Archaeological Excavation in Jahannama Palace: Part of the Safavid Dowlatkana in Isfahan

As a part of urban planning and during the construction of the underground railroad of Charbagh Street, an excavation was carried out from February to May 2015 to detect the location of Jahan Nama Palace, which was destroyed in 1935. The excavation resulted in a better understanding of the Safavid governmental house, Dowlatkhana, and Charbagh Street itself. The discovered materials belong to the pre-Islamic, pre-Safavid, Safavid, and post-Safavid periods. This article studies the architecture and artifacts, which were discovered during this excavation, of Jahan Nama Palace. Although the excavation had the usual limitations, such as time, resources, and space, it provides us with a comprehensive picture of the palace, the governmental house, and Charbagh Street. In a larger view, the results also help us locate other destroyed structures of the city more accurately. The pre-Safavid findings, which at the time were out of the city walls, represent details, which were previously unknown to us, of the suburbs of Isfahan in the middle ages. The discovery of the remains of Jahan Nama Palace, together with the maps and descriptions provided by historians and travelers, provides a framework for the planning of future investigations and the identification of related features of the city in pre- and post-Islamic era. These results demonstrate the importance of such investigations for our understanding of the historical cities of Iran. The discovery of pre-Safavid structures and pre-Islamic materials also underlines the importance of this part of the Isfahan Plain during earlier periods.