This article explores the condition and reception of
Varamin’s architectural heritage from the Ilkhanid period
(1256–1353) during the late nineteenth century. I use two
relatively untapped sources: the photographs of French
traveler Jane Dieulafoy (1851–1916) and the account of
Qajar statesman Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh (1843–96). Reading
these sources in tandem paints a robust picture of Varamin
when it was becoming known for luster tilework and its
Emamzadeh Yahya tomb complex was being steadily plundered.
While our travelers captured a seminal moment in Varamin’s
history, this study ultimately moves beyond their frames
and encourages a present-day appreciation of the city’s
still-standing monuments.
Chicago
Keelan Overton, “Jane Dieulafoy in Varamin: The Emamzadeh
Yahya through a Nineteenth-Century Lens,”
Getty Research Journal, no. 19 (2024),
https://doi.org/10.59491/BPZM5498.
MLA
Overton, Keelan. “Jane Dieulafoy in Varamin: The Emamzadeh
Yahya through a Nineteenth-Century Lens.”
Getty Research Journal, no. 19, 2024,
https://doi.org/10.59491/BPZM5498.
A highlight of the exhibition
Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World held in
2022 at the Getty Villa was two panels of colorful glazed
bricks from the palace of Darius I (r. 522–486 BCE) at Susa.
Both panels were borrowed from the Musée du Louvre, and the
example depicting a royal archer ended up in Paris because of
the photographer and writer Jane Dieulafoy (1851–1916).1
In 1881–82, Jane and her husband, Marcel, spent a year
traveling around Iran, and in 1884, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar
(r. 1848–96) granted them permission to excavate Susa, which
unfolded over two seasons in 1885–86.2
Wooden crates filled with glazed bricks were soon transported
to Paris and entered the Louvre’s Department of Oriental
Antiquities, at whose 1888 inauguration Jane received the
cross of the Légion d’Honneur.3
While Susa bricks flooded the Louvre, another form of Persian
architectural revetment steadily entered French collections.
Luster tiles dating to the first half of the thirteenth
century and the Ilkhanid period (1256–1353) were also sourced
from archaeological excavations but more commonly were taken
off the walls of still-standing buildings. One such site was
the Emamzadeh Yahya (ca. 1260–1307) at Varamin, a tomb complex
that the Dieulafoys visited just two months into their trip.
This article explores Jane Dieulafoy’s photographic
documentation of the Emamzadeh Yahya and Varamin’s other
historical monuments during the couple’s weeklong stay in the
village in June 1881. To date, scholars of Iran have relied
heavily on the woodcut prints after Dieulafoy’s photographs
reproduced in her well-known travelogue
La Perse, la Chaldée et la Susiane: Relation de voyage
contenant 336 gravures sur bois d’après les photographies de
l’auteur et deux cortes
(1887).4
In French photography circles, her photographs were largely
presumed lost until their inclusion in the 2015–16 exhibition
Qui a peur des femmes photographes? 1839–1919 (Who is
afraid of women photographers? 1839–1919) at the Musée de
l’Orangerie.5
Thanks to recent (2021) digitization efforts at the Institut
National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), Dieulafoy’s photographs
can now be studied on the pages of her six personal
photography albums.6
The result is a seismic shift in her work’s viability as a
source for many fields of Iranian studies, for her photographs
omit the creative liberties of the later woodcuts and often
outnumber what was reproduced in the travelogue.7
The Varamin section of La Perse features ten prints,
for example, whereas “Perse 1” (1881) preserves twenty-eight
photographs, meaning nearly triple the archive.8
While this essay focuses on Dieulafoy’s photographs of
Varamin, it is anticipated that pre-Islamicists will conduct
comparable work on Susa and specialists of Orientalist
photography will reevaluate Dieulafoy’s depictions of women.
One of the best known and most insidious prints in
La Perse depicts a half-dressed “Ziba Khanoum,” an
elite woman of Isfahan. The only known comparable photograph
taken by Dieulafoy shows the subject fully dressed and calls
into question any use of the phrase “after the photographs”
(après les photographies).9
Bearing in mind that Dieulafoy was traveling in Iran for the
first time in 1881, had no formal training or expertise in
Iranian studies or Persian art, and retained many of the
biases of European (farangi) travelers of the day, I
explore her photographs of Varamin (June 1881) in relation to
the slightly earlier Persian account (December 1876) of
Mohammad Hasan Khan Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh (1843–96), a Qajar
historian and favorite dragoman of Naser al-Din Shah.10
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh accompanied the shah on his internal
travels and three European tours (1873, 1878, and 1889) and
was a prolific writer.11
Early on his career, during the 1870s, he served as the head
of the state press office and directed the government
newspapers Ruznameh-ye Iran and
Ruznameh-ye Dowlati. His account of Varamin—“Tarikh
va Joghrafia-ye Varamin (ya Shekar-e Masileh)” (The history
and geography of Varamin, or hunting Masileh)—was originally
published in Ruznameh-ye Iran on 7 Dhu al-Hijjah 1293
AH/23 December 1876, just twelve days after he left Varamin.
It was recently included in a collection of his lesser-known
works—the Rasaʾel-e Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh—and is
therefore relatively untapped as a resource, like Dieulafoy’s
photographs.12
Reading Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh and Dieulafoy in tandem paints a
robust picture of Varamin at precisely the moment when it was
becoming known for its luster tilework (Persian:
zarrinfam; French:
faïences à reflets métalliques), a twice-fired
ceramic technique incorporating metallic oxides that reached
the height of its production between 1180 and 1350. This
sparkling revetment once covered the interior of the tomb of
Emamzadeh Yahya but was steadily stolen during the second half
of the nineteenth century and exported to European cities such
as Paris and London. Both Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh and Dieulafoy
visited the tomb during this critical period, but their
accounts differ dramatically in their expertise, emphases, and
value. While the Qajar historian excelled in geographical
analysis, recording measurements, and reading epigraphy, the
French traveler took a series of unmatched photographs,
including the best view of the complex before its renovation
and the only known image of its exceptional luster mihrab in
situ. These photographs have not only advanced scholarly
understanding of the living sacred complex but also prompted a
reevaluation of the display of the tomb’s tiles in more than
forty museums worldwide.13
Introduction to Jane Dieulafoy: The Photography Album “Perse
1” and Travelogue La Perse
The Dieulafoys’ first visit to what they called “La Perse, la
Chaldée et la Susiane” (corresponding to Iran, southern Iraq,
and Susa) lasted from February 1881 to February 1882 and took
them from Azerbaijan in the northwest to Fars in the
south.14
The pair had traveled previously in Spain, Morocco, and Egypt,
and Marcel had served as the architect in charge of historical
monuments in Toulouse (1871–79). They carried a letter from
the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs but were effectively on
their own. In advance of the trip, Jane Dieulafoy studied
photography in Paris, and her equipment included cameras,
chemicals, albumen papers, and glass plate negatives, all
carried by horse across rugged terrain.15
Gelatin dry plates were in wide circulation by 1880, and
Dieulafoy could store these negatives and develop them via
contact printing when it suited. In addition to being a
budding photographer, Dieulafoy was an avid writer, and like
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, she first published her account of
Varamin in a newspaper, in this case the January 1883 issue of
Le tour du monde.16
She continued to publish in Le tour through 1886 and
ultimately compiled these articles into her better-known and
more exclusive La Perse.
While Dieulafoy’s Le tour articles were accessible to
France’s general public and La Perse to privileged
elites, her photographs remained largely hidden from view
until INHA’s recent release of her six albums (Perse 1–6)
cumulatively containing more than nine hundred
photographs.17
This essay focuses exclusively on “Perse 1,” which covers the
first few months of the trip of 1881–82: Marand (April),
Tabriz, Soltaniyya, Qazvin, Tehran (June), Varamin, back to
Tehran, Saveh (July), Qom, Kashan (August), and Isfahan, which
continues into the next album. “Perse 1” is a chronological
memento of the couple’s journey and distinguished by its
personal, dialectical, and working nature and dynamic mixing
of landscapes, buildings, and human subjects (fig. 1). Most of the prints are small (around 6.35 × 10.16
centimeters) and lack captions and borders, save for the
vignettes of Dieulafoy’s wide lens. There are often two to
four prints mounted on a page in a scrapbook manner, and she
sometimes placed two similar prints side by side, or even two
prints from the same negative.18
She stitched together her panoramas, and some seemingly
cohesive prints are in fact collages.19
The majority of prints in “Perse 1” are Dieulafoy’s
photographs, but the album also includes some professional
images that she collected. Her portraits of the shah’s nieces
and nephews, which he requested she take after their brief
audience on 7 June 1881, were mounted across from two
professional photographs of Qajar officials.20
The page before contains four professional photographs of
Naser al-Din Shah.21
The small red D impressed on the prints is therefore
indicative of her ownership, not necessarily her authorship.
Dieulafoy’s modus operandi was to document every step of the
journey, and as such, her photographs vary in quality. A
comparison of her approach to the congregational mosque (masjed-e jameʿ) of Qazvin, one of the oldest mosques of Iran, to that of
the Qajar court photographer ʿAbdollah Mirza Qajar (1850–1909)
is illuminating. This was Dieulafoy’s first substantive
experience of a living congregational mosque in Iran, and she
took seven photographs of the site. The north
ayvan (vaulted space with an arched opening on one
side) topped by two minarets and facing the domed sanctuary on
the south was selected as the representative view in her
travelogue, but the woodcut altered and enhanced the
photograph in several ways.22
Two figures were added to the foreground, and areas of deep
shadow were lightened. ʿAbdollah Qajar positioned his camera
in the same area looking toward the north portal, but the
comparisons end there. His extremely crisp and evenly lit
image captures many features lost in Dieulafoy’s shadows and
is one of the most beautiful nineteenth-century photographs of
the mosque.23
Dieulafoy’s preference for quantity over quality exemplifies
her approach to architectural photography. One of the most
famous monuments photographed by her and many others was the
tomb of the Ilkhanid ruler Oljaytu (r. 1304–17) at Soltaniyya.
