Bibliography: Three British ladies in Bakhtiariland

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 …

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How to catch an Iranian bear . . using tarof

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 …

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Piped water in the desert, Safavid-style

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 …

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Shaykh Bakhaie and his camel oil mill

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 …

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Ladies in Bakhtiariland – and the Constitutional Revolution

Dr Elisabeth Macbean Ross (author of the renowned ‘A Lady Doctor in Bakhtiariland’) was the physician for the “Bibis or great ladies, wives, sisters and mothers of the leading [Bakhtiari] Khans” for around four years from 1910.  She usually visited each of the many “Gha[l]ehs or castles” for several weeks, and there “enjoyed the almost …

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Safavid water fountains in Isfahan

The Masjid-e Jame in Isfahan was not the only congregational mosque in Buyid Isfahan: the Jurjir mosque was constructed sometime shortly before 985CE for the vizier Ibn Abbad, a Mutazilite scholar who transformed the court of the ruler Abu Mansur Moayyed-al-Dawla into a transnational literary centre. Only a fragment of the façade of the latter …

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