EZĪRĀN

 

EZĪRĀN, a village 32 km. southeast of Isfahan on the south bank of the river Zāyandarūd. The major surviving monument is a single-domed mosque with a well-preserved dome and two lateral corridors. The interior has a traditional tripartite elevation of square chamber (interior diameter 8 meters), octagonal zone of transition (with stalactite-filled squinches), and dome supported on a sixteen-sided zone. The meḥrāb recess—from which the original meḥrāb, perhaps of lustre tiles, has been removed—is surrounded on three sides by a plaster inscription containing a Koranic text. Another inscription in cut brick, raised slightly from a ground of red bricks, encircles the base of the double dome. Similar mosques remain in the nearby villages of Daštī and Kāj and attest to the continued florescence of the river valley under the Il-khanids. General stylistic features, such as the stilted profile of the domes and the three-color tile mosaic used at Daštī and Kāj, suggest a date of ca. 1325 for the three mosques.

 

Bibliography:

Rosario Paone, “The Mongol Colonization of the Isfahan Region,” in Isfahan, Quaderni del Seminario di Iranistica, Uralo-Altaistica e Caucasologia Dell’Universitya’ degli Studi di Venezia 10, 1981, pp. 1-30.

Maxime Siroux, Anciennes voies et monuments routiers de la rē‚gion d’Isfahân, Cairo, 1971, pp. 266-67.

Donald Wilber, The Architecture of Islamic Iran: The Il Khānid Period, Princeton, 1955, no. 71.

(Sheila S. Blair)

Originally Published: December 15, 1999

Last Updated: December 15, 2012

This article is available in print.
Vol. IX, Fasc. 2, p. 129