“Perse 1” includes eight photographs of the tomb across three
pages, proceeding from general views, to details of the
exterior, to a single view of the interior.24
In the last, she stood in the upper story and looked down
toward a tiny figure by the entrance, unobstructed by the
scaffolding that currently engulfs the space. The GRI’s album
of photographs by the Italian colonel Luigi Pesce includes a
single general view of the ruler’s tomb mounted in a
shimmering border and identified by a misleading caption:
“Grande Moschea in ruina a Sultanie” (Great mosque in ruins at
Soltaniyya).25
This monumental view was included in many formal albums of the
day, many of which were presented as gifts.26
In her personal album, Dieulafoy had no interest in beautiful
borders and captions, often went beyond the singular facade
shot, and included her local interlocutors.27
While Dieulafoy’s architectural photographs are often
refreshing to the art historian for their scope, detail, and
generally unfiltered nature, the text of her later travelogue
can pose problems. She sometimes made historical errors, but
more problematic is her bias and stereotyping, including
tirades against mollahs and superstition, and a frequent use
of the words fanaticism and infidels.28
Much of La Perse is sprinkled with Dieulafoy’s
encounters with Islam and her struggles to gain access into
religious sites, and her early visit to Qazvin (“Kazbin,”
10–13 May) is a case in point. The couple wanted to visit the
aforementioned congregational mosque, but they were refused
entry, so they sought an audience with the governor, the
brother of the shah.29
When they asked for his assistance, he replied that he had no
authority in the matter and had not visited the mosque in
months. The next day, the guardian of the city’s grand hotel
offered to take the couple into the mosque between prayers.
Their “protector” (protecteur) was successful, and
the couple spent more than an hour and a half walking through
the building, she taking her seven photographs.
In Qazvin, Dieulafoy was also introduced to Twelver Shi'ism,
the majority form of Islam practiced in Iran that hinges on
devotion to the Prophet Mohammad’s bloodline and considers the
Twelve Imams his rightful successors. She first observed a
passion play (taʿziyeh) in the street recreating the
martyrdom of Imam Hossein (626–80), the third Imam, at
Karbala. She took two photographs, and one was reproduced in
La Perse.30
She then proceeded to the Emamzadeh Shahzadeh Hossein
(975–1008 AH/1568–1600), the tomb complex of a young son of
Imam Reza (766–818), the eighth Imam (the term
emamzadeh refers to a descendant of one of the Twelve
Imams and also the tomb of such a person). The tomb is set in
a walled courtyard that doubles as a cemetery, and Dieulafoy
observed women chatting and eating sweets, mourning at the
graves of loved ones, and donning the chador (a loose cloth,
often black, engulfing the body). This scene was captured in
her general view of the tomb, which must have been taken from
atop the entrance portal (see fig. 1,
right page).31
Dieulafoy was surprised when a cleric invited her into the
tomb, and what follows in La Perse is her description
of pilgrimage (ziyarat), or pious visitation. The
most sacred element of any Iranian emamzadeh past or
present is the cenotaph of the deceased, and this example was
enclosed in a three-dimensional pierced screen
(zarih). Dieulafoy observed pilgrims tying pieces of
cloth to the screen, tapping their foreheads against its
corner bosses, and circumambulating it three times. The tomb’s
mihrab was covered by a piece of cloth lifted to reveal a
painting of a man whom she presumed to be the Prophet
Mohammad. She concluded, “It is very rare to find him in a
mosque, the Muslim religion prohibiting the reproduction of
the human figure.”32
This statement underscores Dieulafoy’s amateurism on two
levels. First, the space in question was/is most accurately
defined not as a mosque but as a tomb—many of which have
mihrabs—and specifically an emamzadeh, a tomb of a
descendant of one of the Twelve Imams. Second, there is no
outright prohibition against figural imagery in Islam, and in
certain times and places, religious subjects were, and still
are, depicted in figural form.33
Portraits of the Twelve Imams were especially common in Qajar
Iran (Twelver Shi'ism being the state religion since 1501),
and it is more likely that the painting in the mihrab
portrayed one of the Imams, although portraits of the Prophet
are known in Iranian tombs.34
At the end of her visit, Dieulafoy was invited to sit down
with a mojtahed (senior theologian), and his
education would fill over three pages of
La Perse.35
Reading and Seeing Varamin: Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh and Jane
Dieulafoy
During the Ilkhanid period, Varamin emerged as an important
provincial capital and center of trade, scholarship, and
Twelver Shi'ism.36
By the Qajar period, the once thriving medieval city had
reverted to an agricultural village, but its proximity to
Tehran ensured a steady stream of visitation. Among the most
important early visitors were Russian consul Alexander
Chodzko, who visited in April 1835, and the Qajar statesman
ʿAliqoli Mirza Eʿtezad al-Saltaneh, who took part in a royal
delegation in January 1863.37
During the 1860s and 1870s, Qajar court photographers like the
aforementioned ʿAbdollah Qajar documented a variety of
expeditions, and it is likely that the 1863 (Eʿtezad
al-Saltaneh) and 1876 (Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh) visits to Varamin
could have included a photographer.38
In the current absence of Qajar court photography of the
village, Dieulafoy’s photographs fill a significant gap while
visualizing many details described by Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh,
especially epigraphy.39
Their combined archive is critical to the art historian,
because it illuminates the conditions of Varamin’s monuments
before many were radically transformed.
Nineteenth-century Varamin was strategically located between
the Qajar capital of Tehran to the north and one of the
court’s favorite hunting grounds—Masileh—in the Great Salt
Desert (Dasht-e Kavir) to the south.40
The first major destination on the road south from Tehran was
Rayy, one of the oldest cites of Iran and home to the
twelfth-century Toghrol Tower, which was photographed twice by
Dieulafoy and opens the chapter in question in
La Perse.41
The Dieulafoys passed by several Zoroastrian cemeteries (dakhmeh,
or “tower of silence”), and she also described the gold dome
of the Shrine of ʿAbdolazem (ʿAbd al-ʿAzem al-Hasani), the
most significant holy site near the capital.42
When they were about three “farsakhs” (farsangs, one
unit of which is equal to about four miles) from Tehran, the
landscape changed dramatically, and lines of “kanots” (qanats,
or underground water channels) descended into plains yellowed
by wheat and filled with the sounds of harvesting, dogs,
horses, and cicadas.43
The Dieulafoys spent an entire week in Varamin (June 15–21),
and it left a sizeable impression on Jane, resulting in
twenty-eight photographs in her personal album and ten
woodcuts in her published travelogue. The couple was hosted by
the head of the village (kadkhoda), thanks to the
arrangements of Joseph-Désiré Tholozan, Naser al-Din Shah’s
physician. The kadkhoda’s house included a courtyard
with a talar (porch) and served as the venue for the
local court. It was from the rooftop of this house that
Dieulafoy took her general view of Varamin before watching the
sky turn purple as a “violent” sandstorm approached from the
desert (fig. 2a, upper left;
fig. 2b).44
In the foreground are the village’s mudbrick houses, and in
the background is the tomb tower of ʿAlaoddin (ʿAlaʾ al-Din,
688 AH/1289).
The farmers of Varamin cultivated wheat and opium poppy, and
the intense June heat dictated the daily schedule. On market
day in the main square, Dieulafoy observed the cattle market
and some visiting tribes, including Turkomans from Astarabad,
near the Caspian Sea.45
Her daily routine included early morning gallops to monuments,
midday naps, and delicious meals prepared by the
kadkhoda’s cook. She concluded, “Life is very gentle
in Varamin,” which reflected the privilege of a temporary
visitor.46
At the time, Iran was recovering from the great famine of
1870–71 and several cholera outbreaks.
Turning now to Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, it was a hunting
expedition to Masileh that led the Qajar historian to Varamin
in December 1876. The royal procession departed Tehran on 23
Dhu al-Qaʿdah 1293 AH/9 December 1876, and made several stops
along the way, including lunch in a recently restored garden
in Daulatabad and the evening in Firuzabad, four
farsang (about sixteen miles) from Varamin.47
As is typical of a Qajar insider and geographer, Eʿtemad
al-Saltaneh provides a long list of the crown
(khaliseh) and private (melk) lands along
the route, which reads as a who’s who of the court.48
He describes Varamin as one of the oldest cities of Iran but
now just “a big village” (qarieh-ye bozorgi) with a population
of about a thousand, including Bakhtiari, Ardestani, Shirazi,
and Kangarlu tribes.49
He then launches into an architectural survey of seven
monuments visited during his relatively quick two-day visit.
He begins with Varamin’s oldest and largest site: the central
qaʿleh (citadel), or Narenj Qaʿleh. The citadel’s
massive scale and sloping walls were first memorialized in a
wash painting of 1848 by French artist Jules Laurens, but
Dieulafoy’s photograph is a far sharper record (fig. 3a, upper left; fig. 3b).50
Its importance is amplified by the fact that the citadel is
now completely lost.
ExpandExpandFigs. 3a, 3b. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916). The
fourth spread of Varamin photographs in Dieulafoy’s
photography album “Perse 1,” June 1881, pp. 62–63. On the
left page is the citadel (qaʿleh); a detail of
the interior of the domed sanctuary of the congregational
mosque; and the cattle market. On the right are three
views of the tomb tower of ʿAlaoddin. Albumen silver
prints from gelatin glass negatives (dry plates). Paris,
Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, 4
Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh describes four monuments in cardinal
relation to the citadel: the congregational mosque to the
south (Masjed-e Jameʿ); a ruined mosque (Masjed-e Sharif, 707
AH/1307) and the tomb of Kokaboddin (Emamzadeh Kokaboddin) to
the west; a ruined mosque (899 AH/1493–94) and the tomb of
Fathollah (Emamzadeh Seyyed Fathollah) to the north; and the
tomb of Shah Hossein (Emamzadeh Shah Hossein) to the east (fig. 4).51
He also devotes considerable attention to the tomb tower of
ʿAlaoddin closest to the village in the north (see
fig. 2a, upper left) and the
Emamzadeh Yahya to the distant southeast. As he leaves Varamin
for Masileh, he describes the outlying qaʿlehs and
references his separate account of Qaʿleh Iraj, the massive
citadel to the northeast.52
ExpandFig. 4. —The architectural monuments of Varamin observed by
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh in 1876.
