Salmiya

The ancient and still inhabited village of Mohammedieh with its huge Sassanid castle is located a couple of kilometers northeast to Na’in. Diligent farmers were working in fruit orchards and on the fields. In the beginning of January, there was a scent of springtime. An old man wanted to show me his carpet loom in his hut. Before taking the picture, he put on his coat and told me he was a mollah . Just kidding, I suppose. A qanat is a sort of artificial spring. The aquifer had been invented in ancient Persia and spread throughout the Middle East as far as Africa and Central Asia as far as China. Deep water tables at the foothills of mountains are approached by vertical access shafts and horizontal channels. They finally reach the surface and a small artificial runlet will transport the water miles into the desert for agriculture. Constructing qanats is a dangerous task and nowadays strictly regulated by the government. You may find the well-like openings and runlets as well as so call...

The most significant building in Na’in is certainly its more than 1000-years old Friday mosque, build in 960 CE. Its single minaret without any ornaments has an octagonal ground plan and tapers. It is built on a small hill somewhat outside of the old city’s center. Nearby, a guard will open the doors of a small museum which is part of a Safavid traditional house with a small sunken garden. The mosque itself, one of the oldest in Iran where still Friday prayers take place, is Abbasid/Buyid, as the remains of the Jurjir mosque in Esfahan. Brickwork and carved stucco especially of the mihrab and surrounding bays are superb and well-preserved. There is no iwan , which is in fact a development of the later Seljuq rulers of Iran. The bazaar in the old city is a museum, too. The shops had been closed long time ago when the owners moved to the modern part of the city.

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 tha...