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Jameh Mosque (Yazd, Iran)
by koshkha ~Mosque Magic~ Iran has plenty of mosques and almost all of them are pretty spectacular but by the time we got to the Jami (or Jameh) Mosque in Yazd we'd only seen two other mosques, neither of which was particularly typical of the Persian architectural style. The first had been the massive and as yet unfinished mausoleum to ... Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran which had resembled a concrete abatoir crossed with a Carpet Warehouse and the second was a tiny old and rather decrepit mosque to the Twelve Imams which we'd visited in Yazd that morning was largely undecorated. Neither had prepared us for the visual onslaught of a top notch city mosque. The Jami Mosque or Masjed-e Jameh is such a great mosque that it appears on the back of the Iranian 200 rial banknote. It is what's known as a congregational mosque which means that is one which is designed for worship on a large scale and it would normally be very busy for Friday prayers in particular. Our visit naturally took place outside the main worship times so we found it almost empty except for several groups of identically dressed school girls. It's a strange aspect of tourism in Iran that you frequently come across school groups but almost always groups of girls and I can't recall that we ever found a group of schoolboys. Perhaps art and history are considered to be more 'pink' topics but I hate to think too deeply what the 'blue' pupils are doing whilst their sisters are our looking at architecture and museums. ~It's an old one but a good one~ The mosque as it stands today is about 700 years old but it stands on the site of an earlier mosque which in turn was built on the site of the ruins of a Zoroastrian fire temple. Such is often the way in these countries. We parked our bus in the square outside and headed towards the tall and highly decorated gate of the mosque with its pair of tall thin minarets which reach up to a dazzling height of 48 m, making them the tallest in Iran. Standing before the immensely tall doorway you can look up at the blue tiled decoration of the minarets or step under the doorway and admire the intricate tiling inside the arch. Once through the arch there's a domed roof with a fascinating pattern of interlinked sand-coloured bricks, lit up by small holes in the roof. The tiling in the mosque is spectacular with both painted tiles in which the decoration lies beneath the glaze, and tiles that have been cut and placed together in an elaborate form of mosaic. There are panels of single coloured turquoise tiles, tall panels of geometric lego-like patterns, beautiful panels of floral and geometric patterns intertwined and of course panels of exquisite calligraphy. If you've ever asked yourself "What's the fuss about tiles?" this is the place to see why some of us get so excited about historical ceramics. The mihrab where the holy man who leads the prayers would stand had a fascinating acoustic effect in which the preacher's voice is magnified by reflection and vibration so that it can be heard clearly at a distance without the need for artificial amplification. It's a clever idea - imagine if you went to church and the vicar had his back to you the entire time and you'd appreciate anything to help you hear what he was saying. ~"Miss Miss" - how we became an attraction almost as big as the mosque~ After our guide had given us a bit of an introduction he left us to wander around with our cameras to soak up the atmosphere. I was standing with an Australian lady looking at the ceilings and the tiling when we noticed that a nearby group of schoolgirls had their eyes on us. The bravest few sidled over and said hello. Once they'd realised we were English speakers they called their friends over and the onslaught of questions began. At first it was simple - "What's your name? Where do you come from? How long in Iran?" - then it moved to the more personal questioning of "How old are you? Are you married? Do you have children?" At this point they clearly thought we were quite unusual. I am married but have no kids, my companion has neither a husband nor children. The questions were not unexpected but were quite personal "Why?" they asked. And "Which is your husband?" they quizzed me (probably thinking my poor hubby must have bad seeds since the idea of choosing not to have kids is completely alien in their culture. We'd survived the first onslaught of questions and now we were on to more cultural questions. I live in a part of the UK that foreigners have never heard of so when they ask where we come from we always say 'Manchester' because at the time that's where I was working and I lived there for many years. Several of the girls started to giggle - "Manchester?" they enthused "You know Manchester United then miss?" This is always a conversation starter the world over and my travels are marked by discussions of great players from my favourite team. I can track the history of my travel according to which footballer the locals want to talk about. David Beckham was massive in Vietnam and on several trips to India though when I first travelled we still got questions about Bobby Charlton who played before I was even born. At the time of this visit there was only one footballer who counted. "Miss Miss" they cried "Do you know Cristiano Ronaldo? He's SO handsome" said one and they all started to giggle. It's a hard question to answer. "Do you know?" Sometimes it means "Have you heard of?" or maybe "Does he come round your house for tea on Sundays?" There really was no way of knowing but either way it was unlikely that they could check up on me. "Yes, of course" I replied, "I know Cristiano Ronaldo". And suddenly their attitude changed from looking at me as a poor childless old woman (well they were 14 years old so anyone over 30 is in that category) to seeing me as someone who 'knew' the world's best footballer. The excited chatter continued and the girls followed us out to our bus, saying hello to the three other women in our group and lowering their eyes modestly when seeing our men folk until their teacher caught up with them and told them to stop bothering us. I'm sure they would be surprised to find they're the subject of a review about visiting the mosque - or maybe I'll find out one day that there's a review on an Iranian travel site about meeting the woman who 'knew' Ronaldo'. A final note - I have no idea what it costs to visit this mosque but it's most likely free. Since you're unlikely to get in without a guide, it's fairly irrelevant anyway. Similarly, your guide will know the opening hours and any restrictions. Read the complete review |
