TRAVEL | IRAN
Half Of The World
The city of Isfahan
The sun sat low when we entered Isfahan, casting a warm yellow light. We stopped at a spot along the bank of the Zayandeh River, a waterway that bisects the city.
“Cross that bridge and take your time. I will drive around and meet you on the other side,” our guide shouted and drove off.
The river we now stood next to separated the dominantly Muslim part on the north from the Zoroastrian and Armenian neighborhoods on the south. In front of us was the Khaju Bridge, a pedestrian walkway spanning the river. It was constructed in its current form in 1650 CE under Shah Abbas II, the seventh ruler of the Safavid Dynasty.
The Zayandeh River was silent. The stairs and platforms, typically slick with cascading water, were dusty and bone dry. This was not only because there is little rain in October, the month we visited. Iran is facing a decades-long drought, coupled with a poorly managed national water resource plan. Think the bathtub rings at Lake Powell and the trickle that used to be the Colorado River as it crosses into Mexico.
These depressing thoughts of global water scarcity were in my head as I walked along the lower tier of this marvelous pedestrian walkway. Some archways were filled with people, most standing or sitting on benches. Khaju Bridge is traditionally a place for singing, the acoustics being optimal inside the arches.
That is another of the many ironies in this country. Music of anything other than intoned verses of the Qu’ran is discouraged in Iran, and women are supposedly forbidden from singing at all. But Khaju Bridge is given a pass because it has simply always been the place for music. Here, the romantic Persian character bursts out of hiding and flies free among the polished medieval stone blocks and rapt onlookers.
I heard some of the most soulful music under these arches. Some songs were lively sing-alongs with clapping. Others were solo performances, sung in a sorrowful, yodeling cadence. No one had an instrument, though I did see a few young musicians bringing guitars to play later.
It set the tone of Isfahan for me, in my first hour of being there. Everything we would see had a complex and long history, as much as we had already witnessed in Yazd and Shiraz. The city can trace its roots a long way back, likely emerging as a sizable settlement during the Elam period (2,700–1,600 BCE).
In its heyday, Isfahan was one of the largest cities in the world. It was watered by a major river, which hugs the northeast edge of the Zagros mountain range. Ancient historians compared it to Rome or Athens. It may well have been more ethnically and religiously diverse than either, given how it straddles the ancient world’s old East/West divide. Its prime importance as a cultural and trading center stretched from Achaemenid times up through the 18th century, spanning a thousand years.
For this reason, it was once called ‘Half of the World,’ and the phrase became a Persian proverb: Isfahan nasf-e jahan.
We visited the Jolfa district on the south side of the river. This is the Armenian quarter, one of the largest such concentrations of expatriate Armenians in the world. They were forcibly moved here from their homeland during Safavid times when Iran’s borders encompassed everything south of the Caucasus Mountains. They fared very well compared with most displaced populations, becoming integral to the lucrative silk trade. This economy reigned supreme up until the diversion of goods through the Suez Canal starting in 1869.
In the Jolfa district, the dress code for women is more relaxed, as much of the population is Orthodox Christian. Hair hung down freely amongst the clusters of young women shopping on market street.
It is also home to 27 Orthodox churches, but to our daughter’s great relief, we stepped into only one, called Vank Church.
Except for the six-sided cones topping some of the structures, the overall layout did not look overwhelmingly like churches I have seen in Armenia. Instead, they reflected a style combination of a church and a mosque.
We hit the streets at dawn the following day to see Shah Square before it got busy. This plaza, renamed Naqsh-e Jahan Square after the 1979 revolution, is and has been the heart of Isfahan for many centuries.
Shah Abbas, the aforementioned Safavid ruler, initiated a massive building project in 1598 CE when he moved the Persian capital here. Shah Square was conceived as a single area that would accommodate and connect the dynasty’s military, royal, and merchant classes.
The square is 500 by 170 meters, surrounded by mosques, a palace, and hundreds of merchant stalls. The flat central area was used for festivals, military parades, and polo matches.
At the south end of the square is Shah Mosque.
Due to the constraints on the land that could be developed as Shah Square, it could not be aligned with the direction to Mecca. Hence, Shah Mosque had to be constructed in two parts. The entranceway from the square is in one orientation, and the inner mosque is at an angle to that.
A patch of black floor tiles was in the center of the structure. Standing here, it was supposedly possible to produce a seven-fold echo. My daughter stood on the tiles and made chimpanzee noises, but I could only distinguish about five echoes.
