Christmas in Kashan

Christmas? In Kashan?? At the edge of the Iranian desert?? Maybe rather in Isfahan, among the Armenians of New Julfa, or with the Assyrian Christians in Tabriz or Tehran… But the title is no mistake, there was a Christmas in Kashan as well, at least once. And guess what, one of the participants was Hungarian.

Christmas in the Armenian district of Isfahan. Photo taken in 2019 by Mortezâ Sâlehi from here

Gergely Béldi de Uzon was a member of an aristocratic family from Transylvania. He was appointed as vice-consul to Tehran in the summer of 1914 at the age of 26. In the absence of the envoy, Logothetti, he was in charge of the affairs. At first life in Persia seemed to be one of ease – in August 1914 they spent two weeks hunting in Mazandarân –, but things became complicated soon enough.

Though Persia (as Iran was called at that time) officially stayed neutral in the Great War, it was heavily under the influence of Russia and Great Britain, while in domestic politics one political crisis ensued the other for years. Soon after the outbreak of the war the Germans tried to make Persia an ally of the Central Powers which seemed to turn out a success by the end of 1915. To prevent this, Russians – who already occupied the northern parts of the country since 1911 – sent troops (8000 cavalry and 6000 infantry) under the command of General Nikolai Baratov to the south, to Qazvin.

Iran in the First World War. Source: Yann Richard: Iran. A Social and Political History since the Qajars, 2019. 123. p.

On the news of the advance of the Russians, the diplomats of the Central Powers fled Tehran (the last group of the Austro-Hungarians leaving on the morning of 14 January 1916, disguised as Bakthiyari nomads). Back in early December 1915 Gergely Béldi was south of Tehran in Qom. From there he set out to Isfahan together with a group of Austro-Hungarian officers and soldiers. Then they went on to Abade, where they turned back towards the northeast, to Kermanshah upon the advance of the British troops from the southeast. Finally he arrived via Mesopotamia and Anatolia to Constantinople, then to Vienna on 16 April 1917.

In this period, from 10 December 1915 until April 1917 Béldi wrote a personal diary of his experiences en route, a unique source in which the actual political events are mixed with his personal observations on ornithology and hunting. Later, in 1918 his ornithological notes were published both in Hungarian and German in the Hungarian ornithological journal Aquila. There he gave a brief summary of the hardships of the previous years, illustrating his involuntary Persian voyage with a map.

The voyage of Gergely Béldi through Iran during the First World War. Source: Béldi, Gergely: Madártani jegyzetek Nyugat-Perzsiából és Mesopotámiából [Ornithological notes from Western Persia and Mesopotamia]. In: Aquila 25 (1918) 89. p., accessible here

However, the entire diary was never published. Nowadays one copy is kept in the Archives of Vas County in Szombathely, Western Hungary in the family archives of the Chernel family (presumably a copy of the original, based on its even, clear handwriting). Supposedly it ended up there via Béldi's wife, Erzsébet Mannsberg, a relative to the Chernels. Maybe it is due to the ornithological observations, as a member of the family, István Chernel was a famous ornithologist of his time (and the editor of the Aquila journal), just as later Gergely's son, Miklós too.

His account would not put Baedeker or Lonely Planet to shame, though. He obviously didn't have an eye neither for the Iranian landscape, nor for the milieu in general. He writes about the landscape and Kashan (where they arrived on the evening of 22 December 1915) in such detail and manner:

“We arrived to Kashan in the evening. The road was of no interest. The great, plain Kevir [the desert] to the left and some hills to the right. A large inquisitive crowd was waiting for us outside the city. Kaschan(!) is a city stretching all over and one of no interest, with the usual narrow, arched bazaars.”

However, the wartime circumstances are an excuse for him (how would you enjoy the road if you should take it fleeing from the advancing Russian army on horseback and among uncertain rumors?), as well as the fact that even if he wanted to, he could not visit the nowadays must-see places of Kashan, like the Fin Garden (on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2012) or the historical houses.

According to his account they spent 23 December in Kashan and as they had to marched on the following day, they had an early Christmas Eve there, under rather unconventional circumstances, exactly 109 years ago:

“XII. 23. We rest for a day. Napravil commanded the soldiers that today is Christmas Eve. We had to go on the next day and we could not celebrate it then. We sat together, me, the two officers (Napravil and Daskiewicz) and the two Jewish physicians and we celebrated Christmas Eve as much as we could. We ate raisin and almond and drank red wine at the light of a candle, lying on the carpet.”

There was even time for an occasional bargain earlier that day, though it turned out very soon that it was not a good deal:

“I bought from one of the Swedish officers, who was still there, a fine-looking 6-years old chestnut stallion. I wondered at the low price he asked for it, but the next day I realized why. He went on very well and tame but as soon as I got off of him, as a tiger, he attacked the other horses and kicked them where he reached them. Thus until Isfahan I could not get off and at the lodgings I had to find an empty stable and could only get off there. I cursed the Swedish many times. Otherwise, he endured fatigue better than the other horses we had.”

