Social and Cultural Structure of an Iranian-Islamic City and Its Comparative Comparison to Sana’a City

Abstract

In the Islamic ideology, the Iranian-Islamic culture is the same Islamic transcendental culture blown into the spirit of the skeleton of Iranian culture. The culture has established appearance under the dominance of a particular social system, which in turn, it has created a different social and cultural structure in the cities after the appearance of Islam. In researches carried out regarding Islamic cities during past years, the investigation on the indicators and attributions of the skeletal structure of Islamic cities played a more prominent role. In the present study, through a different view into the Iranian-Islamic cultural and social structure and nature, it has been attempted to investigate on the cultural and social organization of the Islamic city, Sana'a. The aim of the present study is to explain an Iranian-Islamic city from a cultural and social viewpoint and to compare it with the Islamic city, Sana'a comparatively. This study has a descriptive-analytical nature and it is attempting to analyze and pluralize the theme through an attributional method and library resources in order to achieve reasonable results. The results represented that having cultural and historical centers, Sana'a is recognized as one of the most valuable Islamic cultures which has social and cultural features common with those of an Islamic-Iranian city, in particular with respect to the elements playing a prominent role. Among the elements, the following ones were observed: the element of the mosques as the centers of religious and social communications, the element of houses and residential regions as the places for conducting social and individual communications and observing the privacies, the cultural feature such as conducting the cultural and religious ceremonies and celebrations particularly the Muslims' festivals, the birthday of prophet of Islam, the rites of hajj, and etc. These features represent the unity and correlation of Iranian Muslims with all Muslims of the world.