The citadel (qaʿleh), represented through dashed
lines, is now lost, but the surrounding sites (ca.
1260–1490) all stand to various degrees. Drawing by Kanika
Kalra.
Built between 722–26 AH/1322–26, the congregational mosque was
and is Varamin’s largest and most significant Islamic
monument.53
It once sat at the heart of the medieval city, but by the time
of Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh’s visit of 1876, this southern area was
completely ruined (“beh koli kharab”), and settlement had
moved to the north.54
Dieulafoy’s photographs capture the mosque in an empty field
(see fig. 2a), and the west side of
the courtyard is completely lost, which Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh
attributes to a flood.55
In its original configuration, the mosque included a
monumental entrance portal leading into a courtyard with four
ayvans, the southern one leading into the domed qibla
sanctuary (see fig. 2b, right). The
Varamin mosque is the only surviving congregational mosque
from the Ilkhanid period in the classic four-ayvan
plan.
One of the strengths of Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh’s account is his
careful analysis of architectural epigraphy, which required
the reading of Persian and Arabic (mostly Qur'anic)
inscriptions written in a variety of calligraphic scripts and
media.56
At the mosque, he began with the tiled foundation inscription
on the entrance portal, which recorded the name of the patron
Mohammad b. Mohammad b. Mansur al-Quhadi and the date of AH
722/1322 in three dense lines of turquoise
sols (thuluth) on a dark-blue ground.57
Dieulafoy captured a glimpse of this inscription in her
general view of the portal (fig. 5,
left), and she also photographed the beginning of the
elaborate band of knotted Kufic below (see
fig. 2b, left).58
Her images are significant, for only a fraction of the
foundation inscription remains today, and the beginning of the
Kufic band is now entirely gone.59
ExpandFig. 5. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916).
Views of the Congregational Mosque of Varamin (Masjed-e
Jameʿ, 722–26 AH/1322–26) from Dieulafoy’s photography
album “Perse 1,” June 1881, p. 58. At left is a general
view of the mosque’s entrance ayvan; at right is
a detail of the ayvan leading into the domed
qibla sanctuary. Albumen silver prints from gelatin glass
negatives (dry plates). Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut
National d’Histoire de l’Art, 4 Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh also identified the stucco (gach)
inscription on the ayvan leading into the domed
sanctuary as verse 9 of chapter (sura) 62 of the Qur'an,
appropriately concerning the Friday prayer.60
Dieulafoy photographed both the beginning (see
fig. 5, right) and middle of the
inscription, which still survives.61
Inside the domed sanctuary, Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh identified the
stucco inscription wrapping the upper walls as the first seven
verses of sura 62, a common selection, and Dieulafoy left us
three details (see fig. 3a, upper
right).62
She also photographed the exquisitely carved stucco mihrab,
but instead of capturing the full niche, she cropped out its
lower half, which had a gaping hole.63
A final photograph of the mosque deserves mention because it
captures Dieulafoy herself leaning against a wall.64
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh turns next to the tomb tower of ʿAlaoddin.
He identifies the Kufic inscription wrapping the top of the
tower as the Throne Verse (Ayat al-Kursi, Qur'an 2:255) but
neglects to mention the detailed foundation inscription naming
the deceased and dated 688 AH/1289–90.65
The patron, Fakhroddin Hasan (Fakhr al-Din, d. 1308), was the
local ruler (malek) of the province including Rayy
and Varamin and enjoyed an excellent reputation in Ilkhanid
circles. He built the tomb for his father ʿAlaoddin and would
soon patronize the Emamzadeh Yahya. Had Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh
read the foundation inscription, he would not have speculated
about the deceased’s identity, but when looking at Dieulafoy’s
three photographs (see fig. 3b), we
can appreciate the challenge of reading an inscription that
was not only located high up the tower but also rendered in an
almost illegible script weaving in and out of its thirty-two
flanges. It was only in the early twentieth century that the
foundation inscription was recorded, providing the basis for
Sheila Blair’s recent analysis.66
To the east of the citadel was a tall building in ruins
(makhrubeh) said to be the tomb of Shah Hossein.67
A tiled mihrab was one of the remains (baqi) of the
adjacent mosque, and Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh identifies its
inscription as al-Sakinah (Tranquility), in reference
to Qur'an 48:4.68
In his book of 1955, which recorded his visits of 1939 and
1943, American art historian Donald Wilber described the
mihrab as enclosed in a new prayer hall and referred back to
Dieulafoy’s two “drawings” of the site in La Perse.69
In “Perse 1,” she mounted her three original photographs on a
single page (fig. 6). On the left are
two views of the octagonal tomb tower. The roof is missing and
populated by birds’ nests, but we can still discern the fine
brickwork. On the right is the mihrab described above and one
of Dieulafoy’s most arresting photographs: A man leans against
the inside of the niche, engulfed by the hood above; a mule
stands to the right; and a small child sits precariously on
the high wall behind, next to other onlookers. The mihrab’s
massive muqarnas hood recalls Seljuk Anatolian examples, and
it is framed by a border of inscribed square tiles, only the
top row of which is intact.70
When zooming in on Dieulafoy’s sharp photograph, the viewer
can see the word al-sakinah on the first surviving
tile on the upper right. The cropped and simplified woodcut in
La Perse is a poor substitute but would have a
lasting legacy in Varamin, as I will discuss below.71
ExpandFig. 6. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916).
Views of the Emamzadeh Shah Hossein (early 1300s) at
Varamin from Dieulafoy’s photography album “Perse 1,” June
1881, p. 64. Albumen silver prints from gelatin glass
negatives (dry plates). Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut
National d’Histoire de l’Art, 4 Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.
When Wilber visited the Emamzadeh Shah Hossein about sixty
years later, he encountered a very different building. The
tomb was no longer an elongated tower but had been shortened
by half and topped by a new low dome. Wilber took five
photographs of the mihrab, including details of its elaborate
strapwork, but by this time the inscribed tiles documented by
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh and Dieulafoy were mostly gone.72
Today, the site has fared the worst of Varamin’s Ilkhanid
monuments. A report published in 2016 describes the
encroachment of new construction and the destruction of
historical features, and the mihrab is below ground level and
screened by a metal frame.73
“The Most Celebrated Building of the World”: The Emamzadeh
Yahya in the Field
The Emamzadeh Yahya was the farthest site from both the
medieval city of Varamin (by the congregational mosque) and
the nineteenth-century village (by the tomb tower of
ʿAlaoddin), but it nonetheless received the most attention and
praise from our travelers (see fig. 4).
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh concluded, “Due to the prestige of its
tilework, we can say that it is the most celebrated [lit.
first] building of the world.”74
Dieulafoy described it as “one of the most interesting
monuments in the country” and further maintained: “It is not
possible to find enamels more pure and more brilliant than
those of the Emamzadeh Yahya.”75
They were both referring to the tomb’s luster tilework, which
comprised the cenotaph, mihrab, and dado.
All of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s luster revetment was
incrementally stripped from the tomb between the 1870s and
1898 and primarily exported abroad. The mihrab signed by ʿAli
b. Mohammad b. Abi Taher, dated Shaʿban 663 AH/May 1265 and
measuring 3.84 by 2.29 meters (12.61 × 7.5 feet), is preserved
in the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design
in Honolulu.76
The only portion of the dispersed cenotaph that has been
identified to date is a four-tiled panel in the State
Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg that names the deceased
(“the wise Imam, Yahya”) and is signed by Yusof b. ʿAli b.
Mohammad b. Abi Taher, son of the maker of the mihrab, and
dated 10 Moharram 705 AH/2 August 1305 (fig. 7).77
This enormous panel measuring .87 by 2.21 meters (2.85 × 7.25
feet) rested on top of the cenotaph and would have been framed
by a series of borders, for a total upper surface of at least
.91 by 2.44 meters (around 3 × 8 feet). Some comparable
examples include shallow holes in the upper corners that might
have held ritual objects and liquids.78
The many stars and crosses attributed to the tomb’s dado are
preserved in at least forty museums worldwide, only one of
which is in Iran.79
They are distinguished by their size (around 30 centimeters in
diameter), a palette of luster and white alone, and a
perimeter of Qur'anic verses sometimes dated between 660–61
AH/1262–63 (see fig. 7).80
ExpandFig. 7. —Luster tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin on
display in the renovated Iran galleries of the State
Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, September
2022.Middle: top panel of the cenotaph naming “the
Imam, Yahya,” dated 10 Moharram 705 AH/2 August 1305 and
signed by Yusof b. ʿAli b. Mohammad b. Abi Taher and ʿAli
b. Ahmad b. ʿAli al-Hosseini;
left and right sides: stars and crosses from the
tomb’s dado; and upper: tiles from different
sites, including the tomb of Shaykh ʿAbdosamad at Natanz
(upper left). Photograph by Dmitry
Sadofeev.
