In 1590/1, three years after he had deposed his father, Shah Abbas visited Isfahan[1]. Aged only nineteen, he was still fighting to re-conquer his own country. He had recently made a humiliating – if pragmatic – peace with the Ottomans; as well as losing Mashhad (and the important Shia shrine there) to the Uzbeks. Shortly …
From 1590/1 onwards, the city of Isfahan was transformed in a magnificent royal building programme. The dense urban agglomeration that had grown up since the tenth century was substantially extended and remodelled. Shah Abbas the Great[1] oversaw an architectural revolution in which grand structures promoted local and international commerce and splendid new leisure amenities were …
Lord Curzon has described Thomas Herbert’s work as: “by far the most amusing work [on Persia] that has ever been published”[1]. Although Herbert visited Iran in 1626-29 – so, after della Valle and Figueroa – his account was made publicly available much more quickly. The first edition of A relation of some yeares travaile.. Into …