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 – …
For those of you who are claustrophobic, here is a rare chance (for the next few days ONLY: don’t delay, the BBC will take it off the internet soon) to see inside a qanat – a traditional Iranian underground irrigation canal. Click here for the film – to see the qanat section, watch from 15 …
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 …
I have already offered you handy hints in case your hunting-cheetah is indisposed; and suggested how best to address a Musulman lion if you meet it in the Bakhtiari mountains. Now this week, how to – very politely – catch an Iranian bear. Iranian bears (whether brown or black) of course have manners and intelligence …
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 …
Shaykh Bahaie is renowned as a polymath – theologian, mathematician, philosopher, poet and physician – during the reign of Shah Abbas I. My favourite invention of his is an angled-stone sundial at the Masjid-e Shah in Isfahan, the shadows of which accurately indicate prayer times. Nearby Bahaie’s hamam in Isfahan (the water of which was …