Wind’s Role in Human Health in Islamic Medicine Approach and Its Impact on Locating and Structure of Iranian Traditional Cities

A great part of sciences and fundamentals of formation of our cities and past architecture has been destroyed which rooted in regulation of human relationship with the environment. Architects and urban planners deal with their processes only based on modern conditions and fundamentals that are general and international. Lack of these sciences in architecture as well as urban planning has separated it seriously from tradition and finding these fundamentals may, despite of benefitting from modern civilization values, cause biological and health values to be continued based on traditional system in modern architecture and urban planning. Plenty of contemporary cities that recently have been located and constructed are facing with problems in terms of benefitting from natural elements and based on health indicators in the tradition. New academic architecture and urban planning system has trusted in new rules of adjustment of environmental conditions to the extent that even is not seeking for traditional climatic criteria and indicators and is not supposing that many of these problems are arising out of inattention to this traditional science. In the meantime, wind as a climatic-traditional element has direct impact on health of residents of a city. The winds are crucially effective on filtration or creation of pollution in a city. Studies indicated that the wind due to direct impact on human health and is a superior element in prosperity and structure of a city and vernacular architecture of each region, and has a crucial role in filtration or creation of pollution in a city. In this paper, the impact of wind as a natural element on human’s health has been analyzed by considering traditional medical texts and its impact on selection of place and structure of cities has been studied. For this purpose, after analysis of religious, philosophical and medical texts, and description of priority of winds in relation to two factors of wind direction and wind origin, six climatic zones of some of old, important and populous cities were ranked in the light of existence or absence of favorable and unfavorable winds, respectively. Then, by studying the structure of a sample of cities with favorable wind and a sample with unfavorable wind, solution for traditional cities in terms of benefitting from/coping with the wind has been studied. Analysis method used for Islamic and medical fundamentals of wind is interpretive and argumentative. The criterion for selecting cities is being old and populous and located in six climates of Iran. Thereafter, selected cities were classified and graded based on wind quality and considering theoretical fundamentals. The basis of identification of prevailing wind direction in cities includes new climatic books, statistics of meteorological stations as well as internet. Based on fundamentals of traditional and Islamic medicine that is a little different from Greek medicine, human skin breaths in good weather and becomes fresh and in case of lack of wind passage, still air make it stink and putrid. Still air is putrefied and putrefied air is infected. Yet, unsuitable winds may destroy the body’s vitality and be detrimental to health as well as impose bad impacts on human psyche. In nature, life of plants and animals is regulated by wind so that in Quran, it has been mentioned repeatedly and swore spiritually. In the medical fundamentals, wind types and its impact on human health and climate has been studied. According to analysis of Islamic and traditional medical fundamentals, winds quality, from the most favorable to the unfavorable ones respectively, includes east wind, north wind, west wind and finally south wind; meanwhile, in addition to the importance of wind direction, wind origin is also important for its impact. Wind origin includes environments such as sea, desert, mountain, plain, lagoon and forest. In Iran, due to diversity of its climate, instances of each one (usually the first four cases are more evident) can be taken into consideration. Removal of unfavorable wind and attraction of favorable wind in the city creates strategies for city structure. Environmental factors such as wind are significantly important for locating cities. In different regions of Iran, the wind is blown in different directions and from various origins. Each city tries to receive and train any favorable wind. In this study, six climatic zones were selected and in each climate two cities, one with favorable wind status and another one with unfavorable wind blowing were studied to compare the appropriateness of model and experience of ancients for benefitting from or coping with the wind, regarding the health criteria from Islamic viewpoint. In Iranian urban structure model, spatial orientation methods of Iranian housesthat is called Ron (direction) in traditional architecture, had been converted into a model for design of that time. Three fundamental Rons in this regard include Rasteh Ron, Esfahani Ron, and Kermani Ron. Rasteh Ron is referred to the northeast-southwest direction. In this direction, the inside of house is cold in winter and hot in summer. Esfahani Ron is referred to the northwest-southeast and Kermani Ron is referred to east-west direction. In Vitruvius book, an eight-direction model has been introduced for main directions of winds and their specifications that are exposed to main and secondary directions (90 and 45 degrees). Whereas general principle in his proposal is avoiding the same direction with winds in the city passages, so axes shall not be located in main and secondary axes. Iranian Rons, except Kermani Ron, are not located in main and secondary directions and Kermani Ron has been created with a little deviation of the skyline (almost 20 degree); therefore, main lines (including passages and orientation of buildings) of no city are located in main and secondary directions of wind flow. Considering the medical fundamentals of wind direction and superiority of north and east winds to west and south winds in all three Iranian Rons, tendency toward receiving north wind and rejection of south wind such as building backward to the south front can be seen, but in Rasteh and Kermani Ron, tendency for acceptance of east wind and in Esfahani Ron, acceptance of west wind is seen as well. In fact, if a wind of west direction is a favorable wind considering wind origin, the city’s orientation structure is set according to Esfahani Ron to benefit from favorable west wind, while this Ron has less frequency than Rasteh Ron. For instance, in cold climate, mountains of Shahrekord are located in the south that is origin of prevailing wind, so the city has the most unfavorable wind and mountains in the south prevent its suitable sunbathing; thus, its direction tends to the west (Esfahani) so that relative heat of west wind may adjust the coldness of city for the residents. Analysis of instances shows that urban structure of ancient cities has been completely formed based on medical fundamentals and is appropriately conformed to the health factors from Islamic viewpoint. Comparison between quaintly and priority of traditional urban Rons and observance of priority of benefiting from east and north winds and appropriate angle in most of them is the best evidence for paying attention to health in old cities of Iran. Considering the adaption of the past urban structure and health factors from Islamic perspective may be applied on contemporary urban planning and underlie for improvement of environmental pollutions.