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Tomb of Hafez (Shiraz, Iran)
by koshkha ~World Famous in all of Iran~ If I asked you to name some famous Iranian poets I think you could be forgiven for giving me a blank look and changing the subject very quickly. Unless you have some specialist knowledge in that area or have visited the city of Shiraz, famed for centuries as a city of poets, why would you know? ... Personally I struggle with the words 'famous' and 'poet' in the same sentence due to my general ignorance of anything that wasn't on my school's English literature syllabus. However, in the pantheon of great Persian poets, the city of Shiraz can offer you the tombs of two of the greatest - Hafez and Sa'adi - both popular not only in their homeland but in much of the Middle East. ~Long before Shakespeare~ Hafez lived from roughly 1320 to 1389 and his tomb is considered to be the most popular attraction in Shiraz. Personally, I find that hard to believe in a city with so many beautiful and interesting places to visit, but Iranians are romantic souls and they take their poetry very seriously. Hafez inhabits a place in the collective national identity of Iran that's similar to that of Shakespeare amongst the British. The name Hafez means 'one who is known to recite the Koran from memory' so you might expect his poems to be of a religious bent but that's not the whole story. He does have religious poems indeed, but the ones that draw the crowds are the poems that speak of love, romance, passion, visits to taverns to get sozzled on wine and ones that point the finger at hypocrites. You can see how the latter might come in handy in modern day Iran. Hafez was, in short, the kind of poet it would probably have been quite good fun to hang around with and drink a few beers. ~Our Visit~ Our visit to Hafez's tomb was our first stop when we arrived in Shiraz, the city that gave the world the famous red wine and is still even in the alcohol free world of Iran, famed for its grapes. We'd left Yazd earlier that day and had done a long drive, stopping off for tea and coffee at a famously ancient tree and for lunch at the burial spot of Cyrus the Great. We could have been expected to be more enthusiastic about getting to our hotel for a shower than checking out a long dead poet. It was with a certain air of 'Oh do we have to?' that we stepped down from our bus, crossed the traffic and headed to see what all the fuss was about. On our approach to the tomb we came across a character we dubbed 'Saddam the Canaryman'. Apparently this chap has been providing one of the world's most unusual fortune-telling services for so long that we were able to conclude that despite looking rather too much like Saddam Hussein to ever feel totally comfortable living in Iran, he couldn't possibly be the man himself. The fortune-teller's canary - or it might have been a budgerigar, I'm not an expert on small birds - hops onto the shoulder of passers by. If you give his handler a small donation, the bird hops down to the tin of rolled up fortunes and picks one for you. They are of course all written in Farsi - but who cares? It's just the idea of a soothsaying-budgie that had me parting instantly with a few small notes. With the blessings of a small bird bestowed upon us, we then entered the gardens where the tomb can be found, walking past a long narrow lawn and some unhappy looking pot plants, then up some steps to the tomb. Apparently the original tomb was erected about 20 years after Hafez's death but the current mausoleum dates back to the 1930s and was designed by a French architect called Andre Godard. The tomb is made of marble and has lines from one of his poems carved on the sarcophagus. This stands under a tall eight-legged pavillion which is reached up a set of small steps. Wistful-looking young men sat on the steps reading their poetry books and looking decidedly dreamy. This was clearly the place to sit and think about the girl you admired from afar and of unrequited love. ~Tea shop tourism - not just for the National Trust~ After a long drive, we were also happy to learn that it wasn't a bad place to think of more immediate needs and there's a very acceptable little tea-garden where we were able to get some delicious cakes and a near legendary lemon vermicelli ice-creams and some less acceptable hot drinks, all served by a man with the most outrageous of felt hats. If you are so inclined, you can also puff on a hookah whilst you read your poetry books. We whiled away nearly an hour just sitting around, eating and drinking, watching the locals having fun, and watching the local girls eyeing up our ginger-haired Scottish tour leader in a distinctly indiscrete manner. Whoever would have imagined that visiting dead poets could be so much fun or could inspire such licentious behaviour. ~Details~ The site is open from 8 am to 9.30 om daily and entrance is 3000 Rials. I forget the exchange rate but that's so little as to be almost insignificant. Read the complete review |
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Fire Temple (Yazd, Iran)
