Orient the prayer hall so that its principal wall, the qibla wall, stands square to the direction of Mecca, and mark the middle of that wall with a niche, the mihrab.
qibla wall ⟂ direction of the Kaaba; mihrab on the axis
The royal square and its four sides
Make a great square the new heart of the city and ring it with a uniform two-storey arcade of shops; on its four sides place the four powers: the royal congregational mosque, the palace gate, the court mosque and the gate of the royal bazaar.
Maidan ≈ 510 × 160 m
Shah Abbas I laid out the Maidan-i Naqsh-i Jahan in Isfahan in the 1590s, and rebuilt it with its present monuments after he made the city his capital in 1598. It was at once a polo ground, a parade ground, a market and a stage for festivals, and Chardin describes it lined with a canal and trees, its uniform arcades let as shops, and the Shah watching from the talar of the palace gate.
What makes the square a plan rather than an open space is the placing of the buildings: faith at the south end in the Shah’s mosque, the court on the west in Ali Qapu, the royal chapel on the east in the Lotfollah mosque, and trade at the north end in the gate of the Qaisariyya, from which the bazaar runs on to the old city.
Related rules
Build the tower for the call to prayer in the form of the regional tradition: square and stepped in the Maghreb and Spain, cylindrical and tapering in Iran and Central Asia, needle-like and polygonal in the Ottoman lands.
Place an iwan (a vaulted hall walled on three sides and open on the fourth) at the middle of each side of the courtyard, the one on the qibla side leading to a domed chamber before the mihrab.
Lay out the garden as a walled square divided into four by raised walks with water channels on the two axes, and divide each quarter again.
1 → 4 → 16 beds; water on the axes
Where people disagree about the width of a public road, make it seven cubits, and let no one build out into it; lanes that serve only the houses on them may be narrower.
public road ≥ 7 cubits (≈ 3.5 m)
Build as you will on your own land, provided you do your neighbour no harm: open no window, door or roof terrace that looks into his house or court, and do not set your door opposite his across a lane.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The royal square and its four sides”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/maidan-royal-square. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.