Reading the Urban Landscape of Ashraf al-Belād in the Safavid Period: Investigating its Relation to the Safavid Garden Complex

One of the common trends in researching Persian gardens is assuming them as introverted phenomena, enclosed inside their walls and separated from their surrounding context. In this view, some important features of gardens are ignored. On the other hand, reconstructing the original image of gardens in the contemporary urban landscape gets harder every day due to rapid urban changes. This makes it necessary to study and preserve the historic urban landscapes and their constituent elements. Since urban structure in the Safavid period was directly influenced by gardens built in cities, especially royal gardens, this study focuses on identifying the relation of gardens and the city in Safavid Ashraf al-Belād. This paper aims to find out the quality of the connections between the gardens as the key elements of a historic urban landscape with other components. For this, the historical research approach was used for finding the hidden aspects of this connection. Data and documents were arranged according to the stages of the development of the city. Old and contemporary urban structures were then compared and analyzed based on documented morphological evidence. The results of this research show the structural connection between the royal gardens and the historic city, which has been faded over the years; some expressions of which include the status of these gardens in urban planning stages, urban networks, urban landscape hierarchy systems, and urban density. Based on these results, some qualities of this connection regarding the urban identity are revealed, without which both the values of the city and the heritage of the gardens would be lost.