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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It is more than one century that the issue of Islamic city and then the Iranian-Islamic city has been noticed systematically and scientifically by the researchers and scholars. The study of the Iranian-Islamic city has been in the intersection of different kinds of scientific systems so that a large number of researchers including geographers, architects, historians, linguists, orientalists, urbanization experts, Islamists, urban planners and etc. have studied the issue of the Iranian-Islamic city and its characteristics. Due to the large number of these researchers, it is essential to categorize these studies to perceive the main trend in this field and also to recognize the concerned research vacuities. One of the main problems in this field is the large and basic discrepancy and disagreement in the studies. It is necessary to do the pathology of Islamic city studies in general and the Iranian-Islamic city studies specifically. These circumstances have caused ambiguity and confusion for the researchers and sometimes have made the conception and comprehension of the Iranian-Islamic city issue difficult. Most of the basic questions about the Iranian-Islamic city issue have been unanswered and subsequently there has been no substantial procedure in this issue. Therefore, it is of much significance to have a comprehensive approach toward the Iranian-Islamic city studies. Making a recent and original foundation in this field is not possible without the comprehensive analyses in the past studies and recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of them. Delavar believes that any researcher who intends to develop a specific science should first identify and study the previous studies carefully (Delavar, 2008, 97-99); Whereas the issue of the Iranian-Islamic city has been noticed by many professors and students in recent years, according to the large number of the articles, theses, and dissertations about this issue, this research has been assigned to study the scientific articles on the Iranian-Islamic city.
The main question of this research is the diagnostic study of doing the scientific researches about the Iranian-Islamic city, analytical conclusion, and suitable approaches. The main object of this research is the meta-analysis of the Iranian-Islamic city issue to conclude and categorize the latest findings of the scientific researches about this issue. The method of doing this research is meta-analysis. The systematic review and evaluation of practical researches in the field of the Iranian-Islamic city indicates that to achieve the scientific attention and concentration, such meta- analyses are essential. Therefore, in this study, ninety-two articles on the Iranian-Islamic city issue from 1974 to 2016 have been recognized through these scientific databases: Noor Specialized Magazines Website, Scientific Information Database, Magiran Information Database, Comprehensive Portal of Humanities and Cultural Studies. The information domain of this research is the articles that studied one or more factors of the Iranian-Islamic city issue specifically. Hence the specified factors were divided into two categories of nature and existence. In the nature dimension the fundamental and identifying attributes were surveyed and in the existence dimension the manifestation of existential factors and personal and public functions (SajadZadeh & Mosavi, 2014; Babich, 2003) of the Iranian-Islamic city were emphasized. The method of sampling in this research is to count the whole available samples. This matter is significant because the national identity of Iranian due to the cultural overlapping has been influenced by three kinds of civilizations including: Persian cultural identity, Islamic cultural identity and western cultural identity. Many questions have been propounded about the nature and existence of the Iranian identity and its attributes and different scientific systems have surveyed it from different points of view and have attempted to explain it so that it is the reflection of misinterpretations and disarrangements about this fact and different topics and goals relating to it. On the other hand, by the advent of obscure thoughts of modernism in Iranian culture and literature not only its conceptual demonstration but also the concrete demonstration of the modernism has been entered in the Iranian-Islamic architecture and urbanization so that the fundamental elements of the present Iranian-Islamic city are losing their identity. Moreover, the western culture and planning has affected these elements and has caused them to lose their identity and urban coherence and stability. This instability is called development and modernity and is increasing day by day. Therefore, the nature and identity of the Iranian -Islamic city has faded because of the economic, social, and cultural evolutions and the unthinking impressions of the western symbols and the modern urbanization patterns. To apply them correctly the necessary approaches for the contemporary issues of the cities and also making the foundation of the comprehensive theories of the Iranian-Islamic city, the critical and pathological point of view of these studies are needed. Accordingly, in this research the most important factors of the Iranian-Islamic city studies are the meaning and conception of the Iranian-Islamic city; the identity of the Iranian-Islamic city; the historical features of spatial organization of the Iranian-Islamic city; the principals and patterns of the Iranian-Islamic city; the identity of the Iranian-Islamic city; the urban space of the Iranian-Islamic city; the social-cultural revolutions in the spatial formation and structure of the Iranian-Islamic city; the impacts of modernism on the Iranian-Islamic city; devotion , and finally the fundamental elements of the Iranian-Islamic city such as neighborhood, mosque, square, and bazaar.
 

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