Dr Sussan Babaie, Courtauld Institute

Persian kingship and architecture: strategies of power from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis.

Sussan Babaie will be introducing this groundbreaking book that includes scholarly views from archaeology and architectural history and covers important periods in the long history of Iran. Since the Shah went into exile and the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, unhealthy the very idea of monarchy in Iran has become contentious but history tells us that it had served, ailment for millennia, as a unifying cultural force despite shifting political and religious allegiances. The lecture goes on to take Isfahan as a case study to discuss the pivotal role played by the institution of kingship in articulating an abstract notion of Iran since antiquity.