When I was preparing the article about the Friday Mosque of Shiraz and the Qur’anic inscriptions that are written on its walls, I came across the photo of a quite particular alabaster slab that used to be kept in the mosque. The slab is made of alabaster and its design is that of a two-dimensional mihrab….
Category: reading inscription
Naqsh-i Rustam in Islamic Iran: the construction of an identity
All they ask is attention, and they get it, like a child or Hitler Robert Byron has never shown much interest in pre-Islamic Persian art. Similarly, when he arrived in Naqsh-i Rustam, on the 1st of March 1934, he was not at all impressed by the remains of the Persian civilizations. In his travelogue, he certainly recognizes…
Friday Mosque of Shiraz and its Qur’anic inscriptions
It is not a happy combination On the 17th of February 1934, Byron visits Shiraz and its monuments. In particular, he records the Friday Mosque of the city, also known as Masjid-i ‘Atiq. As often, Byron is not at all enthusiast of the building, particularly of its decoration. As a whole, Shiraz does not make…
Sexual conduct and the inscription of a mosque: the case of the South Dome of the Friday Mosque of Isfahan.
Much of it is clumsy, some ugly. When Byron sees for the first time the beautiful Friday Mosque of Isfahan, he is in the car of the Hovlands, on the 11th of February 1934. After they passed by the Maidan-i Imam, they drive to the Friday Mosque, and Byron does not seem at all impressed…
The Gundab-i Bastam: finding inaccuracies in a description
The brickwork has a fine texture Sometimes it is clearly visible from Byron’s writing, that The Road to Oxiana is not a travelogue compiled during the journey. This is the case with the entry dated 9th of January 1934. Under that date, Byron reports his visit to two monuments of Bastam: the Mashhad-i Bayazid Bastami, and a…
Mashhad-i Bayazid Bastami: the work of a family
its towers like Kentish oast-houses After having spent in Mashhad the days around Christmas, on the entry dated 9th of January 1934, we find Byron further West: in Bastam. There, the first monument Byron encounters and notes down in his travelogue is the Mashhad-i Bayazid Bastami. January 1934 corresponds to the month of Ramadan. In…
The Musalla of Mashhad and inscription authorship.
a ruined arch In the entry dated 24th of December 1933 Byron mentions a number of monuments of Mashhad, that he missed during his first visit to the city: the Imamzada Khvajah Rabi’, the Masjid-i Shah, and the Musalla of the city. It is not the first time Byron mentions a musalla: roughly one month before,…
Drinking from the spring of Paradise: the inscription of the Gunbad-i ‘Alaviyyan
The Gunbad-i ‘Alaviyyan is not the most famous building of the Iranian heritage, this is for sure. Considered to have been built around 1150, in the city of Hamadan (the Ancient Greek Ectabana), not much is known about the monument: no inscription provides the date or a name whatsoever. The traditional name is Gunbad-i ‘Alaviyyan,…
The Imamzada of Khvajah Rabi’ by Byron, Yate, and Pope
It suits my mood. After having gone as far East as Herat, Afghanistan, around Christmas 1933 we find Robert Byron once again in Mashhad, where he had already been in the first half of November 1933. Between late November and mid-December 1933, Robert Byron tried to move further East, to Turkestan, but bad weather and…
Blaming the murderer: an inscription of the Ziyarat-i ‘Abd Allah Ansari
Everyone goes to Gazar Gah After his visit to the citadel of Herat, where he fancied for a second about becoming a spy for His Majesty the King of England, on the 24th of November 1933, Byron took a cab that drove him to what he calls “the shrine of Gazar Gah”. In fact, the…
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