DOMES
circular vaulted roofs or ceilings. The
variety of forms and decoration of Persian
domes is unrivaled. Domes on squinches
first appeared in Persia in the Sasanian
period in the palace at Fīrūzābād in Fārs
and at nearby Qalʿa-ye Doḵtar, both
erected by Ardašir I (r. 224-40).
DOMES, circular vaulted roofs or ceilings. The variety of forms
and decoration of Persian domes is unrivaled.
The Sasanian and early Islamic periods. The dome on squinches
first appeared in Persia in the Sasanian period in the palace at
Fīrūzābād in Fārs and at nearby Qalʿa-ye Doḵtar, both erected by
Ardašir (224-40) in the early 3rd century. Although the dome
chambers at these sites are impressive in size, their conical
squinches (arches across the corners of a cube, forming a zone of
transition) are crude in design and execution (Plate XXXII). The
rubble masonry was so haphazardly applied that it is difficult to
distinguish the outer edges of the squinches from the corbeled
walls between them. The extreme thickness of the walls in
proportion to the height of the dome is another indication that
these chambers stood at the beginning of the series. There is no
evidence of precursors. Roman domes on circular bases or smaller
domes on pendentives obviously sprang from a different tradition
(Ward-Perkins, p. 338). Evidence for the simpler pitched-brick
dome exists from as early as the 3rd millenium B.C.E. in
Mesopotamia (Reuther, p. 501; see ČAHĀRṬĀQ i), but the absence
of any known intermediaries between them and the Fīrūzābād
domes, even from the Parthian period, attests to the originality of
the Sasanian examples.
The most numerous surviving Sasanian domes are those over
čahārṭāqs, frequently the central chambers of fire temples. It is in
the large dome of the structure variously identified as a palace and
a fire temple at Sarvestān in Fārs that two constant features of later
dome design first become apparent: the use of lighter materials, in
this instance brick, for the dome itself and decorative emphasis on
the zone of transition, which at Sarvestān is carefully set off by
dogtooth moldings above and below and lightened by four
windows between the squinches. The squinches are also more
clearly articulated, each consisting of intersecting segments of two
tunnel vaults (Bier, figs. 24-28). These features are, however,
consistent with an early Islamic rather than a late Sasanian date
for Sarvestān, a possibility also mooted for several čahārṭāqs.
The survival of the dome on squinches in the Islamic period may
have been encouraged by the transformation of several čahārṭāqs
into mosques, documented in a few instances (see ČAHĀRṬĀQ ii;
EIr. V, Addenda and Corrigenda). The building of isolated dome
chambers to serve as mosques (“kiosk mosques”) may have
followed, though the evidence comes not from the usually cited
congregational mosques of major cities but from a few, mostly
Saljuq examples in small villages in Khorasan.
It was the appearance of the domed mausoleum that was to prove
most important for the development of the dome in early Islamic
Persia. Despite initial Islamic hostility to tomb structures, by the
10th century several had probably been built by the ʿAbbasid
caliphs for themselves (Allen). Domed tombs had also been erected
over the graves of many Shiʿite martyrs (Blair, 1983, pp. 83-84),
and the respect paid to them by pilgrims may well have hastened
the spread of the form. Two early mausoleums in Transoxania
stand out: that of the Samanids in Bukhara (before 331/943) and
the ʿArab Atā at Tīm (possibly 367/977-78), between Bukhara and
Samarqand. In the zone of transition in the former the squinches
are of the same width as the arches between them, resulting in a
regular octagonal plan at this level; this scheme was followed in
virtually all later examples. At Tīm the zone of transition is further
unified by trilobed squinches composed of large moqarnas
(oversailing courses of niche sections) separated by trilobed
arches. This mausoleum is also the earliest extant to incorporate a
pīšṭāq (an arched portal projecting vertically or horizontally from a
facade), a feature that also became usual in domed-square
mausoleums but that, even at this early stage, often made its
impact at the expense of the dome.
Tomb towers represent another tradition in Persian mausoleums;
many survive from the beginning of the 11th century onward. They
are circular or polygonal in plan, thus reducing the importance of
the zone of transition, and they frequently have conical roofs
masking interior domes. Although the domes of the earliest tomb
towers are plain, the shafts often display the inventive decorative
brickwork of the period, as at the Pīr-e ʿĀlamdār (417/1026-27)
and Čehel Doḵtarān (446/1054-55) at Dāmḡān. Two other notable
examples are at Ḵarraqān on the Qazvīn-Hamadān road 33 km
west of Āb-e Garm (460/1067 and 486/1093); the earlier had the
first masonry double dome known from Persia.
