Jameh Mosque of Isfahan

The Jameh Mosque of Isfahan, the city's Friday Mosque, is less a single building than a thousand-year archive of Iranian architecture. A mosque has stood on this site since around 771, and it was rebuilt, extended and redecorated by nearly every dynasty that ruled the city until modern times. It adjoins Isfahan's Grand Bazaar, which runs up to its south-west side, and it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012.

The decisive changes came under the Seljuks, who made Isfahan their capital in the 11th century. In 1086–87 the vizier Nizam al-Mulk replaced the columns in front of the mihrab with a great brick dome, the largest masonry dome in the Islamic world at the time. Two years later his rival Taj al-Mulk built a smaller domed chamber at the northern end of the axis, whose interlaced ribs, pentagons and five-pointed stars make it one of the masterpieces of medieval Persian architecture. By the early 13th century the builders had added four monumental iwans facing a central courtyard — the four-iwan plan that became the model for mosques across Iran and beyond.

Walking through the mosque is the best way to see these layers. Around the courtyard, around 200 brick vaults over the prayer halls each have a different pattern, a catalogue of what can be done with plain brick. In the west wing, a winter prayer hall added under the Ilkhanid ruler Uljaytu contains a carved stucco mihrab of 1310, signed by the calligrapher Haydar and counted among the finest works of its kind. The glazed tilework of the iwans and the two minarets beside the southern iwan are later, largely from the Safavid period in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The mosque is a working place of worship; visitors are expected to dress modestly.

Getting there

The mosque is in central Isfahan, about 2 km from the city centre, beside the Grand Bazaar. Isfahan Shahid Beheshti International Airport (IFN) is about 21 km away.