Overall impressions and summary

Twins and grandmother

We encountered a happy, informed and polite people who welcomed us with a smile or a slight bow, recognising and acknowledging our presence as guests. They are incredibly proud of being Persian and an ancient civilisation that has contributed much to Islam and to the West and retained their own distinct identity. Young families with sleepy toddlers draped over one or other parent, young children wanting to go their own way with parents patiently guiding them – I never heard a raised voice to children, or anyone else for that matter, nor any physical punishment to children. The traffic is chaotic, with motorbikes ridden on pavements or going the wrong way up streets, so crossing a busy road requires confidence and a healthy belief that there will be a future. But only rare horns and never any road rage that we saw.  Very few beggars but quite high levels of youth unemployment. People would guide us, as foreigners, across a street and go back to what they were doing. Young men and women were happy to be photographed and to photograph us and to engage in conversation.

While older women in chadors were sometimes more reserved, old men positively preened for the camera. But all had a quiet dignity and mutual respect. It has been a delight to be a guest in their country.

Mullah

The government is rapidly improving infrastructure with major road, rail and water systems, often under project labour contracts with Chinese or Korean companies under the direction of what are, on evidence, excellent Irani engineers. The big cities, Tehran in particular, are suffering from population pressure from urbanisation and a rapidly increasing disposable income. Cars, buses and motorcycles of many familiar brands cough out pollution that clouds a hot sunny sky with little breeze to shift it. The metros are holes in the ground with no great urgency apparent.

Nomad camp near Yasuj. Enlarge to find the camp!

And as described in Esfahan, the cities are vulnerable to climate change because of their dependence on snow-melt for water, but the tradition is to squander water as an affordable luxury. While the cities and towns are remarkably clean, plastic detritus is a blight on rural roads and vacant blocks of land.

The issues for travelers are the same as any developing country. Toilets are provided in public parks and encourage families to use the grassy areas for picnics. But the flushing systems don’t often work although there is almost always soap and water to wash ones hands. The locals on journey often seem to spurn hotels and camp in collapsible pup tents on sidewalks near a park and toilets. Three or four members of a family will emerge from their portable bedroom and stretch before heading off for a face wash. Presumably there is a thin mattress and blanket on the floor and that’s all that is needed at this time of year. Many of the travellers seemed to be internal tourists reveling in their history or looking for a break on the Caspian like the Shah in his day. Limited and sometimes excellent English is not uncommon, particularly in tourist areas. We were fortunate that there were very few other tour groups around, although we bumped into Australians, Germans, French and Dutch as well as a few from the Balkans. Everyone is very hopeful that the new Prime Minister, Rouhani, can broker a deal with the US over nuclear power and lift sanctions so they can welcome more visitors to their country.

Many apologise for the aggressive rhetoric of Ahmedinijad; however, our sample was limited to those who wanted to engage with us. On the other hand there was very very little evidence of hostility to Americans and much more a wish to be understood.

Go to Iran, particularly before it becomes the next big tourist destination for a jaded West denied access to Iraq, Egypt and Syria by continuing violence. In the hotels we stayed, food was predictable, good and, like all restaurant food, heavy on meat (usually kebabs) and light on fibre and vegetables. Salads at every meal must have been well washed in clean water because tummy troubles were uncommon. The major issue for us was the very dry air and the air-conditioning drying out noses.

Esfahan the glorious

Competing with Istanbul for elegance and beauty, Esfahan in the 16^th C was the jewel of the Savafids in their Golden Age under Shah Abbas I. Abbas forcibly translocated Armenian Christain merchants and their extensive trading networks to run the state silk monoply. Jews were already running the banking system and he developed a reliable tax system that gave him the resources to create a standing army to suppress tribal squabbles and push back Ottoman and Turkic incursions. He imported craftsmen to build some wonderful monuments in Esfahan, his new capital.

Internal dome of new Friday Mosque

The New Friday Mosque used the same dome over a cube as Shapur and Adashir in their Sassanian palaces and as the Zoroastrians before that. For the Zoroastrians, the cube represented the earth, the dome represented the sky and there was always a pool of water before the entrance. Persia thus modified the plain Arabic mosque and gave it architectural grandeur, incorporating minarets to balance the mass of the high outer dome. The New Mosque has an inner dome 30M across and the outer dome rises 57M covered in the trademark turquoise tiles. The inside dome has a marvelous decoration of tiles and acts as a reverberation membrane for a mullah who stands under its apex to project his voice to the furtherest corners of the open mosque square beyond the cube. When we visited, the outdoor part of the mosque was being covered with shade-cloth to protect the congregation. A young mullah took us aside and answered questions about himself and his religion.

Ladies Mosque with the peacock's tail of light

The Ladies Mosque, built for the women of his court and not open to the public of the time, is even more jaw-droppingly exquisite. It was given to the Shah’s respected father-in-law, who developed a theological school there.

Opposite the enormous Imam Square, from which the mosques are entered, is a gorgeous formal reception pavillion and gardens, called the many-pillared. A wide reflecting pool, perhaps 100M long, leads up through a shady and extensive garden of trees of various textures to a pavillion where the Shah sat to receive his guests. As we have seen the fashion, 20 dressed tree trunks became pillars, perhaps 20M high, to support a wide and deep flat roof – an impressive verandah. The royal area had been extensively decorated with mirror-work, now destroyed. Behind the façade is a large reception room, painted with 17^th C frescoes in brilliant colours. These had been covered over with plaster later in the same century to protect them f

Shah Abbass reception hall

rom marauding and iconoclastic Afghans, and were only rediscovered by accident 50 years ago. The frescoes are a cross between Italian renaissance and Persian minaturist styles, where Italian idioms of individual personalities and perspective are married with exquisite detail of costume and colour. The Persians developed a new way of painting that gave them several days to work on a section of damp plaster compared to the Italians who had to work very quickly and therefore more impressionistically. Blue, black, white, grey, red & white and orange horses gallop across a field with the Shah leading the charge in a famous battle.

