Here are my eyes: looking in at some of the many eye diagnoses I have – and looking out at some of the gorgeous splendid amazing things I’ve seen. Before my eyes changed, that is. Im visually impaired – I can’t see bus numbers or street signs – or even my friends in the street. …
As I started to visit 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 dirty, and …
Polo in Isfahan used to be a big thing. The maydan at the centre of today’s city was originally an out-of-town garden. Then when Shah Abbas visited in 1590, he ordered it levelled and spread with river sand, to convert it into a polo field. In 1595, a French steward called Pinçon saw how: “The King of Persia …
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 …
It seems only to be the King who gets to feast up in the tree-house in this gorgeous folio from a Khamsa of Amir Khusrau in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Wouldn’t that make conversation difficult, even there is a great view of the dancing? Maybe the courtiers down below are struggling with the ta’arof: …
On 24 Jan 2014 at 6.30 am, a car bomb exploded outside the Cairo Islamic Art Museum – the largest such museum in the world. The museum holds 100,000 objects including the oldest known example of Kufic script, on a tombstone dated AH.31; a Quran dated AH.203; two of the 12 gold dinars which are …
This week’s entrancing talk on Simin Behbahani by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak told of Behbahani’s poetic development as she matured from writing leftist ‘sketches’ and ‘vignettes’ of poverty, prostitutes and inequality – to an iconic breathing of new life into the ghazal form Karimi-Hakkak spoke of how Simin Behbahani has “outgrown the war between the old [forms …
Ziegler & Company was the first company to produce handmade Persian carpets while catering to European tastes and needs – even accepting designs from Western retailers. What are considered as ‘Iranian’ patterns in carpets were “often affected by European imperialism and process of globalization”. Kimia Maleki has described how Ziegler was “instrumental in shaping how …
Simin Behbahani died on 19 August 2014. She may be best known internationally after President Obama quoted her at the end of his 2011 Nowruz video: “On this day – a celebration that serves as a bridge from the past to the future – I would like to close with a quote from the poet Simin …
Stephennie Mulder sent this on H-Islamart. It is indeed terrible news “Dear Colleagues, I am heartbroken to inform you that the 11th-century minaret of the Umayyad mosque in Aleppo was destroyed yesterday. It was one of the great treasures of Islamic architecture, a restrained and elegant example of the exquisite stone-carving of medieval Syrian stonemasons. …