Iran - Qom and Isfahan

24 Mar 2019 . category: Travel . Comments
#Iran

After visiting the Azadi Tower, we set off for our longest day of the tour, which would have us in Isfahan by the evening, stopping in Qom, Kashan, and Abyaneh.

Qom

Qom is the religious capital of Iran, and more generally a religious center of Shi’a Islam. It’s also the site of the second most holy place in Iran, the Shrine of Fatema Ma’sumeh, the daughter and sister of the seventh and eighth Imams, respectively. It’s second only to the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, the mausoleum of the aforementioned eighth Imam. It definitely feels quite different from Tehran upon arrival: there are more men wearing traditional-looking garb with turbans, more women wearing conservative black abayas, and constant religious preaching in the central area around the mosque. This was another stop I had to ask to add to our itinerary, and I’m happy that I did. Iran is an Islamic Republic after all, and Qom really exemplifies that.

You can also tell how much the nation values the city, as there was a lot of infrasructure investment and general beauty. Though perhaps it’s just because we came from the smog-filled Tehran…

While in Qom, I was trying to come up with the closest US analogy and wasn’t really having much success. Our dominant religion is Christianity, whose historical events and people were all on other continents. If anyone reading this has any ideas, please let me know. The best I came up with was some city that has immense meaning for Mormon history?

Iranian “Beer”

Lunch this day was our first experience with Iranian “non-alcoholic beer,” or “non-alcoholic malt beverage”:

It was honestly pretty good, though the flavored versions don’t taste much like beer. Some unflavored ones we had later in the week got closer though. Note the confidence interval on the volume, I weirdly love that. Also, the label looks like it could be for any hipster micro-brewery in the US. In fact, the stylized letters remind me specifically of Magic Hat’s #9.

Kashan

In Kashan, we saw some old houses from wealthy merchants in the Qajar era and the Agha Bozorg Mosque which were all quite beautiful:

But the highlight was definitely the Sultan Amir bathhouse which had stunning inlaid tilework on the inside and a roof with this alien quality due to the number of windowed domes.

Our last stop was the Fin Garden, one of the famous Persian Gardens which are collectively a UNESCO World Heritage site. At the garden, Q got into this huge argument with the people manning the door. Apparently while the place closes at 5, the last entry is at 4:30 or something? It was a bit surprising to me, as otherwise Iran is a very polite society I believe (see ta’arof). But after about 10 minutes of verbal sparring, again just as we were about to give up, we were given entry! We needed to make it to Abyaneh before sunset, so we walked quickly through the gardens. I generally found them to be unremarkable, which is I think not an indictment of this one in particular, but the gardens more broadly. I think I’m just not the right audience for their particular sort of beauty?

Abyaneh

Our last stop of the day was at Abyaneh, a small and very old village high up in the mountains. It was basically deserted when we went, so we just walked around a bit in in the snow and slush. It’s apparently more populated/tourist during the summer months which makes sense. I’d recommend skipping this, as there was very little to see, and it was a non-trivial detour on an already very long driving day.

Isfahan

We arrived that night in Isfahan. It was a former capital of the Persian Empire, and proverbically described as “half of the world.” The city has a lot of beautiful structures leftover from its time as the capital, and is definitely a lot more picturesque than Tehran.

The main sights are centered around Naqsh-e Jahan Square, a huge area in the center of the city. These include the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque and Imam Mosque, both of which feature tremendously beautiful blue tilework (another similarity with Uzbekistan). Here I am with some of that tilework, under the watchful eye of the Ayatollahs:

There’s also the Ali Qapu palace, which has some incredible muralwork in the interior. It was the first place where we truly saw other tourists, including a group of Danish high schoolers on a school trip, I’m retroactively quite jealous! They even stopped in the palace’s music room to sing a Danish folk song together, which was beautiful. We also ran into a nicely outgoing group of Iranian schoolgirls, with whom we chatted a bit. Somewhat surprisingly, we found young women much more willing to shout hello / engage with us than young men over our week in Iran.

Finally, this area also included various signs with Quran quotes including this gem:

Other sights visited: Ali Qapu gardens and Chehel Souton Palace. The latter included our first taste of beautiful mirror work, but there is more and better to come on that front.