On 24 December they went on to Isfahan and in the evening they arrived to a caravanserai. His short description reflects the circumstances very well:

“XII. 24. At noon we departed for Isfahan. We, Napravil and I, got lost again fortunately. We departed later than the soldiers and the people showed us the shorter way because they didn't know that the others go with a wagon and that we would go with them. When we discovered our mistake, we passed through the stony wasteland and after a long fumble and stumble we reached the others in the dark at a half-collapsed caravanserai. which was full of fleeing Cossacks. They did not have a single bit of discipline and would not make place for us. We didn't even try to throw them out as they were many and the air was already rather awful in the rooms. Thus we set up our beds in a half-collapsed stable where seemingly stray dogs used to give rendez-vous to each other. But we cleaned the place and settled in well enough. What a poor Christmas Eve!”

We hope our readers will have a a richer and less adventurous Christmas.

***

I noticed it only after writing this post that the Hungarian Iranist Miklós Sárközy gave a lecture on Gergely Béldi's diary just a few weeks ago. The recording of the lecture is available online (only in Hungarian) since 21 December but I didn't have the time to watch it until the publication of this post. Thus I wrote this post without knowing it and before it became available, waiting only for the anniversary to publish the story of Gergely Béldi’s unconventional Christmas in Kashan.

It was night out there

The valley of Riu Pardu in Ogliastra, the eastern mountainous region of Sardinia is, as the locals say, an island on the island. The river runs in a deep valley between the two huge mountain ranges of the Tricoli and the Tacchi, and the pastoral villages, Gàiru, Osini, Ulassai, Jerzu, climb up on the steep slopes from the eternally shaded depths of the canyon, toward the light. For thousands of years closed off the external world, and inspired by the bizarre forms of the butte rocks of Tacchi, they populated the region with strange creatures, the evil and good spirits of darkness and light, which still live in their tales and songs.


Here, in Ulassai, in a shepherd’s family blessed with great imaginative power and quite a few artists, was born one of Sardinia’s most important modern artists, Maria Lai. She was lucky: her Italian language teacher discovered her talent, and she was able to complete high school in Rome. Then, since World War II had cut off the island from the mainland, she became acquainted with modern art during her years in Venice. Only her artistic bequest returned to Ulassai, to the former railway station established as a memorial museum. However, her pictures, statues, textiles throughout show the amorphous cliffs and deep fissures of the Sardinian mountains, their animals and shepherds, the basic experience of the contrast of light and darkness, and the stars, which are as bright here only in a very few places of the world.

The Stazione dell’Arte dedicated to Maria Lai on the hilltop, about which we are going to write soon.

The Italian mountains inspired also the manger of Bethlehem, in which the medieval imagination displays the encounter of darkness and light through the medium of religious theater, and with the motifs of the shepherds, the animals, the stars. The first Nativity manger was set up at Christmas 1223 in Greccio, in the Central Italian mountains by St. Francis, who was especially susceptible to such games, and the presepe has since become a basic genre of Italian popular art. In 2006, Maria Lai organized an exhibition in Cagliari of her presepi, made mainly in the 1960s, with the title It was night out there. The scenes, rendered in sweeping contours or collages, are surrounded by a box frame, which makes them three-dimensional. The pebbles and found objects stepping out on the edge of the box, and the similarly lapidary figures, which recall the relics of prehistoric Sardinian art, open up the compositions, and link them with the vastness of the mountains of Ogliastro.



Peppino Marotto and Coro di Neoneli: Sa Ninnia (shepherd’s lullaby)

White Christmas

A childhood dream. Freshly fallen snow, a walk on the hillside in the twilight, on the crunching snow, the light of the candelabra dissolving as the milk loaf, the sound of the snow being bumped off the branches. A dream becoming increasingly unreal with global warming. In only a few places has it become a reality. Jerusalem, for example, where Két Sheng / Gyuri captured the following scene:

“He spreads the snow like wool
and scatters the frost like ashes.”
(Ps 147:16)

The countries poor in snow, what can they do? They borrow their Christmas postcards from countries rich in snow. This is what Canada does, from where in November we received this message:

I work for a non-profit organization in Canada. I saw a beautiful picture in your blog, which I would gladly use for our Christmas postcard. Would you please give permission?

Of course.



As to why the Canadian The Centre of Israel & Jewish Affairs sends a Christmas postcard, it can be questioned only by the most nitpicky. In fact, Hanuka and Christmas exactly coincided this year. And to make ecumenism even more complete, I received this postcard exactly today, on the day of the Orthodox Christmas, from Gyuri, who received a bunch of them from the Centre as a complimentary copy. So I forward it to our readers as long as the feast lasts.

The miracle tree

Rome, Termini Railway Station