The online event “Under the Sails – Maritime Conversation on Trade and Seafaring. Perspectives from Iran and Kuwait” held on May 26, 2021 is now available to view on Youtube. This is a fascinating set of interviews with both Kuwaiti and Iranian ship captains of the past. It is well worth watching.
There is a new exhibit on Iran at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London through 12 September. If you cannot make it to the exhibition, there is a brief trailer. You can also learn about the exhibition here and there is a slide show of 15 objects over 5,000 years here.
One of the rather silly parts of the coverage of the event on the website is having images with a woman or two women (perhaps to encourage masks…) observing the items, as in the following.
This new recording by Misagh Joolaee is sad but enthralling at the same time. Read about it and listen on the Qantara Website.
My friend, the historian G. Rex Smith, has co-edited a translation of the travel narrative of Pierre Loti, who visited the Middle East in 1900.
In 1928 my mother, who was 6 years old at the time, received a coloring book from a neighbour. It was called “Big Circus Painting and Crayoning Book” and published in Cleveland, Ohio. On most of the pages there was a color image with the same image below it meant to be colored or crayoned in. The image above seems rather distant from the idea of a circus, but other non-circus images are of the military, a grizzly bear and Scotland.
There is a fascinating talk on Youtube by Travis Zadeh on marvels and wonders in Islamic texts, especially the many versions of al-Qazwini.
Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the sporting activities in the Zurkhaneh were declared inappropriate. Nowadays, however, they have become a symbol of Iranian national pride.
Persia’s “power houses” packed a punch
Qantara
Varzesh-e Zurkhaneh-i, (literally, the sport of heroes in the house of power). The ancient Iranian Zurkhaneh gymnasia have their roots in customs and traditions that date back to the country’s pre-Islamic past. This selection of early photographs portrays the world of the Zurkhaneh athletes from 1789 to 1925.
The women of Iran – 120 years ago
Antoin Sevruguin, the father of Iranian society photography, captured portraits of Iranian women in the early 20th century, from well-known ladies at the court to women from various tribes around the country.
Click here to see the photographs.