George and Gavin's travels to Iran 14th June 20

Long one - some of the highpoints

From Zein-o-din, it was a long drive to Parsagadae, over dry, bare country, which was a little greener as we entered Fars - Persia proper. Parsagadae stands in a wide, flat, fertile, irrigated plain, which contrasts sharply with the dry mountains all around. Think of the irrigated flatlands and the scarp at Bacchus Marsh, though the Parsagadae plain is much wider and the mountains much taller and rougher.

The buildings here are due to Cyrus the Great, who between 560BC and 530BC conquered most of the known world, and took Persia from a country district to world empire. His tomb stands alone, and is much bigger than it looks in photographs. A stepped base perhaps 50 feet by 40 and 15 feet high supports a small stone building like a house, about 20 feet high. It has minimal ornamentation, is made of a light-coloured local limestone, and has worn fairly well. As far as I can tell, it is the only one of its kind. 

Half a mile away are the remains of a ceremonial palace. It has a columned hall, perhaps 50 feet on a side, with a pair of loggias in front. The columns are tall but not fluted, and stand on bases of black and white limestone. Very little sculpture seems to have been used, just a few reliefs in the doorways, which look like Assyrian workmanship, and may have shown a bull-human composite creature, but too much of them has been lost to be sure. A smaller hall a little way off is similar, but simpler, and may have been a waiting room. No domestic buildings are to be seen: they would have been mud-brick, as would the walls of the ceremonial buildings. The buildings are not raised above the plain, but they stand on an imperceptible natural rise in the plain: you can see more or less to the feet of the mountains in every direction. On the inside wall of a gateway is a simple inscription: I am King Cyrus, the Achaemenid.

It is about 65km from Parsagadae to Persepolis. You go from one flat, rich plain to another, via a mountain ridge. On a rocky hill overlooking the plain, and backing onto the mountains, Darius I built a wide platform ughly 35 feet above the plain, and on it he built the first of 3 extravagantly grand palaces, themselves raised above the main platform. The layout of the audience halls is similar to those in the palace at Parsagadae, but the halls are much larger, the columns are much taller, are richly fluted and carved, and have capitals made of pairs of bulls, lions or griffons, and the halls are approached by grand shallow staircases flanked by enormous reliefs showing processions of subject people bringing tribute, Persian and Median lords chattering as they approach the throne, guardsmen looking straight ahead, and the King communing with Ahura Mazda. The style has moved on from the Assyrian to something more humane and inclusive, and just a little humorous. In long inscriptions in three languages, King Darius explains how he was set to rule the world by the grace of Ahura Mazda.

The palace complex was added to by his successors: it is dense and enormous, and must have been overwhelming. It may be the grandest thing you see in a lifetime. But the sculpture is repetitive, and the site is mainly ceremonial, with only a comparatively small area regarded as a royal residence. It seems to have been used for a grand reception, shown in the reliefs, every New Year (21 March - still a national holiday). It may not have been used for much else: we know that the main business of government was carried on in other capitals.

Beside Persepolis, Parsagadae looks simple and austere, although it was splendid, particularly by the standards of the Persia of the day. Cyrus built at ground level, in the middle of his people, and he didn't brag. The difference may be due to evolution: Darius and his successors had grown up in splendour, and may have found Parsagadae too simple for their taste; or it may be function, as it seems that Parsagadae was completed by Darius and used by him to receive the Persian nobility, but not the subject people, from whom the Kings kept a greater distance; or it may reflect different degrees of self-confidence. While each of them contributed enormously to founding a Persian empire, they were very different men.

According to Herodotus and Xenophon, Cyrus was an outstanding general, who mixed and joked with his men, who would follow him anywhere (and they usually did have to follow). As King, he was humane in an age of atrocities, made a conquered enemy his adviser, freed the Israelites from the Babylonian captivity, set the Achaemenid principle of tolerating the religions of the subject peoples, no matter how distasteful they were to him, didn't increase taxes, and generally won people over. Darius I, on the other hand, was more remote and came to the throne as the result of a coup, the rights and wrongs of which are still unclear. Perhaps he needed to distance himself even from the Persians, and to assert the divine right to rule. The Persian lords said that Cyrus was a father, Darius was a merchant, but Xerxes was a king (which shows how wrong you can be: although Cyrus created the empire, Darius made it work, and Xerxes was a failure).

