Journal of Researches in Islamic Architecture

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Today's Islamic Iranian city must be an appropriate place to meet the diverse needs of citizens where relations between citizens together, and with the natural and artificial environment around them is set based on the values and Monotheism teachings of the religion of Islam. In fact, it seems that the ultimate goal of the Islamic Iranian city as a habitat is to pave the way of man towards the divine grace. In the ancient Islamic Iranian city, public spaces have always been a place for the crystallizing the unity of the Islamic Ummah, holding communal religious practices, trading, establishing social interactions, and communicating with the natural environment. Defined public spaces, lively, flexible, thriving, environmentally friendly and with a special meaning, this study refers to them as place, and their creation defines the Islamic Ummah, not merely the accumulation of human beings. The places that need for them in today's Islamic Iranian cities are felt more than ever. Certainly an excellent example of such spaces in the past Islamic Iranian cities has been the space and the courtyard of historical mosques. In fact, the mosques were on the one hand a venue for worship, and on the other hand, the place that organized the social life of the neighborhoods inhabitants and resolved the affairs of the people. Mosques have always played a role in various fields such as strengthening social cohesion, promoting public participation, increasing social security, building functional diversity and enhancing the sense of belonging. Leading the city's path into the courtyard of mosques turned these spaces into urban public spaces. The presence of such spaces in the fabric of cities and urban neighborhoods brings a vitality and social life to the Islamic cities. Therefore, this research seeks to identify the effective factors to make and develop places in the Islamic Iranian cities through the analysis of the physical, semantic and functional characteristics of mosques as the most excellent example of public place in the Islamic Iranian cities. In this regard, two historical mosques in the city of Shiraz (Atiq and Nasir al-Mulk Mosques), which have unique semantic physical characteristics, have been selected as a case study. Atiq Jame' Mosque, as the oldest mosque in Shiraz, has always played a central and pivotal role in the religious, historical, cultural, social and political structure of Shiraz city and with many general and historical areas of Shiraz, such as the bazaar, historical neighborhoods, Shah Cheragh, Now Mosque (the New Mosque), and the city entrance gate have a spatial-physical continuity. The sixth entrance of the mosque, located on the different sides, is a testimony to the unique prosperity and performance of the mosque in the past as a throbbing heart in the old Shiraz fabric, a communication space and a place for gathering and establishing social relations between citizens. On the other hand, many studies refer to the present position of the Nasir al-Mulk historical mosque as a space for communication and social interaction of citizens, a place with unique physical, social, and perceptual characteristics to induce a sense of belonging to citizens and with influential physical attributes to strengthen the sense of spirituality and the imposition of semantic load to the citizens. These signs point to the contemporary role of the courtyard of the mosque as an urban space. Also, the present study uses a descriptive-analytic research method in the field of theoretical framework analysis; and the causal-comparative research method and content analysis and review methods of video documentation and interviews with experts and the Analytic network process (ANP) for ranking the rules and analyzing case examples. Formation of network structure, formation of comparative matrices and compatibility control, binary comparison of the main criteria, binary comparison of internal dependencies of the main criteria, binary comparison of the sub-criteria of each main criteria, the binary comparison of the sub-criteria of internal dependencies, the calculation of the final weight of the sub-criteria, the binary comparison of the preferred options and the choice of the optimal option are the main steps of the network analysis process. The statistical population of this research in interviewing and completing the process of hierarchical analysis was architecture and urban planners of the universities of Iran that among them, based on the snowball sampling method, 25 people with urban and architectural specialties were selected as the sample group of the statistical population. The results of this research show that form component (with indicators: attractive elements of attention, orientation and perception capability through different senses), activity component (with indicators: behavior, body language, and culture sociality), meaning and imagination component (with indicators: memorable, spirituality, Meanings and values and emotion), and ecosystem component (with indicators: tree and plant, water, natural light, and coherence with the climate), affect the formation of the place in the Islamic Iranian city. Also, in this research, along with analysis of case studies, strategies and policies have been presented to make place in the Islamic Iranian city, based on the developed components and key criteria.    

