Arg Citadel of Tabriz

Arg is what Tabriz calls the huge brick mass in the centre of the city, the only thing that has survived of the Alishah mosque. It was begun in the first half of the fourteenth century by Taj al-Din Alishah, vizier of the Ilkhans, and by his design the arch of the main iwan was to span more than the famous vault at Ctesiphon. The covering collapsed while the building was still going up, or soon after, and all that remained of it were colossal walls about ten metres thick and some twenty-six metres high. Later the ruin was adapted as a fortress: in the first half of the nineteenth century a gun yard and an arsenal were placed here, and from that comes its present name. During the Russo-Persian wars the walls served as a fortification and withstood bombardment. The brick is laid in even courses, without facing, and in the sun the mass looks almost monolithic, while the rare openings only underline its blank heaviness. A lawn has been laid out around it, and the bulk of a new mosque has grown up alongside, which makes the scale of the old walls read especially clearly.

Visitors are usually not let inside the colossal walls: the mass is fenced off and is looked at from outside, from the side of the lawn and of the new mosque, next to which its scale is especially clear. It stands right in the centre, on the way to the bazaar, and takes a few minutes to see.

Address

Ark, Tabriz

On the map