Bosra, (meaning citadel in Aramaic) is an ancient town in southern Syria, close to the border with Jordan. Bosra boasts a prestigious past: it was mentioned in the Egyptian documents 1400 years B.C and it was the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom and capital of the Arabia Province under the Roman Empire at the time…
Tag: monuments
“One thinks of…” Robert Byron describing monuments
As I have already written, the Road to Oxiana can be seen as an artistic Bildungsroman, where the author, while traveling, becomes more and more aware of Islamic art. This awareness changes Byron’s perspectives and point of view: the more Byron travels, the more knowledge of Islamic art and architecture he builds. This background change…
No image available: imagining Termez
All the same, I should like to have seen the ruins of Termez Byron’s plan was to cross the Oxus river. The river, known by the Latin name Oxus, is also called the Amu Darya and is one of the major rivers of Central Asia. Byron has thus far traveled around Afghanistan and Iran, keeping…
Masjid-i Imam and its seven-color technique
pretty, if you like, even magnificent, but not important In mid-March 1934 Byron is back in Isfahan. This time he has certainly more time to go around and carefully visit the most important monuments of the city. It is now, for instance, that he visits properly the Friday Mosque. On the 18th of March 1934,…
The monuments of Isfahan from Byron’s car
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…
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 Monuments on the Road to Oxiana
Robert Byron’s The Road to Oxiana is certainly one of the best-known and most-read travelogues: ‘perhaps the best travel book of the 20th century’, it’s book no. 40 in the list of the 100 best nonfiction books of The Guardian. The book is a marvelous and addictive account of the 10-month-long journey of Robert Byron across the…
SquareKufic 