Time Travels in Persia

By Heidi Noroozy

Don’t you wish you had a time machine?

I do. But until someone invents one, I have to travel back in time vicariously through books. One of my favorite time-travel novels is Blackout (and its sequel, All Clear) by Connie Willis. These stories, and the others in the series, feature time-traveling historians from the year 2060 who visit England during World War II to observe history in the making. Because they must blend in while observing the “contemps” (short for “contemporaries”), they take jobs and new identities: a shop girl on Oxford Street during the London Blitz, an American journalist at Dunkirk, and a maid in a country manor that has become a shelter for children evacuated from the bomb-ridden cities.

Clearly I was born many decades too soon. Wouldn’t it be cool to travel back in time and see history in the raw—and experience the events than never made it into the history books? But if I had a time machine, I wouldn’t travel back to the Blitz. (How crazy is that?) I’d set the dial for Persia and seek out some of the happening places in the ancient and not-so-ancient world. Here are my top 3 picks for a historical adventure:

A valley in the Alborz Mountains

My first stop will be in 1930, the year that the British explorer, Freya Stark, embarked on her famous, and often hazardous, trek through the Iranian back country. She was searching for the elusive Alamut Castle in the Alborz Mountains, stronghold of the Nizari Ismaili mystics, also know as the Assassins. (A few years later, she also traveled to Lorestan, a region in the Zagros Mountains, near the Iraq border. In The Valleys of the Assassins, Stark’s account of her Iranian adventures, she describes the area as “that part of the country where one is less frequently murdered.”)

It sounds ominous, I know. But along with the bandits, shifty-eyed tribal chieftains, and policemen whose “protection” bribes were only a few cents less than that those of the outlaws, Stark encountered the last vestiges of traditions that even then were starting to die out. She describes breathtaking landscapes, and that exuberant Persian hospitality that Iranians are still famous for today. Equipped with letters of introduction from authorities in Tehran, she charmed her way past the suspicious natures of people unaccustomed to trusting strangers and ended up documenting the Alborz range’s remote valleys for the Royal Geographic Society. Apart from witnessing history as it unfolds, it would be thrilling to watch this fearless adventurer in action.

The problem with time travel is that you can never say goodbye to your new friends. So after we trek back to civilization from the Alamut Valley, I’ll have to slip away to my time machine and set the dial (or maybe it uses a switch—who knows) for another era. I’m heading far into the past, 2,500 years to be precise, to the time of Cyrus the Great.

To blend in, I’ll need a job, so I’m off to join the chapars, those swift relay couriers who carried the mail throughout the vast Persian Empire, crossing from one end to the other in a matter of days. They rode from one chapar-khaneh (courier house) to the next, which were situated as far apart as a man could ride in a day without stopping to feed and water the horse. And at each stop, they switched to a fresh horse and continued the journey.

I’ll need to brush up on my horseback riding skills. But I’m surely in good physical shape now after trekking through the Alborz Mountains in 1930. Wouldn’t the Persian Pony Express be a great way to see a vast and prosperous empire? True, I’d probably take in little of the landscape, galloping across the country at top speed. But surely I’ll get to rest at the end of the ride and, with a little ingenuity, even sneak a peak into the mailbag. Maybe I’ll discover a story or two that never made it into the history books. To get an idea of what my life as a chapar will be like, check out the blog I wrote about Cyrus the Great’s postal service.

Entrance to the Isfahan Bazaar

After these two heart-stopping adventures, 17^th century Isfahan, my final stop on the way back to my own time, will seem almost dull. Or maybe not. It’s not for nothing that Isfahan is called nesf-e jahan (half the world). In the 1600s, after Shah Abbas I built his glorious capital in the Iranian desert, Isfahan became a major stop on the Silk Road. Its squares and bazaars were thronged with people from all over the world. The arts flourished with everything from carpet weaving and miniature painting to bookbinding and calligraphy to tilework and the lovely architecture that still characterizes the city today. Maybe I’ll even get a glimpse of the silk, gold, and silver Polonaise carpets that Abbas commissioned to promote trade with Europe.

What I’d really like to find out, though, is whether there was a tunnel beneath Naghsh-e Jahan Square, connecting Shah Abbas’s Ali Qapu Palace to the Sheikh Lotfallah Mosque. A guide at the mosque once told me it existed at one time, but I’ve never been able to confirm the truth of his words. It is said that the mystery passage was built to allow the shah’s wives to pass from the palace to their female-only house of worship without being seen. Since I’m unlikely to get into the palace (or the mosque) to find the tunnel, I’ll have to suss out the secret from the gossips at the bazaar.

So that’s my whirlwind tour of history. What about you? If you had a time machine, where would you go?

