Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE SAP AVID EMPIRE
The art of building revived under Shah Abbas had Timurid antecedents in about the same wa>, Ottoman architecture was based on Seljuk forms. Again as with the Ottomans, contemporary influences from outside Persia were wholly rejected until, as in Turkey, European forms were introduced in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Buildings of Shah Abbas I
Shah Abbas I celebrated Nauruz, the Persian New Year, in Isfahan in 1598 and then decided to transform the areas of gardens and fields between the old walled town and the Zayandeh River into a new capital. The Isfahan of Shah Abbas, while certainly not the first planned city in Islam, is one of the very few of which enough remains or is recorded to make a nearly complete reconstruction of its general features possible. The design was not wholly new, as it adjusted itself to a number of pre-existing features. The great Median-i-Shah, today about 1,709 by 525 feet, was probably in existence as early as 1504-5 when Shah Ismail laid out to the west of it the garden called Naqsh-i-Jahan or Picture of the World, reproducing the name of one of Timur’s gardens at Samarkand, in

1509-10 the Meidan was widened.

Shah Tahmasp is said to have resided frequently in a Timurid paiace, probably on the site of the Ali Kapu, which may still contain parts of it. Here he may well have entertained the exiled Mughul emperor, Humayun. Shah Abbas rebuilt the Meidan, providing it on all four sides with a covered bazar lined with stalls and with another row of stalls facing the square. Rows of trees and a water channel, since filled in. separated these from the central open space used for temporary markets, polo games, public executions.

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Political and Cultural History of Islam

and other spectacles. The orientation of the Meidan determined that of the palace area west of it in Ismail’s garden the south end of the Meidan arose the great Friday mosque, the Masjid Shah, who monumental entrance, finished in 1616, faces (on axis) another entrance leading to a great complex of bazars, baths, and caravanserais comprising the commercial quarter of the new suburb. For the central axis of his new city. Shah Abbas departed from the direction of the Meidan and placed his promenade, the Chahar Bagh. named for the four gardens purchased for the right of way, almost due north south.