Masjid-i Khayyat-ha

Isfahan, Iran

Masjid-i Khayyat-ha, or the Taylors' Mosque, is a small mosque located in the Bazaar of Isfahan along one of its main vaulted streets. It is also known locally as Masjid-i Pa Dirakht-i Sukhtah-i Zanjani (The Mosque of Zanjani's Burnt Tree-Stump). It dates to the Safavid or Qajar period.

Date:

The Ganjnamah mentions a plaque on the mosque's portal dated 975 AH (1567-1568 CE) and bearing the name of 'Abd al-Fath Sultan-Mirza, the son of Safavid Shah Tahmasp I, suggesting that this mosque may date to the Safavid period. In Gaube and Wirth's survey of the bazaar, no plaque is mentioned, and the authors relate the building stylistically to another late nineteenth/thirteenth-century AH mosque nearby. 

Plan:

The mosque fills the space between two covered bazaar streets that intersect at its northeastern corner: one running roughly east-west along the north side of the mosque, and another running northeast-southwest along the southeastern side of the mosque. The main entrance is through a portal on the market street running along its southeastern side. The portal, decorated with tiles that include vegetal motifs and an inscription, leads through a vaulted, octagonal vestibule onto the southeastern side of the mosque's central courtyard through an iwan. 

The central courtyard is oriented northeast to southwest (qibla). The northeastern and southwestern facades are both distinguished with large central iwans, each flanked by two smaller iwans. The height of these facades is greater than that of the two lateral facades (southeast and northwest). 

The iwan on the southwestern (qibla) facade is the highest. It leads onto a domed prayer hall with a mihrab. The smaller iwans flanking the large central one lead onto side bays open to the central domed space. 

Directly opposite this qibla assemblage, the central iwan of the northeastern facade is broader than it is deep, and is flanked on either side by two narrower iwans. These do not give onto any further rooms.

The northwestern side of the courtyard has three shallow niches with doors that lead onto a hypostyle prayer hall three aisles wide and five bays deep. 

The facade of the courtyard's southeastern side is centered on the entrance iwan, which is flanked on either side by a corridor (also leading to the entrance vestibule) and another iwan. A corridor on the north side of the entrance vestibule leads behind the iwans on the southeast side of the courtyard to an ablutions hall, located in the northeastern corner of the complex.