After Santa Maria church and Hagia Sophia mosque in turkey dome of Soltaniyeh in Zanjan has got the highest dome. This dome is located in Zanjan-Iran. And also, this is the first dome in Iran in terms of height. Here is also registered in UNESCO world heritage. A remarkable point about this landmark is that it’s 1600 tons in weight but the height has only been decreased 8 centimeters after passing 700 years.
Who made dome of Soltaniyeh ?
Dome of Soltaniyeh in Zanjan was made at the behest of Oljayto or Soltan Mohammad Khodabandeh, the governor at that time and here is his tomb. He was not Muslim when he started to build this landmark, but during the building process he got Muslim and went Ali ebn-Abitaleb pilgrimage in Iraq.
Why he built dome of Soltaniyeh ?
Then he tried to bring Ali the Imam corpse from his holy shrine to Soltaniyeh and bury him under this dome. Actually, he built here for this reason. But religious leaders at that time didn’t allow him to do such. Nevertheless, he decided to bring amount of soil of Najaf and used the soil in part of this building this monument.
Architecture
This monument consists of four floors and the method of its architecture belongs to Siljuks era architecture. Architectural of ground floor and first floor are rectangle-shaped but the second and third floor are octagon and length of each side of this octagon is 17 meters. The 8 number is not the ordinary thing. Some researchers say that it pertains to the 8 doors of Heaven and some of them believe 8 numbers on solar clock made in this monument. Now we talk about different parts of this historical building:
Soil house
After being disappointed, when religious leaders didn’t allow him to bring Imam Ali’s corpse to dome of Soltaniyeh in Zanjan, Oljaito decided to bring the small amount of holy shrine’s soil and used that small amount for building this part of the landmark. Eventually, he used this the brought soil for inscription of the altar. They wrote that inscription in Naskh and Sols calligraphy. This is why this part is called Soil house or in Persian Torbatkhaneh. This part is 17 meters in length, 8 meters in width and 16 meter in height.
The crypt
Some researchers believe that here is the place in where kings or other governors of former ages have been buried before building the dome of Soltaniyeh. Despite not finding any tombstones, many research guess that Oljaito the King is buried under the ground in this part of the landmark. Threshold of the entrance is made with low height to make people who enter bow to respect the dead persons who have been buried there.
Dome house
Another exciting place is the dome house at the highest floor of the monument. The dome is almost 60 meters in height, the diameter of the dome is 40.5 meters and it’s thickness is 1.6 meter. They built a two shelled dome in order to make it strong against the earthquake.
Solar watch
Skylights of this building are created in a way which the sunlight shines on the wall through them. Sunlight shining from little hole indicates the dawn Namaz or saying prayer time of Muslims before dawn. Sunlight shining from bigger one indicates Namaz time at midday. There are also two windows in this watch that, sunlight shining from the bigger window indicates hour and from the smaller one indicates the minute. At least this unique and fantastic feature motivates you to come Iran and visit here.