Graffiti from 1592 at Qasr-i Bahram

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 certainly still plenty of game in the surrounding, and restricted entry, Kavir National Park.

Shah Abbas almost certainly stayed in the building in 1602.  Then, he was returning to Isfahan from the Balkh campaign via the ‘Siyahkuh’ route, and stayed at the ‘Shahi’ caravanserai.

However, when Abbas walked through the area on his famous thousand-kilometre walk in 1601, there is no record of him stopping at any building in the area. Instead the map here shows how he camped at a pool (Hauz Agha Mohamad), and then by a bridge (Pul-i Shurab). I had therefore wondered if this meant that Qasr-i Bahram was constructed between 1601 and 1602 – perhaps even as part of the post-walk building programme that Melville has documented.

Very excitingly, however, Mariam’s photos prove that this idea must be completely wrong – since the graffiti they show is actually dated.

The photographs were taken in 1971, in a corner room – to the right of the photo here.  By the time I visited in 2008, this room was in active use by the game wardens who lived in, and worked out of, the building; and there was no sign of any graffiti.

You can see that the graffiti has three obvious dates: 1001AH; 26 Moharram 1[0]36AH; and Ramazan 1062AH. These are equivalent, respectively, to: 1592; Sat 17 October 1626; and August 1652.

All this means that the building must have been constructed by 1592 – although we still can’t know how much earlier than that.  This might argue against the idea that it was his own special hunting lodge.  I’m going to do more work on the content of the graffiti – the later writings, especially, seem to suggest that the building might not only have been used by royal travellers – but if you want to comment, then please do.

Meanwhile, if you want to see more pictures of Qasr-i Bahram/Siahkuh and the nearby Haramserail, have a look here