Typology of Masjid-Madrasa in the Islamic Architecture of Iran, Investigating the Correlation between Educational and Devotional Spaces

Scientific education had been prevalent in Iran from many times ago. Although there are limited information of learning situation in pre-Islamic Iran، after Islam conquest the acquisition of knowledge which had a great correlation with religion flourished in Iran. According to the Prophet’s tradition of sermons to his followers، the first place which was used for educational purposes in the first Islamic centuries was mosque. Although the independent madrasa was created in the next periods، the correlation between mosque and madrasa was again formed for their religious education and therefore masjid-madrasa was introduced in Islamic architecture. But this type of architecture has been less studied، so that the features of a masjid- madrasa and the different types of educational and devotional combinations in different eras of Iranian Islamic architecture is not clearly and exactly known. Recognition of this correlation in different periods of the Islamic architecture of Iran is considered in this paper and to know which type has the most correlation between educational and devotional spaces which the term Masjid-madrasa can be used for. Evolution of the correlation between educational and devotional spaces and different types of spatial structures of the correlation in different periods of Iranian Islamic architecture has been considered in the paper. The research is an applied and developmental one and library and field studies have been used. At the end، different combination types of educational and devotional spaces are understood and categorized according to presented charts and finally the most complete form based on presented criterions in the paper is recognized as masjid- madrasa. Isfahan Hakim mosque is found as a prototype and in the final categorizations the evolutional process in Iranian architecture can be easily seen from the first to the culmination of masjid-madrasa building during Qajar era.