The Catal Atlas was produced around 1375 by the Majorcan cartographic school. The Mongol Il-Khanate ruler and his dominions are depicted in the area of Iran under the title “Rey del tauris”, after his capital city of Tabriz. The Ilkhanate flag (a red square over gold) also appears flying over the major cities, including ‘Soldania’. The Atlas was in the royal library of France by 1380, during the reign of King Charles V, and is still preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. See the whole map here.

The Fra Mauro map is a map of the world made around 1450 by the Italian (Venetian) cartographer Fra Mauro, which is “considered the greatest memorial of medieval cartography.” It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame that measures over two by two meters. Including Asia, the Indian Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic, it is orientated with south at the top. The map is usually on display in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice in Italy. See the whole map here.

The Ilkhanid capital of Sultaniyeh as depicted by Nasuh b. Abdullah Matrakçı, Beyan-ı menazil-i sefer-i Irakayn-i Sultan Süleyman (1535). [Istanbul University Library, NEKTY05964, ff. 31v-32r, available online here].

“Conchiudo della Meschita di Sultania, con dire, che è la più bella fabrica, che io habbia veduto in fin’adesso in Persia, in quante Città, e Terre, ho caminate: e dico in fin’adesso, perche sò ben, che ve ne è un’altra più bella, che io non hò veduta ancora.”

“I conclude with the Mosque of Sultania, saying that it is the most beautiful building I have seen so far in Persia, in the cities and lands I have traveled through: and I say ‘so far’ because I know well that there is another more beautiful one, which I have not yet seen.”

Pietro della Valle (Rome 1586-1652) travelled to Asia and visited Persia between 1618-21. He often wrote letters back to a friend in Rome, which were later collected in a book [read the English translation here].

View of Sultania (Sultaniyeh), from birds-eye views of the chief cities of the Persian Empire under the Safavid dynasty, in Johann Baptist Homann (1663-1724), Verschiedene Prospekte der vornemsten Städten in Persien, published in 1720 in Nuremberg, after the engravings by Jean Chardin.

See the original image here.

In this 1740 map of Persia, the city of Sultania (Soltaniyeh) is portrayed as one of the major urban center with walls, together with cities such as Tabriz, Hamadan, Qom, and Isfahan. Unknown cartographer, published in 1740 in Venice by Gianbattista Albrizi.

See the original image here.

Luigi Pesce (1827-1864), a Neapolitan lieutenant colonel and amateur photographer, was employed by Nasir al-Din Shah, beginning in 1848, to modernize the Persian army, and eventually became commander-in-chief of its infantry. Pesce took the earliest documented photographs of Persepolis (and some of the earliest photographs of Tehran), for which he was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. His album of photographs contains 21 views of Tehran and environs, followed by 21 views of ancient Persian sites including the Achaemenid ruins of Persepolis, the Achaemenid tombs and Sasanian reliefs at Naqsh-i Rustam near Persepolis, and the Sasanian reliefs at Tāq-e Bostān. You can see the whole album by Pesce here.

Robert Byron (26 February 1905 – 24 February 1941) was an English travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana, a description of his 1934 travel in Persia. In addition to the many photos he took at Soltaniyeh, this is the passage where he describe the dome:

“This remarkable building was finished by the Mongol prince Uljaitu in 1313. An egg-shaped dome about 100 feet high rests on a tall octagon, and is enclosed by a stockade of eight minarets which stand on the parapet of the octagon at the corners. The brick is pinkish. But the minarets were originally turquoise, and trefoils of the same colour, outlined in lapis, glitter round the base of the dome. Against the flat desert, pressed about by mud hovels, this gigantic memorial of the Mongol Empire bears witness to that Central Asian virility which produced, under the Seljuks, Mongols, and Timurids, the happiest inspirations of Persian architecture. Certainly, this is façade architecture: the prototype of the Taj and a hundred other shrines. But it still breathes power and content, while its offspring achieve only scenic refinement. It has the audacity of true invention; the graces are sacrificed to the idea, and the result, imperfect as it may be, represents the triumph of the idea over technical limitations. Much great architecture is of this kind. One thinks of Brunelleschi.”

Find Robert Byron Archive at Yale here and a collection of his photographs here.

“Jafar’s Blue Tiles” is a short documentary describing the ongoing replacement of the tiles on the dome of Soltaniyeh, featuring the director of the restoration Enrico d’Errico on site.

Synopsis: Jafar Eskarbaksh is fourteen years old. During his school break, he learns how to make the special blue tiles that are needed to restore the ancient dome of Oljaytu Mausoleum, in the North-West desert of Iran. The 672-year-old tomb stands in the centre of Jafar’s village of Soltaniyeh. The art and chemistry of making the special blue glazes that seem to shimmer in the desert light was lost for many years.

This short documentary is available here.

Criterion (ii): The Mausoleum of Oljaytu forms an essential link in the development of the Islamic architecture in central and western Asia, from the classical Seljuk phase into the Timurid period. This is particularly relevant to the double-shell structure and the elaborate use of materials and themes in the decoration.

Criterion (iii): Soltaniyeh as the ancient capital of the Ilkhanid dynasty represents an exceptional testimony to the history of the 13th and 14th centuries.

Criterion (iv): The Mausoleum of Oljaytu represents an outstanding achievement in the development of Persian architecture particularly in the Ilkhanid period, characterized by its innovative engineering structure, spatial proportions, architectural forms and the decorative patterns and techniques.

Visit the UNESCO page on Soltaniyeh.