According to Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, the tomb (maqbareh)
of Emamzadeh Yahya was located southeast of the citadel in a
neighborhood called Kohneh Gel, an external quarter (mahalat-e kharej) of the medieval city of Varamin that likewise remained at a
distance from the present village (see
fig. 4). Dieulafoy’s photograph of the
site has long been known through its woodcut version in
La Perse, which in turn served as Wilber’s guide for
the reconstruction of its Ilkhanid-period plan (fig. 8, upper right).81
The complex was originally fronted by a monumental entrance
portal; to the west was a conical tower; and at the south was
the main tomb capped by a stepped dome. As always, Dieulafoy’s
photograph is a much stronger resource than the woodcut, and
we can now appreciate the portal’s decorative brickwork, note
some damages to the conical dome, and discern details of the
complex’s crumbling walls. The only known comparable
photograph was taken by German art historian Friedrich Sarre
around 1897 and is far darker and blurrier.82
ExpandFig. 8. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916).
Views of Varamin from Dieulafoy’s photography album “Perse
1,” June 1881, p. 65. At the upper right is a general view
of the Emamzadeh Yahya (660–707 AH/1261–1307). At left are
its guards and a mollah. Below is a group of Turkomans at
the village’s market. Albumen silver prints from gelatin
glass negatives (dry plates). Paris, Bibliothèque de
l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, 4 Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.
In La Perse, Dieulafoy refers to the stripping of the
tomb’s luster tilework and notes that she and her husband had
been granted special access by Naser al-Din Shah:
Several parts of this revetment [the tomb’s luster tilework]
have been stolen and sold in Tehran at very high prices; as
a result of these thefts, entrance into the small sanctuary
has been forbidden to Christians, and this prohibition is
best observed because the chapels sanctified by the tombs of
the imams are, in the eye of Persians, imbued with more
sacred character than the mosques themselves. We are
exempted from the ban [loi commune], the shah
having agreed, in the interest of Marcel’s studies, to
authorize us to cross the threshold of the sanctuary. On
seeing the royal order, the ketkhoda [kadkhoda]
ordered his brother to accompany us; his presence was not
useless. When we arrived, the guarding of the gate was
entrusted to peasants armed with sticks, surrounding a
mollah wearing a white turban reserved for priests.83
A portrait of these supposedly threatening “peasants” and
mollah is mounted next to Dieulafoy’s general view of the
shrine (see fig. 8, far left), and we
can imagine the subjects’ potential displeasure on two levels:
having to grant the couple entry and being subjected to
Dieulafoy’s voyeuristic lens.
Dieulafoy took two photographs inside the relatively small
tomb measuring about 9 meters across and ultimately stacked
and slightly overlapped the prints in “Perse 1” (fig. 9).84
The upper photograph is the only known image of the luster
mihrab in situ and one of the most valuable photographs in
“Perse 1.” The mihrab, in turn, is a very important subject,
and one of just nine known examples of its kind. Six are
relatively intact in museums—three in Mashhad and one each in
Tehran, Berlin, and Honolulu (the Emamzadeh Yahya example)—and
three are dispersed and require virtual reconstruction.85
Dieulafoy stood slightly to the left of the enormous mihrab
and captured it perfectly framed by a stucco inscription and
topped by an additional stucco panel. Her lower photograph
focuses on the squinch to the mihrab’s immediate left, which
was decorated with fine panels of stucco. A recent photograph
of the mihrab void and adjacent corner niche effectively
combines the views in Dieulafoy’s two photographs and gives a
fuller perspective of the intimate space (fig. 10). A green sheet divides the visitors to the tomb by gender
and hangs across the narrow ambulatory between the white void
once home to the mihrab and the hexagonal screen
(zarih) enclosing the modern cenotaph.86
ExpandFig. 9. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916).
Two views of the interior of the Emamzadeh Yahya from
Dieulafoy’s photography album “Perse 1,” June 1881, p.
66 (detail). At the upper left is the luster mihrab
dated Shaʿban 663 AH/May 1265 and signed by ʿAli b.
Mohammad b. Abi Taher. At the lower right is the squinch
of the adjacent corner niche. Albumen silver prints from
gelatin glass negatives (dry plates). Paris,
Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art,
4 Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.Image Description
Part of a blue-gray album page with two photographs
showing a wall with inscribed stucco and luster tiles
partially obscured by a wood screen (upper left) and an
arched form with decorative stucco (lower right).
ExpandFig. 10. —Mihrab void and southwest corner niche of the
Emamzadeh Yahya, Varamin, April 2018.
Photograph by the author.
Despite some fading, Dieulafoy’s photograph of the mihrab
allows us to appreciate its original configuration on its
multimedia qibla wall. The mihrab was framed not only by the
surviving later stucco inscription dated Moharram 707 AH/July
1307 (forty-two years after the mihrab’s date) but also two
smaller borders, one of which was composed of luster half
stars and half crosses. During the mihrab’s afterlife on the
market (circa 1898–1940), some of its more than sixty tiles
were lost, which led Blair to conclude, “The proportions and
layout are slightly odd, and there must have been a horizontal
band on top of the second niche connecting the two vertical
bands with jumbled sections of Qurʼān 2:255–56.”87
Indeed, this now-lost band is visible in Dieulafoy’s
photograph (fig. 11).
ExpandFig. 11. —Annotation of Jane Dieulafoy’s 1881 photograph of the
Emamzadeh Yahya’s luster mihrab in situ (“Perse 1,” p.
66).
Yellow elements are carved stucco, and black is luster
tilework. The numbers indicate chapters and verses of the
Qur'an. Dashed lines in the outer border of the mihrab
delineate individual tiles, which sometimes span verses.
Annotations by the author.
Some of the mihrab’s outer border tiles were jumbled during
its life in Honolulu (since 1941), and thanks to Dieulafoy’s
photograph, we can now read the tiles containing Qur'an 62:1–5
(al-Jumuʿah) in the correct order and consider these verses in
relation to the same ones (62:1–4) in the framing stucco
inscription (see fig. 11).88
These verses concerning God, His Messenger, and His Sacred
Book were clearly very important to the denizens of Ilkhanid
Varamin. They were selected not only for the Emamzadeh Yahya’s
luster mihrab (663 AH/1265) and stucco frieze (707 AH/1307)
but also for the stucco band (see
fig. 3a, upper right) wrapping the
sanctuary of the city’s congregational mosque (722–26
AH/1322–26). In the Emamzadeh Yahya, these verses transition
into the dated foundation inscription naming Fakhroddin Hasan
(the same patron as the ʿAlaoddin tower) and a hadith in honor
of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandfather, all of which were read
by Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh.89
In addition to leaving us with a priceless view of the luster
mihrab in situ, Dieulafoy also captured the tomb’s living
sanctity and furnishings. The lower half of the mihrab is
obstructed by a geometric screen, and metal vases with flared
rims sit on its visible corners (see
fig. 9, upper left).90
A string above suspends several votive offerings
(nazr), likely metal lamps, vases, and birds.91
Considered together, these features reveal that the tomb was a
living sacred space in 1881, despite the poor condition of
some parts of the complex, including the entrance portal. This
assertion is supported by Dieulafoy’s aforementioned
photograph of the mollah and guards (see
fig. 8, far left) and Eʿtemad
al-Saltaneh’s encounter with the tomb’s guardian
(motevalli), who shared that the saint was a son of
Imam Musa, the seventh Imam.92
The screen in front of the mihrab poses some interpretive
conundrums but likely attests the fluid and jeopardized nature
of the interior. Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh describes a wood
marqad (tomb or grave) in the middle of the tomb
measuring 1.75 by 3.25 zarʿ (cubits), or 1.82 by 3.38
meters (5.97 × 11.09 feet).93
Given this substantial size, which was roughly one third of
the tomb’s total diameter (about 9 m), he was likely referring
to the screen that shielded the cenotaph, versus the cenotaph
itself.94
By 1881, this screen could have been resized and pushed
against the qibla wall for a double function: to serve as the
sacred threshold between the pilgrim and the deceased (the
cenotaph) and to protect the mihrab from theft.95
While the former was the screen’s conventional role, the
latter would have been precipitated by the steady stealing of
the tomb’s luster tilework, and such a screen-cenotaph-mihrab
combination is not unknown.96
The ex-votos captured by Dieulafoy further imply the
cenotaph’s presence behind the screen, because, as the symbol
of the deceased, the cenotaph would have been the focus of
such offerings. A photograph taken in 1958 appears to capture
the same screen bedecked in calligraphic drawings of birds
(basmala birds), prayer tablets, and flags (fig. 12).97
An elaborate metal ʿalam (ceremonial standard) rests
against the screen, and a few vessels seem to sit on top of
the cenotaph behind.98
Still further behind, the mihrab is now but a looming void.
ExpandFig. 12. —A large ceremonial standard (ʿalam) and
votives affixed to the screen in front of the mihrab
void in the Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin, April
1958.
Photograph dated on the reverse and stamped “U. S. I. S.
Iran Press Section.” Washington, D.C., National Museum of
Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, The Myron
Bement Smith Collection, FSA-2023-000001.
Like Dieulafoy, Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh was captivated by the
mihrab. He had only seen one of its kind in an
emamzadeh in Qom, in reference to the 734 AH/1334
example from the Emamzadeh ʿAli b. Jaʿfar now in the Islamic
Museum of Tehran’s National Museum complex.99
He presumably spent a good amount of time inspecting the
Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab, because he identified the majority
of its twelve sets of Qur'anic inscriptions (see
fig. 11).100
The easiest to read were those in large blue letters in relief
in either sols (thuluth) or Kufic (see the outer
border and two triangular hoods). Far more difficult were
those painted in luster in naskh script in one-inch
bands on either side of the four columns. Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh
identified the inscriptions by their chapter titles (for
example, sura Hamd, or al-Fatiha, in reference to the first
chapter of the Qur'an) and common names (for example, Ayat
al-Kursi, or 2:255) and provided the spread of verses when
necessary. He also transcribed the signature and date panel at
the bottom of the mihrab.101
One of the most interesting sections of Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh’s
account concerns his reading of two luster tiles from the
dado. He describes these stars as separated from the wall (“az
divar seva shodeh”) and conceivably could have held them in
his hands, rotating them as he read their small perimeter
inscriptions in naskh (for their scale, see
fig. 7).102
The first was inscribed with verses 78 and 79 of sura al-Israʾ
(chapter 17), concerning the performance of prayer. The only
tile currently known to carry these verses is in the Musée du
Louvre and features verses 78–79 on one side and 80–81 on the
other.103
The second tile was inscribed with a common combination of
verses—sura Hamd and sura al-Ikhlas (112:1–4)—and one of many
examples is today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.104
The Louvre tile was donated by Jules Maciet in 1888, and the
Metropolitan star by Edward C. Moore in 1891, but the shrine’s
stars and crosses had begun entering museums a decade earlier.
