Qajar Architecture

Qajar architecture describes the buildings, palaces and religious structures produced in Iran during the Qajar era, from 1781 to 1925, a period of relative peace following Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar's rise that allowed an artistic flourishing after the turmoil of the eighteenth century. The style combined a deliberate revival of pre-Islamic Persian motifs drawn from the Achaemenid and Sasanian periods with an eclectic adoption of Western styles including Neoclassical, Neo-Baroque and Neo-Byzantine forms, producing a hybrid that set it apart from earlier Persian building traditions. Its major surviving examples include the Golestan Palace complex and Niavaran Palace complex in Tehran, the Nasir-ol-Molk Mosque in Shiraz, the Masoudieh Mansion complex in Tehran completed in 1878, the Eram Garden in Shiraz, and the Shazdeh Garden in Kerman, built in the 1890s.