A Critique on André Godard's Historiography Considering the Fields of his Historiography

Architectural historiography is one of the most important areas in architecture, and the main problem is that in Iran, it is not considered by domestic historians as it should; on the other hand, the existing historiographical works, which are mainly the result of the work of Western historians, are less criticized and their strengths and weaknesses are unclear. Therefore, in this research, as one of the historians influencing the history of Iranian architecture, Andre Godard’s historiographical works will be criticized and investigated. These works used as a reliable source for the study of Iranian architecture have not been reread and criticized, its criticizing is necessary. It is not clear that what aspects of the Iranian architecture is investigated by the historian based on his particular attitude and his historiography method and which aspects are neglected. Therefore their review clarifies the existing defects, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can be a guide for mapping the history of Iranian architecture by Iranian historians.
The objective of this research is to criticize and investigate Andre Godard’s historiography considering the fields and context of his historiography and how to reflect these fields in his historiography works. In this research, extraction of data from the written works of Godard’s historiography is a large part of the research process, and therefore the grounded theory that is a theory derived from the data collected and analyzed systematically during the research process was selected as the method of this research. The results of this study indicated that Andre Godard influenced by the fields of his era has investigated the historiography of Iranian architecture with a particular attitude which affected type of his recognition from Iranian architecture and in general, he can be introduced as a partial thinking historian, product-centered and regardless of the influential fields in architecture, Physics-centered, regardless of architectural aspects.