Fakhrieh School

The first school in the modern history of Iran was Dar al-Funun that was established by Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir in the reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, however, if we want to speak about the oldest school in Islamic Iran we have to mention to Fakhrieh School.

Fakhrieh School is approximately 1100-year-old. It was built in the fourth century AH under the reign of Deylamian. Therefore, the antiquity of this building is even more than Nezamieh schools in different cities of Iran that were built in Seljuk period in the fifth century AH.

The school was once the place of teaching religious sciences in the Shia’ city of Sabzervar and its name is driven from Fakhr al-Dowle Deylami, the Shia’ ruler of Sabzevar. The building has today retained its original function and is still one of the active schools of theology of Iran in Sabzevar.

You have to move to Sabzevar in Razavi Khorasan Province. This school is located along the main road of the city namely Beyhagh, between Darvazeh Iraq square and Beyhagh intersection. A three-floor building that was restored during Pahlavi II period and now two chambers and one corridor remained entire from the original building.

Master Pirnia, the father of the traditional architecture of Iran, described Fakhrieh school of Sabzevar in his noble research into the traditional schools of Iran as follows: “the original school is related to Fakhr al-Dowleh Deylami and retained, in spite of its reconstructions, its original form. The rooms of schools, that are now long, are not logically fit. The dimensions are about one meter in two and a half meters that show it had a closet, Ivancheh (the small porch) or both of them.”

The existence of many different historical schools in Iran is indicating the value and antiquity of knowledge acquisition in Iran. visiting and investigating the old schools of Iran not only introduce the evolution process of schools to us, the role they play in the social and historical circumstances around them but also they are noteworthy in terms of architecture art.