Analytical and Structural Study of Wooden Ornamentation of Khalesi Door at Astan Quds Razavi Museum

Balasar mosque is the remnant of an Iranian historical monument established in Ghaznavids, the Ghaznavid dynasty was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk origin at their greatest extent ruling large parts of Iran, Afghanistan, much of Transoxiana and the northwest Indian subcontinent from 977 to 1186. The entrance to the mosque was from inception on the west side (called as the porch of the Dar-al-Siyadah as one of the oldest porches extends from north to south in the west and southwest of the Imam Reza Shrine (the shrine in Mashhad, Iran is a complex which contains the mausoleum of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam of Twelver Shi‘ites); the reason for naming it is that this porch has been the place of gathering of Sadat and those belonging to the family of Imam Ali (as) since ancient times) and then was through the corridor behind the northern wall of the tomb, which is called the back corridor (Pas Posht) in later periods. The door of this mosque has been added to its main entrance after the construction of this building. Khalesi Door located in Balasar mosque is one of the valuable monuments of the Ilkhanid dynasty (the Ilkhanate, also spelled Il-khanate, known to the Mongols as Hülegü Ulus was a khanate established from the southwestern sector of the Mongol Empire, ruled by the Mongol House of Hulagu in Iran from 1253 to 1336 for 83 years), which is preserved at the Astan Quds Razavi Museum. During the repair and rebuilding of the Imam Reza Holy Shrine in this period, this door was built to order "Amir Abdul Hai ibn Amir Taher al-Musawi" for the Balasar mosque, which was joined to the shrine via a corridor. The structure and design of this door is in the form of frames and plates, the ornaments of this door has benefited from approaches, techniques and architectures such as geometric motifs, plant designs and arabesque decoration as well as inscriptions using several skills and techniques such as carving, wood carving, Latticework, Javak, Girih and Zomudgari. The purpose of this article were the attempts made to scrutinize and analysis the ornaments implemented on this door, aiming at classifying the utilized motifs and techniques, and to answer the question of what type of ornamentation has been employed on the Khalesi Door. The design of the present study was descriptive-analytical research of historical objects. The required data collection tools in this study was the sources andreferences related to library and field studies, manual techniques and the application of software to analyze the motifs. According to the findings obtained from the current study, most of the ornaments and the motifs were implemented by wood carving technique, which has been widely applied during the Ilkhanid dynasty. The Javak technique, known with Zil Khatam during this period, has been rarely performed and mainly in smaller instruments, such as bergamot, due to the difficulty of work and the type of materials utilized in the technique.