Engelbert Kaempfer was a German physician who traveled to Persia with a Swedish embassy in 1683. He is best known, in Persia, for his descriptions of the court of Shah Abbas II and of Persepolis, where he was the first person to identify the inscriptions as a form of writing.

Kaempfer's sketch of the "Great Messczit" in Isfahan

He lodged in Isfahan for nearly 20 months (29 March 1684 to 20 November 1685) – during which time he carried out a methodological survey of the town. The most famous of his drawings of Isfahan is his Planographia, a birdseye axionometric drawing of the city, which has been used by many scholars to help fix the location of various palaces and other buildings.

A page from Kaempfer's sketchbook, showing the Ali Qapu

I’m going to show you something else here: his drawing of the “Great Messczit” (Shah Abbas I’s great Mosque on the Maidan); and his sketches of the buildings along the west side of the Maidan (the Ali Qapu).

In the manuscripts, Kaempfer writes in a mixture of German and Latin which is very difficult to read (for me, anyway!). But a printed translation writes of how the Safavid maidan: “is surrounded by two-storeyed vaulted buildings with recesses. The upper floors are divided into small rooms that are rented out as dormitories for all sorts of foreigners as well as prostitutes. The ground floor of this arcade serves partly as a covered walk for pedestrians but in the main to accommodate spacious bazaar stalls for shopkeepers and craftsmen who produce and sell a variety of goods there.”

He also mentions something I have not seen described anywhere else: “On the . . eastern side one’s eye is caught by the exceedingly elegant Mosque of Shaykh LutfAllah, which is covered in gleaming tiles, as well as by a hall along the walls of which the curious viewer is presented with mechanical figures in warlike poses, which for a few small coins will enact vivid scenes”.

Does anyone know of any other accounts of this?

This week, it’s the viewings for the Islamic sales in London.

It’s your chance to see high quality Islamic objects up close! If you’re nice, the sales ladies will probably even let you touch!

There’s lots – but maybe the highlights for me include:

At Sothebys (click here to get to the e-catalogue, then search for the lot number – or just browse):

Lot 475: An illuminated leaf from the Shah Ismail Shahnameh. This has especially lovely illustration of the paintings on the wall behind Kay Khosraw. Other folios are in the Aga Khan online museum here, and in the Reza Abbasi Museum in Tehran.

Lot 584: An Indo-Persian celestial globe. This is such fun!

Sothebys also has an Ottoman and an Orientalist sale.

At Christies (click here to get to the e-catalogue, then search for the lot number – or just browse:

Lot 152: A very cute battle scene from the Shahnama (look especially at the shield).

Lot 153: The execution of Mazdah – also from the Shahnama. Many of the participants (assailants and victims) are dressed in very beautiful textiles – are they woven, are they embroidered?

Lot 155: Bahram Gur in the Green Pavilion – also with very pretty wall paintings.

Last – and most certainly not least: Lot 175: Are these leopards or cheetahs in the background? And look at that very sumptuous palanquin!

LAST CHANCE:

Thurs 19 April. AKPIA lecture: 5.30 Room 318, Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Chaharbaghs, Palaces and Mughal Court Routine in the Sixteenth Century

Thurs 19 April. Iran Society lecture.
Challenges and New Waves in Iranian Art Now

NEW: May History today issue: Islam’s Origins: Where Mystery Meets History.
Read online for a limited time

APRIL:

Mon 23 April. UCL Interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Seminar: 6.15pm. Room G09. 24-5 Gordon Sq, London WC1 6BT. FREE
Prof Trevor Dean: Medieval Italian Vendettas: Fact or fiction

Thurs 26 April. AKPIA lecture: 5.30 Room 318, Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Mustafa Ali and the Arts of the Book

Thurs 26 April. AKPIA lecture: 5.30 Room 318, Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Mustafa Ali and the Arts of the Book

Fri 27-Sun 29 April. The Asia House Fair.
A unique showcase for the work of artisans, designers and master craftsmen

MAY:

Wed 2 May 2012. Indian Art Circle lecture. 6.30pm. SOAS, B111
Jahangir’s Journey. The Art of an Itinerant Court

Thursday 3 May 2012: 6.00pm: SOAS, B111. FREE
Jennifer Scarce:  Research Seminar in Islamic Art: “The Role of Painting in the Art of Qajar Iran (1785-1925) – Royal Portraits, Still Life and Much More”

Monday 7 May 2012: 4-6pm: Nelson Mandela Lecture Theatre, Saïd Business School, Oxford. FREE, needs online registration.
Images and History – A lecture by Shirin Neshat
The art museum in the 21st century – A lecture by Malcolm Rogers

Thursday 10 May 2012: 4-6pm: Nelson Mandela Lecture Theatre, Saïd Business School, Oxford. FREE, needs online registration.
Portraiture: pasts and futures
A symposium with Shirin Neshat, Malcolm Rogers (Humanitas Visiting Professor in Museums, Galleries and Libraries), William A. Ewing (Curator, Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Lausanne), and A.S. Byatt (Writer).

