A Conceptual History of “Muhandis” in the Qajar Period

While in contemporary Iran, educated architects are titled muhandis (engineer) or muhandis-i mi’mār (architectural engineer), in Europe where is the origin of modern Iranian architectural education, it is not common to title architects as such at all. The same title in Persian, muhandis, is commonly used to address graduates in other technical disciplines (mechanic engineer, civil engineer, etc.). Having the same signifier for different signifieds implies that there is some common cultural aspect to the matter. This article aims to study the transformation of the concept of muhandis in the first half of the Qajar period, especially the Fath-Ali-Shah’s reign, through a conceptual history approach and by taking an interpretive-historical method. The study suggests that in the early Qajar period, muhandis started to denote a person less concerned with architecture but more concerned with surveying and fortification. Even though in pre-modern Iran eminent experts in other fields concerned with handasa (geometry) used to be called muhandis (a person who knows geometry) too, in this period, the term chiefly denoted the Iranian architects and engineers who had been educated in Europe. Gradually, the architecture of non-military buildings was delegated to this latter group of muhandiss, which implies that they were the transmitters of European architecture to Iran too.