On a clear morning, sunlight pours through coloured glass and paints the floor of this mosque.
It is the Nasir al-Mulk Mosque in Shiraz, Iran, nicknamed the Pink Mosque for its pink tiles.
It was built between 1876 and 1888, in the Qajar era, for Mirza Hasan Ali, a nobleman of Shiraz who held the title Nasir al-Mulk. The mosque is named after it.
Two Shiraz masters are credited with the design. It once stood in a larger complex with a house and a bathhouse, but most of that was lost as the city grew.
Beyond the entrance, a long pool in the courtyard mirrors the arches. The walls are covered in tiles of pink, blue and yellow, with roses and other flowers, and Quranic calligraphy.
The western prayer hall has twelve spiral stone columns, in two rows of six. Some guides link the number to the twelve Imams.
Seven wooden doors open from this hall onto the courtyard, filled with glass in red, yellow, green and blue. When the morning sun comes through, patterns of colour move across the walls and floor, like a kaleidoscope.
Accounts differ on the glass itself. Some say it was fitted soon after the mosque was built, others that it was installed or restored in 1969.
Today the mosque is still used for prayer, and an endowment foundation named for its founder helps look after it.
The mosque was constructed between 1876 and 1888 and is under the protection of the Endowment Foundation of Nasir-ol-Molk. Construction of the mosque was commissioned by Mirza Hasan Ali Nasir ol-Molk, an aristocratic lord of Shiraz and the son of Ali Akbar Qavam ol-Molk, the kalantar of Shiraz.
Architecture and design
The mosque was completed in the Qajar style and was designed by Mohammad Hasan-e-Memār, a Persian architect who had also built the noted Eram Garden before the Nasir-ol-Molk Mosque, Mohammad Hosseini Shirazi, and Mohammad Rezā Kāshi-Sāz-e-Širāzi. There is a poem inscribed on marble at the mosque's entrance and the mosque contains extensive use of blue, yellow, pink, azure, and white tiles.
The Nasir ol-Molk Mosque has two Shabestans, and the interior decoration of the western (or winter) Shabestan consists of a series of arches and vaults and two rows of six columns that divide the interior into smaller sections. The western Shabestan is connected to the sahn by seven wooden doors, each decorated by Gereh Chini, with extensive use of stained glass. The passage of light through the stained glass in red, azure, yellow, orange, and green colors is a major tourist attraction. There is a shallow and wide pool in the middle of the sahn. The Nasir ol-Molk Mosque has two north and south porches, each different from the other. The northern porch of the mosque has three half-arches on three sides, connected to the sahn by the fourth half-arch.
Orsi: Persian stained glass
Although stained glass is popular in churches, the earliest discovered was in Syria from the 7th century CE. There is evidence of techniques and recipes for obtaining stained glass by the Persian chemist Jabir ibn Hayyan in his book Kitab al-Durra al-maknuna (transl. The Book of the Hidden Pearl) published in the 8th century. Orsi windows are windows made of a mixture of wood and colorful glass during the Safavid and Qajar eras. Orsi differs from stained glass used in many churches and Ottoman mosques which serve as illuminated images rather than a source of light. Light is a major feature in many mosques considering it being a major symbol of God in Islam. This is mentioned in the Quran:
"Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth."
The History, Architecture and later sections are adapted from the Wikipedia article “Nasir-ol-Molk Mosque”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article. Text has been shortened.
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