Jameh Mosque

The Jameh Mosque of Isfahan (Masjid-e Jāmé) is the principal congregational mosque of the city of Isfahan and one of the oldest and most architecturally significant mosques in Iran, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012. The mosque has been continuously expanded and rebuilt for over twelve centuries on the same site, with surviving architectural elements from every major Islamic Persian dynasty — Abbasid, Buyid, Seljuk, Ilkhanid, Muzaffarid, Timurid and Safavid — making the building effectively a living architectural museum of the development of Iranian mosque architecture. The mosque is built around a central four-iwan courtyard plan that became the standard model for major Iranian mosques and was disseminated from Isfahan across the eastern Islamic world. Particularly notable are the two Seljuk-period domed chambers (the southern Nizam al-Mulk dome of 1086 and the northern Taj al-Mulk dome of 1088, both attributed to the great vizier-architects of Sultan Malik Shah) which represent the peak of Seljuk Iranian dome construction; and the muqarnas vaulting of the Ilkhanid Mongol-period mihrab of Oljaytu (1310), which is among the finest examples of stucco craftsmanship in the Islamic world. The mosque continues to function as a working congregational mosque alongside its role as one of Iran's most visited cultural monuments. It sits at the historic heart of old Isfahan, near the great bazaar.