That’s what Lord Curzon thought about Thomas Herbert’s A relation of some yeares travaile… into the Territories of the Persian Monarchie. Herbert’s account, of his journey to Persia in 1627-29 as a junior member of the Dodmore Cotton embassy, is one of my favourites too, even if most Safavid historians pay much less attention to …
Shirin Neshat is the first artist of Middle East origin and first woman since 2009 to have a solo show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. Ms Neshat is an expatriate Iranian and much of her work is identified with gender politics in the Islamic Republic. After her seminal Women of Allah photographic series, and the …
I’ve just been travelling close by the Roman-Sasanian border: around Diyarbakir, or Amida, as the Assyrians and Romans called it. It was a lesson in the long history of multicultural-ness of that area – now on the edges of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Diyarbakir / Amida is an important node in the ancient international trade …
Even though the Safavid ‘Coronation carpet’ failed to sell at Sothebys recently, its story can’t fail to interest you. It was used at the coronation of two British Kings, Edward VII (in 1902) and George V (1911), as well as at the marriage of Princess Mary (1922). Click here to see what I’m talking about The …