Abbasid Architectural Stucco Decoration from Excavations at the Friday Mosque of Isfahan

Corsi, Andrea Luigi

The book addresses a complete corpus of Islamic stucco, analysed within its archaeological stratigraphic context. The finds mostly pertain to the two Abbasid phases of the Friday Mosque of Isfahan (767 and 840–41 CE), excavated in the 1970s by the Italian Archaeological Mission in Iran directed by Umberto Scerrato. The corpus includes some panels in situ (from the mi?r?b and qibl? wall) and around 500 diagnostic fragments. The stratigraphic data and the analytical study of the techniques and compositions of the stuccoes made it possible to identify different production phases pertaining to the two Abbasid phases of the mosque. The book proposes a reconstruction of the stucco decoration of the qibl? wall of the first mosque (767 CE), a kind of architectonic backdrop divided into at least two horizontal registers, which constitutes one of the earliest visual renderings of the decorative programme of a mosque.