Be that as it may, despite the grandeur of Persepolis, the greatest effect of the day was to feel something of the personality of Cyrus, in the austerity and directness of his palace and his tomb, and in the detail of the old general choosing the highest point in a flat plain.

Next morning, we went over more of Persepolis, visiting the tombs of two of the Achaemenid kings which are cut into the cliffs overlooking the site, and showing Gavin (who skipped it the day before) the palaces of Darius I and Xerxes. After a sustaining melon juice, we went on to a necropolis of four of the Achaemenid kings, in a cliff a few miles away. Near the Achaemenid graves, and in a grotto a few miles away, are eight or so reliefs in a much livelier style showing the triumphs (and approval by Ahura Mazda) of several of the Sassanid kings of the C3rd and 4th AD. You often enough see photos of these reliefs, but out of context: by putting their own memorials next to the graves of the Achaemenids, the Sassanids were asserting the continuity of the Persian empire and its national religion, or at least its revival after the centuries of Parthian rule.

Before going on to Shiraz, we briefly visited the remains of Istakhr, which is only five miles from Persepolis. This was the base from which Ardeshir I launched the overthrow of Parthia, it remained a fortified city to protect the Marvdasht valley throughout the Sassanid centuries, and it resisted the Arabs for several years, before being destroyed, rebuilt and abandoned again. There isn't much left, and some of that obviously belongs to the Islamic period (including columns taken from Persepolis for the mosque), but the guardian and his little boy kindly pointed out the main features and showed us the archaeological map.

George and Gavin's travels to Iran 12th June 2014

Some connection issues. Resolved for the moment.

Naein and Yazd. From Abyaneh we returned to the main north-south highway. As we reach the plain, we pass a mud-brick castle which was built by Shapur II as a hunting lodge (which raises a few questions about ecological change - I'll have to get back to that). I remark that, although it is a ruin, it's pretty good for a mud brick building over 1600 years old. Well, no: it was maintained and in use until 1906, when it was blown up to stop bandits using it. A lot of old fortifications suffered the same way.

We then drove to Naein, which is a medium-sized industrial city which began around another oasis, at an intersection between caravan trade routes: part of the western end of the silk road. All of the country arid plains, bordered by steep rough mountains. 

Naein has a crumbling tower, which is all that remains of city walls which were rebuilt over Sassanid originals a century or so after the Arab conquest. The main mosque is a very early one, built before the standard design had been settled. It replaced a Zoroastrian fire temple and uses its ground plan, which includes four archways, one on each side, instead of the modern plan with one arch, at the end nearest Mecca. The mosque (and the temple before it) were fortified outside the city walls, and joined to the city by an underground tunnel, part of which still exists, connecting to underground chambers. More bandit problems.

Then to Yazd, which was a similar city, further south-east on the caravan route, perched in a strip of merely arid country under the mountains and between deserts north and south. Now, however, it is a metropolis of a million people and a hive of industry.

It is also the home of the biggest remaining Zoroastrian population. There is a fire temple, of which the foyer can be visited, from which you can see the perpetual fire burning in a big brass pot, and maintained by a priest. Although it is quietly impressive and set in a traditional garden of cypresses, the temple is new, built with money sent by the Parsees in India, and not traditional in design. There is no literature to explain or recommend their faith: Zoroastrianism is well tolerated, but not anything which looks like attempt to convert Moslems. Outside the town are the towers of silence, also relatively new, but traditional in design, now disused for sanitary reasons. The bodies of the dead were exposed there for the birds to pick clean. The towers are on the top of two steep hills. Each is a circular stone wall about 12 feet high and 100 feet across, with a paved floor. It must have been pretty grim when it was in use. Under the late Shah, the Zoroastrian community accepted a form of burial in which the bodies are placed in sealed concrete graves, so do not pollute the earth, and there is now a graveyard near the old towers.

