Religious spaces in Islamic traditional Cities

Subject Areas : Urban Design

Atefeh Dehghan Touran Poshti ¹ , Abbasali Tayefi Nasrabadi ² , Mohammd Naghizade ³

1 - Ph.D. Faculty Member,Department of Architecture, West Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Ph.D. Faculty Member, Department of civil, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran
3 - Assistant Professor, Islamic Azad University, Sience and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2011-01-24 Accepted : 2011-08-23 Published : 2012-04-01

Keywords: Moslem-settled city, Mosque, Religious functioning building, takiyeh, hosseiniye, Masjid Al-Nabi1, Jamie Mosque,

Abstract :

The present paper aims for the most part to prove the fact that religious and spiritual places andabove all, mosques play major roles within Islamic urban areas. They are in fact the basis of civil infrastructures. Ahistorical analysis focusing on where mosques stand in Islamic urban areas reveals that mosques have always been thecenter of development and growth and that they must be studied as a cultural and historical component of Islamic cities.The study also argues that considering mosques as works of architecture in isolation would be a far cry from reality.There are indisputable ties between mosques and historical cultural developments in such cities.