by koshkha ~A Diamond in the Desert~ The Iranian desert city of Yazd has many things which mark it out as special. It's said to be the second oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and since the organisation saying that is UNESCO, I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the claim. It's a high altitude desert with amazingly ... creative ways of stretching the little water it has far beyond what most could manage. But for me the thing which makes the city really fascinating is its status as the heartland of the ancient Zoroastrian religion. If you thought Iran was an exclusively Muslim land, then think again. They're more religiously tolerant than most people realise though not if you're of the Bahai faith - they don't like the Bahais at all. ~Thus spake Zarathustra~ Zoroastrians believe that fire is pure and sacred and must be preserved and protected along with water. The place where Zorastrians go to worship is called the Fire Temple or Atashkadeh which means literally the 'House of Fire'. There are nearly 20 fire temples in Yazd but the one on Atashkadeh Alley, off Kashani Street is most popular with tour groups. I've read that this isn't entirely typical of an Atashkadeh because it's less of an active temple and more of a tourist attraction but it's a good place to get an introduction to the religion and its iconography. Zoroastrianism was the religion of the great Persian emperors including Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great and was the main religion in Iran/Persia until the rise of Islam. It is one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions and has a god called Ahura Mazda who created the world and everything in it and a prophet called Zoroaster or Zarathustra (probably more widely known for the theme music to 2001: A Space Odyssey which is Richard Strauss's 'Thus Spake Zarathustra). The Zoroastrian religion has been around for about 3500-4000 years but despite its longevity and great history, today there are believed to be only a quarter of a million worshipers world wide and most of these are either in Iran or India (where they are known as Parsis). ~Death and Fire~ We had just had a fascinating visit to the Towers of Silence on the outskirts of the city where the bodies of the dead are laid out to be eaten by the birds before the bones are buried in concrete lined tombs. When both fire and earth are sacred, you've got to improvise a bit. Leaving the Towers behind we headed to the Fire Temple to round off an intense morning of Zoroastrian influence. We parked up at the end of the street and walked into the grounds of the Fire Temple where our guide took us through some of the tenets of the religion and explained to us the history of the temple. We were told that the building dated only back to 1934 but the flame inside had been kept constantly lit since 470 AD. In front of the temple there's a pretty courtyard with a large pool. Both fire and water are used for ritual because of their purity. Standing in front of the temple by the pool we learned about the symbolism of the image of Ahura Mazda as represented above the entrance to the temple. This image is known as the Farohar or Farovahar. He is an elderly (and so wise and experienced) man with a long beard and one of his hands is raised towards god. His face is that of a human which indicates his connection to humankind. He stands inside a circle which represents the universe and holds another ring in his hand which may represent loyalty to the religion. The large circle has two 'legs' which represent good and evil - the good 'leg' is on the side to which the figure is facing representing the choice to follow good and leave evil behind. He has wings with three layers of feathers which represent the three principles that all Zoroastrians should follow : good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Only by following all three principles can a worshipper 'fly' and advance. Beneath the circle of the universe are another three layers of feathers which represent the opposite of the wing feathers - so bad thoughts, bad words and bad actions. (It might help to have a look at my photo in order to understand this better). We stood quietly listening to the explanation and looking up at the figure standing out against the bluest of November skies before going up the steps and into the temple. Inside we found a few dozen people crowded around a glass partition behind which we could see a large metal urn with fire inside. An elderly man was minding the flames and feeding the fire whilst we stood watching. ~Worth a visit?~ Even though tourists are welcomed and actively encouraged to visit the Fire Temple as part of a process of educating the public and spreading the knowledge of this tiny but ancient religion, I did feel a bit uncomfortable as if we were just a bunch of stupid foreigners gawping at this strange religion in a somewhat intrusive way. This was tempered somewhat by knowing that the local Zorastrians had set the place up to encourage tourism, but it did feel a little artificial. I'd enjoyed our trip to the Towers of Silence and really felt able to relate to the role of the towers in the religion but the Fire Temple didn't really feel quite real. It was an attractive building with a neat pleasant courtyard and a great place to learn about the symbolism but somehow it didn't 'touch' me in the way that other religious buildings and shrines tend to do. If you find yourself in Yazd, you should definitely go, but in a city of spectacular buildings of stunning ingenuity, it might not be the main thing you remember at the end of your trip. Entrance - as far as I could tell - was free but money may have changed hands between our guide and the temple keepers. However since you'll not get to go there without a guide, any payment will be unnoticed. Read the complete review |
Middle East Sightseeing International |
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Sightseeing International / The historic coronation site of the ancient Persian kings. |
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1 review Sightseeing International / Fire Temple in Yazd, Iran - Centre of worship of the minority Iranian Zoroastrian faith. |
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1 review Sightseeing International / The resting place of Iran's most famous poet in Shiraz. |
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1 review Sightseeing International / Spectacular mosque in the ancient desert city of Yazd in Iran. |
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