The Saljuq period. The introduction by the Saljuqs of a maqṣūra
(enclosure) in front of the mihrab of the hypostyle mosque helped
to transform the skylines, characteristically punctuated with
domes, of Persian towns. Although in the early Islamic period
dome chambers may have been used for small neighborhood
mosques, it was only after the vizier Neẓām-al-Molk introduced the
domed maqṣūra (ca 479-80/1086-87) in the congregational
mosque at Isfahan that dome chambers on the qebla become the
norm in Persian congregational mosques. It was the largest
masonry dome in the Islamic world in its time and embodied a new
form of squinch, in which a barrel vault above two smaller quarter
domes was substituted for the weaker central unit of the squinch at
ʿArab Atā. The classic status of this squinch form is clear from
numerous copies, not only in the Isfahan oasis (Barsīān, Ardestān,
Zavāra), but also in Khorasan (Rebāṭ-e Šaraf) and Transoxania
(Yarty [Yortī] Gonbad; Karriev et al., pp. 88-89). At the Isfahan
mosque Neẓām-al-Molk’s rival Tāj-al-Molk built a second dome
chamber (481/1088) on the axis opposite the southern chamber,
for purposes that are still unclear (see Blair, 1992, pp. 166-67). It is
justly famous as the cynosure of Saljuq domes (Pope). The
emphasis on verticality and on lightening the walls of the lower
square became typical of Il-khanid dome chambers. The interior of
the dome of Tāj-al-Molk is patterned with interlacing ribs that
form pentagons and five-pointed stars, among other geometric
figures. This arrangement represents a considerable technical
advance over the eight ribs in the southern dome and could well
have inspired subsequent designers of patterns for this hitherto
neglected surface. The much smaller domes over the bays of the
hypostyle portion of the Isfahan mosque also display a wealth of
geometric ornamentation (Galdieri, I, pls. 60-62).
The numerous Saljuq dome chambers of northwestern Persia
usually have much simpler zones of transition than those at
Isfahan but, perhaps in compensation, are abundantly decorated
with carved stucco and are also sometimes articulated on the
exterior (Hillenbrand, 1976). This concern is most apparent in the
largest Saljuq domed chamber, the tomb of Sultan Sanjar at Marv.
Although the dome is decorated on the interior with a system of
intersecting ribs, the squinches and lower walls are plain. The
exterior zone of transition received the greatest emphasis, with the
squinches disguised by alternating large and small arches, echoed
by smaller superposed arches at the base of the double-shelled
dome. Stucco work on the soffits of the main arcade, probably by
the same artisans who had earlier worked at Rebāṭ-e Šaraf (cf.
Cohn-Wiener, pl. VIII; Hill and Grabar, fig. 546), underlines the
new importance of this zone.
The Il-khanid period. The dome chamber of the congregational
mosque in Varāmīn provides an example of changes in Persian
domes in the Il-khanid period. Its taller proportions result
primarily from the increased height of the zone of transition, with
the addition of a sixteen-sided zone above the main zone of
moqarnas squinches. Extra light enters through eight windows in
this upper tier, although, as the Persian climate necessitated
avoidance of sunlight during most of the year, architects of Persian
dome chambers never aspired to the walls of light that
characterized Ottoman examples.
The major Il-khanid domes were those of the mausoleums of Ḡāzān
Khan at Tabrīz and Öljeitü (Ūljāytū) at Solṭānīya, each at the center
of a larger complex of buildings. Ḡāzān’s mausoleum was twelvesided; although it is no longer extant, its magnificence may be
judged by that of ÖÚljeitü, which was built to rival it. The dome of
Öljeitü’s mausoleum is 50 m high and nearly 25 m in diameter,
dimensions unsurpassed in later Persian examples. The decoration
of tile, stucco, and painting (the last forming part of a remodeling
of the interior; Blair, 1987) is the finest surviving from the period.
The thin double-shelled dome was reinforced by arches between
the shells. Galleries on the upper part of the octagonal exterior
differ from earlier arcades in that they were easily accessible. They
were the first in a series that can be traced through Timurid and
Shaybanid examples to a culmination at the Taj Mahal in Agra.
