Last week, the blog focused on the story of Bizhan and Manizheh and how it is represented on the Freer beaker. This week, a little more from Dr Marianna Shreve Simpson’s fascinating Khalili Lecture. After saying that she thought that a mina’i (overglaze enamel ceramic) fragment in the Khalili collection also showed scenes from the …
This week’s Khalili Memorial lecture was entitled ‘The Cosmic Cup in Medieval and Later Persian Art’. Since there’s not enough space in one posting to go through everything that Dr Marianna Shreve Simpson talked about, this week’s blog will concentrate especially on the Shahnameh story of Bizhan and Manizheh (here in verse, here in prose), …
Three of the men who travelled with the Sherley brothers wrote accounts of their trips. George Manwaring (who also wrote about the jewels he saw) describes arriving in Kashan in 1589: So that night we went twelve miles to a gallant city called Cason [Kashan], spending time by the way in hawking and hunting, and …
Last week I wrote about Jonas Hanway, the Caspian Trader, and his account of Shah Abbas advising the Ottoman Sultan that he would stop the Persians wearing green stockings if the Sultan stopped dogs in Turkey from pissing on the grass. When I was looking for images of Hanway, I found several (for example here …
Today the commonest tale told in Iran about Shah Abbas concerns the 999 caravanserais he is supposed to have constructed. Jonas Hanway, in his Historical account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, tells lots more. My two favourites stories are about the shrewdness of Shah Abbas. The first is about Abbas’ supposed “method …
Happy Yalda! Yalda is the longest night of the year – or, more positively, the night after which the days become longer, and the sun starts to win again. Although it’s on December 20 or 21st, I’ve put this posting up early, since SOAS are having a special Yalda night on the 17th and you …
Professor Edmund Herzig did this year’s BIPS AGM lecture on 23 November. I’m not even going to attempt to summarise it, but he made some fascinating points about the teaching and conception of history during and after the Islamic Revolution. I’m going to (very partially) summarise some of them here. During the Pahlavi dynasty, pre-Islamic …
It’s all very exciting: the Met galleries (in New York) for ‘Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia’ (or ALTICASA for short, gulp!) are re-opening from 24 Oct. There are 15 galleries, and 1200 objects on show at any one time – so I’m not going through everything here! …
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 …