So much it meant to have escaped from Teheran After having described the Friday Mosque of Isfahan, it seems that Byron wants to continue with his hopping-on-an-off and sightseeing the most important monuments of Isfahan. It is always the evening of the 11th of February 1934, and as he did for the Maidan-i Imam, he drives…
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 Maidan-i Imam from Byron’s window
There was time to drive round Isfahan before dark A couple of days after Byron is in Qom and describes hurriedly the Shrine of Fatima, he arrives in Isfahan. It is, according to the travelogue, the 11th of February 1934. He and the two people that were traveling with him, or better, that gave him…
A shrine as the center of the city: Mashhad-i Fatima
a good group with its tall gold dome and four blue minarets Robert Byron stayed in Teheran for a while before going towards Isfahan. After he visited the monuments of Bastam, next to Tehran, he did not visit any other monument, and we do not know the exact reason for this. After he had visited…
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 Masjid-i Shah of Mashhad: a fairly atypical mosque
“a ruined mosque in the bazaar“ When Byron is in Mashhad in December 1933, it seems that his whole days are spent at the small and peaceful shrine of Khvajah Rabi’, as he himself writes under the entry dated 24th December 1933. In fact, he also visited another monument in those days: the Masjid-i Shah….
Waiting for 2018: the books of the future
At the end of the year, I like looking back at what I missed (and should not have), but also checking what to expect next. This is why I’ve decided to devote a post to the forthcoming publications about Islamic art and architecture that will be published in 2018, or at least in the first months…
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