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 …
Yezdikhwast is between Isfahan and Shiraz – or, for Vita Sackville-West in 1927, from Isfahan on the way across the Zagros Mountains when she visited the Bakhtiari. She described the town as: “that fantastic grey eyrie overhanging a chasm. Pierre Loti compared it to the abode of sea birds [click here and scroll down for …
I’ve already written about archaeology being carried out in the current war-zone on the Iran-Afghan border. But the rest of Khurasan was a busy conflict zone before and in the early years of Shah Abbas’ reign –with either the Safavid or the Uzbeg army, or both, invading pretty much every year. While the sieges and …
I’ve already posted something about the splendidly luxurious litter Pietro della Valle had made for his beloved wife Ma’ani. But she was actually very comfortable riding horseback and camping out. When the couple travelled across the Darya Namak area north-east of Kashan, on their way up from Isfahan to see Shah Abbas in Mazanderan, she …
In 1672, Chardin reported an earthquake in NE Iran: “On 11 August, there arriv’d two Expresses [in Isfahan], one upon the Heels of the other, with bad News, to-wit, That two thirds of Metched . . one half of Nichapour, and a little Town near Nichapour, had been over-thrown by an Earthquake. That which most …
Shah ‘Abbās the First was a famously itinerant ruler: travelling up to a annual maximum of 4500km (in 1591-2 – and that’s not counting his prodigious hunting trips). On each of his average-thirty-odd annual moves, Melville has calculated that the Shah generally covered 34-45 km/day. ‘Abbās could, however, travel much faster: Pietro della Valle wrote …
The earliest known portraits of Iranians by Westerners reached record prices in the October 2010 Christies sales: £157,250 for a 1604 drawing of “Mehdi Quli Bey”; and £229,250 for a 1604 drawing of “Sinal Shah Kamlu”, with his even more extravagant mustachios (against estimates of £35-50,000). Click on the links to see what you might …
In a recent posting about the litters, or cages, that many women (and invalids) used to get around Persia, I said that I thought that Figueroa – the Spanish ambassador in 1617-19 – did not use the undignified cages. So what might he have used? Another litter that is well documented as being used is …