In the Il-khanid period tomb towers mirroring the splendors of
Öljeitü’s mausoleum proliferated. Several have moqarnas domes.
This feature was found in brick at the Saljuq congregational
mosque at Sīn, and an example covered with painted plaster in the
congregational mosque at Nāʾīn may date from as early as the 10th
century (Hillenbrand, 1987, fig. 11). In Il-khanid examples they
usually consist of plaster shells masking the underlying structures.
The finest example is probably that at the tomb of ʿAbd-al-Ṣamad
in Naṭanz. The form may have been adopted from the tomb of
Shaikh Sohravardī, founder of the order to which ʿAbd-al-Ṣamad
belonged, near Baghdad (Blair, 1986). In the Mesopotamian
examples (that of Imam Dūr at Samarra, 478/1085-86, is the
earliest) the moqarnas are frequently expressed on the exterior as
well. This form is occasionally found in Persia, for example, at the
emāmzāda of Mīr Moḥammad on Ḵarg island, dated 738/1337
(Watson, p. 187). A plaster slab discovered at Taḵt-e Solaymān in
Kordestān is incised with a plan of the moqarnas vaulting for a
room restored by Abaqa Khan (671-74/1271-74; Harb).
The dome over the chamber adjoining the Do Manār Dardašt in
Isfahan marks a major advance in dome design. If contemporary
with the gravestone of Solṭān-Baḵt Āqā inside (753/1351-52;
Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 317), it is the earliest known example of a
double dome in which the inner and outer shells have substantially
different profiles. It has been claimed that the dome of the
Solṭānīya complex in Cairo (probably built by Sultan Ḥasan, ca.
1356-60) was the origin of this form, which then spread to Persia
(Meinecke, p. 175), but the interior buttressing at the Solṭānīya
complex betrays the influence of a brick tradition, suggesting a
Persian origin. The trend toward taller drums continued in the
Timurid period, finally reaching the inordinate proportions of the
ʿEšrat-ḵāna in Samarqand (ca. 869/1464). One factor responsible
was the increasing height of pīšṭāqs, which at the boqʿa (shrine) of
Zayn-al-Dīn Ḵᵛāfī at Tāybād (848/1444-45) led the architect to
abandon the outer shell of the dome altogether (Plate XXXIII).
Where the drum was retained, however, it usually rose straight
from a lower square, resulting in the loss of an external zone of
transition.
There were two divergent trends in the interior decoration of
domed chambers from the Saljuq period onward. The most
prominent was the substitution of plain or painted plaster for
brick. The other was increased use of tilework. A spectacular early
example of nearly complete tile revetment is the dome chamber of
the congregational mosque at Yazd (765/1364; Plate XXXIV). The
same craftsman’s signature appears in the dome of this monument
and in the congregational mosque at Sāva (O’Kane, 1984, p. 84).
The interiors of several of the mausoleums in the Šāh-e Zenda in
Samarqand (e.g., that of Šād-e Molk, 773/1371) are totally reveted
in tilework.
In the 15th-17th centuries. After the turn of the 15th century the
Timurids built very few freestanding mausoleums, attaching them
instead to madrasas (religious schools), often in pairs. The dome
chambers erected within these madrasas revolutionized the design
of interiors, as in the madrasa of Gowhar Šād at Herat (82036/1417-33) and the madrasa at Ḵargerd (ca. 840-46/1436-43;
O’Kane, 1987, nos. 14, 22). This change probably originated in
14th-century experiments with small lantern domes set at right
angles to the main transverse vaults, from which arose the concept
of using intersecting arches to support a dome with a diameter
smaller than the width of the square below. The chamber was also
modified, with a deep recess added to each side to produce a
cruciform plan. The result was a much more fluid space than had
been possible with the rigid tripartite division of lower square,
zone of transition, and dome. In particular, the intersecting arches
provide a visual link between the dome and the dado level, an
illusion, as the thrusts are taken up by concealed masonry (O’Kane,
1987, pp. 108-09). In the madrasa of Gowhar Šād the dome is
actually a triple shell, the first of its kind; the intermediate dome
presumably was added for reinforcement.
