Safavid and Mughal Urban Bridges: Visual and Embodied Experience of Nature

Among the praiseworthy features of Isfahan, European travellers who visited the city throughout the seventeenth century admired the Khājū and Allāhvirdīkhān Bridges, particularly the galleries that lined their main passage and offered passers-by opportunities to rest and enjoy the breeze and expansive views of the river. Similarly, the Nūrābād Bridge and Jaunpur’s Shāhī Bridge in Mughal India, with their chhatrīs located on either side, provided comparable experiences for those traversing their length. Focusing on these four bridges, built between 1568 and 1659, this paper examines the novel architectural layout of these public structures within the framework of manzar, and argues for understanding the secondary spaces of these bridges as a thematic extension of the renowned Safavid and Mughal waterfront pavilions that were purposefully designed to engage with the surrounding landscape. As elements that were previously limited to royal and elite establishments, these viewing platforms empowered a particular mode of visual and embodied engagement with the landscape, which favoured immersion in natural settings and considered nature as a reflection of God and a text to decode – practices with roots in Turco-nomadic sensibilities towards nature, and the growth and popularity of mystic knowledge and esoteric practices in the post-Mongol eastern Islamic lands.