Last week I wrote about Jonas Hanway, the Caspian Trader, and his account of Shah Abbas advising the Ottoman Sultan that he would stop the Persians wearing green stockings if the Sultan stopped dogs in Turkey from pissing on the grass. When I was looking for images of Hanway, I found several (for example here and here) celebrating him as the ‘first man in England with an umbrella’.
Of course umbrellas, or maybe more accurately parasols (čatr), have a long – and royal – history in Iran. The Achaemenids saw the parasol as part of court panoply. Both honouring and sheltering the monarch, it was an indicator of rank. Maybe this is why the ‘Parsis’ (Zoroastrians) were not allowed to carry umbrellas until 1895.
Representations of čatr distinguish the king on the door jambs of entrances at Persepolis and in stone friezes at Ṭāq-e Bostān.
Thinking about umbrellas, I couldn’t fail to remember Figueroa, and his care and concern for his party as they at last travelled homewards from Isfahan in 1619. The desert area from Shiraz to Hormuz had had no rain for two years. With no water in the cisterns, the merchants and caravans had stopped journeying. Figueroa ordered, before the party left Isfahan, that everyone should carry, along with their arquebus, a leather bag capable of containing 10 or 12 pints of water, and a parasol “because although they travelled at night, it could happen on this long journey, that they might have to travel in the day, and that the Sun, although it was the end of the Summer, was just as strong, and at least as dangerous”.
How they managed to carry all this is a mystery to me (click here to see just how long and unwieldy an arquebus is) – especially since, as well as the water bag, the horses and mules had small water containers hanging from them – just like Strabo described: about a handsbreadth away from the animal’s belly, by which means the water “refreshes itself”.
This week, a follow-up to last weeks mention of Jonas Hanway being the first Englishman to carry an umbrella – a race through the Persian pre-history of the parasol, with a focus on Figueroa’s insistence that all of his party should carry parasols, and arquebuses, and bulky water sacks, and more water containers dangling off their horses when they travelled across the drought area between Shiraz and Hormuz. It doesnt sound convenient at all!
Hi Caroline
Further to your interesting post on parasols, there is a lengthy article on the same subject in the July/August 2011 issue of Saudi Aramco World entitled “In the Shade of the Royal Umbrella”, covering its role from the Assyrians to modern day Brunei. It can be read on http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201104/in.the.shade.of.the.royal.umbrella.htm
Bye
Irena
Yolande wrote to me to say that:
“the hallebarde here was taken from the Geneva parade the second sunday in December when we celebrate l”Escalade” to commemorate the defeat of the Savoyards in 1602. A procession of 800 in 17th century costumes…..”
Its great to know that, at least if the 800 are right in their ‘recreation’, I’ve picked out an image which is timed right
And even better to get some context of these weapons being used in Europe, before Figueroa and his men carried them to Iran.