Resourceology of Historical Studies on Iranian Architecture

Researchers require appropriate resources to conduct researches. In historical studies, data can be extracted only from these resources. Thus, in historical research especially in historical studies on architecture, the importance of these resources is doubled. Notwithstanding the resources of architectural historiography in Iran are very rare, since the architecture is considered as Container of life, it is almost not a resource that does not provide information about architecture. Therefore, this extent of resources makes identifying and organizing them to research in the history of Iranian architecture very rigorous. On the other hand, regarding the research of the history of Iranian architecture, researchers are faced with a wide range of unknown resources related to all aspects of human life, which makes risk of drowning in the ocean of information ahead. Thus, it seems to be necessary to identify and organize the resources of Historical Studies on Iranian Architecture. Recognizing the resources and understanding the dimensions, levels, species, and priorities for referring to them can reduce the time costing on the one hand and increase the validity of the data on the other hand. In this article, it has been tried to provide a clear view of the resources of historical studies of Iranian architecture. Based on the study of the background of the researches, the lack of theory, theoretical framework and conceptual model in this field was obvious and there were no coherent research results to identify the sources and discover the logical and hierarchical relationship between them from inductive strategy and specifically method. Therefore, the method of grounded theory was used to reach purpose of the research by focusing on the academic studies of the last four decades in the field of Iranian architectural studies. The discussion begins with what the resource is and definitions of it. Then, based on the literature on the subject of famous species of historical studies on Iranian architecture resources are introduced and then, based on the extracted codes, the species identified by this research are presented and completed. Depending on the type of expression, the time interval to the subject, the accuracy and the level of superficiality or depth of information and the degree of validity, several categories can be defined as the resource in the field of historical studies on Iranian architecture, which are generally dual. These dualities include; first- and second - hand resources, specialized and general resources, artistic and non-artistic resources, and explicit or implicit resources. In addition, there is a classification of resources in terms of the type of expression, which is also divided into two general categories of written and unwritten. By identifying and classifying these resources based on the mentioned method, a new formulation of the resources under the central concepts was done and finally three basic concepts for the types of the classified resources were introduced including: expression, time and depth of information. These three key concepts of expression, time and depth were identified as the basis for organizing the resources of historical studies on Iranian architecture and seven main types of them were introduced. These three concepts and seven categories include various levels and dimensions of resources and provide a proper tool for researchers to identify, categorize and prioritize in referring to the resources of historical studies on Iranian architecture.