History and architecture of five historical mosques will be discussed in a meeting arranged by the House of Humanities Thinkers in Tehran.
The meeting is scheduled for July 28 at the House of Humanities Thinkers, located at Warsaw Street on Nejatollahi (Villa) Street, Honaronline reported on its Persian website.
Archeologists Fariba Saeedi-Anaraki will open the meeting by elaborating on the history of the famous Jameh Mosque and Pa Minar Mosque in Isfahan.
Jameh Mosque was built in the four-iwan architectural style, placing four gates opposite each other. In Islamic architecture, iwan is a vaulted space used as an entrance, or, if closed at one end, a hall facing a court in a mosque.
It later became a prototype for mosques and designing domes. The Qibla Iwan on the southern wing of the mosque was vaulted with muqarnas during the 13th century. Muqarnas is an ornamented vault in which a squinch is subdivided into a large number of miniature squinches.
The mosque has been renovated several times since the 9th century. It was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012.
Construction of Pa Minar Mosque dates back to 1069. The mosque comprises seven mihrabs with eye catching stuccoes. Mihrab is a semicircular niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the qibla, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca and the direction Muslims face during prayer.
The mosque was registered as a national heritage in 1937. Its minaret, which bears a Kufic inscription, is one of the oldest in the country.
Talks on Jameh Mosque of Fariman in Khorasan Razavi Province, and Tarikhaneh Mosque in Damghan, Semnan Province, will be given by Hossein Abbaszadeh, who headed an archeological excavation in the area in April, and Masoumeh Davoudian, head of Cultural Heritage Office of Damghan.
Sari Central Mosque in Mazandaran Province that caught fire on July 12 will be the last to be appraised by the archeologist Mehdi Abedini. The mosque was almost completely ruined due to a short circuit.
Some experts believe the mosque was built on the ruins of a Sassanid-era (224–651) fire temple, others say it was first erected as a one-iwan mosque in 757.