The hotel we stayed at is a very large old private home set in a garden with flowing water and lots of trees, now converted into a very comfortable and stylish 50+ room hotel. The layout, at least as now converted, is a series of staircases, each leading from the garden to a small group of rooms: more like a block of flats than one house. They got an award for the conversion, so they must have respected the original layout, to a degree. Perhaps it was suitable for an extended family.

The other highlights of Yazd were the mosque, sunset over the mosque, the water museum and a Persian garden. The Fin garden at Kashan is beautiful, but small and strictly a decorative garden: mostly grass and cypress trees. This one has the same basic layout, with crossed paths, running water and a summer-house, but it is much larger, and a working orchard. One end is planted to grape vines, the other to fruit and nut trees: pomegranates, pistachios, olives and a lot more, with a few hibiscus and other decorative plants, and a couple of rows of cypresses to give it definition. Not as pretty, but a pleasant garden. And they serve good coffee.

The water museum is another old mansion, built over a qanat in the basement, and displays which describe the qanats, and explain a lot about central Iran. The country is mainly arid, just parched earth, with the odd low bush. Even goats and camels are scarce. Wherever there is water, the country supports trees, crops and towns: it is a bit like coming across Port Augusta every 50 miles. There are a lot of mountains, which obviously attract heavy rain from time to time: the highway crosses numerous culverts, and there are miles of almost continuous banks shaped to direct floodwater into the culverts. But the mountains are mostly much too steep to farm, or to hold water. Even the valley at Abyaneh is terraced. To get water from the mountains to the plains, they dug wells to tap the water table in the mountains, then tapped the wells from the bottom by driving underground tunnels for miles (up to 60 miles) to where the water was needed. The tunnels went partly through rock, and partly through porous materials, where they needed to be lined. This was a huge and difficult job, but the qanats provided a reliable water supply, which allowed farms and towns to exist where otherwise there would only have been scanty pasture. This is why the oases and towns mainly sit at the feet of the mountains. Nowadays, the qanats have mainly fallen out of use (even maintaining them was expensive) and water is pumped from wells in the places where it is needed. I suppose that is why Yazd can now be a city of a million people, which would have taken a large number of qanats to supply with water. Perhaps it also means that new towns and farms can be developed in places which are now waste ground.

The climate in Yazd is pretty bracing. In winter, they used to let water freeze in shaded tanks and saved the ice for summer. Now, in early summer, the temperature is reaching the high 30s. In late summer, it must be hotter than a Melbourne heatwave, maybe even hotter than Broken Hill. They used a lot of tricks to manage the heat: thick walls, underground sitting rooms, shady gardens, shady streets, and wind towers. A wind tower is a hollow tower like a chimney with a big Tudor chimney-pot, usually 10 to 20 feet higher than the house (higher works better, and is more prestigious) with two or more fixed grilles under the cap at the top, angled to catch the wind and funnel it down into the house, where it is routed through doorways or ducts through the main sitting rooms. In function it is roughly the reverse of both a chimney and a roof vent. It really does provide the same sort of cooling as a fan, and the air is surprisingly cool. I expect we could use them to provide passive cooling even now: start by reversing the design, as well as the function, of a roof vent.

Tonight, we are staying in the Zein-o-din caravanserai, 70km south-east of Yazd, which is 500 years old. It was one of 999 caravanserais built at 20 mile intervals along the trade routes to encourage trade. Like nearly all of them outside the towns, it fell into disuse in the C20th, but has been renovated after a huge effort, and offers accommodation of a kind now unusual. We have beds (mattresses on the floor) in a big room with a skylight but no windows, open to the passage and a dozen more rooms, except for a brocade curtain, with three huge rugs and eight big cushions, and no other furniture, though there are electric lights and a power point. There are two telescopes for star gazing: the sky here is ideal for the purpose, though tonight there will be a half moon. Later: no astronomy last night, but slept well. The rooms were cool yesterday, and not too warm last night: no doubt because the walls are 3 or 4 feet thick.

George and Gavin's trip to Iran 8th June 2014

Day 2. We left Tehran early, heading south into desert and by-passing Qom, stopping at Kashan, an oasis town. We saw three very grand private houses, built by C19th merchants, with multiple grand courtyards and wind towers. In the outskirts of the town, at Sialk, is a neolithic hill town, the earliest layers of which are dated to the 6th millenium BC: the excavations are not very informative, but there seems to be an early ziggurat, and there is a good little museum of pottery and stone tools found at the site.