The tilework of the Qara Qoyunlū Moẓaffarīya mosque (also known
as the Blue Mosque, 870/1465) at Tabrīz is outstanding. Above a
marble dado the whole of the interior of the dome chamber on the
qebla was faced with dark-blue hexagonal tiles with stenciled
gilding, creating a richness that was unparalleled until
construction of the mosque of Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh in Isfahan (101228/1603-18), the quintessential Persian dome chamber. In the
latter the blending of the square, zone of transition, and dome was
achieved by unifying the first two, rather than the upper two, as in
the Timurid examples with intersecting arches. The form of the
squinches is plain, recalling those of Sarvestān and the Saljuq
domes of northwestern Persia, but the way in which the framing
arches and the enclosed tilework patterns continue in an
uninterrupted sweep down to dado level was an innovation. The
four identical arches between the squinches are edged by a bold
twisted turquoise cable, lending the interior a new unity and
simplicity. The exterior of the dome displays another innovation,
the use of multiple levels of arabesque, interwoven with the brick
ground with such finesse that it has often been mistakenly
presumed that the ground, too, was glazed. The domes of the 17thcentury Masjed-e Šāh and Mādar-e Šāh madrasa in Isfahan show
how effective a similar arabesque pattern can be against a lightblue tiled ground.
In Transoxania and neighboring regions the Uzbeks carried on the
Timurid tradition of dome building with little change, though
dome chambers were sometimes surrounded with axial ayvāns
and corner rooms, as in the ḵānaqāh (Sufi monastery) of Qāsem
Shaikh in Kermān (Golombek, fig. 16). Where these corner rooms
are part of an octagonal plan and on two stories, as in the shrine of
Ḵᵛāja Pārsā at Balḵ (ca. 1598), the form was a prototype for the
major Indian mausoleums of Persian inspiration, that of Homāyūn
in Delhi and the Taj Mahal. The domed tīmčas (markets) that
survive at major intersections in Shaybanid Bukhara (McChesney)
are among the earliest survivors of the type.
In the 19th and 20th centuries. In the Qajar period the major
architectural focus was the ayvān, leading to comparative neglect
of the dome, even when it was on the qebla axis (as at the Solṭānī
mosque in Semnān, 1242/1826-27, and the Sepahsalār madrasa in
Tehran, 1296/1878-79). The “onion dome,” with an exaggerated
swelling above a short drum, first appeared in Persia in this period
(e.g., at Šāh Čerāḡ in Shiraz, 1269/1852-53), but it is difficult to
view the resulting top-heavy appearance as other than an aesthetic
step backward. More impressive are the Qajar tīmcās at Qom
(Plate XXXV) and Kāšān, each of which features a sea of stalactites
supporting a central dome flanked by two smaller ones (Ministry,
pp. 218-19, 228-33).
In the 20th century the dome has declined further in importance,
especially since reinforced steel has usurped its role as a substitute
for wooden beams. It has remained central in mausoleums,
however, perhaps echoing an original paradise symbolism
(Daneshvari), as at the 20th-century tombs of Ḥāfeẓ and Saʿdī in
Shiraz and those of Reżā Shah in Ray (now destroyed) and
Ruhollah Khomeini (Rūḥ-Allāh Ḵomeynī) in Tehran.
In vernacular architecture. Throughout Persian history the dome
also played an important role in vernacular architecture. On many
parts of the Persian plateau where wood is scarce whole villages
with domed roofs are to be observed (Beazley, fig. 1). From
Sasanian to Qajar times caravansaries were frequently constructed
with the domed bay as the module. Domed cisterns (āb-anbār;
Plate XXXVI) and icehouses (yakčāls), still common sights in the
Persian countryside (Beazley), are other reminders of the variety,
pervasiveness, and permanence of the dome in Persian history.
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Plate XXII. Detail of dome chamber, palace of Ardašīr I, Fīrūzābād,
3rd century.
Plate XXIII. Exterior of the dome of the boqʿa of Zayn-al-Dīn Ḵᵛāfī,
Tāybād, 848/1444-45, from the southwest.
Plate XXIV. Interior of dome faced with tiles, congregational
mosque, Yazd, 765/1364.
Plate XXV. Domed carpet market (Tīm-e bozorg), Qom, 19th
century.
Plate XXVI. Domed cistern with wind funnel (bādḡīr), at Bašnīḡān,
near Yazd.
[Plate numbers in this entry have been corrected; the numbers
given in the print edition's version of the entry are in error.]
(Bernard O’Kane)
Originally Published: December 15, 1995
Last Updated: February 27, 2013
This article is available in print.
Vol. VII, Fasc. 5, pp. 479-485