Continuity of Sassanid Motifs in Stucco Decorations of Seymareh Mosque

In the pre-Islamic era, stucco was used to cover the walls of palaces and temples, because the building materials such as stone, sandstone or crude clay were not very interesting, and the richness of decorated walls was more effective than bare walls. This type of architectural-related decorations in the history of Iran was technically and artistically developed and became one of the archetypes of the Sassanid era. Stucco patterns of this era include plant, geometric, animal and human designs. The use of these patterns in this period, with a few differences in quantity, was accompanied with some mythical concepts. The transfer of these designs from the Sassanid era to the cultural and artistic realms of Islam was in companionship with some changes such as selection of motifs based on their usage in religious or non-religious places and being measured according to the basic Islamic principles. This has made plant and geometric designs luckier than other designs. Under the influence of the Islamic view, these motifs tended to be abstract and the artists avoided direct imitation of nature. Fast curability, fast progression and the whiteness of stucco that were important in the decoration of Islamic buildings were among other factors involved in the re-use of stucco decorations in Islamic monuments. For these reasons, this art, along with its plant and geometric motifs, grew and developed. One of the important findings during the archeological activities in Seymareh, was the discovery of its mosque and its stucco decorations. According to the dates given, the mosque belongs to the late Umayyad and early Abbasid era. Considering the importance of stucco decorations in Iran, the main objectives of this study were, firstly, to identify types of decorative motifs influenced by Sassanid stucco, and then, to study the similarities and differences between the Sassanid stucco designs and the decorative designs of the Seymareh Mosque. Accordingly, the main questions of research are: what are the decorative motifs influenced by the stucco art of the Sassanid period in the stucco adornment of the Seymareh Mosque? What are the similarities between the Sassanid stucco designs and the decorative designs of the Seymareh Mosque? The results of the study show that the decorative motifs found in the mosque of Seymareh could be divided into two main types of plant and geometric designs. Meanwhile, in addition to design and implementation, the plant motif of the Datura flower, and trapezoidal, elliptical geometric patterns, as well as decorative margins used in circular, square and rectangular frameworks, differ from the decorative designs of the Sassanid era. In addition to the formal effect, the application of the principle of symmetry and repetition and the method of making stucco decorations by molding, casting and prefabricated methods, we can see other evidences of the continuation of the Sassanid period stucco art in the stucco decorations of the Seymareh Mosque. Such volume of similarity and influence should be considered as a result of the location of the city of Seymareh in the Sassanid period, which has been evidenced by many architectures decorated with its stucco decorations in areas such as Barzqavaleh, Qaleh Gori and Goriyeh. In most of the stucco specimens of Qaleh Gori and Barzqavaleh, which are from the archeological sites of the Sassanid period and close to the city of Seymareh, and in the present study, the specimens with decorations of the Seymareh Mosque were compared in terms of marginalization and framing according to geometric and plant elements. The use of flowers and leaves such as palm, artichoke, rosette and lotus in the corners of the decorative frames of the design is one of the elements that exists in the stucco of both areas of Bozorgvaleh and Qaleh Gori. Based on archaeological findings, stucco decorations have been one of the most important methods of arranging Sassanid architectural spaces in the city of Seymareh, which can be used to justify the textual connection between the stucco decorations of the Seymareh Mosque and the stucco decorations of the Sassanid period. However, in the study of the decorative patterns of stucco of the Seymareh Mosque, there is evidence of the creation of new arrays such as the tendency towards different designs of plant motifs such as pomegranate fruit, pine fruit, tulip buds or the design of the decorative borders of the frame. Circular or square and rectangular geometric shapes are observed along with the creation of new geometric arrays such as trapezoidal and oval geometric patterns. Therefore, it can be said that the artists who designed the stucco decorations of the Seymareh Mosque, by using these innovations and the complexity of geometric and plant decorative motifs in addition to imitation, sought to provide new decorative surfaces appropriate to the cultural and artistic atmosphere of the first Islamic centuries and created new texts.