The Shah's renaissance battle

On the other wall, the court of Shah Abbas I is shown in its power and decadence, whereas his son’s court, receiving a supplication from Humayun (a Mughal Emperor on the run), is shown as formal and correct. The son commissioned all the paintings, of course. Below these grand frescoes are small wall paintings of familiar romances and stories in minaturist style.

The Armenian church of Joseph of Arimathea is unprepossessing on the outside but is covered with brightly coloured murals of gospel stories on the inside. The small museum offers gruesome documentation on the genocide of Turkish Armenians and some wonderful illuminated bibles in Armenian script. On the other side of the river the 2000 or so remaining Jews use a private house as their synagoue although one old synagogue we visited still had services every morning followed by breakfast. The rabbi and the Armenian priest divide their time with Tehran where they represent their minority in parliament. Underneath the arches of Shah Abbas’s bridge is cool and has good acoustics. They are a gathering place for reading or contemplation, family picnics and for singers, such as the several men, young and old, who sang for their and our pleasure this morning. A lovely city, but dependent on snow-melt and good water management and therefore fragile in the face of climate change. The Esfahanis are without any water in their river this summer for the first time ever because it has been siphoned off upstream to send to Yazd and to service two large steel mills. Without water, this city of gardens and fountains will die.

Shiraz and Persepolis

Tomb of Hafez

Shiraz, city of roses and poets, was reached after a long drive across salt lakes and over moderate mountains, all semi-desert peopled by nomads and occasional oases. The average temperature was 5 deg cooler 2500 years ago and Alexander’s troops had to find their way through forest in this area. So a Sassanian prince’s hunting lodge in the middle of a bare plain at Sarvestan on the way would have made more sense then. Shiraz had few roses in bloom but truly loves its poets. A garden and pavilion dedicated to a lyrical mystic poet, Hafez, in Shiraz was crowded by people of all ages coming to pay their respects and touch his tomb.
A middle-aged lady was propped up against a pillar reading a volume of his works, totally oblivious to the normal mayhem going on around her. As always, lots of kids of various ages doing their thing, mums and dads looking after them and all the latest fashions on display.

Photo shoot

Later we visited an orangerie with a mirrored pavilion with two young women in startling red or blue tribal gear having a photo-shoot

Persepolis, near Shiraz, is a knock out. Darius set out to shock and awe the tributary kingdoms by the grand, enormously high entrance gateway on a huge terrace accessed up symmetrical flights of shallow stairs. The flat ceiling of the entrance hall was held up by carved bulls on top of 20M pillars, the whole (originally) painted in brilliant colours. One Stanley of the New York Herald left his name there in 1870. Round to the hall of 100 pillars, where skeletal stone windows and doors are set in long-vanished mud walls, originally also about 20M. Then to an antechamber in front of where the great King of Kings, Darius, Xerxes or Ataxerxes sat on the next level approached up further symmetrical shallow flights of stairs.

Persepolis gate

The walls of the stairs carry bas-reliefs of the 28 subject nations, each in distinctive caps and clothing and bearing gifts of their local specialty: metal, cloth, food or animals. The king sits enthroned in another hall of enormous height, this time with fluted columns. the rock tombs of three Kings are a short distance away, the facades in the overall shape of a cross. The cave entrance of each is carved to represent the palace; above that level, the 28 nations support the king (and kingdom) under the symbol of Ahura Mazda. Below the palace, the arm of the cross is blank – the nothingness of the pit. Cyrus is buried elsewhere. The whole impression is of the recruitment and organisation of massive resources to emphasise imperial grandeur.

Darius receiving his tributed

Persepolis was connected by fast pony express to all parts of the empire. Darius used the site for ceremonial gatherings, dividing his time with Susa, near Ctesiphon and Basra in Mesopotamia, and with Ecbatana, modern Hamdan. Each transfer is about 500km. In 330 BC, Alexander and his hoplites with their superior spears and shields had sliced through the 10,000 Immortals (bodyguard) and the many other troops to defeat the Sassanian Empire. In a drunken orgy, the treasury was looted and the palace burnt down. The ceiling fell in and the site became covered with earth, protecting the artifacts until they were excavated in the 1939’s.

The Sassanians had their origin with Ardashir in the third century AD. He defeated the Parthians after declaring an independent state based on a well defended hilltop palace & fort. Once he felt safe, he built a palace on the plain near permanent water near what is now Ferozeabad. There, the builders constructed the first dome – double skinned at that - on a square building for the very first time, using kiln dried bricks. The inside parabolic dome had a diameter of 20M and the outer dome started further out and rose at a shallower angle to join the inner dome towards a center aperture. Two of the three domes still stand. His son, Shapur the Great defeated the Roman Governor of Syria, Philip the Arab and defeated and captured the Roman Emperor Valerian as celebrated on rock carvings at Bishapur.

Shapur's Roman built city

Shapur and the Roman emperors

There Shapur built his own palace and city with an enormous dome of about 28M diameter, supported on a Greek Cross. The city was built by captured Roman soldiers, now slaves and included the only mosaics in the Sassanian tradition, now carted off to the Louvre. When the Arabs arrived in the 7^th C, they adapted signal high towers, such as Ardashir’s 35M example, as minarets for the muezzin to call for prayers.