Tabatabai House

Tabatabai House: A Persian Masterpiece

• Architecture of the Tabatabai House
• History of Tabatabai House
• Sightseeing near Tabatabai House:

The luxurious Tabatabai House is located in the historic center of Kashan. It took the wealthy Tabatabai family nearly 10 years to construct this mansion. The house was built in 1835 by the head of the family, Seyed Jafar Tabatabai, a carpet merchant during the Qajar dynasty (1790–1925). The story of the construction of the historical Tabatabai House is a tale of love. Mr Tabatabai instructed the architects to design the house's decorations and forms based on the legend of the Huma bird (the phoenix), as it was the name of his wife, whom he loved dearly.

Architecture of the Tabatabai House

The house covers approximately 5000 square meters and features the three classic elements of traditional Persian architecture: the outer section – a public area where receptions were held; the inner section, used as a private area for women; and a designated area for servants. It includes forty rooms, four courtyards – the main one with pools and fountains at the center of the house, two courtyards for the women's area in a secluded part of the house, and one for the servants – as well as three badgirs (windcatchers) and two qanats (channels for water supply).

The exterior of the house is rather unremarkable. However, the interior astonishes with its beauty and elegance.

In addition to the exquisite interior, adorned with paintings, mirror mosaics, intricate mouldings, oriental patterns, and vaulted ceilings, the house is also exceptionally well designed.

Due to the thoughtful distribution of sunlight and the use of badgirs (windcatchers), the rooms remain cool even in hot weather and warm during the colder months.

The house is situated 6 meters below the level of the surrounding ground to protect its residents from sandstorms and the harsh desert climate.

The architecture of the mansion combines traditional Iranian style with carefully planned masonry, fine plasterwork, elegant mouldings, a vaulted ceiling painted with traditional patterns, colorful stained-glass windows, and European influences, including frescoes in the women's section of the house. Additionally, in this part of the mansion, the walls are adorned with mirror mosaics designed to evoke the starry sky during prolonged sandstorms.

History of Tabatabai House

The Tabatabai House was built in the second half of the 13th century AH (coinciding with the Qajar period) by Seyyed Jafar Tabatabai Natanzi, a merchant of Kashan, in the Sultan Amir Ahmad neighborhood. The architect who built it was Ustad Ali Maryam Kashani, and its stucco and paintings were done by the students of Mirza Abul Hasan Sani’ol-Molk Ghaffari Kashani, and under his supervision. This house has an area of 4730 square meters and was commissioned by Seyyed Jafar Tabatabai around 1250 AH to Ustad Ali Maryam Kashani as the designer and builder. He, who was also the builder of the Borujerdi House and Timcheh Amin-al-Dowleh, was able to complete the construction of this house in 10 years. Since the owner of the house was in the carpet trade, all the stucco designs were inspired by the patterns of Persian carpets and Islamic flowers and birds, and were ultimately executed magnificently.

This house consists of four courtyards and a courtyard, the central courtyard belonging to the outer part, two courtyards belonging to the interior, and one courtyard belonging to the servants. The interior part of the house consists of a simple five-door room in the center and two courtyards on both sides of it, and has cellars in which windcatchers circulate air. This part was the residence of the Tabatabaei family. The courtyard on the northwest side is larger and has more rooms and a separate reception hall. Under the interior part, especially the central room, there is a large cellar that has its own unique characteristics. For various reasons, such as the presence of a windcatcher, a pitched roof, the type of materials used in the body, the double-walled body, the presence of a pond that was previously in the center of the cellar, the height difference with the street level of about 8 to 10 meters, and the cool breeze that enters the underground from the surface of the pond in the central courtyard, this has caused a temperature difference of 15 to 20 degrees between the basement and the outside, especially in the summer. 

The exterior of the house includes a large hall (Shah Neshin) in the center with skylights and colored lattice windows and double-glazed side windows that open and close vertically. This room has interesting painting, mirroring, and stucco decorations, including plaster lattice windows that look like delicate lace. On both sides of the Shah Neshin room are earring rooms. In front of the Shah Neshin room, there is a veranda with interesting mirroring and stucco. On the sides of the large hall, two backyards and skylights have been built in a symmetrical manner, which have exquisite paintings and are considered among the finest works of art in this land. Documents and evidence show that the great artist and painter of the court of Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar, Mirza Abolhassan Ghaffari Kashani, nicknamed "Sani' al-Molk", was a close friend of the owner of the house, so he supervised the execution of the plasterwork and the drawing of the paintings in this house, and this greatly increases the value and credibility of the decorations of the Tabatabaei house.

Sightseeing near Tabatabai House

You can visit Sultan Amir Ahmad Bathhouse and Abbasian Historical House which is located near Tabatabai House in Kashan.