Even more important is the question of the pre-Seljuq work in the Masjid-i-Jami’ of Isfahan. It is the most interesting, and, in the loveliness of some parts, the most beautiful of Persian buildings. No one can stand in its great dilapidated court, or under the Seljuq domes, where the loud flight of agitated pigeons leaves a profound silence that seems to roar in the ears, without a sense of awe. It is the work of many periods. But in the succession of these it contains hardly anything that is not of the best…” (Eric Schroeder, Standing Monuments of the First Period, 1967). The text publishes a thorough research of one element of the pre-Seljuq work of this monument, its wall painting. The few fragments discovered during the excavation of the Italian archaeological mission of the 1970s are here analysed with the help of various scholars from different fields of research. Their contribution reveals a fascinating glimpse of a little known artistic genre of the early Islamic art. The Author: Michael Jung is Curator of the Department of Islamic Archaeology and Ancient Southern Arabia of the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale/Rome. He has participated in numerous archaeological missions in Spain, Syria, Yemen and Iran. Currently he is scientific director of CONTENTS A short outline of the main building phases of the Great Mosque Michael Jung The wall paintings of the pre-Seljuq mosque Michael Jung Introduction to the research of the excavated fragments The refined typology of the wall paintings Chronological attribution and search for comparisons The wall paintings of the post-Seljuq mosque Michael Jung The excavated mural paintings of sector 112 Two paintings of mosques and hand-prints The wall paintings of the gav-chah Materials and painting technique of the wall paintings of the pre-Seljuq Isfahani Mosque Paolo Cornale, Fabio Frezzato, Michael Jung, Claudio Seccaroni Digital microscope observations Plaster Final coating of the mud plaster Polychromy and colored decorations Blue Red Gilding Discussion and additional observations Botanical characterization of some iconographic painted elements Antonella Altieri Summary Michael Jung, Claudio Seccaroni Bibliography

"... 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East held in Rome on May 5th-10th, 2008 (www.6icaane.it)"--Foreword.

This collection of essays offers an examination of the Sasanian empire based almost entirely on archaeological and scientific research, much presented here for the first time. The book is divided into three parts examining Sasanian sites, settlements and landscapes; their complex agricultural resources; and their crafts and industries.

Winner of the Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award 2009This beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501-1722) explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and Perso-Shi'i practice of kingship.An immense building campaign, initiated in 1590-91 at the millennial threshold of the Islamic calendar (1000 A.H.), transformed Isfahan from a provincial, medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered representation of the first Imami Shi'i empire in the history of Islam. The historical process of Shi'ification of Safavid Iran and the deployment of the arts in situating the shifts in the politico-religious agenda of the imperial household informs Sussan Babaie's study of palatial architecture and urban environments of Isfahan and the earlier capitals of Tabriz and Qazvin.Babaie argues that since the Safavid claim presumed the inheritance both of the charisma of the Shi'i Imams and of the aura of royal splendor integral to ancient Persian notions of kingship, a ceremonial regime was gradually devised in which access and proximity to the shah assumed the contours of an institutionalized form of feasting. Talar-palaces, a new typology in Islamic palatial designs, and the urban-spatial articulation of access and proximity are the architectural anchors of this argument. Cast in the comparative light of urban spaces and palace complexes elsewhere and earlier-in the Timurid, Ottoman, and Mughal realms as well as in the early modern European capitals-Safavid Isfahan emerges as the epitome of a new architectural-urban paradigm in the early modern age.

In the early 1400s, Iranian elites began migrating to the Deccan plateau of southern India. Lured to the region for many reasons, these poets, traders, statesmen, and artists of all kinds left an indelible mark on the Islamic sultanates that ruled the Deccan until the late seventeenth century. The result was the creation of a robust transregional Persianate network linking such distant cities as Bidar and Shiraz, Bijapur and Isfahan, and Golconda and Mashhad. Iran and the Deccan explores the circulation of art, culture, and talent between Iran and the Deccan over a three-hundred-year period. Its interdisciplinary contributions consider the factors that prompted migration, the physical and intellectual poles of connectivity between the two regions, and processes of adaptation and response. Placing the Deccan at the center of Indo-Persian and early modern global history, Iran and the Deccan reveals how mobility, liminality, and cultural translation nuance the traditional methods and boundaries of the humanities.