At the Foothills of Karkas

The new town and old village of Natanz have received considerable international attention since 2003 when the first centrifuges for Uranium enrichment had been installed in a huge subsurface complex close to the highway between Kashan and Natanz. The nuclear facilities, which are top on any list of possible targets for Israel’s and even the United States’ bunker busting weapons, can be seen when traveling by bus to Esfahan. Taking pictures is, of course, not allowed. Not so well-known is that especially the ancient village of Natanz is very beautiful and absolutely worth a visit. Tourists are rarely seen in the small bazaar in the center, where interesting handicrafts are sold. The other ‘must’ is, of course, the lovely Abyaneh at the foothills of Kuh-e Karkas, the 3800 meters high mountain massif in Central Iran. I have reported on a visit there in 2005 somewhere else on this blog.

My host, the Dean at Khorasgan University in Esfahan, had invited me and some of his former students for a trip to a cottage in another small village. After heating up the rooms, we had a breakfast and then went to Natanz and took pictures of the impressive 14th century Masjed-e Jomeh. As in so many other old villages, really old dwellings are now abandoned. People have moved to more modern buildings.



































On our return to the cottage, we passed Tarq with its citadel from Sassanid times and had some stunning views of the Karkas Mountain. Afterwards, we had a barbeque of delicious chicken kebab and went back to Esfahan late at night. Earlier that evening, I have seen Venus and Mercury, and on our way back, we stopped at the highway and I saw, maybe for the first time in my life, the Milky Way among thousands of twinkling stars.













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

The Cassin Collection at Auction (IV) The King of the Yellow Rug Group

Image
  According to his Anatolian kilim opus (p. 8), Cassin had found this gorgeous yellow ground rug fragment in 1981 when traveling on his own in Anatolia. He had left his German travel companion from Nuremberg in Istanbul as, according to Jack, the guy wasn't able to behave properly. The purpose of the trip was twofold: to find one or two collectibles in Turkey and "to do some first-hand research into early archetype rugs and kelim." As to the former, he only found one rug worth to take home (the above) but no kilim. Note that Jack always emphasized that the small collection of archetype kilims from Anatolia was already in his possession before he went to Turkey. At least seven of these kilims are currently at auction in Philadelphia (see my previous post ). The fragment is what he calls the "King of the yellow rug group". As far as we know, Cassin kept this rug for almost forty years and never even considered it for sale. I am quite sure that he did not s
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