A comparative study of the religious architecture of the Jews of Tehran from the Qajar era to the end of the first Pahlavi era

Understanding the religious architecture of the Jews of Tehran is one of the important aspects of knowing the city as an important archaeological data. The religious architecture of the Jews of Tehran has received less attention from researchers due to reasons such as the disinclination of the Jews to provide information in this field and the lack of significant architecture in the field of religious architecture and for this reason, there is less knowledge about them than other religious minorities who have been studied extensively in the field of religious architecture and hence, the need for study in this filed is palpable. Due to the lack of significant information in this area, the present study compares the architecture of the 7 remaining synagogues of the Qajar and first Pahlavi eras. Some of these synagogues were built in the old Jewish neighborhood of Tehran (Oudlajan) and the other part of it has been created outside the mentioned neighborhood; and their division into three distinct periods, the process of change and evolution of the religious architecture of the Jews of Tehran and how it is influenced by the social and political conditions of the Qajar and first Pahlavi periods will be reviewed. We will also examine and distinguish between Qajar and Pahlavi synagogues. It is worth mentioning that the religious architecture of the Jews of Tehran has been strongly influenced by the social and political conditions of this minority and has been influenced by the residential architecture around it. Accordingly, the view of religious architecture and the reluctance to show the synagogue in the urban context changed with the post-constitutional political changes and the greater freedom of action of the Jews, and caused a level of extraversion and a desire to build magnificent religious buildings in later periods. This research is of fundamental research type. Research data were collected through field study and library research and presented by descriptive-analytical method.