THE SHAPING FACTORS OF TRADITIONAL URBAN FORM IN THE CITY CENTRE OF HAMADAN

The city of Hamadan in the highlands of central Zagros is known as the first capital of Aryans after their migration to the Iranian plateau, where the Medes tribes established the first Iranian state-city on eighth century B.C and extended their empire from the centre of Turkey to India. Superimposing a radial concentric plan with a solid geometrical shape over the historic core of Hamadan during the modernisations of 1930s and the consequent sea changes of this massive renewal necessitates a profound reading of the traditional urban form and the factors which shaped it. Sustainable integration of the two urban systems, the traditional and the modern, cannot be realised without such scrutiny of the pre-modern urban form in Hamadan. The paper has therefore outlined the socio-spatial configuration of the historic core in Hamadan through analyzing its morphological elements in general and within the traditional bazaar of Hamadan as the major public space of the old city in particular.