The South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria & Albert
Museum [V&A]) acquired its first batch of Emamzadeh Yahya
tiles in 1875, and the Musée National de Céramique at Sèvres
received its first in March 1880 via the diplomat Émile
Bernay.105
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh’s reading of the tomb’s tiles in situ, yet
off the wall, therefore coincided exactly with their steady
removal and export. This raises the question of any potential
involvement in their dispersal, and the same must be asked of
the Dieulafoys.
“All Is Fish That Comes to the Net:” The Emamzadeh Yahya on
the Market
The Antoin Sevruguin collection of photographs of Persia at
the GRI includes a rare photograph of luster ceramics on
display in Tehran shortly after our travelers’ visits to
Varamin (fig. 13).106
Captioned “Cachis persans (Téhéran)” (“cachis” for
kashi, or tiles), the subject is a tall cabinet with
five shelves packed with four types of luster: medieval
Kashani tiles, including large stars and crosses that can be
attributed to the Emamzadeh Yahya and must have been recently
removed; Safavid (1501–1722) vessels with metal fittings;
contemporary Qajar tiles, some imitating Ilkhanid models; and,
most remarkably given the location in Iran, large chargers
made in Manises, Valencia, around 1400 and then referred to as
“Hispano-Moresque.” The cabinet’s mixed curation of luster
objects and tiles from Spain and Iran over seven centuries
echoed contemporary trends in Europe. In the catalog of the
Frédéric Spitzer sale held in Paris in 1893, for example,
eleven Spanish luster vessels were reproduced directly above
three sets of Ilkhanid luster tiles.107
ExpandFig. 13. —Interior of a Tehran house with a luster cabinet
captioned “Cachis persans (Téhéran)” (Persian tiles
[Tehran]), ca. 1880s.
Photograph by Antoin Sevruguin (ca. 1851–1933), albumen
print. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute,
2017.R.25.
Judging by the quality and cosmopolitanism of the ceramics on
display in the cabinet as well as the interior’s fine
wallpaper and photograph of a military unit, the Tehran home
in question likely belonged to a European attached to the
Qajar court who was deeply immersed in the global trade of
luster. One such individual was the Frenchman Jules Richard
(1816–91), who taught photography at the Dar al-Fonun (a
polytechnic college in Tehran founded in 1851) and is infamous
for supplying many museums with medieval luster tiles,
especially South Kensington. In his 1883 account of his
fifteen-year residence in Iran (1866–81), English physician C.
J. Wills describes a visit to Richard’s home that paints a
useful backstory to Sevruguin’s photograph:
Our host was an old Frenchman who held an appointment as
instructor in French and translator to the Shah, and was a
Mahommedan [referring to Richard’s conversion to Islam].
. . . The Frenchman had a large collection of valuable
antiquities, which he showed us, and they were all genuine.
That was seventeen years ago [circa 1866]; now, in a hundred
specimens from Persia, be they what they will, ninety are
shams. . . . At that time [circa 1866] the craze for objects
of oriental art had not set in, and the big tiles we saw (or
bricks) of reflet métallique, with raised
inscriptions, were such as one seldom sees nowadays [circa
1883], save in national collections.108
Later in his account, in his section on pottery, Wills further
describes the state of affairs in the 1880s:
The wall tiles now [circa 1883] so much valued in Europe are
seldom seen in situ. Clever imitations are made in
Ispahan [Isfahan], but the art of making the metallic
(reflet) lustre is gone. Most of the bricks that
are not protected, by the fact of being in shrines, have
already been stolen, and fear of the consequences of
detection is all that protects the rest. All is fish that
comes to the net, and the local magnates would sell the big
monolith of Yezd [Yazd] marble, which covers the grave of
Hafiz [d. 1390, buried in Shiraz], for a price.109
Wills’s comments capture the major trends of the
nineteenth-century (table 1).110
During the 1850s and 1860s, the purveying of luster tilework
was led primarily by a small network of Tehran-based
Frenchmen.111
In 1858, the director of the Musée National de Céramique at
Sèvres instructed Émile Duhousset, an officer involved in
training the Qajar army, to research contemporary ceramic
production and acquire historical specimens.112
Around the same time, Richard and Jules-Baptiste Nicolas,
another Frenchman based in Tehran, began acquiring luster
tiles, and in 1867, diplomat Julien de Rochechouart published
a travelogue that named specific sites, including the Shrine
of Shaykh ʿAbdosamad (ʿAbd al-Samad, d. 1299–1300 [699 AH]) at
Natanz.113
He especially praised the epigraphic frieze tiles in the
shrine’s tomb and confessed that he owned a few.114
Some of these tiles ended up in the hands of Richard and
Nicolas in Tehran and were sold in 1875 to Robert Murdoch
Smith, agent for South Kensington, alongside stars and crosses
from the Emamzadeh Yahya.115
As previously mentioned, the Sèvres museum would receive its
first batch of Emamzadeh Yahya tiles five years later (1880).
Table 1. —
Timeline of Key Events, ca. 1860s–1940
Date
Event
1862–75: First wave of luster tilework thefts:
Natanz, Qom, Varamin
1863
January: Eʿtezad al-Saltaneh visits Varamin
ca. 1860–70
museums in Sèvres and London dispatch agents to
research ceramics and acquire tiles
1867: publication of Julien de Rochechouart’s
Souvenirs d’un voyage en Perse
1875
South Kensington Museum (now Victoria &
Albert Museum) receives a large set of luster
tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya
1876
apparent Qajar edict banning Christians from
entering religious sites
December: Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh visits Varamin
and publishes his account in
Ruznameh-ye Iran
state of the Emamzadeh Yahya as observed by
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh: marqad (tomb or
grave) in the center of the tomb, luster mihrab
in situ, some dado tiles off the wall,
motevalli (caretaker) present
1880–1900: Second wave of luster tilework thefts:
Damghan, Kashan, Qom, Varamin
1880
March: Musée National de Céramique, Sèvres,
receives its first Emamzadeh Yahya tiles
1881
June: Jane Dieulafoy visits Varamin
state of the Emamzadeh Yahya at the time of
Dieulafoy’s visit: entrance portal standing but
vault collapsed, conical tower intact, luster
mihrab in situ, mollah and guards present,
apparent edict of 1876 in place (see above)
1883
January: publication of Dieulafoy’s first
Le tour article, including Varamin
1885–86
Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy excavate at Susa over
two seasons
1887
publication of Dieulafoy’s travelogue
La Perse
1888
inauguration of the Musée du Louvre’s Department
of Oriental Antiquities, including the Susa
galleries
1889
Naser al-Din Shah’s third tour of Europe,
including Paris
ca. 1880s
Antoin Sevruguin photographs the luster cabinet
in a Tehran home
ca. 1890s
underglaze tiles dateable to the late Qajar
period are installed on the dado of the tomb of
Emamzadeh Yahya to mask the empty walls of the
stolen luster tiles
1893
sale of the Frédéric Spitzer collection in Paris
combining Iranian and Spanish luster
1900
the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is in Paris, said
by Hagop Kevorkian to have been brought there by
Mirza Hasan Ashtiani Mostowfi al-Mamalek for the
Exposition Universelle
July–August: Mozaffar al-Din Shah visits Paris
for the Exposition Universelle; signing of the
third Franco-Persian archaeological convention
ca. 1900–1930
major renovation of the Emamzadeh Yahya; the
original entrance portal and conical tower are
completely lost
1906–11
Constitutional Revolution of Iran
1909
case launched by the Qajar government to
investigate the thefts of manuscripts from the
Golestan Palace Library
1910
publication of Friedrich Sarre’s
Denkmäler persischer Baukunst,
including a general view of the Emamzadeh Yahya
and its mihrab on display in Paris, likely in a
shop
1911
publication of Henry d’Allemagne’s
Du Khorassan au Pays des Backhtiaris, including a section titled
“Histoire du mihrab de Véramine”
1912
February: Henri Viollet visits Varamin and
photographs the congregational mosque
October: Kevorkian travels to Iran to negotiate
the purchase of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab,
still stored in Paris
1913
May:
Exhibition of Persian Art & Curios,
London, inclusive of the luster mihrab from
Kashan’s Masjed-e Maydan
25 August: Kevorkian writes to Charles Freer
offering the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab for sale
1914
the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is displayed in
Exhibition of Muhammedan-Persian Art,
Exhibition of the Kevorkian Collection, New York
1920s
1921: coup d’etat; foundation of the Society for
National Heritage
1925: rise of the Pahlavi dynasty
1927: end of the French archaeological monopoly
1928: André Godard arrives in Iran to serve as
Director of the Persian Antiquities Service and
head of the National Museum in Tehran
1930s
Iran:
3 November 1930: passing of the Antiquities Law
1930–33: registration of Varamin’s
congregational mosque, tomb tower of ʿAlaoddin,
and Emamzadeh Yahya as national heritage
1934–37: construction and inauguration of the
National Museum in Tehran
International:
1931: the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is displayed
in the
International Exhibition of Persian Art, London
1938: publication of Arthur Upham Pope and
Phyllis Ackerman, eds.,
A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric
Times to the Present, including the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab
Godard and Donald Wilber photograph the
renovated Emamzadeh Yahya
1940
April–May: the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is
displayed in
Six Thousand Years of Persian Art, New
York
June: Mary Crane negotiates with Kevorkian for
Doris Duke’s purchase of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s
mihrab
28 December: Kevorkian writes to Duke
celebrating the sale of the mihrab
The Natanz and Varamin tomb shrines were far from the only
Iranian sites plundered for their luster during the second
half of the nineteenth century. Additional targets were
emamzadehs in Qom and Damghan and the Masjed-e Maydan
in Kashan.116
The stolen elements included mihrabs, cenotaphs, long
epigraphic friezes, and the variously shaped tiles of the
dadoes. The easiest way to reimagine these tiled jigsaw
puzzles is to walk into the Natanz tomb, whose walls have not
been plastered and which capture for posterity the imprints of
each removed tile.117
One of the last luster elements taken from the Emamzadeh Yahya
was the mihrab composed of more than sixty tiles. According to
Armenian-American dealer and collector Hagop Kevorkian, Mirza
Hasan Ashtiani Mostowfi al-Mamalek, the chief state
accountant, brought the mihrab to Paris for exhibition in the
Exposition Universelle of 1900. As a result, the Mostowfi was
“disgraced and degraded” by Mozaffar al-Din Shah (r.
