Iran - Andrew Burke [159]
VISA EXTENSIONS
Passport Office (Edareh Gozannameh; 826 2025; 1st fl, Khaje Rashid Blvd; 8.30am-2.30pm Sat-Thu) The austere concrete building looks forbidding behind high green railings and guarded by armed soldiers. But friendly staff assured us that applications for visa extensions are now granted routinely.
Sights
Esther & Mordecai Tomb
This vaguely Tolkeinesque, 14th-century tomb tower (Aramgah-e Ester va Mordekhay; 252 2285; 12 Zangeneh Lane; admission by donation, typically IR10,000 & a pen; 8am-noon & 3-6pm Sun-Thu, 8am-noon Fri) was once Iran’s most important Jewish pilgrimage site. These days visitors are few and far between and some of the Hebrew inscriptions have been repainted so often by those who evidently couldn’t understand them, that they have become stylised beyond readability.
Traditionally this is considered to be the burial site of Esther (for whom a book in the Bible’s Old Testament is named) and her cousin/guardian Mordecai (who possibly wrote it). Jewish orphan Esther had married Xerxes I (Biblical King Ahasuerus) who’d ditched his first wife, Vashti, for being too much of an early feminist. Esther’s better-honed feminine wiles are later said to have saved the Jews from a massacre planned by Xerxes’ commander (and Mordecai’s enemy) Haman. With names eerily reminiscent of Babylonian gods, Esther (Ishtar?) and Mordecai (Morduk?) might be purely allegorical. Some suggest that the tower actually commemorated Jewish queen, Shushan-Dokht, who persuaded her husband, Yazdgerd I (r AD 399–420) to sanction a renewed Jewish colony at Hamadan.
The tower is mostly hidden behind a high grey metal barrier – ring the door bell (no English sign) and hopefully Rabbi Rajad will scurry out to greet you, opening the 400kg stone-slab door to the tower and telling you (in French or Farsi) to don a scull-cap (provided) before crawling into the inner tomb area. He’s an avid collector of foreign pens, which thus make an ideal tip.
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BUALI SINA
Had you studied advanced medicine in 17th-century Europe, your ‘text book’ would have been the great medical encyclopaedia, Canon Medicinae. Incredibly, this had been written 600 years earlier. Its author, remembered in the West as Avicenna, was in fact the great Iranian philosopher, physicist and poet Abu Ali Ibn Sina (AD 980–1037), ‘BuAli’ Sina for short. If you’re a fan of aromatherapy you can thank BuAli for the development of steam distillation with which essential oils are extracted. His ideas on momentum and inertia were centuries ahead of Newton’s. And (following al-Kindi and al-Farabi), his blending of Aristotle’s ideas with Persian philosophy helped inspire a golden age of Islamic scholarship. However, this philosophy, rapidly led to a polarisation of views about the man whose ego was reputedly as great as his intellect.
Born in what is today Uzbekistan, BuAli studied medicine in Bukhara where his sharp mind and photographic memory had him running rings around his teachers. Political intrigues in Bukhara meant BuAli fled westwards to Jorjan (Gonbad-e Kavus, Click here) only to arrive as Qabus, his illustrious prospective sponsor, dropped dead. Initially Buali proved luckier in Hamadan, where he successfully treated the ailments of the ruling emir and was promoted to vizier. However, when his patron died, Avicenna was thrown into prison for corresponding with Abu Jafar, a rival ruler based in Esfahan. Perhaps the suspicions were true. Four months later the Esfahanis stormed Hamadan releasing BuAli who thereupon worked with Abu Jafar for the rest of his life, coincidentally dying while on a return trip to Hamadan some 14 years later.
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OTHER MAUSOLEA & TOMB TOWERS
Hamadan’s icon