This week I want to show you the Gonbad-i Bāz – an octagonal tower perched atop a conical mountain near Natanz, and an unusual survival of a non-religious Safavid-era building. Although Kleiss suggests that this domed tower is a royal pavilion for hunting the “numerous deer” in the area; most other writers, and all the …
Can I this week share some 1930s aerial photos of Iran from the Oriental Institute in Chicago – and juxtapose them with the Google Earth satellite images (still aerial of course, just from a little higher up!) that I used when identifying and double-checking locations for the stopping places along the thousand kilometre walk of …
Following on the earlier tales of Musulman and Kafir lions on Bakhtiari land, I want to share an amazing short film. Cheetah were traditionally used in the Safavid era for hunting, as you can see in this (apologies!) very poor quality image of a cheetah being carried on the back of a hunter’s horse (from …
I’ve already talked about the Uzbeks returning a looted diamond to Shah Abbas, and the jewels Abbas gifted to Jahangir. Here’s another posting on jewels – this time in the current Iranian collection. When I visited this several years ago, I was lucky enough to be shown round by the Director himself. Pressing my nose …
The famous Bakhtiari lion gravestones were recorded by the earliest of the European travellers (the line-drawing below was published in 1891) – and they are now being analysed and recorded more formally. When I very first saw them, at dusk on the way northwards from Lali up into the mountains, I was SO excited – …
As well as giving me the graffiti photos from Qasr-i Bahram, Mariam Emamy also showed me well over a hundred photos taken around the holy city of Qom in 1979. I was thrilled to recognise the photographer: the renowned Kamran Adle helped me walk the Bakhtiari migration. Sadly, the planned book about Qom has never …
Mariam Emamy recently and kindly showed me three photos of graffiti at the gorgeous white-stone building of Qasr-i Bahram. Local experts say that Qasr-i Bahram – which has also been called Abbasabad and Siyahkuh (in all sorts of spellings over the years) – was constructed as a hunting lodge for Shah Abbas; and there is …
This week, you need to click the links to see the pictures, please. Don’t miss out on the 1 metre high golden globe with over 51 thousand gemstones (at the bottom of the page)! I wrote previously about the diamond Shah Abbas recognised when it was returned by refugee Uzbek princes in 1601; and the …
This week was Sotheby’s spring Islamic Sale. For me, the most interesting – if perhaps not the most beautiful – was the dated ‘black-ring’ dish. Amidst the mountain of Safavid-era ceramics that still exist worldwide, only a very (very!) few are dated. Of the 8 dated dishes known, 7 are in the so-called ‘black-ring’ style. …
I’ve been re-reading Henry Layard’s 1887 ‘Early Adventures in Persia’; after I noticed that this apparently included identifying details of the events and individuals in one of the Bakhtiari poems translated by DLR Lorimer. I was especially interested by Layard’s descriptions of Bakhtiari poetry recitations: “I frequently witnessed . . the effect which poetry had …