Such classic, cubic perfection, so lyrical and yet so strong, reveals a new architectural world to the European. In Maragha, on the 17th of October 1933, Byron visits three monuments: the observatory, a cave with altars (not better identified), and, last but certainly not the least, the Gunbad-i Surkh. Robert Byron’s fascination for tomb…
Tag: robert byron
The story of the book: The Road to Oxiana
The Road to Oxiana is considered Byron’s masterpiece. In the form of a travelogue, the book is an accurate reportage of the long, exotic journey of Byron and his friend Christopher Sykes. It is extremely romantic thinking of Robert Byron, on those snowy days blocked in Qala i Now, writing the diary at length, writing down…
Gunbad-i Qabud
built of plum-red brick […] transferred as it were from an English kitchen garden to the service of Koranic texts Robert Byron arrives in Maragha on the 16th of October 1933 where he visits and takes pictures of one of the three tombs that are to be found there: the Gundab-i Qabud. Byron himself recognizes the…
Arg-i Tabriz
it had once been a mosque, […] one of the biggest ever built During his visit to Tabriz on the 15th of October 1933, Byron records two monuments: one is the despised Blue Mosque, the other one is the Arg-e Tabriz, literally the Forterss of Tabriz. The short description that Byron gives of the building is quite…
The Blue Mosque in Tabriz
the wreck of the famous Blue Mosque When Robert Byron, on the 15th of October 1933, arrives in Tabriz, he records two monuments: the Blue Mosque and the Ark. In the case of the Blue Mosque no description is provided, at all. The author simply records in about 10 words that in Tabriz there was the…
The Tomb of Uljaytu or the Dome of Sultaniyya
One thinks of Brunelleschi The Tomb of Uljaytu is the first great monument Robert Byron saw in Persia as he would recall 6 months later his first visit, on the 12th of October 1933. On that occasion, Byron praise the monument as an example of Central Asian greatness and virility [sic!]. The ‘gigantic memorial’, in…
Robert Byron: a short life, a big personality
Robert Byron was born in an eccentric Victoria middle-class Wilshire family in 1905. Though the family was not rich, his parents managed to send him to Eton and Marton College in Oxford, where he obtained a third-class degree in History in 1926. Robert Byron’s personality was already well developed in his late boyhood or early…
The Friday Mosque of Varamin
‘From a distance, it resembles a ruined abbey’ The Friday Mosque of Varamin is the last monument Byron includes in his account under the 10th October 1933. Byron starts his brief description of the monument comparing it with the Tintern Abbey, in Wales. The only difference, according to Byron, the fact that the mosque ‘has…
Gunbad-i ‘Ala al-Din
‘This one […] was tenanted by an opium fiend who looked up from cooking his lunch to tell us that it was his home and 3000 years old.’ On the 10th of October 1933, Byron records in his travel journal three monuments: two tomb towers, and one mosque. The first tomb tower he mentions is…
Tughril Tower
‘a fluted grave-tower […] whose lower part is Seljuk’ In his entry, dated October 10th 1933, Byron briefly mentions two funerary towers: the first, the Tughril Tower in Rayy, the second, a tomb tower in Varamin. The Tughril Tower, located in Rayy, is indeed a monumental construction built around 1140. It is weird Byron does…
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