The Analytical Revisiting of the Structure Known as Ilkhanid Bathhouse in Rab’e Rashidi, Tabriz

Statement of the problem: “Rab’e Rashidi” or “Rashidiyya” is an architectural complex. According to “Mostowfi”, the author of “Nuz’hat al-Qulub”, it was a cultural and academic town, in the northeastern Tabriz at the foot of Mt. Sorkhāb.It was planned and founded in the reign of the Ilkhanid “Sultan Muhammad Öljeitü” by “Khwāja Rashid al-Din Fazl- Allah”. According to the “Endowment Deed”, the town encompassed several public buildings including a bathhouse. Therefore, it was expected that excavations reveal the ruins of an Ilkhanid bathhouse. The outdoor building in the southeastern quadrant of the site was thus overtly introduced as the Ilkhanid bathhouse of the complex by the former excavators. The underlying question of the present paper was the nature and function of this alleged bathhouse. A precise understanding and systematic apperception of the nature, function and identity of a historical/archaeological construction is an essential and challenges facing those preparing any restoration plan are inevitable. No restoration master will then be able to restore a building precisely and systematically without gaining correct insights into that building and its archaeological structure. Analytical review of the architectural plan, internal spaces, and building materials of the building allegedly designated as the Ilkhanid Bathhouse showed evident discrepancies with those of the known historical bathhouses in Iran. Based on the falsifiable hypothesizing approach, the purported Ilkhanid Bathhouse could not serve such a function, and indeed there was no evidence to support its Ilkhanid date. The authors proposed the falsifiable hypothesis of a dying workshop or a tannery.