Creeping tiles, creeping standards?

Some of the tiles on the dome of the Masjid-e Shah in Isfahan have recently been reported to be ‘creeping’ downwards.

I recently realised that this is what is visible in a photo I took of the dome in spring 2008.  Until now, I confess that I had thought it was a fault in my photographic technique or maybe, more charitably, an odd trick of the light!  Other images of the ‘crinkles’ are here

The dome inscriptions are from 1627-8.  They praise the Shah’s justice (click here for an earlier – and chilling – example of this) and pray to God to grant him victory by “banishing to hell the enemies of the Twelver Shi’is, namely those who are friends of the Umayyads and follow them in tyranny”.  By this is meant the Sunni Ottomans: from whom in 1624 Abbas had taken Baghdad, thereby also gaining control over the Shia shrines of Najaf and Kerbala.

When I realised that I had in fact documented the ‘creep’, I thought back to other signs of inadequate maintenance or restoration that I had seen (or knew of) in the mosque.

These are hardly unexpected in a building constructed over the course of more than twenty-five years (1611-1637) and said of consist of 18 million bricks, with 472,500 facing tiles – especially when the 1844 earthquake did such substantial damage (including the separation of the southern minarets from the main body of the mosque: click here to see where these minarets are: they’re the ones at an angle to the Maydan).

After the 1844 earthquake, superficial restorations were ordered by Mohammad Shah Qajar: essentially covering the cracks with tiles.  These tiles collapsed in 1932; and Reza Shah Pahlavi then ordered a team of restorers to fasten and secure the minarets, close the cracks and restore the tiles “using traditional materials and techniques”.  Since then, there have been various restorations – including of the dome – over the last twenty-odd years.

I don’t know when the mismatched tile panels shown here above right were created: from the colours, some of the tiles may be Safavid.

Perhaps even more tantalising, though, are some other panels – from their colours still a bit of a muddle, but containing clear images of living creatures: not only various gazelles and birds, but also some monkey-like beings.  Iranian art, of course, includes a rich figurative tradition – but such images are unusual actually within the prayer hall of a mosque.