This week, my article on Three British Ladies in Bakhtiariland is published in the journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. The article explores the history of the Bakhtiari – through the eyes of three British women who visited the area across a span of 40 years. The first of the women, Isabella Bird, …
I’ve already shown you some (Safavid-era) Persian and (alcoholic) Armenian graffiti at the caravanserai of Siahkuh. So I was pleased to read about more graffiti in another caravanserai – although this time seen, and then added to, by Olearius, the very same ‘sick person with a great beard‘ I introduced you to last week. On …
Many Safavid women were transported in litters – or what the Spanish Ambassador Figueroa described “more accurately as cages”. These were covered wooden boxes, just like those in the Qajar image below. Two boxes were suspended, one on each side of the carrying animal, with the woman facing either backwards or forwards as she chose, …
In 2010, Ashura (‘Āšūrā’) was on 16th December. Ashura, of course, commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hosayn at the Battle of Karbala on 10 Muharram 61 AH (2nd October 680). To show respect to that important date in the Shi’a religious calendar, and also to present some ancient and more modern objects; here is a …
When Shah Abbas set out from Daulatabad with the “six hundred handsome young men” witnessed by Muratowicz, the first stop properly outside Isfahan on the thousand kilometre walk (in 1601) was at Ribat Qazi Ahmad. Melville couldn’t find this ribat (fort) on the War Office Quarter-Inch maps he worked with to retrace the walk – …
On the 10th of November 1618, some servants who were up very early in the morning reported to Figueroa, the Spanish Ambassador, that they had seen “une grande meteor au ciel”. When another valet and some Armenians also saw something the next night, the Ambassador decided to wait up and observe for himself. Sitting outside …
In 1618, the Spanish Ambassador, García de Silva y Figueroa, travelled from Isfahan to Qazvin. On the way, he stopped at an ‘Emansade’ where he was “strangely persecuted . . for the whole night by a sort of midge, which are so white and so small as to be imperceptible”. To avoid this, on the …
If one has a bottle of vodka he never gets old. That is, according to Armenian graffiti at Siahkuh caravanserai (also called Abbasabad and Qasr-i Bahram) in the kavir between the fearsome salt plains of the Darya Namak and the neighbouring 30km expanse of salty mud. Siahkuh is now in a restricted-entry area; but it …
Three very different British women travelled in Bakhtiari territory between 1890 and 1927. Although their accounts span only four decades, they encapsulate the meteoric rise – and fall – of the Bakhtiari, all of whose important leaders were immediate relatives of the ‘Great Khan’, Hosaynqolī Khan. Here below is the full bibliography for my article …
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 …