1896–1907) and prohibited from exhibiting or selling the
piece.118
It was eventually displayed in a store on the rue du 4
septembre, where it was the focus of pilgrimage by all of the
amateur enthusiasts of “Oriental art” in Paris, as described
by French collector and author Henry-René d’Allemagne.119
During this time, it was also reproduced in Sarre’s
Denkmäler persischer Baukunst (Monuments of Persian
architecture) and attributed to the Emamzadeh Yahya.120
According to Kevorkian, upon the death of the shah, a leading
mojtahed of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution
(1906–11) authorized the Mostowfi “to dispose of the monument
in question.”121
In October 1912, Kevorkian traveled to Iran to negotiate the
purchase, and his political connections ultimately earned him
a good price. He soon sent the following telegram to American
industrialist and collector Charles Freer: “Have just secured
famous mihrab of lustre tiles of Veramin mosque property of
Mostofy Memalik Persian Minister of War . . . now stored in
Paris where could be viewed privately . . . pleased give you
priority of right of refusal.”122
The year 1913 was momentous in the global dissemination of the
Emamzadeh Yahya’s tiles, and Paris was a central node. While
Kevorkian peddled the mihrab to Freer, Paris-based dealer
Clotilde Duffeuty sold the cenotaph panel (see
fig. 7) and many stars and crosses to
the museum of the Stieglitz Central School of Technical
Drawing in Saint Petersburg.123
Concurrently in London, the luster mihrab from the Masjed-e
Maydan at Kashan was offered in the
Exhibition of Persian Art & Curios: The Collection
Formed by J. R. Preece.124
In his telegram to Freer, Kevorkian compared the two luster
mihrabs, emphasizing that the Emamzadeh Yahya example was “in
far better condition and about twice as large as that of
Preece quality infinitely superieur altogether by far finer
monument.”125
The theft of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab marked the end of
the shrine’s half century of steady plunder and both conformed
to and departed from contemporary trends.126
Unlike many large luster ensembles that were broken up and
sold piecemeal, including the Emamzadeh Yahya’s cenotaph and
the two mihrabs from the Natanz shrine, the Emamzadeh Yahya’s
mihrab was carefully packed and transported for display abroad
as a relatively complete unit. If we trust Kevorkian’s
account, this was a bold example of removal and export by an
Iranian minister, but Hasan Mostowfi was far from the first
Qajar official to sell out the country’s luster tilework.127
In the 1870s, the minister Hossein Khan Sepahsalar issued four
critical permits facilitating the export of luster tilework
bound for South Kensington, including from the Emamzadeh
Yahya.128
By the 1880s, large luster tiles were increasingly rare, as
observed by Wills, and it is not surprising that the mihrab
became a valuable cultural commodity at the Paris exposition.
This was also the stage to negotiate the ongoing excavation of
Susa, then under the purview of French archaeologist Jacques
de Morgan. Just before he left Paris, Mozaffar al-Din signed
the third Franco-Persian archaeological convention, which made
the French monopoly perpetual and granted all Susa finds to
France.129
While the Dieulafoys were responsible for illegally taking
much of Susa to Paris, and their names appear frequently on
the Louvre’s labels for the glazed bricks, they played a more
indirect role in the global consumption of the Emamzadeh
Yahya’s luster tiles. Jane Dieulafoy’s praise of the shrine’s
tilework in her first newspaper article and subsequent
travelogue undoubtedly amplified its demand, as was the case
with Rochechouart’s 1867 travelogue and the Natanz shrine. It
is critical to remember, however, that Dieulafoy never
reproduced her exceptional photograph of the mihrab in situ
during her lifetime. It remained tucked away in her personal
album (see fig. 9), while the mihrab
itself entered a state of architectural ambiguity on the art
market. Despite Sarre’s attribution of the mihrab to the
Emamzadeh Yahya in 1910, Kevorkian vaguely described it as
from the “Veramin mosque” in his 1913 telegram to Freer.130
The next year, he displayed it in New York and published it as
“from the Seljoucid Temple at Veramin.”131
In 1931, the mihrab was included in the momentous
International Exhibition of Persian Art in London and
described as a “mihrab of lustre tiles from a mosque in
Kashan.”132
Had Dieulafoy reproduced her photograph of the mihrab in her
1880s publications, and had it simply been seen on its
distinct qibla wall in the tomb of Emamzadeh Yahya, its
origins might not have been so easily confused or deliberately
muddled.
The anonymity of the Emamzadeh Yahya persists in many museums
today. In the V&A’s Ceramics Galleries, a single star tile
from the shrine’s dado is included in a large display titled
“The Spread of Tin-Glaze and Lustre, 800–1800.” The star tile
sits in front of a contemporaneous Kashani jar, and the two
are combined in a label that only lists the shared place of
production (Kashan).133
In the same museum’s Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, a large
panel of stars and crosses from the shrine is displayed next
to a fifteenth-century luster bowl from Málaga in a manner
that recalls the eclectic Tehran cabinet photographed by
Sevruguin (see fig. 13).134
This label does provide some architectural context—“from the
tomb of a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad at Varamin near
Tehran”—but there are many emamzadehs in Varamin, and
the Emamzadeh Yahya could have been named, as it is in the
collections records online.135
These two displays represent a fraction of those worldwide,
but we can generally observe a prioritization of the luster
technique over architectural context. One exception is the
bilingual placard in the Hermitage’s recently (2021) renovated
Iran galleries titled “Tiles from the Imamzadeh Yahya
Mausoleum in Varamin.” This longer text offers substantive
information on the tomb’s original luster environment and the
tiles’ provenance. The latter section opens with, “The
mausoleum gradually fell into decline and was largely
destroyed by the middle of the nineteenth century.”136
This begs questions about the extent to which the Emamzadeh
Yahya was “largely destroyed” and the look of the building
today.
Conclusion: Ruins to Realities
In their accounts of Varamin, both Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh and
Dieulafoy describe the village’s historical monuments as
ruins, ruined, or remains (Persian: makhrubeh,kharab, baqi; French: ruine). Dieulafoy’s
picturesque photographs of lost domes, crumbling
ayvans, and stripped tiles attest some of these grim
realities, but Varamin’s monuments were not ruins in the total
sense of the word, and their conditions varied considerably.
Some had suffered massive structural damage (the
congregational mosque); others were relatively intact (the
tomb tower of ʿAlaoddin); and still others remained in use
despite areas of dilapidation (the Emamzadeh Yahya). In the
ensuing century, all of Varamin’s monuments, except for the
citadel, would be renovated and restored to varying degrees.
Viewers of Dieulafoy’s photographs must therefore avoid
indefinite lingering and romanticization and approach them as
valuable snapshots in time (1881 to be precise), ultimately
moving beyond their frame.
Indeed, in the decades following Dieulafoy’s visit, the
Emamzadeh Yahya underwent profound physical changes. The
complex’s original entrance portal and conical tower (see
fig. 8, upper right) were progressively
lost and/or deliberately demolished, and the tomb was recast
as a solitary building set in the middle of a new rectangular
courtyard, as documented by French architect, archaeologist,
and museum director André Godard (fig. 14).137
The original domed tomb was ringed by a new perimeter of low,
domed rooms and ayvans (one each on the north and
south), and the interior’s stripped dado was clad in
rectangular underglaze tiles, many of which also went
missing.138
The exact dates of these renovations are unknown, but they
likely transpired in the early twentieth century during the
Qajar-to-Pahlavi (1925–79) transition.
ExpandFig. 14. —View of the south (back) facade of the Emamzadeh Yahya
at Varamin during or after the major renovation of the
early twentieth century, likely early 1930s. Photograph by André Godard (French, 1881–1965). Paris,
Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts de l’Islam, Archives
Godard, 1APAI/9025.
Soon after he ascended to the throne, Reza Shah (r. 1925–41)
and his ministers initiated a rapid systematization of some of
the seeds of excavation, documentation, and restoration
planted by their Qajar predecessors. The Society for National
Heritage (Anjoman-e asar-e melli) was founded in 1921, the
year of Reza Khan’s coup, and national heritage thereafter
became a top priority of an increasingly nationalist
state.139
Among the most important early initiatives were the abolition
of the French monopoly on excavation (1927), the passing of
the Antiquities Law (“Law concerning the preservation of
national antiquities,” 3 November 1930), and the founding of
the National Museum in Tehran (1934–37, Muzeh-ye Iran Bastan),
whose first director was Godard. The Antiquities Law called
for the registration of historical monuments through the end
of the Zand era (1796), and Varamin’s Ilkhanid sites were
registered at the beginning of this process (the
congregational mosque, registered as no. 176 in 1932; the tomb
tower of ʿAlaoddin, no. 177, 1932; the Emamzadeh Yahya, no.
