The Influence of Religion on Development of Architecture in Iran and in the World

Human life, since early era, has been associated with religious beliefs and convictions and these beliefs and convictions have always influenced human lifestyle and physical space formation. Existing documents, drawings depicted on the caves walls and construction of primitive accommodations indicate direct relationships between human beliefs and their lifestyle, and shape and form of their accommodations. There is limited evidence on Arabs’ invasion to Iran that happened in order to expansion of the religion of Islam in early first-century (ah). However, there are documents showing that they entered from South-West of the country with the aim of decolonization and presenting the Islamic religion and beliefs to Iranians who were mostly Zoroastrian in that time. Giving this assumption, Arabs’ invasion to Iran and bringing the Islam religion to this country has had impacts on life, customs, faith, traditions and culture, and also on architecture, particularly construction of Iranian religious buildings. In general, different religions have influenced culture, people’s lifestyle, and particularly architecture of countries. In this regards, evolvement of identity, form and shape of synagogues, churches, Buddhist temples are considerable. Apart from climatic and regional impacts and also traditions in constructing buildings, evolvement in architecture in different areas have been influenced by people’s religions in different countries.This article aims to use textual and visual documents and to apply a desk study, to investigate this issue, with the hope of providing and studying relevant case studies and summarizing and concluding the influence of religion on the architecture of the country.