Urmia Jameh Mosque’s Dome Chamber Structural Order

Urmia Jameh mosque is one of the valuable architectural monuments that contains many features of Persian architecture from early Islam until Qajar. Nevertheless, this collection has been neglected and not studied comprehensively until now. Rudimentary analyses based on documentation, evidence, and studies show that the dome chamber of the mosque is related to Seljuk architecture and has a lot of geometrical similarities with other Seljuk examples, but there are noticeable differences which are at the heart of this research. The research attempts to answer questions such as ‘what is the most remarkable characteristic of the structural organisation of Urmia Jameh mosque dome chamber?’, and ‘what are the substantial differences between the structural organisation of this dome chamber and the same contemporaneous structures around Iran?’ In this article, we start with a descriptive-analytical method, and then move on to an adaptive study phase, using deductive analysis method. The results of this research indicate that this dome chamber is similar to other Seljuk ones in many ways, but in its transitional zone we witnessed a new Patkâné organisation, which is rarely seen in Iranian architecture, with examples from other Islamic countries not being exactly the same.