Dynastic History|ʿAli Qapu, Isfahan — The Square Built on a Year of Remitted Tax

Abbas I proclaimed Isfahan his capital in 1006/1597–98, though work on the ground had begun earlier. Construction of the great rectangle known as Naqsh-e Jahan (میدان نقش جهان), listed by UNESCO under its later name Meidan Emam, started in 1001 AH, and Encyclopaedia Iranica records that a year's tax relief was granted toward the project. That remission is the clearest surviving statement of who paid. The square did not come out of a treasury surplus; it came out of revenue the state agreed not to collect from the households and traders of Isfahan, who then furnished the labour and the materials.

The enclosure runs roughly 560 by 160 metres. The shops, caravanserais, bathhouses and coffeehouses along its two-storey arcades were finished by 1012/1603. The Masjed-e Shah on the south side was begun in 1020/1611 and was still taking additions and repairs in 1078/1667, four decades after Abbas died. ʿAli Qapu, the palace gate on the west side, was raised under Abbas but not occupied until the reign of his successor Shah Safi — the building that reads as the emblem of Abbas's Isfahan was completed for someone else.

The arrangement was deliberate. Palace, congregational mosque, a smaller court mosque and the head of the bazaar face one another across a single enclosure, so that court ceremonial, Friday prayer and the customs revenue all sat inside one frame.

UNESCO inscribed the square in 1979. The arcades still trade, and the ticket queue for ʿAli Qapu forms at its foot.

📸 Cover: ʿAli Qapu seen across the square's pool, Fardinma, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.