Jāmeh Mosque (The Great Mosque)
The Jāmeh mosque is located in the city of Qazvin (region of the same name) and was built in the year 192 of the lunar Hegira on the foundations of a temple of fire of the Sasanian period. In it you can see architectural traces of different historical periods, from that of the Abbasids to the era of the Qajari kings.
This historic monument is considered one of the largest mosques in Iran and the oldest congregational mosque in the country. It is also known as Jāmeh Atiq Mosque or Jāmeh Kabir Mosque, it was built in the style of four Iwan and has a courtyard and a courtyard of the width of 4000 square meters and on the four sides of the courtyard stand out the tall 4 Iwan.
On both sides of each one a long portico and a colonnaded underground prayer room have been created next to eight large ones Shabestan to the four corners of the courtyard and this is considered one of the important peculiarities of this mosque.
The building with four entry doors also has a bathtub in the middle of the courtyard. This mosque, in whose construction various types of Iranian artistic techniques have been employed, such as brickwork, majolica, muqarnas, the stucco work, the cross-linking, the art of calligraphy, the inlay, etc., has different parts and structures such as: the double-layer brick dome, some Iwan, a minaret, a portico, an arch, one Shabestan, numerous inscriptions, a court, one madrasa, an Khanqah (place hosting a Sufi confraternity), a well, of the premises that were once the shelter for the poor and the sick etc..and here we describe some of them:
-Maqsureh Khamār Tashi
Maqsureh Khamār Tāshi or Arco Ja'fari is behind theIwan southern and is surrounded by arches, has a mihrab covered with marble and colorful majolica with a minbar in stone and above it a double-tiled tiled brick dome, two more Shabestan and inscriptions with stucco work-today this part is known as the temple of fire.
- Inscriptions of the mosque
The numerous inscriptions are the following: historical inscription of the portal (which shows the name of the masters and the date of construction), a Koranic inscription in blue majolica above one of the doors of the mosque (which shows the date of construction), an inscription in the portal and in the vestibule of the main entrance of the mosque (which shows the master of restoration and a fragment of poetry), five splendid inscriptions in stucco in the part of the gonbadkhāneh (which show the name of its builder, the dome, the time of execution of the building, the name of the villages and land donated to this mosque, a verse of the sacred Qur'an, the list of legacies, the deed of donation and the explanation of the subterranean water division, Qanat), a narrow wall-to-wall inscription in blue on a lemon-colored tiled background on the second floor of the'Iwan southern (which explains the construction of theIwan same) and other epigraphs; in the mosque there are also marble tablets on which inscriptions of the safavid and qajaro period have been written, in which topics concerning government edicts are dealt with.
-Tank
The cistern of the mosque is considered one of the oldest and largest of Qazvin and was built in the Safavid era. It had two gushvāreh on both sides of the portal and today only one is evident.
The building is simple and there is no trace of common decorations. 37 stone steps make it possible to access the cistern tap. "Taq-e horuni" or "maqsureh kohan" is a small building with a large brick and mud dome, the oldest remaining building and the original construction of this Taq-e horuni is attributed to the pre-Islamic period.
In this mosque, a part of which in the invasion of the Mongols in Qazvin (1220) has been destroyed, are the museums of stone and ceramics, the door and the ancient windows and in them are exposed various types of earthenware, cave paintings , guillotine windows, majolica and various types of stucco workings etc ...
