Table of Contents

Introduction. Sussan Babaie and Talinn Grigor Chapter 1: Achaemenid Imperial Architecture: Performative Porticoes of Persepolis. Margaret Cool Root Chapter 2: Dynastic Sanctuaries and the Transformation of Iranian Kingship between Alexander and Islam. Matthew P. Canepa Chapter 3: The Sassanian Palaces and Their Influence in Early Islam. Lionel Bier Chapter 4: In the Footsteps of the Sasanians: Funerary Architecture and Bavandid Legitimacy. Melanie Michailidis Chapter 5: Sacred Sites of Kingship: The Maydan and the Spatial-Spiritual Mapping of the Empire in Safavid Iran. Sussan Babaie Chapter 6: Kingship Hybridized, Kingship Homogenized: Revivalism under the Qajar and the Pahlavi Dynasties. Talinn Grigor

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Drawing on archaeology, ancient, medieval, early and modern architectural history, both Islamic and secular, this book is suitable for all those interested in Iranian studies and visual culture. It shows how architecture was appropriated by different rulers as an integral part of their strategies of legitimising power.

About the Author

Sussan Babaie is Lecturer in the Arts of Iran and Islam at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK. She is the co-author of Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1989), Slaves of the Shah. New Elites of Safavid Iran (2004), and Shirin Neshat (2013), and the author of the award-winning Isfahan and its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi'ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran (University of Edinburgh Press, 2008). Talinn Grigor is an Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Architecture in the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University, USA. Her research interests include the relationships between architecture and (post)colonial politics. She is the author of Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (2009), Identity Politics in Irano-Indian Modern Architecture (2013), and Contemporary Iranian Art: A Social History from the Street to Studio and Exile (2014).