The Writing of Dreams on Lustre Tiles in Two Qadamgāhs in Kashan from the Ilkhanid and Safavid Periods

One of the main reasons of building Qadamgāhs (literally meaning the place of foot or the place of stepping) was the dreams a believer had of a saint. There are a large number of such buildings in Iran. In some cases, the dreams are inscribed on tablets in order to preserve the dream for future generations. This paper introduces five lustre ceramic tablets, which contain records of such dreams. The texts of two of them have been preserved completely, and significantly show astonishing similarities. The first is dated back to 1312 AD and belongs to Qadamgāh of Mehrīqābād. Its text mentions that Fakhr al-Din Hasan Tabari saw Imam Ali in a dream ordering him to build a shrine. According to the text of the second tile in Qadamgāh-i Khezr in the village of Yazdelan in 1607, someone saw Khezr in a dream who orders to reconstruct a ruined domed building. This article examines the differences and similarities between these two tablets from the Ilkhanid and Safavid periods, and analyzes them in detail. It can be said that these two tablets have a common content that have been written with the aim of documenting the reconstruction of a religious building borrowing the Iranian and Shi'at themes. These two examples show that the tradition of recording dreams on lustre tiles was not only prevalent at the glorious era of lustre production, but also extended to three centuries later.

Introduction

“Qadamgāh” refers to some places of pilgrimage in the Islamic world where a Prophet, Imam or saint has passed or has been seen in a dream. Dreaming has been one of the main reasons for building Qadamgāhs, in that, it was built when someone saw one of the saints in a dream and based on the saint’s order or his own decision, he called that place a Qadamgāh. This phenomenon, which sometimes led to the establishment of a building, has been common among Shi'ats. In some cases, commemorative tablets made of stones or tiles were used to record the dreams. Five lustre tiles, which belong to the Qadamgāhi buildings, have been identified in the region of Kashan, that contain a record of a dream. Three of them, which bear the name of a Qadamgāh, called Darb-e Mehriqābād, were produced in the fourteenth century. Although the tradition of writing on lustre tiles has continued until the Safavid period, no example containing a dream is known except for an unpublished tile from Qadamgāh-e Khezr in Yazdelan village. This tile, which dates back to 1015 AH/1607 AD, is full of symbolic and mythical signs. Interestingly, the Mehriqābād tiles dates back to 711 AH/1312 AD, and the Yazdelan tile have significant similarities with them in terms of form and content.

Research Background

The major research on lustre tiles has been done by Oliver Watson (1975, 1985). However, no research has been done on the Qadamgāhi lustre tiles, except for two papers written by Chahryar Adle about the tiles of Mehriqābād (Adle, 1972, 1982). Nonetheless, he has made some mistakes in reading the text and also did not notice the fifty-year difference in the date of these tiles. In addition, he was unable to identify the exact building of this Qadamgāh.

Discussion

There is a pair of circular lustre tiles in the Musée national de céramique de Sèvres, the text of which mentions the construction of a Qadamgāh in Kashan. The text of the tiles tells us that a person named Sayyed Fakhr al-Din Hassan Tabari finds himself in a dream in the middle of a crowd in the garden of Amir in Kashan. There, he sees Imam ‘Ali who tells him to construct a building in that place so that whoever wants to visit him can come to that position. Three centuries later, a lustre tile was installed in the Khezr Qadamgāh of Yazdelan, which narrates a dream that led to the construction of the building. According to its text, a person saw Khezr in a dream, who asked him to repair a domed building.

One of the similar and important elements in both dreams is their connection to the garden. In fact, the holy sites in question are located in the garden that was famous at that time. The timing of both dreams is interesting in its own way. The dream of Mehriqābād coincides with Eid al-Fitr and the dream of Yazdelan coincides with Nowruz. In fact, the dreamers have been influenced by the religious festivals at both times, which belong to a mythical and ritual time. Another common feature of both texts is the effort to document the dream, which mentions the exact characteristics of the place and time of the dream.

Conclusion

During the Ilkhanid period, as there was more religious freedom for Shi'ats, the opportunity to express and document such Shi'at dreams became more prominent. On the other hand, with the rise of the Safavids and the prevalent freedom for the Shi'ats, the emergence of Shi'at beliefs developed unprecedentedly. Although the two lustre tiles examined in this paper were made over a period of three centuries, they are certain significant similarities in their content. The main theme, the type of time and place, the sacred personality, the attention to documentation and the influence of Iranian culture in both examples are comparable. In fact, they both express an identical concern: the reconstruction of a religious building the location of which has sacred memories. Interestingly, in the inscriptions of both buildings discussed in this article, there are signs of pre-Islamic beliefs of the people of the region. However, this is far from the common traditions of Islam and is based mostly on popular beliefs.

References

Adle, Ch. (1972). Un disque de fondation en céramique (Kâšân, 711/1312), Journal Asiatique, CCLX (3‒4), 277‒297.

Adle, Ch. (1982). Un diptique de foundation en ceramique lustrée, Kašan 711/1312, In: idem, ed., Art et société dans le monde iranien, (pp. 199-218). Paris: Institut Français d’Iranologie.

Watson, O. (1975b). Persian lusterware, from the 14^th to the 19th centuries. Le Monde Iranien et l'Islam: Sociétés et Cultures, 3, 63-80.

Watson, O. (1985). Persian lusterware. Faber and Faber.