199, 1933; and the Emamzadeh Shah Hossein, no. 339, 1940).140
While national heritage became a chief prerogative of the
Pahlavi state, Kevorkian peddled the Emamzadeh Yahya’s luster
mihrab on the global stage. After displaying it in New York
(1914) and London (1931) and securing its inclusion in the
six-volume A Survey of Persian Art (1938–39), he
again displayed it in New York, this time in the momentous
Six Thousand Years of Persian Art (1940).141
Shortly after this exhibition, he sold the mihrab to a
then-twenty-eight-year-old Doris Duke for the staggering sum
of $150,000.142
In a letter to Duke, Kevorkian expressed his “deep
satisfaction in the realization that I have transferred the
title of this unique monument which I cherished, to one so
worthy.”143
It is quite something to consider the registration and
renovation of the Emamzadeh Yahya on one side of the world and
the purveying of its mihrab as a “unique monument” on the
other, which ultimately landed it in a private home in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is equally powerful to
consider the relatively contemporary construction of the
National Museum in Tehran (1934–37) and that museum’s
possession of several Ilkhanid mihrabs, including the luster
example seen by Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh in Qom’s Emamzadeh ʿAli b.
Jaʿfar.144
Unlike many emamzadehs in Iran, the Emamzadeh Yahya
has successfully resisted encroachment and construction beyond
the major renovation of the early twentieth century. Its
exceptional Ilkhanid stuccowork can still be appreciated in
situ, and the site lives on as a sacred space. The current
cenotaph is modestly sized, covered in textiles and ritual
objects, and set within the aforementioned hexagonal screen
(zarih). The memory of the luster tilework lives on
and is symbolized by a tiny fragment of a cross remounted at
the top of the mihrab void (see
fig. 10). Until recently (2021),
Dieulafoy’s La Perse also figured prominently in the
mihrab void. Two framed collages (for viewing on each side of
the gender-segregated space) displayed two woodcuts from a
Persian edition of La Perse: the general view of the
Emamzadeh Yahya and the mihrab of the Emamzadeh Shah Hossein,
erroneously identified as the mihrab of the Emamzadeh Yahya
(see fig. 10).145
Below were two photographs of tiles on display in the State
Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, including the cenotaph
panel flanked by stars and crosses. At the time of the
collage’s production, Dieulafoy’s excellent photographs of
both mihrabs (see fig. 6, right; see
fig. 9, upper left) were not known, but
today they are accessible to anyone in Varamin with internet
access. It remains to be seen if Dieulafoy’s photographs will
make a cameo in the Emamzadeh Yahya, like the previous
La Perse woodcuts. What is certain is that they are
known to the shrine’s conservators, and their digitization has
facilitated practical and educational use by many.
Tehranis willing to make the trek to Varamin today (about the
distance from West Los Angeles to San Bernadino) are most
likely to visit the congregational mosque and tomb tower of
ʿAlaoddin. The tower is now a small anthropology museum set
off the main square, and it displays a large field camera of
the type Dieulafoy would have used. As we have seen, the
mosque was in terrible condition during the nineteenth century
but rebuilt in the 1990s. Today, it is surrounded by a park,
used for religious ceremonies such as Moharram and Ahya
(Laylat al-Qadr, when the first verses of the Qur'an were
revealed to the Prophet Mohammad during Ramadan), and is the
home of the Varamin branch of the Office of Cultural Heritage.
Like the Emamzadeh Yahya, these buildings exemplify the fluid
fortunes of medieval sites, and the mosque’s rise from an
abandoned ruin to a living building is an important reminder
to see beyond the nineteenth-century lens.
This article has emphasized the importance of
nineteenth-century photography for the study of Iran’s
medieval monuments while also underscoring the contingent
nature of the photograph as a source—contingent on its
reproduction (or not), accessibility (or not), and
dissemination (or not). It has taken more than 140 years for
Dieulafoy’s photographs to become critical resources for the
study of Varamin, and the future discovery of additional
photographs will likewise reshape the narrative. In the
meantime, it is expected that Dieulafoy’s openly accessible
photographs will become standard resources in many fields of
Iranian architectural history, including Achaemenid Susa,
Safavid Isfahan, and Qajar Tehran, as well as critical tools
for revisiting La Perse itself.
Keelan Overton is an independent scholar
based in Santa Barbara, California.
Notes
I am sincerely grateful to Thomas Galifot for alerting me to
Dieulafoy’s albums at INHA and Jérôme Delatour and Julie
Brunet for supporting ongoing research and reproduction.
Archivists at the Louvre, BULAC, National Museum of Asian Art,
Getty Research Institute, and University of Michigan also
kindly facilitated research. Finally, I thank Sheila Blair,
Lauren Gendler, and the anonymous reviewers for their
feedback. The transliteration of Persian follows a simplified
phonetic format (a, e, o for short vowels; a, i, u for long
vowels; ʿ indicates the letter ʿayn and ʾ indicates hamza).
Dates are given in AH (Islamic lunar calendar) and SH (Iranian
solar calendar), followed by the Gregorian conversion. All
translations from Persian and French are mine.
Jeffrey Spier, Timothy F. Potts, and Sara E. Cole,
Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World,
exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2022), 85,
cat. no. 2 (Musée du Louvre, SB 23875). The second
panel, SB 24868, is from the Jacques de Morgan
excavation (see this essay, note 3).
↩︎
The term used for Iran by the Dieulafoys and other
foreigners of the time was Perse or
Persia, a Greek exonym derived from Pars, a
region in southern Iran. For Dieulafoy’s Susa account,
see Jane Dieulafoy,
Suse: Journal des fouilles, 1884–1886 (Paris:
Librairie Hachette, 1888).
↩︎
A decade later, Naser al-Din Shah granted the excavation
to Jacques de Morgan. See Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam,
L’archéologie française en Perse et les antiquités
nationales, 1884–1914
(Paris: Connaissances et Savoirs, 2004); and Kamyar
Abdi, “Nationalism, Politics, and the Development of
Archaeology in Iran,”
American Journal of Archaeology 105, no. 1
(2001): 51–76.
↩︎
Jane Dieulafoy,
La Perse, la Chaldée et la Susiane: Relation de
voyage contenant 336 gravures sur bois d’après les
photographies de l’auteur et deux cortes
(Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1887). I have consulted the
copy at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), 3026-720. It
is also online at
https://archive.org/details/ldpd_6885554_000/mode/1up. ↩︎
In 1997, Marc Potel noted that Dieulafoy’s photographs
had “apparently disappeared.” Marc Potel, “Photographie
et voyage en Perse,”
Cahiers d’études sur la Méditerranée orientale et le
monde turco-iranien
23 (1997): paragraph 7,
https://doi.org/10.4000/cemoti.123. For Dieulafoy’s inclusion in the exhibition, see
Thomas Galifot and Marie Robert,
Qui a peur des femmes photographes? 1839–1945,
exh. cat. (Paris: Hazan, 2015), 269, cat. no. 292 (a
young woman of Zanjan).
↩︎
Albums Dieulafoy, “Perse 1–6,” 1880–94, Paris,
Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art
(hereafter INHA), collections Jacques Doucet, NUM 4 PHOT
018 (1–6). The albums were acquired by the Bibliothèque
d’Art et Archéologie shortly after Marcel Dieulafoy’s
death in 1920. See Ambre Péron, “Les albums de Jane et
Marcel Dieulafoy,” Sous les coupoles (blog), 9
October 2021,
https://blog.bibliotheque.inha.fr/fr/posts/les-albums-de-jane-et-marcel-dieulafoy.html. ↩︎
For the reproduction of several
La Perse woodcuts in a seminal history text,
see Abbas Amanat, Iran: A Modern History (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 272, figs. 5.8,
5.9. ↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh was titled as such in 1886. I refer
to him with this title throughout, with the caveat that
his visit to Varamin occurred ten years earlier. For his
lengthy career, see Abbas Amanat, s.v.
“Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, Moḥammad-Ḥasan Khan Moqaddam
Marāḡaʾī,” in Encylopaedia Iranica, 15 December
1998 (updated 19 January 2012),
https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/etemad-al-saltana. ↩︎
Eight years after his visit to Varamin, Eʿtemad
al-Saltaneh accompanied Naser al-Din Shah on his second
pilgrimage to Mashhad, home to the Shrine of Imam Reza
(d. 818), the eighth Imam. For his account of Nishapur’s
turquoise mines, see Arash Khazeni,
Sky Blue Stone: The Turquoise Trade in World
History
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014),
110–20.
↩︎
Rasāʾel-e Eʿtemād al-Salṭaneh (Notes of Eʿtemad
al-Saltaneh), ed. Mīr-Hāshem Moḥaddeth (Tehran:
Eṭṭelāʿāt, 1391 SH/2012) (hereafter Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh,
Rasaʾel), chap. 11, 199–209. Many of the
twenty-four texts in this collection were published in
Ruznameh-ye Iran and/or survive in manuscript
form in Iranian libraries. I thank Hossein Nakhaei for
introducing me to this volume, which he used in his book
Hossein Nakhaei,
Masjed-e jāmeʿ-ye Varāmīn: bāzshenāsī-ye ravand-e
sheklgīrī va seyr-e taḥavvol
[The Great Mosque of Varamin: The Process of Formation
and Evolution] (Tehran: Shahid Beheshti University and
Rowzaneh, 1397 SH/2019). Hereafter
The Great Mosque. In January 2024, Nakhaei
located Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh’s original newspaper article
in the National Library and Archives of Iran,
82-00065-00,
https://sana.nlai.ir/handle/123456789/77911. ↩︎
The entry on Dieulafoy in the
Encyclopedia Iranica summarizes her 1881–82
travels as follows: “From Marseilles to Athens,
Istanbul, Poti, Erevan, Jolfā [modern-day Nakhchivan
Autonomous Republic], Tabrīz [first stop in modern-day
Iran], Qazvīn, Tehran [then the capital of the Qajar
dynasty, 1789–1925], Isfahan, Persepolis, Shiraz,
Sarvestān, Fīrūzābād, and to Susa via Būšehr [Bushehr, a
port on the Persian Gulf] and Mesopotamia.” Varamin is
noticeably missing from this synopsis and occurred after
Tehran in her actual itinerary. Jean Calmard, s.v.