After lunch we came on south to Abyane, a village in the hills where we will spend the night. It is very different from the plains. Soon after we were fairly out of Tehran, we were in very dry, hilly country, with some salt lakes and other flat areas which looked like dried-out lake beds. It isn't sandy or particularly rocky, because most of the country rock is soft sedimentaries which have eroded away, though there are occasional harder layers which look like sandstone, cap steep-sided hills and break down into gravel. It seems to be a plateau which has eroded down to a fairly flat base and a lot of low hills. Further south, the plains get more level and show a bit of green, and for the first time we saw some flocks of goats. From time to time, particularly near the mountains to the west of the road, there are oases of farmland. The water from the hills is brought down through underground channels and used to irrigate crops and trees. They grow some surprising things: pomegranates, roses (for rosewater), cucumbers and melons, and probably some grain and other orchards.

The side road to Abyane runs up a narrow river valley, which is packed with greenery: trees, lots of fruit trees and poplars, small grass meadows for the goats and sheep, lots of gardens. It looks as if the plants have run wild, but they are evidently under careful cultivation: when you can see through the greenery, which isn't often, the whole valley is terraced. The valley must be more productive than many square miles of the surrounding plains, let alone the hills. The village is relatively cool, breezy and scenic. In winter, it must be more than cool. There are dozens of underground shelters dug into the hillsides to keep the livestock from cold when it snows.

We walked through the village, which seems to have been fairly isolated in the past, at the dead end of a fairly tough 20-mile track up from the plains. The old people speak a dialect laced with words from 1000 years ago. Sad to say, the old people are about all that's left. Since the road came, and the schools, and the rest, the young people have left, and the population is down to about 200, though they have tourists (many of them from nearby towns) and two pubs. The village is mainly brick-red one and two-story houses in mud brick, along one long street which starts at the Abyane Hotel and wraps around a hillside for about 1/4 mile. At first glance, it is in good condition, but a lot of that is due to preservation works to seal roofs and walls with sheet metal and render. It has been done discreetly and seems to be holding, but it will only delay the rot. Some houses have already collapsed and a number are looking very derelict. While the old houses are falling down, new holiday homes are being built at the top of the village.

One of the really old buildings is the town mosque. They started it soon after the Moslem conquest, by converting an underground Mithraic chapel (there are a few of these in Britain, built by the Roman army). The chapel was small and inconvenient, poky in fact, so in the 9th century they built a mosque over the chapel, turning it into the crypt. That building has been repaired on the grandfather's axe system so that very little of the original remains, but the keeper believes that the original plan and a few of the original timbers have been kept. It is a simple rectangular hall, with fifteen or so wooden columns to hold up a decorative timber ceiling, a square timber clerestory to let in light, and a pulpit: bigger and more elaborate, but reminiscent of a mosque from the same period now converted to a church in Mertola, Portugal. It is decorated with a series of photographs of recent performances of rituals conducted in the town, and some of them all over Iran, which look like survivals of Zoroastrianism. The keeper had a lot to say about the building and its history, all in Farsi, however. From the bits that Mansour passed on, he seemed to be talking sense. I hope someone is writing it all down: like the rest of them, he is well on in years.

After the old part of the village, we went to the Abyane Hotel for afternoon tea, sitting on divans in the courtyard, next to the garden, the pigeons and the mynah. The evening cooled down and a breeze picked up, the view is good, the tea was good, and it was good to sit for an hour or two taking it all in. Then the family decided to wash the winter grot off the courtyard (this is mainly a summer resort). Four strong men got the pressure spray down from the store-room, and then they worked out how to set it up (actually, grandfather told them). Then they started hosing down the marble. Then someone remembered the broom and the detergent. Meantime, grandfather let the pigeons out and fed them from an aluminium bowl, on a Persian carpet. At about 7 o'clock, they were well under way, and they shifted us and the mynah out of the way, very civilly.

