Cultural heritage is a vast range of tangible and intangible elements that make up the identity of a country, showcasing the history of its people in terms of culture, society, and politics to the world. Therefore, preserving and safeguarding it is a crucial and important task, entrusted to each member of society. The richness of Iran’s unique architectural history has led to the historical structures of cities and villages becoming the identity card of a region, passed down from generation to generation, showcasing lifestyle, architectural patterns, material characteristics, and execution techniques such as sabaat, dalan, jolokhan, bazaar, hammam, and takiya, as an invaluable legacy for future generations.

These days, the issue of destruction of the historical fabric of Shiraz, which is one of the 168 approved historical fabrics in the country, notified by the Supreme Council of Urban Planning and Architecture of Iran in 1394, has become a major concern and demand of culture enthusiasts and lovers of Iran’s historical and cultural heritage. The root cause and investigation of the history of destruction of historical fabrics at the national level shows that several factors have always been the main reasons for the physical changes and disappearance of historical fabrics in the country’s historic cities. The development-oriented approach in the longitudinal and latitudinal directions of cities (internal development perspective), migration and abandonment of valuable plots in the fabrics, lack of attention from legal owners and occupiers due to unfavorable economic conditions, which leads to the destruction and reconstruction of plots by investors, lack of awareness and knowledge about cultural values and changes in lifestyle that have led to the desire of residents to move from generally underdeveloped areas to more developed urban areas,

When talking about historical fabric, it means a collection of historical plots with different ages and time periods, connected together in a colony, with nodes and architectural links using traditional construction techniques that, if destroyed, will never be possible to rebuild. Therefore, the destruction of the historical fabric of Shiraz means a physical change in the environmental and architectural structure of the city, which not only reduces its visual appeal, but also gradually turns Shiraz into an identity-less city. Just as the movement of street expansion began in the middle of Qajar and Safavid markets in cities and led to the disruption of markets in cities such as Kashan, Semnan, Qazvin, and many others during the first Pahlavi era under the name of development, today we witness the movement of expansion and development of shrines to turn cities into religious centers; unaware that tourism is a collection of ideas, social actions, cultural infrastructures, personal interactions, and diverse values that if one is lost, it will not

From the perspective of laws and regulations, many protective measures have been put in place in recent years to safeguard buildings and urban and rural structures, which have sometimes been very effective, but at other times, extra-legal actions and pressures, such as the events in Shiraz, have practically rendered the spirit of the law and its supportive aspects ineffective and created pessimism among the general public. Even now, with the reinforcement of the law and expert opinions, the remaining seeds of Shiraz’s historical fabric have the potential to be preserved and introduced to future generations and tourists, in order to create added value, economic prosperity, and sustainable income for residents and the country, provided that sufficient foresight and planning are in place to achieve this goal.