Safavid water fountains in Isfahan

The Masjid-e Jame in Isfahan was not the only congregational mosque in Buyid Isfahan: the Jurjir mosque was constructed sometime shortly before 985CE for the vizier Ibn Abbad, a Mutazilite scholar who transformed the court of the ruler Abu Mansur Moayyed-al-Dawla into a transnational literary centre.

Only a fragment of the façade of the latter building now remains, re-discovered in 1955 within the walls of the Hakim Mosque (itself constructed 1656-63).  This very rare physical survival from the century of Buyid calm and prosperity in Isfahan is a never-ending puzzle of shapes and shadows: using the typical Buyid decorative technique of thin bricks forming geometric patterns in relief; plus alternate engravings of repeated geometric patterns in stucco (click here – for wrongly placed – and here – for mislabelled – photos).

Sheila Blair suggests that the Jurjir façade is the very earliest example of a monumental portal on a mosque in the eastern Islamic world.  She also describes an accompanying 100 – or maybe it was 70 – cubit minaret, which has now been destroyed.

What I wanted to show you, though, are the two Safavid royal water fountains immediately opposite the façade.

Now, the space just looks like a deserted shop/workshop.  But on either side of the bottom of the ‘door’, the front of the ‘shop’ is made up of two carved stones.  The one on the left is largely plain, with just a simple band of calligraphy – including the name of Sultan Hossein (r.1694-1722).  The one on the right (shown here) is covered in much more ornate written panels with, at the very bottom . . a date from the reign of Shah Abbas the Second (r.1642–1666).

Both panels have raised ‘plugholes’ to catch and drain the water, and the right (Shah Abbas the Second) side has had a brass tap added in a notch cut through the top of the calligraphy.  The man who kindly showed me this place also told me that the tap was operational until very recently.

Lisa Golombek has suggested that Jurjir Mosque opened onto the west-east bazaar-street leading from the Kushk gate and intersecting at the Old (Seljuk) Maydan with the north-south bazaar from the Tuqchi to the Hasanabad gates.

The royal water fountains were then in a great position to supply the thirsty people of Isfahan.  They underline that, both before and after Shah Abbas the First’s development of the bazaar between his Maydan and the Masjid-e Jame, there were other important and active commercial areas in Isfahan.