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 …