We were accosted, in perfect English, by a merchant while walking past the market stalls of Shah Square. I politely refused to step into his store, knowing how this usually plays out in other parts of the Middle East. He, of course, had Persian carpets for sale, which he would pack up and ship to our address. No muss, no fuss. I’ve no doubt they were beautiful carpets.
I protested. “We are from the United States. How would you be able to do that? There is an embargo on the importation of Iranian goods.”
He passed me his card. “We have ways. It is really not a problem.”
A few minutes from Shah Mosque, on another side of the plaza, is Lutfullah Mosque. This place of worship was built exclusively for Shah Abbas and his family in 1602 CE. Like the Shah Mosque, it had to be angled toward Mecca. The entrance hallway bends awkwardly away from the plaza to achieve this.
Shah Abbas needed a place to receive dignitaries and survey his magnificent square. To this end, the Ali Qapu Palace was constructed.
The palace is small but with six floors, giving the top floors a commanding view. It also had an unprecidented feature for the time, a functioning water fountain on the third floor (it no longer works). One can only imagine what the interior artwork looked like originally when it was accented with gold leaf.
Ali Qapu Palace links with Chehel Sotoun Palace, yet another residence used exclusively by the Shah. This palace’s artwork and attention to detail were similar to the other structures. Chehel Sotoun literally means ‘forty columns’, though there are only twenty. This could have been a poetic reference to the reflection of those columns off the pond in front of it, or may allude to the commonly accepted practice of equating the number forty with ‘a large number of things’.
Much of the artwork of Chehel Sotoun Palace recounts important moments of Safavid history. Naturally, it is selective, presenting only events that brought glory and importance to the dynasty and the kingdom.
The north end of Shah Square connects with the Isfahan Bazaar, a warren of covered passages and market stalls that winds for a kilometer through even older parts of the city.
I can’t say our walk through the bazaar was much different than in Shiraz, Yazd, or any of the cities we visited later. However, I can say that walking through these vibrant marketplaces is always like entering a trance, the colors, smells, and sounds overwhelming the senses. At times, pedestrians, heavily laden carts, and motorbikes pressed in and we became just water molecules in a river. It was alarmingly easy to get lost.
We ducked upstairs along a seemingly random alley to a restaurant I’m sure I would never be able to locate again if my life depended on it. It was filled with all manner of ceramic, metal, and glass decor.
The Jameh Mosque of Isfahan lies at the northern end of the bazaar. It is one of the most culturally significant mosques in Iran. The initial structure was built in 771 CE during Abbasid times. Like many mosques of that age, it was probably built over a Sassanian fire temple. It underwent many revisions during the Buyid, Seljuk, Ilkhanid, and Safavid dynasties. Though the main entrance (evan) is Safavid, the dome behind it is in Seljuk style.
The inclusion of Ilkhanid modifications is an interesting one because they were the product of the Mongol invasions that started in the 13th century. Though the Mongol occupiers slaughtered millions of people in Iran who did not immediately submit to the hegemony of Genghis Khan, they would eventually convert and start their own Islamic dynasty.
The detail I found compelling about this mosque was the size of the muqarnas. These are the scoop-shaped indentions under the central arch photographed above. They are tough to construct, involving a great deal of mathematical precision. The muqarnas in this mosque are the largest in the world.
On our second and last night in Isfahan, I went out alone after dinner and walked random streets for a few hours. Like most places in the Middle East, the sidewalks and parks come alive with people after dark, and most stores are open for business. Much effort had gone into colorful street lighting, and the roads were clean of refuse. I sat on a bench in Shah Square while two mothers next to me chatted and watched their children play on the flagstones. I couldn’t translate what reprimands they occasionally shouted to their kids, but I knew the troublemaker was named Mohammad.
I wanted more days to experience Isfahan. The city felt relaxed, open, and with an astounding density of cultural history. Burrowing straight down into the ground, one could imagine the layers of flattened buildings, homes, human skeletons, and artifacts going back to the beginnings of recorded history. And likely well beyond that, to the Paleolithic.
But the vagaries of our particular moment of history, where Iran and my country are policial enemies, precluded staying in places longer than our tour itinerary specified. I’m just thankful we got a brief taste of this beautiful city.
For the other articles I’ve written about my family’s 2022 trip to Iran, please read:
Thank you for reading! Please check my profile for other travel-related articles at Brad Yonaka.