Persian letters


“How can one be Persian?” asks Montesquieu. “How can one learn Persian?” they ask me sometimes.

The French of the East. For a thousand years, the language of culture from Istanbul through the Caucasus to India, and in many places still it is; without it you cannot penetrate beyond a certain point into this world. The language of the purest poetry: the Persian poems are structured so much by the musicality of the language that they are untranslatable, any attempt is just a prosaic extract of their content. The language of music: the two and a half thousand year old Persian music is just as sophisticated, powerful and engaging as the European classical music. The language of a unique visual culture, to which, apart from the miniatures, the Iranian films and photos also bear witness. Of a multinational, multicultural, beautiful and isolated country of the size of a quarter of Europe, where only this language opens up doors and people, but this really does.


Kayhan Kalhor (kamanche) and Erdal Erzincan (saz): Gulnîshan (7:01)
Iranian Kurdish folk song performed by the classical Persian kamanche-player Kalhor and his frequent companion, the Turkish Erzincan, to illustrate Iran’s many cultures. From the concert held in Tehran’s Vahdat Hall.


history
Müteferrika in Iran
Sir Gore Ouseley and the Treaty of Gulistan (1813)
Sándor Kégl’s Persian journey
Ármin Vámbéry’s Persian journeys
Persian travel sketches by Fedor Karacsay
Nasreddin Shah in Hungary, 1889
Ahmad Mirza, the little prince (1909-1925)
Ahmad Mirza on the bridge of sirat
Paraphrase of the Shahnameh against Hitler, 1943
Beard fashions in Iran
Elections and manifestations in Iran, 2009
It’s winter

sites
The chariot of time on Isfahan’s main square
Bicycles in Isfahan
The faces of Kashan
Qâjâr-era palaces in Kashan and Shiraz (fr)
Abyaneh, the Red Village
Ashura in Abyaneh
Village mosque in Abyaneh (fr)
Nomadic butter churn in Abyaneh
Masouleh, 1975
The Persian desert
On the edge of the desert
A mineral world
Vaults of Yazd
Zoroastrian towers of silence
The tomb of Queen Esther in Hamadan
The Bakhtiari village of Sar Agha Seyyed
Bakhtiari tents
Khaled Nabi’s cemetery
Gorgan: Turkoman shepherds and the village of Ziyarat
Ruinous hammam in Kerman
Cave dwellings in Kandovan
Tehran, Behesht-e Zahra cemetery
Beggar’s fiddle from the Museum of Music
First day in the school in Mazandaran and Tehran
Tabriz, the city of treasures
Armenian monasteries in Iran
Armenian churches in Northern Iran (fr)
“Shepherd’s church” facing the Armenian cemetery of Julfa
The Armenian quarter in Isfahan (fr)
Damghan, birthplace of the demijohn?
Qajar influences in 19th-c. Tiflis

nature
Spring poppies in the Zagros
Imperial crowns in the Zagros
Conquering the Savalan Mountain
translations of poetry
Mehdi Akhavan Sales: Comets and nights
Sohrab Sepehri: Direction
Omar Khayyam: The eternal secret
Mehdi Akhavan Sales: It’s winter
Hafez: From the blood of my heart
Malek o-Sho'arâ Bahâr: Dawn bird
Hushang Ebtehaj: As strangers
Shahram Nazeri: Spring lily
Fereidoun Moshiri: Trust in the spring
Sohrab Sepehri: Village

music
The power of Persian music
Bakhtiari folk music: Cheshme-ye Kuhrang
Masoud Bakhtyari: Tey tum rah
Mahsa & Marjan Vahdat: Gol-e lâle
Mohsen Namjoo: Name
Hojjat Ashrafzadeh: Jam-e vasl
Hossein Alizadeh - Kayhan Kalhor - Mohammad Reza Shajarian - Homayoun Shajarian: Zemestân ast
Kayhan Kalhor: Desert night
Soheil Nafisi: Hame-ye faslân-e donyâ
Mohammad Reza Lotfi: Vatanam Iran
Sahrab Tolouie: Tango perso
Shahram Nazeri: Lâle-ye bahâr
Shajarian – Kalhor – Alizadeh: Morgh-e sahâr
Bijan Kamkar & Mastan Ensemble: Gharibâne
Soheil Nafisi: Shahâbhâ va shabhâ
Hossein Alizadeh: Horizon
Sepa va dopa. Dance from Lorestan
Asita Hamidi: Dokhtar-e Buir Ahmadi
Freidoun Poorreza – Hossein Hamidi: Naz Bedashteh
Davood Azad: Rumi + Bach
photo
Hamid Khurshidi: Shepherds in Gorgan
Alieh Sâdatpur: Bicycles in Isfahan
Shahram Sharif: Iranian fragments
Ehsan Amini and Hamed Masoumi
Ahmad Kavousian: Masouleh 1975
Ahmad Kavousian: Desert people
Nasrollah Kasraian: The desert
Alieh Sâdatpur: Bakhtiari tents
Hamid Khurshidi: First day in the school in Mazandaran
Ali Rafiei: First day in the school in Tehran
Mohammad Javad Martabi: The village of Ziyarat
Abotaleb Nadri: Brick-making children
Ali Majdfar and Ardeshir Soltani: Khaled Nabi’s cemetery
Mansure Motamedi: Flower-sellers in Tehran
Omid H. Hassan: Tehran in Budapest

miniature
Paraphrase of the Shahnameh
A cup of tea from Isfahan
Persian Jewish bride and bridegroom portrait

motifs
Butterfly and candle
Bird
Imperial crown and tulip
Bear cub

Iranian languages and cultures
Tat villages in the Caucasus
Lahij, the village of Persian border guards
Tat and Pamiri languages
Persian architecture in Tiflis
The market in Kabul
Poppy fields in Afghanistan

other
A train to Persia
Come with us to Iran!
30 (and more) reasons to visit Iran (fr)
Happy new year, Persia
Persian cuisine
Iran’s secret language, the Russian
The “five stones” game in Persia
Sufi
The origin of sin


2 comentarios:

Catherine dijo...

A wonderful kind of travel guide, ideal to enhance my eagerness to to visit Iran!

Studiolum dijo...

It was partly composed for that ;)