This week, the BBC suggested that high heels were originally a virile fashion for men, which followed on the 1599 Persian embassy to Europe. Elizabeth Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto was reported as saying that “the high heel was worn for centuries throughout the near east as a form of riding footwear …
As I started to visit buildings in Iran, I started to meet Iranian craftsmen – often high up on rudimentary scaffolding. I also started to realise how little is understood about their impressive skills and knowledge. With many master craftmen (ustads) relatively old, and relatively few young men now wanting to undergo the lengthy, often …
The Haramserail is said to have been the facilities for Shah Abbas’ wives and children, when he was hunting at Qasr-i Bahram. It is constructed from a mix of baked bricks and mud intermingled with large local stones, and the layout is completely unlike most other caravanserais. Here it is, in the 1970s. The central …
Here are the remains of the ancient qaleh (fort) in Deh Namak. This has ‘Sassanian-size’ bricks and is referenced in early Arab chronicles. To the right is the dome of an extant abambar (covered water-tank).
In Isfahan, the master craftsman currently in charge of renovating the Safavid buildings in New Julfa explained the different types of traditional rope to me and also described how the maximum length for any rope was determined by the size of buildings, and therefore by the standard size of Safavid bricks. He then helped me …
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 …
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 …
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 …
When Shah Abbas set out from Daulatabad with the “six hundred handsome young men” witnessed by Muratowicz, the first stop properly outside Isfahan on the thousand kilometre walk (in 1601) was at Ribat Qazi Ahmad. Melville couldn’t find this ribat (fort) on the War Office Quarter-Inch maps he worked with to retrace the walk – …