Isfahan on Paper: Naqsha, the Covered Bazaar, and Persianate Urban Knowledge in the Making of Shahjahanabad
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https://doi.org/10.66871/ihj.v1i1.005##semicolon##
Shahjahanabad##common.commaListSeparator## Safavid Isfahan##common.commaListSeparator## Chhatta Chowk##common.commaListSeparator## Mughal design practice##common.commaListSeparator## royal judgement##common.commaListSeparator## urban translation##common.commaListSeparator## Safavid-Mughal networksसार
This article reconsiders the making of Shahjahanabad through the circulation of Persianate urban knowledge between Safavid Iran and Mughal India. Rather than treating Shah Jahan’s new capital as an imitation of Isfahan, it asks how Isfahan entered Mughal architectural thought through naqsha, tarh, textual description, architectural vocabulary, courtly comparison, and royal judgement. Its central evidence is the Ma’athir-ul-Umara, where Shah Jahan is said to have examined the naqshas of Baghdad and Isfahan and criticised the new city’s bazaars for not following their covered and octagonal examples. The Red Fort’s covered bazaar provides the architectural point of entry: between the Lahori Gate, the Naqqar Khana, and the Diwan-i ‘Amm, it turned passage from city to palace into a commercial, ceremonial, auditory, and political sequence.
Reading Mughal Persian sources alongside recent scholarship on Safavid Isfahan, Shahjahanabad, Mughal building practice, and Safavid-Mughal networks, the article connects the courtly use of naqsha, Shahjahani practices of tarh and judgement, and the mediating role of ‘Ali Mardan Khan, the Peshawar bazaar, and Mukarramat Khan. It argues that Persianate urban knowledge moved not only through craftsmen, forms, or ornament, but through paper, text, observation, comparison, and sovereign correction. Isfahan was not a model to be copied, but a city on paper: visible, comparable, and translatable within Shah Jahan’s architectural world.
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