Diplomacy in Silk

By Heidi Noroozy

Polonaise carpet in the
Iranian Carpet Museum

Let’s take a trip back in time. We’ll set our time machine for early 17^th-century Isfahan at the height of the Safavid Golden Age and tour the city’s blue-tiled mosques, arcaded bazaars, and ornate bridges when they were still brand new. Maybe we’ll catch a polo match with Shah Abbas I and cheer his favorite team from our seats on the high balcony of the Ali Qapu Palace. Best of all, we’ll sink our bare feet into sumptuous wool and silk rugs and feel their soft pile tickle our toes. After all, like me, Shah Abbas had a special place in his heart for Persian carpets. Not only did he fill his palaces with the finest examples, he also made them an important element of trade and diplomacy.

Shah Abbas’s military accomplishments included consolidating a fragmented Persian kingdom and defending it against encroaching neighbors. The king also bolstered his country’s economy by intensifying trade between Persia and Europe, whose leaders he viewed as natural allies against his enemies, the Ottoman Turks. Abbas developed close ties with England’s East India Company by giving them special trade privileges and exchanging silk for English broadcloth. He also sent a large shipment of fine silk to King Philip of Spain and Portugal in an attempt to persuade him to give up the strategic island of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which the Portuguese had captured from the Persians nearly a century earlier. (This mission failed so completely that the Safavid ambassador to King Philip's court was executed when he returned home to Persia.) Not only silk yarn and cloth but luxury carpets also often made their way onto merchant ships and into diplomatic pouches.

Polonaise detail

Some of the finest carpets to come out of Isfahan’s royal workshops belong to a group that scholars today classify as “Polonaise.” The name, a French word meaning “Polish,” is a bit misguided, based on a misunderstanding (more about that in a bit), but Abbas spared no expense in commissioning these unique carpets to dazzle trade partners both at home and abroad. The carpets were made of silk in bold, vibrant colors and often had brocaded areas fashioned from threads wrapped in real gold or silver. Although the foundations were usually cotton to lend the structure durability, separate silk fringes would be sewn onto the ends, giving the appearance that the entire rug was made of the more costly material.

Polonaise weavers used motifs that are still recognizable in modern Persian carpets, with medallions in the center, twisting vines along the borders, and floral designs against contrasting fields that look like someone scattered a flower bouquet across a pool of calm water. Other Polonaise designs were more typically European, often incorporating emblems associated with Western royalty, which has led scholars to believe that they were commissioned and made to the customer’s specifications.

Polonaise carpet with the
Polish royal crest
(Residenz Museum, Munich)

But these Western influences also created the misunderstanding over the name “Polonaise.” Over several centuries, the carpets’ origins were forgotten, as many didn’t survive the ravages of time. When two antique rugs owned by Poland’s Prince Czartoryski appeared in a Paris exhibition in 1878, they were labeled as tapis polonaise (Polish carpets). This source was supported by the fact that their motifs and materials were not seen as being typically Persian. And these particular rugs featured the coat of arms of a noble Polish family worked right into the design.

Although some historians questioned the carpets’ European roots right from the start, many prominent textile experts persisted in attributing them to Polish carpet factories well into the 20^th century. But contemporary accounts show that Sigismund Vasa III of Poland commissioned eight carpets in 1601, and two years later Shah Abbas sent another to Marino Grimani, the Doge of Venice, as a diplomatic gift. Today, nearly everyone agrees that most Polonaise carpets were woven in royal Safavid workshops in the Persian rug weaving centers of Isfahan, Yazd, and Kashan from the time of Shah Abbas’s Golden Age right up until a devastating Afghan invasion put an end to Safavid rule in 1722. And yet the Polish-inspired name has stuck.

Polonaise carpets today are rare, with only around 300 of them known to exist. Some of these rugs belong to prominent museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Residenz Museum in Munich, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Three of the photos I've featured on this page are of a Polonaise carpet I saw in the Iranian Carpet Museum in Tehran. At the time, I was writing my first mystery novel, which centered around the theft of a rare Safavid carpet. I took so many pictures of the Polonaise that I’m sure the guard suspected me of planning a forgery.

Border detail

The surviving Polonaise carpets leave only a hint of their former glory. Many have been worn down to the foundation, making them look more like loosely woven fabric than knotted pile rugs. The once vivid colors have faded to pastels (these dyes apparently adhere better to wool than to silk), and often the gold and silver brocade is either missing or tarnished. But you can still make out the lovely designs and with a bit of imagination reconstruct the vibrant colors in your mind. These carpets are prized as highly today as they were 500 years ago, with some commanding six-figure prices at auction.

Before we climb back aboard our time machine for the return journey to the 21^st century, let’s take a side trip to the Shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf (present day Iraq), where we’ll slip off our shoes and sink our feet into the soft silk of another of Shah Abbas’s precious commissions: a red and gold Polonaise that he presented to the shrine as a gift. Perhaps it was even another piece of diplomacy, since such a lovely carpet must have gone a long way toward unlocking the gates of heaven to its donor for his generosity. I hope so, anyway. Shah Abbas and his successors deserve a fine reward for giving the world such beautiful treasures.