Another Trip through the Desert of Central Iran

The course at Islamic Azad University in Khorasgan was over and I had a free week for some traveling in Iran before returning to the Arctic. Hamadan, the Achaemenid capital (Ecbatana in ancient times) and home of Esther and Mordecai at the court of Artaxerxes (or one of his successors on the throne) would be one of my favorite destinations. But it was far away and most probably also too cold this time of the year. It has to wait for a future visit to Iran. I decided to go to Na'in, halfway to the other desert city Yazd, which I had visited in 2004. The German couple that I met in the breakfast room of the Dibaee house in the old city of Esfahan (he was interestingly enough a diplomat at the German Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan) planned to go further to Yazd. When I suggested taking a bus rather than a taxi for the after all more than 300 km, they were not interested.

To get to the Jey minibus terminal east of Esfahan’s city center you must take a taxi which will cost you more than the 140 km bus trip afterwards (IR 15’000, if I recall correctly, about $1.5). The bus would go in half an hour. So I bought the ticket and sat down on a bench of the small concourse of the terminal. There were many students who, after the weekend, made it to Na'in’s other branch of Islamic Azad University.

East of Esfahan (which is in fact a huge oasis, located at the banks of one of Iran’s major rivers, the Zayandeh Rud) the desert of central Iran stretches for hundreds of kilometers. Every now and then caravanserais can be seen along the highway. The bus terminal in Na'in was very close to the excellent traditional tourist inn with its beautifully renovated, two-storey rooms (IR 30’000, or $30). The receptionist gave me a brochure of the city and I started my sight-seeing tour.

Na'in is not a tourist hub. I met a Chinese group that had hired an Iranian driver. They, too, were on their way further to Yazd, which is bigger and definitely more famous. Na'in itself is charming. Not really a ‘one-horse town’, but slumbering and a bit provincial. Most interesting is its historical old city, which, sad to say, is more a museum now since most people had moved into other areas. Huge water reservoirs and wind towers (badgirs) everywhere. An enormous castle, known as Narin Ghaleh, dominates the center of the ancient buildings’ fabric. It originates from Sassanid times.


















































































No carpets from here. Although very popular in Iran and in the West, there are several aspects which I do not appreciate very much in Na'in carpets.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lady Shatita

Image
In order to learn more about Shi’a Islam and the piety of ordinary people it would have been most helpful to visit at least some of the plenty of Emamzadehs (holy sites) all over Iran. So, it was a most welcome opportunity and, in fact, great honor when my Kuwaiti friends invited me to accompany them on their several bus trips in Khorasan on the occasion of their 2006 pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mashhad. Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires each embraced half of the then known world when they climaxed. And even when Iran was under the reign of Seleucids, Arabs, Seljuks, or Mongols, the Iranians imprinted their lifestyle and culture on the non-welcome invaders, who in any sense immensely benefited. So, the austere new religion Islam, which replaced Iran’s state religion Zoroastrianism, was fundamentally reorganized, and, as I see it as an outsider, filled with life. The rapid and shocking decline of the Sasanid Empire at the end of a century-long fight with Byzantium, and the ...
Read more

Persianization

Image
Kuwait’s Arab Times had attracted my attention to Esfahan’s gorgeous Great Mosque in an article in 2003. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find so far a webpage of the article which praised the wonders of Iran’s largest mosque and one of the most significant and finest buildings of the Islamic world. I visited the site the first time at my second trip to Esfahan in late spring of 2004. I took some pictures in the vast courtyard, soaked the peaceful atmosphere there, and watched the few visitors from Iran and elsewhere. I had forgotten about the many details of the article and faintly had read some of the notes in my travel guide. My second visit in late 2007 was driven by scientific interest. I had recently posted (at Freelance ) my rather amateurish studies and thoughts about a suggested ‘conceptual breakthrough’ in Islamic architecture and art in the late 15th century, i.e., quasi-crystalline tessellations, which had led to world-wide attention due to its publication in the Science magazine...
Read more

Buyid Architecture in Esfahan

Image
Older than what is now visible in Esfahan’s Great Mosque (although the first mosque there was built in the 7th century) is what has remained of the Jurjir Mosque . The fragmentary façade of the Jurjir Mosque had been discovered during restoration work at Masjed-e Hakim in 1955. The fragment had been hidden for centuries behind a mud wall. The beautiful Hakim mosque itself is a Safavid mosque from the 17th century. The Jurjir façade is the only remains of a 10th century mosque which was commissioned by the Buyid (Buwayhid) vizier Al-Sahib ibn Abbad (d. 995), a Mutazilite scholar. The Buyid Dynasty, who ruled in Iraq and Iran, effectively brought the Abbasids era in Baghdad to an end. Although the Abbasids retained the caliphate, they were deprived of all secular power. Buyids were originally Zaydi, or Fiver Shi'as. They later began to lean closer to the nowadays dominating Twelver Shi'a branch of Islam. In general tolerant in religious matters, the Buyid rulers in Baghdad even ...
Read more