I’ve been told, at the shrine in Arbabil, that no-one really knows where Shah Abbas is buried. Apparently, after he died, three coffins were prepared – maybe to ensure that his bones couldn’t be disturbed by enemies after his death, or perhaps to signal that he ruled over the whole of Iran. One coffin was taken to Ardabil, one to Mashhad, and one to Kashan, and no one knows which one really contains Abbas.

Imamzadeh Habib ibn Musa, in Kashan

Iskander Beg doesn’t mention this story at all: he describes how Shah Abbas’ funeral cortege left Mazanderan with his aunt (a daughter of Shah Tahmasp) and other women of the royal household in charge of “the royal treasuries and workshops”. Devoted Sufis “shouldered the bier”. Then in Kashan:

Shah Abbas' grave in Kashan. 1959. Image: Ernst J Grube, courtesy of Eleanor Sims

“The people came out to meet the funeral procession and demonstrated their great grief. The throng around the bier was so great that the emirs and other nobles could hardly make their way through the crowd. The bier was taken to the Imamzada Habib ibn Musa, situated behind the burial ground outside the city”

There the body lay in state, with incense, long candles, and “every kind of meat and sweetmeat”, as well as a roster ensuring that the Koran was recited continuously.

My modern picture of Shah Abbas' grave in Kashan

But it’s not only the people of Arbabil who claim that Abbas is buried in their town. When Chardin went through Qom in 1672, he was told that Abbas was buried there, near the tomb of Fatima:

“which is overlaid also with China Tiles, painted A-la-moresco, and overspread with cloth of gold, which hangs down on both sides. [Fatima’s tomb] is enclosed with a grate of massy Silver, ten foot high. . and at each corner are Apples of fine Gold. In the two chapels on each side stand the tombs of the two last kings of Persia, viz, Abas and Sophi, both very Magnificent; but on that of Abas are written in large Characters of Gold, seven elegies upon Mahomet and Haly, made by the learned Hafan-Caxa. These are rare pieces of eloquence, and in them may be seen not only the Genius of Perfian Poetry, but the Transports of the Mahometan Devotion”

Just like the 999 caravanserais, the stories can’t all be literally true, but they do show the enduring importance of Abbas.

At the British Museum: Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam, 26 January – 15 April 2012

• See slideshow at: http://www.historytoday.com/blog/2012/01/slideshow-hajj-journey-centre-islam

Iran’s literary heritage lecture series: organised by the Oxford University Persian Society. All lectures take place at 5.30p.m. in the Middle East Centre, 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6JF. Admission free. All welcome. For further information contact the organiser, Amara Elahi: persiansoc@gmail.com

• Wednesday February 1st: Dr Homa Katouzian (University of Oxford) – Women in Sadeq Hedayat’s fiction
• Wednesday February 8th: Amara Elahi (University of Oxford) – Vis u Ramin and Tristan: Resonance or Influence?
• Wednesday February 15th: Professor Charles Melville (University of Cambridge) – Rubrics and chapter headings in the Shahnama story of Forud
• Wednesday February 22nd: Dr Leonard Lewisohn (University of Exeter) – An Introduction to the Poetry of Hafiz
• Wednesday February 29th: Professor Alan Williams (University of Manchester) – The Metamorphosis of meaning in Rumi’s Masnavi
• Wednesday March 7th: Dr Saeed Talajooy (University of Cambridge) – Modernity and Iranian Drama: Hassan Moqaddam and Mirzadeh Eshqui

The Idea of Iran: the age of the great Saljuqs. All day symposium at SOAS. 4 February 2012

• Click here for more info

Maps and cartographic studies on Iran and the Iranian world

• New release of website

Last week, the blog focused on the story of Bizhan and Manizheh and how it is represented on the Freer beaker. This week, a little more from Dr Marianna Shreve Simpson’s fascinating Khalili Lecture.

After saying that she thought that a mina’i (overglaze enamel ceramic) fragment in the Khalili collection also showed scenes from the Bizhan and Manizheh story; Dr Shreve Simpson went on to talk about two mina’i bowls – one in Doha and one in Madrid. Unfortunately I don’t have images of either of these.

But I thought you shouldn’t miss hearing about her detective work.

The Freer beaker is a masterpiece. Between 1911 and 1914, it was sold more than once, and published in several catalogues. All of the illustrations show the same partial view of the beaker – last week I talked about how you have to rotate it in your hand to be able to see the whole story. Even Google Art still shows only one view.

