Qualla: Jameh Mosque of Saveh: Twelve Centuries in Brick and Stucco https://qualla.com/jameh-mosque-of-saveh en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/5/z/jameh-mosque-of-saveh-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Jameh Mosque of Saveh: Twelve Centuries in Brick and Stucco https://qualla.com/jameh-mosque-of-saveh Jameh Mosque of Saveh: Twelve Centuries in Brick and Stucco: Introduction https://qualla.com/jameh-mosque-of-saveh/ Photo credit Alireza Anisi, Public domain. Dig beneath the Jameh Mosque of Saveh and you find another mosque. Dig beneath that one and you find a third. Archaeological excavations have revealed at least three congregational buildings stacked on this site, the oldest dating to the 8th or 9th century - its piers built of stamped earth, its roof long collapsed. Each generation tore down walls, reinforced columns, added domes, and inscribed new names over old ones. The result is not a single building but a geological record of Iranian architecture, compressed into 5,400 square meters on the southeastern edge of a small city most travelers pass through without stopping.

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Image: Alireza Anisi | Public domain

]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/5/z/jameh-mosque-of-saveh-wp/tn5z-jameh-mosque-of-saveh-twelve-centuries-in-brick-an-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Jameh Mosque of Saveh: Twelve Centuries in Brick and Stucco: A Crossroads Town and Its Mosque https://qualla.com/jameh-mosque-of-saveh/ Photo credit Hassanxyz, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saveh sits in the historic region of Jibal, the uplands of western-central Iran that medieval geographers used as a label for the territory between Ray, Hamadan, Isfahan, and Baghdad. The city prospered because it lay on caravan routes connecting these larger centers, and because...

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]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/5/z/jameh-mosque-of-saveh-wp/tn5z-jameh-mosque-of-saveh-twelve-centuries-in-brick-an-a-crossroads-town-and-its-mosque.mp3 0:06 2 full Jameh Mosque of Saveh: Twelve Centuries in Brick and Stucco: Building Upon Building https://qualla.com/jameh-mosque-of-saveh/ Photo credit MohammadAsadi4545, CC BY-SA 4.0. The earliest mosque on the site was a hypostyle hall - rows of closely spaced piers supporting a flat roof, a design borrowed from the earliest mosques of Arabia and Iraq. It was built largely of stamped earth, a technique called china in Persian, with fragments of its mud-brick ...

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Image: MohammadAsadi4545 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/5/z/jameh-mosque-of-saveh-wp/tn5z-jameh-mosque-of-saveh-twelve-centuries-in-brick-an-building-upon-building.mp3 0:06 3 full Jameh Mosque of Saveh: Twelve Centuries in Brick and Stucco: Destruction and Reinvention https://qualla.com/jameh-mosque-of-saveh/ Photo credit MohammadAsadi4545, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Mongol invasions of the early 13th century devastated Saveh. The scholar Yaqut al-Hamawi, writing before his death in 1229, reported that the mosque's library was burned. The city recovered under the Ilkhanids, and in the early 14th century the mosque was substantially remode...

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Image: MohammadAsadi4545 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/5/z/jameh-mosque-of-saveh-wp/tn5z-jameh-mosque-of-saveh-twelve-centuries-in-brick-an-destruction-and-reinvention.mp3 0:06 4 full Jameh Mosque of Saveh: Twelve Centuries in Brick and Stucco: The Safavid Transformation https://qualla.com/jameh-mosque-of-saveh/ Photo credit Luis Argerich, CC BY 2.0. When Shah Ismail I established Twelver Shi'ism as the state religion in the early 16th century, mosques across Iran were redecorated to reflect the new orthodoxy. At Saveh, a new outer dome shell was added over the Seljuk dome, creating a tall double-shell profile rising 21.9 met...

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Image: Luis Argerich | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/5/z/jameh-mosque-of-saveh-wp/tn5z-jameh-mosque-of-saveh-twelve-centuries-in-brick-an-the-safavid-transformation.mp3 0:06 5 full Jameh Mosque of Saveh: Twelve Centuries in Brick and Stucco: Reading the Walls https://qualla.com/jameh-mosque-of-saveh/ Photo credit MohammadAsadi4545, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walking through the Jameh Mosque today is an exercise in dating by decoration. The earliest mihrabs are flat plaster panels with Kufic and Naskh scripts, resembling work from Nain and Nishapur. Seljuk-era stucco survives in the dome chamber as interlaced star patterns with vegeta...

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]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/5/z/jameh-mosque-of-saveh-wp/tn5z-jameh-mosque-of-saveh-twelve-centuries-in-brick-an-reading-the-walls.mp3 0:06 6 full