We had dinner while they did the courtyard. Chicken stew with walnuts and pomegranate is a specialty of the house, and perhaps of the region: certainly, they grow the ingredients locally. You get a plate of rice and a small bowl of a dark mixture, with chunks of chicken. Similar to the way curry is best served, but a very different dish. If I hadn't known, I might not have identified the pomegranate or the walnuts. They are both ground to a paste, and there is no overt fruity sweetness, no walnut astringency and none of the sugar-and-vinegar effect of basic sweet and sour. Instead you get a mild flavour which is hard to place, beyond being rich, not quite sharp, not quite sweet, and clearly vegetable. Some surviving Roman recipes are based on similar ideas, and the recipe may be very old.  It must depend on getting the quantities just right, and avoiding anything that fights with the main flavours. Too much salt, any chilli, and it would be gone. Even a tomato would wreck it. So what happened when the Romans added garum (fish sauce) to their equivalent dishes? Was garum the ancient world's answer to ketchup, and thus the cause of the Fall of the Roman Empire?

Sunday morning: slept well, woke to find it quiet and cool, lots of birds, mountains all round, the terraces and poplars in the valley, and the village just along the way. Shortly off to Yazd, where the forecast is for 39 degrees. Breakfast is tea, flat bread, a tomato and a cucumber, sliced, some goat cheese (less salty than fetta), fried eggs and a few big chunks of watermelon, served in a great barn of a dining room in the Viuna Hotel, with a view over the valley. Time for a walk into the village before we set off.

George and Gavin's travels to Iran, 7th June 2014

Expedition starts with CX 134: Cathay Pacific from Melbourne to Hong Kong, flying premium economy, which is roughly what economy used to be before Jetstar, although at a premium economy price. Plane is well run, service polite and effective, but not overdone: very Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was, as usual, too hot, too steamy, well run, but sufficiently chaotic to be memorable. We walked the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade, visited the history museum (seriously good), took the Metro to a suburban electronics market, pottered through vast halls or malls full of overpriced stuff you wouldn't buy in a fit (but nicely air conditioned) and generally took in a few of the sights of Kowloon. Not ambitious: the weather won. 

Another long hop to Dubai, which looks rather like the Gold Coast with extra sand. We only stayed overnight, so I can't say much. The roads aren't quite as good as they could be, and the driving isn't nearly as good as it should be. The pub was said to be an economy one, and wasn't overloaded with frills, but it was new, clean, and efficient: all you really need in a pub. Opposite the pub is an enormous shopping mall, which used to be the place to go; but two bigger and better malls have been built since then. The airport is neither as grand, nor as dire, as rumour says. It's big, well laid out, well run: perhaps more than you really need in an airport.

The flight to Tehran was with Emirates. Two hours, nothing unusual except for the view. We crossed the Straits of Hormuz and flew north, a bit west of centre, then turned north-west for Tehran. The coast on the Persian Gulf is low, flat and empty, but backed by a spectacular scarp, fronting rugged mountain ranges. The mountains look completely dry and barren, but there are dry river beds and gorges, and little pockets of irrigated farmland, which get more numerous and closer together as you go further north. Roads run through them, many of which look modern and sealed. Tehran airport is a bit scruffy, but it works. Passport staff were slow but civil and customs staff waved us through: not very different from Dubai. It is about 50km into town: the road is good, but I wouldn't drive here.

The National Museum has grand sculptures from Persepolis, pottery early and late, some good finds from other places, such as Hammurabi's Code and Cyrus's cylinder, a bragging inscription of Sargon II, an Egyptian statue of Darius I and a gold cup thought to have been his, and so on. Most of the best finds went to Britain or France: one early permit to excavate said the Shah got any precious metals, but the archaeologist could keep everything else. All of this set out and nicely labelled in an attractive building with an elliptical arched doorway modelled on a later Persian palace. 

Pub is the Ferdowsi International, in the middle of town. It is named after the national poet, who wrote the Book of Kings 1000 years ago, and full of busts of him. Lonely Planet says it is the best around. We are on the sixth floor, which has been redesigned, and everything is very stylistic, though most of it works. Room a fair size, cool, no view to speak of, beds comfortable and bathroom good, once you work out how to drive the sculptural tap. The lifts work, as does the wifi, when you can get to it: the coverage of the building is patchy, and I will probably have to send this from the lift lobby.