Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures @ SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE University of Queensland

Reading 'Persianate Civitas' in the Excavations and Photography of Erich F. Schmidt

Collaborators: Manu P. Sobti & Sahar Hosseini

In 1940, Erich F. Schmidt, the archeologist who had directed the excavation of the mounds of Rayy from 1934-36, under the auspices of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania and the Museum of Fine Arts - Boston, produced his most memorable publication entitled Flights over Ancient Cities of Iran. This article argues that Schmidt’s exploration was an unprecedented project in many, still un-explored ways and suggested critical revisions to the ways in which Persian urbanities had been viewed. Schmidt’s work was a radical shift towards a macro, comparative and analytical view of ancient and medieval imprints of cities spread across eastern Iran and Central Asia. His evocative imageries moved beyond the biases of earlier scholars who had primarily examined archaeological assessments of ancient settlements in the Persian plateau. In contrast to examining sites of ancient cults via their monuments, artifacts and inscriptions, Schmidt’s Flights was an early recognition that if indeed the traditions of Persian urbanism should be seriously accessed, this must be done within the broader framework of networked urbanism, wherein multiple, interconnected, large and small cities occupied the landscape in the region of ancient and medieval Persia.

While Schmidt’s methods were novel for his day, he also followed in the footsteps of prolific medieval historians including al-Tabari, Baladhuri, Al-Masudi, Al-Muqaddasi and others, in his descriptions of the geographic region of Persia and Central Asia as a prime example of networked urbanism. He also built on the writings of Russian academician Vassily Barthold (1869-1930), which while geographically specific to Eurasia, went far beyond the boundaries of Central Asia in its discussions on medieval urban processes. It is within this larger purview, and in its timely re-examination of Schmidt’s Flights, that this article therefore serves to interrogate the relevance of a critical review of the traditions of Islamic urbanism, especially within the socio-cultural ecumene of a constantly re-defined Persia. It seeks to establish the trends recognizable within the urban traditions that created the palimpsest of cities in this historical land. Finally, it focuses to re-establish the primacy of Erich Schmidt’s superlative compendium that is easily missed in the rare book section of the average library.