However, what Dr Shreve Simpson noticed was that both the Doha and Madrid bowls show only the scenes from the Bizhan and Manizheh story that were included in the early catalogues. These are repeated, with an old-fashioned Orientalist feeling for what was often described as the ‘typically Islamic’ horror vacui – or compulsion to fill every space with ornament – and a complete disregard for the other half of the story that is supposed to be being portrayed.

Dr Shreve Simpson was, of course, not impolite enough to say right out that the Doha and Madrid pieces are fakes; but she did note that (just like the fakes highlighted by the Ashmolean) one of them, at least, seems – on close inspection – to be made up of fragments that might not all be from the same source.

This week’s Khalili Memorial lecture was entitled ‘The Cosmic Cup in Medieval and Later Persian Art’.  Since there’s not enough space in one posting to go through everything that Dr Marianna Shreve Simpson talked about, this week’s blog will concentrate especially on the Shahnameh story of Bizhan and Manizheh (here in verse, here in prose), as shown on two 12^th century wine vessels.

Hafiz looking at the cup of Jamshid. Bibliotheque Nationale / wikimedia image

The best known of these is the Freer beaker. This was created in Kashan in the late 12^th century. It is only 12cm high, so the three levels of painted narrative (plus the upper and lower bands) are much smaller-scale than the images appear on the internet or in lecture theatres. Click here and here to see two different views of the paintings.

If you could hold the beaker in your hand, and twirl it round in your hand (incidentally recreating the ‘all-seeing’ action of legendary rulers like Jamshid when they used these  ‘cosmic’ vessels) you would be able to see the story of Bizhan and Manizheh literally unfolding.

Bizhan recieves an invitation through the intermediary of Manizheh's nurse. Met / wiki image

In this tale, the king Kai Khusrau was asked to help some Iranians whose land was being ravaged. The warrior Bizhan volunteered to slay the boar who were causing all the problems (see images here and here), but was more than a little distracted by the fair Manizheh along the way, and ended by being captured by Afrasiyab (the ‘evil’ ruler of Turan: here, killing Nawzar). When the men with Bizhan falsely told Kai Khusrau that the warrior had been killed by the boar, the Iranian king refuse to believe this, and vowed to find where Bizhan was in one of the cosmic or all-seeing cups that Dr Shreve Simpson was talking about:

. . Then will I
Call for the cup that mirroreth the world,
And stand before God’s presence. In that cup
I shall behold the seven climes of earth,
Both field and fell and all the provinces,
Will offer reverence to mine ancestors,
My chosen, gracious lords, and thou shalt know
Where thy son is. The cup will show me all.

And of course the cup worked perfectly. Kai Khusrau saw Bizhan “chained and prisoned . . attended by a maid of noble birth” (Manizheh); and sent for Rustam, who immediately headed off to rescue Bizhan from the pit he was trapped in. Click here and here to see two classic pit-rescue images.

Three of the men who travelled with the Sherley brothers wrote accounts of their trips.  George Manwaring (who also wrote about the jewels he saw) describes arriving in Kashan in 1589:

So that night we went twelve miles to a gallant city called Cason [Kashan], spending time by the way in hawking and hunting, and we came into the city in the evening, where we were royally entertained by the citizens. The King did lie at his own palace, and we were lodged in a nobleman’s house, where we were entertained by all kinds of dainties from the citizens.

Manwaring goes on to write about how the Persians synchronised a show of lamps:

About ten o clock in the night we were sent for to meet the King in the Piazza, which is a fair place, like unto Smithfield, standing in the middle of  the town; there we found the King and all his nobility, with great store of torches, and round about the place were lamps hanged on the sides of their houses unlighted; so the King took us upon the top of a turret, and caused us to look down towards the lamps, which lighted all at the twinkling of an eye, and likewise on the tops of all the houses in the city were lamps which made a glorious show, thicker than the stars in the sky.

1749: Royal fireworks on the Thames, London. wiki / British Museum image

After this, there were “such stately fireworks, made by a Turk”:

which seemed as if dragons were fighting in the air, with many other varieties, especially one firework worth the noting, which was this: there was a great fountain of water in the Piazza, out of which from the very bottom would arise things like fishes, throwing fire out of their mouth, about a dozen yards high, which we thought a great wonder.

Of course, there were fireworks in Europe at the time. Click here to see fireworks in Rome in 1579 (with more flames here) – though the earliest picture of fireworks in England I can find is from 1769.