Talking to Clerics and Opinions of America

One of the mosques also included a chance to have “free friendly talks with clerics.” I sadly didn’t a picture, but a nearby sign proclaimed this as an effort of the “propagandizing department,” perhaps an apt translation:

This was a government supported program to paint Iran in a good light for foreigners, and perhaps to specifically humanize mullahs. The conversation was a bit awkward to start, but he was pretty personable, and I suspect had a script of sorts. He spoke about how Iran stood globally with the “disadvantaged countries of the world” against “hegemonic powers such as the US or Saudi Arabia.” They were also on the right side in the fight against Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) in Iran and Syria And he emphasized that he had no trouble with the people of America, only its leaders and government. He specifically called attention to the nuclear deal and how Trump’s withdrawal was causing problems for the country. According to him, most Iranians supported the deal. The whole conversation was a reminder that Trump’s election was particularly bad for US-Iran relations / reversed the general thawing that was happening with the West. For example, British Airways and KLM both cancelled their direct flights to Tehran after the news.

This seems like a good opportunity to talk generally about people’s opinions of America. Folks were generally very friendly, and random strangers would often come up to ask us where we were from. They were almost universally surprised to hear “America” as a response. Though I also did get some of the “No you can’t be from America, where are you really from?” which I’ve come to expect when traveling… Talking to the tour company the last day, it sounds like it’s never been particulary popular with Americans, and certainly the recent sanctions and breakdown in relations hasn’t helped much. But, people always reacted positively upon hearing America, and would shake our hands and say welcome. Obviously, this isn’t necessarily representative: it skews urban, is biased by people who would talk to a foreigner, etc. But still, the cleric’s “like the people, hate the country” position rings true to me. This was also the position offerd by our guides in North Korea. This was perfectly illustrated when we were leaving Qom. A traditionally-dressed man came up to ask where we were from, was surprised and happy to hear America, and shook our hands and said welcome. Q then started chuckling as we walked away, because right at that moment, the sermon being piped over the speakers was apparently saying down with America and Israel…

Hipster Coffee

We stopped in the afternoon for some coffee at the Moustache (Sibil) Cafe, which seemed like your standard hipster coffee shop, including eclectic wall and stylized mugs that said “filter coffee not people.” Definitely not something I expected to find in Iran:

Armenian Vank Cathedral

Iran has a sizable Armenian population, and one of our stops in Isfahan was the Vank Cathedral. It has some beautiful artwork on the walls, and also included a display regarding the Armenian genocide:

It listed of all the countries who recognize the genocide. Notably, the US is not included, though we’re just one state short of all the 50 states individually recognizing it apparently. Of course, that’s not the same thing as national recognition, which regrettably Obama did not do while president.

Zermelo-Fraenkel Chicken

As I previously mentioned, very few Western brands have made it to Iran. This notably includes fast food chains, which as far as I can tell, don’t exist. But instead, there are many local knock-offs, including ZFC, which of course stands for Zermelo-Frankel Chicken:

I found this place endlessly amusing and of course had to order something. All these fast-food restaurants in Iran seem to be the same, regardless of the exterior branding, selling pizza, burgers, and “kentucky”, which evidently means fried chicken:

To be honest, the food was pretty disappointing. Turns fried chicken is not an Iranian speciality! Also, it took nearly twenty minutes for them to prepare it, so not really a fast food experience given that we were almost the only ones waiting. For those interested in the fast food saga of Iran, stay tuned for the grand finale!

Si-o-se-pol and Evening in Isfahan

Isfahan is famous for its Si-o-se-pol, “the bridge of thirteen spans.” Before visiting, I saw these beautiful pictures of the bridge during the day and especially lit up at night:

The reality is sadly a little disappointing, as the river has since dried up, so it’s just a bridge across a barren riverbed. It does mean you can walk amongst its foundations though:

It was still nice to look at lit up in the evening though. As part of our evening wanderings, we also encountered a “living statue” type person, dressed in all gray with a paintbrush. Strangely, he was also doing jump-scares and grabbing at some of the women who posed with him, which didn’t seem to fit local customs at all… He started gesturing at Dore and me with the paintbrush, and eventually actually dabbed some gray paint onto Dore’s nose. Quite a strange way to end our time in Isfahan.

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