Journal of Researches in Islamic Architecture

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This article, in order to improve the quality of urban spaces, wants to explain how ritual ceremonies, particularly Moharam and Safar mourning as an identity and cultural factor, interact with physical structure of urban space. The discussed problem, in this article, is to describe the nature of this Interaction in the past times and comprise it with the urban development plans. In this regard, the research questions include the items such as relationship between ritual ceremonies and urban structure and urban space, influenced factors on selection of an urban space for doing this ceremony and importance of this factors and considering them in new development plans. The aim of the research is the retraining from the interaction between ritual ceremonies and urban structure for using in the new urban development plans. In this article, research framework is based on the descriptive method and used from case study and spatial analysis. The significant part of historic urban of Mashhad has been studied, in connection with research subject and during Moharam and Safar mourning, by using of documents, observations, interview and completion of questionnaire. The conclusion is based on data analysis and descriptive statistics. Studies shows that passing path of mourning groups, over the different years, was constantly conformed to the paths which are part of the main structure of this area and position of elements including structural, culture – religion and historical ones are important as factors which are making direction and being effective on passing path of mourning groups. The accordance of these factors with the approved urban plans of this area shows to give low attention to them. According to the comparison of the most crowded passing path of mourners with suggested items of new detailed plan of the area can understand that these old cultural – ritual paths is ignored in new plan and sometimes, their traces is completely eliminated, and if not ignored, their use is changed in the way that cannot be defined as a ritual path. Concepts which were considered as part of social geometry of religious context and placed within the physical geometry for years, because of traffic and physical attitudes lose their important. For providing of city development plans of historic urban quarters, giving attention to the research conclusion can cause to form more suitable urban spaces for development and improvement of ritual ceremonies.

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