Recently, I showed you some Safavid-era public fountains, in Isfahan. But the massive infrastructure developments of the era included installation of water supplies in the most unlikely places – for example, in the desert area sandwiched between 40km of salt plains (the Darya Namak), and 30km of salt mud (click here for a photo of …
Shaykh Bahaie is renowned as a polymath – theologian, mathematician, philosopher, poet and physician – during the reign of Shah Abbas I. My favourite invention of his is an angled-stone sundial at the Masjid-e Shah in Isfahan, the shadows of which accurately indicate prayer times. Nearby Bahaie’s hamam in Isfahan (the water of which was …
Major Herbert Sawyer was an Indian Army officer who, in 1890, carried out a geographical-military reconnaissance in West Persia, including a mapping of the Bakhtiari territories. Even though a detailed version of his map was publicly available in 1894 (click here and scroll down); copies in the India Office collection (now in the British Library) …
Dr Elisabeth Macbean Ross (author of the renowned ‘A Lady Doctor in Bakhtiariland’) was the physician for the “Bibis or great ladies, wives, sisters and mothers of the leading [Bakhtiari] Khans” for around four years from 1910. She usually visited each of the many “Gha[l]ehs or castles” for several weeks, and there “enjoyed the almost …
Some of the tiles on the dome of the Masjid-e Shah in Isfahan have recently been reported to be ‘creeping’ downwards. I recently realised that this is what is visible in a photo I took of the dome in spring 2008. Until now, I confess that I had thought it was a fault in my …
The Masjid-e Jame in Isfahan was not the only congregational mosque in Buyid Isfahan: the Jurjir mosque was constructed sometime shortly before 985CE for the vizier Ibn Abbad, a Mutazilite scholar who transformed the court of the ruler Abu Mansur Moayyed-al-Dawla into a transnational literary centre. Only a fragment of the façade of the latter …
This week, an amazing old Negah video showing all the stages of Ghalam-kari (also called qalamkari or wood-block printing), including the preparation of the cloth [@ 2.50 minutes], the first rinse [3.00], the printing [3.40 and 6.30]; and the carving of the blocks [5.55]. The video says [1.00] that the craft started in the time …
When Shah Abbas walked along the Khurasan Highroad on his way to Mashhad in 1601, one of the places he stopped at is recorded by Munajjim Yazdi as Ribat-i Qusha (the fort at Qusha: 601km from Isfahan). A dervish named Kamal had walked with the Shah from Kashan and, around Qusha, Kamal is reported to …
Siavash queried the architectural origins of the Chini-kana, in one of his (thankyou, Siavash!) interesting comments. I thought I’d add a note about this, drawing on AH Morton’s very helpful paper, “The Ardabīl Shrine in the Reign of Shāh Ṭahmāsp I”. Iran Vol. 12 (1974), pp. 31-64 AHM reports that ME Weaver, a UNESCO consultant …
Some of you may already have noticed that UNESCO inscribed the Sheikh Safi al-din Khānegāh and Shrine Ensemble in Ardabil on its World Heritage list on 31 July 2010. In the citation, it was described as a “rare ensemble of medieval Islamic architecture”; incorporating a route to reach the shrine of Sheikh Safi “divided into …