The ‘festival of lights’: 1595

In 1595, three years before Shah Abbas formally designated Isfahan as his capital city, he spent a mind-blowing 22 thousand tumans on an eye-popping ‘festival of lights’ in the city.

Fifteeen thousand footsoldiers were gathered from nearby regions, equipped with regalia and banners, and presented to the Shah just outside Isfahan – in the village of Daulatabad – as he travelled from Qazvin.

In the town, the main square (today’s Maidan-e Emam) was larger than now – the inner row of inward-facing shops and the second storey of balakhana (‘apartments’) were only added in 1602.  The square was generally used for polo, horse-racing and public entertainments – rather than its later more commercial focus – and so had a plain perimeter wall (any shops were outward-facing).

This wall was “smoothed” – presumably plastered – and had “wondrous creatures and marvellous creations” painted on it.  Twelve wheels were erected “on each [of which] were fixed nearly one thousand lamps in such a way that by lighting one lamp and then turning the wheel all the lamps on that wheel could be lit”.  Gardens with sweet-smelling flowers and fruit-bearing trees were constructed at each of the four corners of the maidan and a “multitude of smooth-cheeked youths” ambled about “as if they were hidden pearls”.

For the festival itself, four hundred tumans were spent on explosives alone.  The spectacular fireworks included “rockets, starbursts, lindens, pineapples, the peacock’s fan, halos, the magic narcissus, the yellow moon-burst, the lily flower, the purple burst, the gold sprinkler, the centfoil, the Indian rose, and the pinwheel, as well as the ringlet, the shooting arrow, the sun, the water lily, the bannered heavens, the flower sprinkler, the seven coloured narcissus , the salamander flower and other effects”.

Four mock castles were erected on the four sides of the Maidan.  Each had one hundred effigies of either Qizilbash (Safavid) or Uzbeg (the enemy) warriors – dressed in purple and red and with all their weapons and other equipment of war.   The display started with ‘envoys’ going back and forth.  When ‘peace’ could not be made, cannons and muskets were set off, and eventually the four castles were set aflame.  The  resultant smoke even obscured the light from the hundreds of lanterns.

The Ali Qapu, now the obvious place to watch such a spectacle, was then merely a seed of its current self.  Archaeological investigations in the 1960s showed that it began life as a plain two-storey gatehouse, and this is what would have been in existence in 1595.