I’m fascinated by the area around Ahuan. Isidore of Charax’s Parthian Stations run through it. It’s near where Darius was killed by his men as he tried to escape from Alexander. And the Seleucid King Antiochus chased Arsaces across here too, with both forces trying to take control over the water supplies. Now, there’s a …
Even if his splendid mustachios were his defining feature, many European travellers reported on the clothes that Shah Abbas wore. Many of the visitors specifically noted the Shah’s simple costume. Gouvea (visiting between 1602 and 1613) “had to have the King pointed out” as his seat (on the ground), his turban and his dress were …
This week, the winners of the 2011 Jameel Prize were announced. The Prize is for contemporary art or design inspired by traditions of Islamic craft and design, and this year’s official winner is Rachid Koraïchi, for his embroidered cloth banners. The People’s Choice winner is Aisha Khalid, who showed the wonderful ‘Kashmiri Shawl’ (a cashmere …
From the times of Ptolemy’s Geographia, the Caspian Sea was (wrongly!) depicted by European cartographers as widest from east to west. Only as late as 1647 did Adam Olearius manage to correct this mistake. Click here to see Olearius’ map. Elio Brancaforte has described Olearius as an intellectual hybrid: drawing on classical and biblical sources, …
Ice was a historical commonplace in Persia: Fryer wrote of how in 1677 the Persians “mightily covet cool things to the Palat. Wherefore they mix snow, or dissolve ice in their Water, Wine or Sherbets,”. Even the poorest, “have they but a Penny in the World, the one half will go for Bread, and dried …
I’ve already written a little about the tanab, the traditional rope-measuring device that Munajjim Yazdi and his team used to record the distances that Shah Abbas walked in 1601. As chief astrologer, Yazdi was a measurement expert – also using his astrolabe (click here to see a slightly later Safavid astrolabe) to compute how fast …
The Islamic Ceramics display in the Ashmolean Museum includes a fascinating feature on fakery. The first fake dish included here is boat-shaped – or seems that way. Actually it’s made up, according to the Ashmolean, from pieces of a round bowl. It’s maybe more difficult to see the fakery in the second dish. It purports …
Ahuan is one of the places in Khurasan where, on the 1601 walk to Mashhad, Abbas stayed in a ribat (fort). Click here to see Herzfeld’s plan – though it’s also as clear as can be on the satellite image. The hilltop ‘settlement’ (it’s now really just a petrol station) also has a superb extant …
Everyone knows 999 caravanserais were constructed by Shah Abbas the First . . don’t they? Certainly, very many Iranians will – on the slightest provocation – tell one of the very many variants of the story: most commonly that the Shah thought that the number 999 was so precise that it should be believed, whilst …
Stopping place km from Isfahan Details Dating CVS also called ‘ribat’ Deh Namak 441 17th century/Safavid CVS, inscription panel missing, restored in 1976-8. Second mud brick CVS, built after 1848, now in poor condition (Kleiss 1998 [K]: 85). See details Abdalabad 463 Mud/mudbrick CVS: stylistically of multiple periods including Qajar. ? Lasjird 483 17th century/Safavid …