish, 1974; and Anthony H. Morton, “The Ardabil Shrine in the Reign of Shah Tahmasp I,” Iran 12 (1974): 31–64 and vol. 13 (1975): 39–58.) The overlay of these two types of buildings was not coincidental, but part of the courtly culture of early Safavid Iran, as exemplified in the third, and most spectacular, capital city, Isfahan.

The core of Babaie’s study focuses on the final capital, from the macro level of its urban planning to the detailed reconstruction of ceremonials in the palatial audience halls. She sheds important light on the preceding architectural history of Isfahan, which was renowned for its extra-muros garden estates during the Buyid period (945–1055) and the monumental Friday Mosque built by the ruling Seljuk dynasty (1038–1118) in the eleventh century. The city was also known for its connection to Shi‛ism, making it an ideal site for Shah ‘Abbas to enact his religious reformations when he moved the capital in 1590/1. Thus Babaie provides an important complement to earlier scholarship which suggested that the move from Qazvin to Isfahan was in response to increased tensions with the Ottomans on the Safavids’ western borders (Michel Mazzaoui, “From Tabriz to Qazvin and Isfahan: Three Phases of Safavid History,” ZDMG Supplement III (1977): 514–22).

Shah ‘Abbas I created an entirely new quarter in the southern edges of Isfahan and thus put his own imprint on the historical city. The buildings he commissioned were in conjunction with profound transformations in Safavid religious and political authority. (Babaie cites the historian Rasul Jafariyan, in Dīn va siyāsat dar dawrah-yi Ṣafavī, Qum: Ansāriyān, 1370 (1991); see also Sheila R. Canby, Shah ‘Abbas: The Remaking of Iran, London: British Museum Press, 2009 [click here for review].) Foremost among these was a reinterpretation of Shi‛i law which had, until Shah ‘Abbas I’s reign, not permitted the call to Friday prayer in the absence of the twelfth Shi‛i imam. Shah ‘Abbas I’s clerics argued for the establishment of the call to Friday prayer and the accompanying sermon in which the ruler’s name would be called out. The legitimizing function of the proclamation was clear and subsequently monumentalized in the construction, for the first time in Safavid history, of a large Congregational Mosque (completed after his death, in 1638).

The Congregational Mosque was one, indeed later, marker of transforming Isfahan into Shah ‘Abbas I’s imperial capital. The most remarkable was the construction of the grand plaza known as the Maydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan. The Maydan was built in phases, with structures added to it over more than twenty years. On one side was the entrance into the Qaisariyya (“Imperial”) gateway which led into a long series of covered bazaars linking the old center of Isfahan to Shah ‘Abbas I’s new quarter. On the opposite side was the new Congregational Mosque. On one of the broader sides was a small mosque which was dedicated to Shah ‘Abbas’s father-in-law and favored cleric, Shaykh Lutfullah, and on the other, the ‘Ali Qapu (“Lofty Threshold”) gateway. The gateway led into the palace precincts which comprised a complex of heterogeneous spaces built for both public ceremonial and private leisure. This Daulatkhana (“Royal ensemble”) was a “permeable” space which reflected, Babaie suggests, the splendor and accessibility that defined Safavid imperial architecture of the period.

According to Babaie the palaces of Isfahan could be divided into three distinct, if sometimes overlapping, phases: the first, 1590/1–1629, corresponding with the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I, was characterized by broader urban developments, during which the palace was established; the second phase, 1629–66, corresponded with the rule of Shah Safi (r. 1629–1642) and Shah ‘Abbas II (r. 1642–1666), in which a new architectural typology was created, one that focused on an architecture of transparency; the third phase, lasting until the end of the Safavid dynasty in 1722, was a period of retreat by the later Safavid shahs from the more public spaces of the palace into the private realms of the harem quarters.

Isfahan and its Palaces is richly illustrated with historical drawings of buildings that no longer exist such as the Ayenekhana, “Hall of Mirrors,” and valuable documentation of lesser-known sites such as the hunting retreats that served as de facto palaces for the shahs. Babaie argues that there was a direct link between the retreats, mostly in the Mazandaran region, and the talar (“pillared”) porticos built during the reign of Shah ‘Abbas II, namely, in his addition to the front of the ‘Ali Qapu gatehouse and the design of the Chehel Sutoon (“Forty Columns”) audience hall. Through a close reading of the historical contexts that predicated their construction and a detailed analysis of the architecture, Babaie provides a pioneering study of these monuments. She eloquently points out that “such an extraordinary architectural conceptualization of the liminal space between nature and culture, between unrestrained airiness and protective enclosure, between the space within and the space without, exploits all kinds of natural potentialities” (190). A similarly insightful examination of the Hasht Behest (“Eight Paradises”) palace (completed in 1669) points to the manner in which “royal authority was staged” at the end of the seventeenth century. Babaie analyzes both the precedents of the hasht-behest, an architectural trope that permeates many facets of Islamic art and architecture, and the formal geometry of the particular monument in Isfahan. She suggests that in contrast to the Chehel Sutoon, the Hasht Behest represented a more inward-looking architecture, one that presaged important changes in the increasingly isolated and politically insular court culture of the late seventeenth century.

One of the major contributions of this study is the manner in which Babaie weaves her analysis of architectural form into a narrative of Safavid kingship and ideology. The architecture of transparency, as viewed in later structures such as the Chehel Sutoon, was a remarkable innovation and ideal setting for the Safavid culture of conviviality, in which feasting formed the core of the royal ceremonial. Babaie utilizes European texts and illustrations by visitors to the court to recreate, indeed give life to, the royal culture of seventeenth-century Iran. In using such sources, there is a danger, acknowledged by the author, of falling prey to the stereotypes and biases of the European travelers, themselves outsiders with access limited to a select few sites. More use could have been made of Safavid sources themselves, which speak directly to the manner in which the Safavid court propagated its imperial vision. The references are not descriptive (although ‘Abdi Beg provides an early example of poetic description of the palace in Qazvin) but suggestive; for example, Afushteh Natanzi, cited at the beginning of this review, gave detailed accounts of the pomp and ceremony that preceded Shah Abbas I’s entrance into Isfahan. He wrote of the amazing, candlelit streets and the marvelous architectural mechanisms built by the Shah’s architects and engineers. Such spectacles served as backdrops to the royal procession as well as important complements to the buildings commissioned by the Shah.

A broadened architectural context would have further enhanced this already detailed study. The Safavids patronized the shrines of Sufi and Shi‛i figures; the ancestral shrine of Shaykh Safi and that of the eighth Shi‛i imam, Ali Reza, were foremost among these and served as the ideological hearts of the empire. The ethos of Safavid kingship emanating from these shrines was one that merged the religious with the imperial, an aspect that was also witnessed in the palaces. Feasting and royal festivities took place in the courtyards of the shrines as well as in the Maydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan; in Isfahan itself, mosques and seminaries were being built contemporaneously to the palaces that Babaie describes. Could one imagine an overlapping of conceptual and formal qualities in these similarly patronized monuments? While these questions were not immediately answered, the book has laid solid foundations for subsequent studies on Safavid Isfahan. With Isfahan and its Palaces, Babaie has made a significant contribution to the architectural history of Iran and the Islamic world during the early modern period.