I’ve just added a small set of travel photographs taken in Shiraz, Iran, together with extracts from some travellers passing through before me (accessible from the menu).
Honestly, I was a little burnt out from photography while I was in Shiraz, so there were whole parts of the city I couldn’t muster the concentration to shoot. The wide avenues, the abundant burger shops, the Arg, the innumerable orange-scented gardens, the dry river, the bazaar, the wonderful pickle shops, the people…it’s all in my head but not on camera.
But, I would like to share some of my favourite extracts I couldn’t pair with a photograph.
First, Edward Browne’s account of an Iranian philosopher who got a bit too loose on a hard night out in 1888:
“The attention of the philosopher began to wander; his eyes were fixed on the evolutions of the dancer; his hands and feet beat times to the music. Wine was offered to him and not refused; metaphysic was exorcised by melody; and ere the hour of departure arrived, the disciple of Aristotle and Avicenna lay helpless on the floor, incapable of utterance, insensible to reproof, and oblivious alike of dignity and decorum.”
- Edward G. Browne (1893), A Year Amongst the Persians
Secondly, this timeless tale:
“The poor fellow was blind, and I shall never forget the pathos of his tones when, as I was seated one evening … by the side of the stream in the courtyard under the moonlit plane-trees, he heard the former address me in an interval of the music as “Hakim Sahib,” and eagerly exclaimed, “Hakim! Did you say hakim, Master? Is our guest a physician? Can he not perhaps cure my blindness and enable me once more to behold the light?” And when the Nawwab answered gently, “No, my poor fellow, he is a metaphysician (hakim-i-ilahi), rather than a physician (hakim-i-tabi’i); he can do nothing for you,” it went to my heart to see the momentary expression of anxious hope which had crossed the face of the blind minstrel pass, through a quiver of disappointment, into the look of patient sadness which his countenance habitually wore.”
- Edward G. Browne (1893), A Year Amongst the Persians
Finally, Tavernier’s account touching on the legendary pickling capabilities of the Iranians dating back as far as the 1600s (you can find a few good pickle stores in Shiraz):
“There are in Schiras three or four Glass-houses, where they make great and small bottles, to transport the sweet-waters that are made in the city. There are also made the several sorts of vessels wherein they pickle their fruits of all sorts, which they send in great quantities to India, to Sumatra, Batavia [Java], and other places.”
- Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1678), The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier...through Turkey into Persia
