Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque - Art

Art

Ali Reza Abbasi, the leading calligrapher at the court of Shah Abbas, has decorated the entrance, above the door, with majestic inscriptions with the names and titles of Shah Abbas, the Husayni and the Musavi, that is, the descendants of Imams Husayn and Musa.

The inscriptions of the Mosque reflect matters that were preoccupying the shah around the time it was built; namely the need to define Twelver Shiism in contrast to Sunni Islam, and the Persian resistance to Ottoman invasion. The running inscription in white tile on blue ground on the exterior drum of the dome, visible to the public, consists of three suras (chapters) from the Quran; al- Shams (91, The Sun), al-Insan (76, Man) and al-Kauthar (108, Abundance). The suras emphasize the rightness of a pure soul and the fate in hell of those who reject God’s way, most likely referring to the Ottoman Turks.

Entering the prayer chamber, one is confronted with walls covered with blue, yellow, turquoise and white tiles with intricate arabesque patterns. Quranic verses appear in each corner while the east and west walls contain poetry by Shaykh Bahai. Around the mihrab are the names of the Twelve Shi’i Imams, and the inscription contains the names of Shaykh Lutfallah, Ostad Muahmmad Reza Isfahani (the engineer), and Baqir al- Banai (the calligrapher who wrote it).

Turning right at the entrance to the domed prayer chamber, one first encounters the full text of Sura 98, al- Bayyina, the Clear Proof. The message of this chapter is that clear evidence of the true scripture was not available to the People of the Book (i.e. Christians or Jews) until God sent his messenger Muhammad. The horizontal band of script at the bottom of the arch is not Quranic, but states that God’s blessings are on the (Shi’i) martyrs. Thus, Shi’i invocation echoes the Quranic verses in its stress on the truthfulness of God’s message.

The poem of Shaykh Bahai on the right wall prays for help from the Fourteen Immaculate Ones (Muhammad, Fatima and the Twelve Imams), while the inscriptions on the interior of the dome emphasize the virtues of charity, prayer and honesty, as well as the correctness of following Islam and its prophets versus the error of other religions.

The specifically Shi’i passages and their prominent placement in the mihrab, on the two lateral walls and in the horizontal bands of each corner, underscore the pre- eminence of this creed in Safavid Iran.

The fact that two poems by Shaykh Bahai, a devoted sufi, grace the walls of Shah Abbas’ private mosque, proves that, although some sufi elements in the empire were suppressed, Sufism as a general phenomenon continued to play an important role in the Safavid society.