Ehsan Rajabi

The Barakat Trust will help fund Ehsan's MSt in Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Oxford. He has a particular focus on architectural metrology (the study of measurement) in early modern Iran that arose out of a longstanding engagement with architectural history following a Bachelor's in Architectural Design from the University of Tehran and a master's degree in Iranian Architectural Studies from Shahid Beheshti University.

Ehsan's current research examines the relationship between royal justice, metrology, and architecture in Safavid Iran, focusing on a rare seventeenth-century royal measuring rod bestowed by Shah Safi upon his chief architect and now preserved in the British Museum. Drawing on the long-standing Perso-Islamic ideal that linked royal justice (ʿadl) to the prosperity (ābādānī), I investigate how royal measures—and the instruments through which they were materialized—functioned not only as practical tools for architectural design and construction but also as symbols of just kingship. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining the study of Persian and Arabic texts, material culture, and digital surveys of Safavid monuments, my project seeks to explore the metrological foundations of architectural practice and to illuminate how concepts of justice and prosperity were embedded within the built environment of early modern Iran.