Wed 16 May: Islamic Art Circle lecture. KLT, SOAS, 7pm.
An early Fatimid rock crystal ewer in context

Thurs 17 May. Iran Society lecture.
Colonel Peysan and his rebellion of 1921

NEW: Fri 19 May. Frenemies + Jigsaw. Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS, 7.30pm
Israeli-Iranian Stand-up Comedy. NOT free.

JUNE:

6 June. Indian Art Circle lecture. 6.30pm. SOAS, B111
Indian Ocean Exchange in the Indo-Roman Period

13 June. Islamic Art Circle lecture. KLT, SOAS, 7pm.
The last Fatimid fortifications. The Towers of the Vizier Saladin

15-16 June 2012. Conference at Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. NOT free
Early Modern Merchants as Collectors

Tues 19 June. Iran Society lecture.
The awkwardness of Nader Shah

LATER:

18-20 October 2012: Historians of Islamic Art Association: Third Biennial Symposium, in New York

NEW ONLINE:

A digitized Persian manuscript in the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts – the so-called Peck Shahnama – is now available online.

Please don’t hesitate to suggestion additions to this list – just email me

When I visited Bedasht, I was taken to see a very lovely little namaskhane (literally ‘prayer house’) – full of images of Hosayn (just in case any of you still think images are taboo in Islam), and with much more space for women than for men.

Bedasht caravanserai - now converted into a volleyball court

There’s also a mosque – this was the only village all along the Khurasan Highway where I heard a call for prayer – and what was a beautiful caravanserai, now converted into a (wind-free) volleyball court.

The satellite image below shows, from top down: the caravanserai (with the typical outline of a Safavid caravanserai), the mosque, the namaskhane, and the earth fort. You can click on any of the placemarkers to see what it’s pointing at – and zoom in and out, or move the image around if you want to see what the neighbours are up to.

Click here, to see a photo of the remains of the huge fort. When Valentine Baker visited this in 1876, he described it as:

“a small one [of the many forts in the area], 640 yards in circumference.  These works, composed of solid earth, are raised to a height of from sixty to a hundred feet. There is no ditch round them, but it is evident that the earth of which they are composed has been dug out from the ground for about 200 or 300 yards round, as this is always on a rather lower level than the surrounding country”.

Some of this is discernable on the satellite image – though it does seem amazing that this huge edifice was ever considered small.

View Bedasht in a larger map
 

In 1896, three British men set off on “the longest bicycle ride ever attempted, just 19,237 miles over continuous new ground” – including a ride through Persia.

The three cyclists in 'Around the world on a wheel'

John Foster Fraser’s account of the two year trip is full of colonial-style anecdotes (many of which are a little too close to racism for many modern readers). His was also not the first bike-trip acrossPersia(the earliest I can find was two American students, Thomas Gaskell Allen, Jr. and William Lewis Sachtleben, in 1894 – click here if you want to read their whole account).

Of course, one can’t underestimate the practical difficulties of cycling across the deserts and mountains of Persia, especially at a time when roads were much rarer than now. And JFF does have a few stories that are perhaps worth re-telling.

Mozaffer al Din - looking grumpy in his big kolah

For example, click here to read about the cycling display he and his friends put on for the Zill-i Sultan, in the grounds of the Chehel Sutun.

And here, for his account of the harem he passed on the road, travelling in ‘hutches’ swung aside mules – just like the descriptions here and here in the blog earlier

Perhaps most fun of all – though second-hand – is his account of Muzzafer ad Din’s coronation. The

“crowning of the Shah . . was a quiet but irksome ceremony. The day was excessively hot, and as soon as His Majesty could escape, he hastened off to his private rooms . . ten minutes afterwards, [he was] sitting in a draught and his shirt sleeves, on some steps in the corridor, the crown still on his head, though pushed somewhat awry . . ‘Oh, I am so warm! And this thing’ he said, taking off the crown and pitching it on one side, ‘is so heavy. I hope I won’t have to ever put it on again.’

On another occasion he took off his big kolah, which was weighty with big diamonds, and, throwing it to the corner of the room, said ‘I’m not going to have my head cracked with a load like that on it. Let the stones be removed’.

Click here if you want to read the whole of JFF’s adventures - Persia is on pages 110 to 200.