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Qara Qoyunlu mosque, completed 1465

Blue Mosque of Tabriz

مسجد کبود

A Qara Qoyunlu mosque famous for its deep blue tile mosaic

The Blue Mosque of Tabriz, the Masjed-e Kabud, was built for the court of Jahan Shah, ruler of the Qara Qoyunlu, the Turkmen dynasty that held Tabriz and much of western Iran in the fifteenth century. The inscription on its portal records that the building was completed in October 1465. Historians credit its patronage to Jahan Shah’s family, and his wife Jan Begum Khatun is named in several accounts.

Unlike most Iranian mosques it had no open courtyard. Instead, the whole building was roofed: a large central domed hall was surrounded on three sides by domed galleries, with a smaller domed sanctuary beyond. A mausoleum, intended for the family, was added to the south. Every surface inside and out was faced with tile mosaic, in a deep cobalt and turquoise that gave the mosque its name, set with arabesques, floral scrolls and bands of calligraphy in white and black. The surviving fragments, especially on the great portal, are among the finest tilework of fifteenth-century Iran.

Tabriz lies in an earthquake zone, and in 1780 a great earthquake brought down the domes and much of the structure. For nearly two centuries the mosque stood as a ruin. Restoration began in the 1970s, led by the architect Reza Memaran Benam, and the domes were rebuilt in plain brick, so that visitors can see clearly where the old tilework ends and the new work begins.

The result is an honest and moving building: brick vaults and patches of brilliant blue mosaic side by side, a record both of what fifteenth-century Tabriz achieved and of what was lost.

Blue Mosque of Tabriz through time

Iranian history
  1. Elam and the first cities4000 BCE
  2. The Medes850 BCE
  3. The Achaemenids550 BCE
  4. Seleucids and Parthians330 BCE
  5. The Sasanians224
  6. The Arab conquest and the Persian revival636
  7. Seljuks, Mongols and Ilkhanids1040
  8. The Timurids1370
  9. The Safavids1501
  10. Afsharids, Zands and Qajars1736
  11. The Pahlavi century and after1925

1370–1507

The Timuridsتیموریان

Timur's campaigns were brutal, but his heirs made Samarkand and Herat capitals of Persian painting, poetry, astronomy and architecture.

  • 1465 Mosque completed, according to its portal inscription
  • 1780 Earthquake brings down the domes

More in East Azerbaijanآذربایجان شرقی

East Azerbaijan

Stories from the regionداستان‌ها

A long-necked saz with a red bowl and saffron frets, the instrument of the ashiq minstrels, before the rows of brick domes and arches of the Tabriz bazaar, with Mount Sahand and a saffron sun on turquoise behind.

Turkic speech, an ancient Iranian province, and a nation of their own to the north

Azerbaijanis

Iran’s Azerbaijanis, who often call themselves *Türk*, speak a Turkic language in a land named after an Iranian satrap. North of the Aras, the Republic of Azerbaijan is a separate nation that defines itself.

A sheaf of wheat tied with a red band above a round loaf broken into equal pieces on a pale cloth, against a white halo on clay

A sixth-century movement for sharing

Mazdakism

Under King Kavad I, a priest called Mazdak preached that goods should be shared and the world made just. His movement was crushed, but its memory lasted for centuries.

A Persian tar with its double-bowled saffron body, two white skin faces and long fretted neck, angled across a red halo on turquoise

The long-necked lute of the radif

Tar

With its double-bowled mulberry body and skin face, the tar was the instrument on which the radif itself was codified. In the Caucasus a related tar has grown into a tradition of its own.