Persian Pictures

by Bell, Gertrude

• ISBN13: 9781843311690
• ISBN10: 1843311690
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-05-30
• Publisher: Anthem Pr

Summary

This brilliant, vivid and impressionistic series of sketches, formed during her 1892 stay in Persia, is Gertrude Bell's first published work. Infused with a distinctive orientalism,Persian Picturesis an evocative, virtuosic meditation, moving sinuously between Persia's heroic, complex, mythical past and its present decline; the public face of Tehran and the otherworldly ls"secret, mysterious life of the Eastrs", the lives of its women, its enclosed, quasi-medieval gardens; from the bustling cities to the lonely wastelands of Khorasan. Bell's documentation of Muharram the month of mourning for Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and Ramadan, display a mind finely attuned to the differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity, East and West. Persian Pictures is both travelogue and meditation, an elegiac and beautifully observed account of a spellbinding land.

Author Biography

As a scholar, historian, linguist, archaeologist, photographer, secret service agent and traveller, (1868–1926), Gertrude Bell was a hugely significant figure of her time. Her early travels were made in Europe and Persia; she made two round-the-world trips (1897–98 and 1902–03). She was instrumental in creating the new state of Iraq and as Honorary Director of Antiquities in Iraq, she established the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.

 

Dr Liora Lukitz has for several years been a research fellow at the Centre for Middle East Studies at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Introduction	ix
Preface	xvii
1. An Eastern City	1	(8)
2. The Tower of Silence	9	(4)
3. In Praise of Gardens	13	(6)
4. The King of Merchants	19	(4)
5. The Imam Hussein	23	(8)
6. The Shadow of Death	31	(8)
7. Dwellers in Tents	39	(6)
8. Three Noble Ladies	45	(8)
9. The Treasure of the King	53	(6)
10. Sheikh Hassan	59	(8)
11. A Persian Host	67	(6)
12. A Stage and a Half	73	(6)
13. A Bridle-Path	79	(8)
14. Two Palaces	87	(8)
15. The Month of Fasting	95	(6)
16. Requiescant in Pace	101	(8)
17. The City of King Prusias	109	(6)
18. Shops and Shopkeepers	115	(6)
19. A Murray of the First Century	121	(6)
20. Travelling Companions	127