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Since man has been engaged in architecture, he has paid attention to the spiritual , inner needs and aesthetics sense too. Today, in architecture, aesthetics is limited to formal secondary factors due to lack of the systematic and applied explanation, while this concept has a more definition and is closely related to structure, details of construction, audience and environment. Iranian architecture that has manifested aesthetics over many years age, has been a rich source for adapting the principles of aesthetics in architecture. Quantitative and qualitative foundations in traditional architecture, which are related to the aesthetics and visual principles set on structure and proportions, lead to aesthetics appearance. Accordingly This research tries to answer the question: how are aesthetics principles engaged in Iranian architecture in order to utilizing them in contemporary architecture.
The analysis of the houses was carried out in Mashhad because of its historical background, which was a rich source of architectural works. In this research, current findings of different schools and philosophers viewpoints about aesthetics were collected next analyzed and Interpreted with content analysis method which they formed the criteria of analysis. Using the documentations, 10 types of Mashhad historical houses were analyzed with aesthetics factors, all of them were belonged to Qajar period. In this analysis, according to architectural changes affected from historical conditions (Qajar period), the spatial & structural principles of the houses belonged to the first period and the beginning of the second period were conformed with aesthetics criteria. While the houses belonged to second Qajar period, they included elements as sloping roofs, and issues like: having less application of the symmetry and proportionality in the plan & façade, and more extravagance, which is a conception of Western architecture and doesn’t fit to regional culture and climate.
 

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When architecture is discussed in the land of Iran, architecture is created as a container and context of life for human beings where the Spirit of God is blown in his (her) (Surah Al-Hijr - Verse 29), his existence is not limited to material needs, but he is a creature with different existential levels. It derives from the material needs such as eating and sleeping, and need for shelter, which arise from the material levels of human existence to the psychological needs that embrace a range of needs from security to belonging and levels of spirituality of human existence with its characteristics and needs in which the essence and basic instinct of humans lies. Iran is a country with long-standing architectural value. Experts have long a consensus on the preservation, restoration and rehabilitation of Iran’s past values to preserve cultural values representing the national identity. Identification of the past noble values and adopting the most important one in observing criteria in accordance with the circumstances of time and place of today's society is considered the main problem. In this regard, we should try to recognize the Iranian - Islamic architectural values and reflect them to young professionals who are somehow involved in this issue. Today, it is tried to convey ideas and thoughts to others in the form of desired concepts and ideas using the meaning language which is indirect.
In the meantime, valuable Iranian Islamic architecture, due to its comprehensive functionality as well as permanent and enduring presence in our culture, is considered more than before. Because maintaining Iranian – Islamic values and identity is one of the requirements, modern designers are obliged to think deeply about traditional architectural values and standards to get rid of the imitation and create a design in accordance with modern human expectations based on Islamic law. In this regard, architecture, due to direct contact with human life, plays an important role in strengthening or weakening culture and identity in the face of globalization, for all the people are associated with the architecture and their behaviors are shaped in these buildings. The importance and necessity of this issue, in challenging designers to think about the different aspects of the past architecture and special attention to the ancient fundamental values, is to enrich the design quality. The study has a qualitative and quantitative research method, because it used desk and field study to gather information. Its qualitative nature was created with research studies and literature review and its quantitative nature was shaped by choosing statistical population and preparing a questionnaire for the analysis. 
The identification of the past architectural values and selecting the most essential of them are considered as the main issue in the observance of the scales matching with the temporal and spatial conditions of the today’s society. Efforts have to be constantly made for recognizing the Iranian-Islamic architectural values and reflecting them to the young experts who are somehow involved in this issue. The present piece of writing has been compiled based on a qualitative and quantitative method and the study has been conducted based on a survey method; the study is fundamental in terms of objectives. It is posited based on the selection of a process of the qualitative-descriptive type and its investigation based on a quantitative method that “there is observed a significant relationship between meaning and contextual elements of architecture”. It might have been quite common in the past architecture, especially in the Islamic Era’s architecture, that the manifestations and embodiments of the concepts stemming from the society’s culture were manifested most beautifully in the architectural works hence more readily identifiable. Moreover, the principles that are dealt with in the resources are different in terms of prioritization and valuation; thus, experts’ notions have been used in this area to quantitatively discover these topics using survey methods. At first, in order to achieve sublimity in architecture through seeking assistance from the honorable Surah Hashr, ĀYA 23, and comparing it with the valuable architectural principles, it has been descriptively investigated and extracted and 15 professors were subsequently asked to confirm this information. Next, a questionnaire was codified and, in order to select a study sample volume comprised of the experts, including the professors and students of post-graduate education in state and national universities of the country, five universities were selected that included 120 individuals in total and, excluding the imperfect questionnaires, 100 questionnaires were finally attained. The data were analyzed in SPSS software, version 21, using statistical tests (one-sample t-test, two-sample test, ANOVA test and Friedman test); the results have been offered in two descriptive and inferential methods. The results indicate that there is a significant relationship between the indicators of the concepts and the contextual elements in architectures. Furthermore, factors like semantic, climatic, structural and eventually technological indicators were respectively found with the highest degree of importance.

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