Friday Mosque of Herat

The Friday Mosque of Herat, the Masjed-e Jame, is the great congregational mosque of a city that has been one of the cultural capitals of the Persian-speaking world. A mosque stood here earlier, but the building known today was founded around 1200 by the Ghurid sultan Ghiyath al-Din, whose tomb lies within it. Jame means gathering or congregational, for the mosque where the community meets for Friday prayer.

The plan is classic Iranian: a vast courtyard with four iwans, monumental vaulted halls open to the courtyard, one in the middle of each side. Much of the decoration is later. In the fifteenth century, when Herat was the capital of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh and later of Sultan Husayn Bayqara, the mosque was restored and covered with glazed tile mosaic in blue, turquoise, white and green.

Restoration has continued in modern times. The mosque keeps a tile workshop on site, where craftsmen cut and glaze tiles to replace damaged panels, keeping the Herati tradition of tile mosaic in practice. On Fridays the courtyard fills with worshippers; at other times visitors can watch the craftsmen at work, and look for the surviving Ghurid portal with its stucco and brick ornament, a fragment of the earlier building amid the later tile.