“Dieulafoy, Jane Henriette Magre,”
Encyclopaedia Iranica, 15 December 1995
(updated 28 November 2011),
https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dieulafoy-1. ↩︎
For her mention of these plates, see Dieulafoy,
La Perse, 10. I am grateful to Thomas Galifot
and Jim Ganz for providing feedback on Dieulafoy’s
equipment and techniques.
↩︎
Jane Dieulafoy, “La Perse, La Chaldée et La Susiane,”
Le tour du monde: Nouveau journal des voyages
(January 1883): 1–80. This first article ends with her
account of Varamin and includes the same ten woodcuts
later reproduced in La Perse.↩︎
“Album fotografico della Persia: Compilato dal Sig.r
Luigi Pesce, Tenente Colonnello; Instruttore
d’Infanteria al servizio dello Shah, Teheran,” 1860,
GRI, 2012.R.18,
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2012r18. Dieulafoy’s caption (La Perse, 12) more
appropriately reads, “Tombeau de chah Khoda bendeh a
Sultanieh” (Tomb of Shah Khodabandeh at Soltaniyya).
Mohammad Khodabandeh was Oljaytu’s Muslim name.
↩︎
The Pesce album was presented by Luigi Pesce to
linguist, military officer, and diplomat Henry Creswicke
Rawlinson in May 1860. Leila Moayeri Pazargadi and
Frances Terpak, “Picturing Qājār Persia: A Gift to
Major-General Henry Creswicke Rawlinson,”
Getty Research Journal, no. 6 (2014): 47–62.
↩︎
Nakhaei, The Great Mosque, 33–47; and Sheila
Blair, “Architecture as a Source for Local History in
the Mongol Period: The Example of Warāmīn,”
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 26, nos.
1–2 (January 2016): 215–16.
↩︎
Alexander Chodzko, “Une excursion de Téhéran aux Pyles
caspiennes (1835),”
Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, n.s., 127, no.
23 (1850): 280–308. On Eʿtezad al-Saltaneh, see Nakhaei,
The Great Mosque, 111, 163.
↩︎
For some of ʿAbdollah Qajar’s expeditions, see Elahe
Helbig, “Geographies Traced and Histories Told:
Photographic Documentation of Land and People by
ʿAbdollah Mirza Qajar, 1880s–1890s,” in
The Indigenous Lens? Early Photography in the Near
and Middle East,
ed. Markus Ritter and Staci Gem Scheiwiller (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2018), 79–109.
↩︎
The most plausible location of Qajar court photographs
of Varamin is the Golestan Palace Library in Tehran. On
this immense repository of more than forty-two thousand
photographs and one thousand albums, see Alireza
Nabipour and Reza Sheikh, “The Photograph Albums of the
Royal Golestan Palace: A Window into the Social History
of Iran during the Qajar Era,” in Ritter and
Scheiwiller, The Indigenous Lens?, 291–323; and
Mohammad Hasan Semsar and Fatemeh Saraian,
Golestan Palace Photo Archives: Catalogue of Qajar
Selected Photographs
(Tehran: Ketab-e Aban, 1390 SH/2011).
↩︎
On Masileh, a depression south of Varamin historically
flooded in spring, see H. M. The Shah of Persia [Naser
al-Din Shah], “On the New Lake between Ḳom and Ṭeherân,”
trans. and annotated by General A. Houtum-Schindler, in
Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and
Monthly Record of Geography
10, no. 10 (October 1888): 626, 628, and map.
↩︎
Dieulafoy, “Perse 1,” 55; and Dieulafoy,
La Perse, 133.
↩︎
The print depicting a newly deceased body in one of
these towers is an example of pure fiction in Dieulafoy,
La Perse, 136.
↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 199. These sites,
and the route in general, can be read against the map of
Rayy (Rhages) in G. Pézard and G. Bondoux, “Mission de
Téhéran,” in
Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, vol. 12
(Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1911), following p. 56.
↩︎
Dieulafoy, “Perse 1,” 62, no. 120. The Dieulafoys
visited the “kale” (qaʿleh) at dawn and were
impressed by its immense size, mudbrick walls, moat, and
still-decent condition.
↩︎
I thank Kanika Kalra for drawing this map, which builds
on Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh’s 1876 observations; Hossein
Nakhaei’s annotations of aerial photographs in Nakhaei,
The Great Mosque, 62, figs. 15–16; and the
present locations of all sites (except for the citadel)
in Google Maps. The citadel’s location has been
approximated.
↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 208–9. For
“Qaʿleh Iraj Varamin,” see Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh,
Rasaʾel, 217–20.
↩︎
For the general history of the mosque, see Nakhaei,
The Great Mosque.↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 203; and Nakhaei,
The Great Mosque, 76–79.
↩︎
Such skills are unsurprising for an Iranian historian
and apparently pious Muslim. See Mehrdad Kia, “Inside
the Court of Naser Od-Din Shah Qajar, 1881–96: The Life
and Diary of Mohammad Hasan Khan Eʿtemad Os-Saltaneh,”
Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 1 (2001): 108.
↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 204. See also
Nakhaei, The Great Mosque, 111–14.
↩︎
Dieulafoy mismatched these photographs on the pages of
“Perse 1.” Her detail of the entrance portal’s Kufic
band (no. 109) appears next to her general view of the
ayvan leading into the domed qibla sanctuary
(no. 110). On the next page, her general view of the
entrance portal (no. 111) is next to a detail of the
qibla ayvan (no. 112).
↩︎
For the condition of the foundation inscription in 1897
versus 2013, see Nakhaei, The Great Mosque, 91,
figs. 45 and 46.
↩︎
For the middle of the inscription, see Dieulafoy, “Perse
1,” 61, no. 117.
↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 205. For
Dieulafoy’s two other details, see Dieulafoy “Perse 1,”
60, no. 115; 61, no. 119.
↩︎
Dieulafoy, “Perse 1,” 61, no. 118. This hole was still
present three decades later, as captured by French
archaeologist and architect Henry Viollet in February
1912. His archive (Fonds Henry Viollet) is preserved in
the Bibliothèque Universitaire des Langues et
Civilisations (BULAC) in Paris, and his glass plates
were recently released online (https://bina.bulac.fr/HV). Thanks to Sandra Aube and Martina Massullo for
facilitating research.
↩︎
Blair, “Architecture as a Source,” 224–25, based on
Étienne Combe, Jean Sauvaget, and Gaston Wiet, eds.,
Répertoire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe,
vol. 13, no. 4912 (Cairo: L’imprimerie de l’Institut
Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1931–56), 77, which
indicates the basmala at the beginning. Parts of this
formula are visible today (thanks to Hossein Nakhaei for
confirming this), but Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh’s reading of
Qur'an 2:225 remains to be verified.
↩︎
Dieulafoy, La Perse, 148–49; and Donald Newton
Wilber,
The Architecture of Islamic Iran: the Il Khānid
Period
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955),
177–78, cat. no. 86.
↩︎
The photographs are in the Donald Wilber Archives,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, DW49-00a, DW49-00b,
DW49-01, DW 49-02, DW60-37. I am grateful to Sally Bjork
and Cathy Garcia for searching this archive and sharing
scans. Wilber also took some valuable photographs of the
Emamzadeh Yahya.
↩︎
“Keh az heysiat-e kashikari mitavan goft avval bana-ye
ʿalam ast.” Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 207.
↩︎
“Un des monuments les plus intéressants de la contrée.
. . . Il n’est pas possible d’obtenir des émaux plus
purs et plus brillants que ceux de l’imamzaddè Yaya.”
Dieulafoy, La Perse, 148–49.
↩︎
Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design,
Honolulu, 48.327,
https://collection.shangrilahawaii.org/objects/4334/. See Sheila Blair, “Art as Text: The Luster Mihrab in
the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art,” in
No Tapping around Philology: A Festschrift in Honor
of Wheeler McIntosh Thackston Jr.’s 70th Birthday,
ed. Alireza Korangy and Daniel J. Sheffield (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2014), 415–16 and figs. 13–14. Much later
in life, Doris Duke also purchased several stars and
crosses from the shrine, including cross tile 48.267,
https://collection.shangrilahawaii.org/objects/5817/. ↩︎
Consider the reconstructed cenotaph of Fatemeh Maʿsumeh
(d. 816) in Qom. Mohsen Ghanooni and Samaneh
Sadeghimehr, “Barrasī-ye katībeh-ye kāshīhā-ye
zarrīnfām-e mazār-e ḥażrat-e Fāṭemeh Maʿṣūmeh dar Qom”
[Study of the inscriptions of the luster tiles of the
tomb of Hazrat-e Fatemeh Maʿsumeh at Qom],
Honarha-ye Ziba 22, no. 2 (1396 SH/2017): 82,
no. 3.
↩︎
For those on display in the Moghaddam Museum in Tehran,
see Mohsen Moghadam, “An Old House in Tehran: Its
Gardens, Its Collections,” in
A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the
Present,
vol. 14, ed. Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman
(Ashiya, Japan: SOPA, A Survey of Persian Art, 1967),
facing p. 3190, pl. 1529, figs. e–f.
↩︎
There are exceptions. Similar tiles measuring about
twenty centimeters across have also been attributed to
the shrine, as well as some with Persian verses. For one
example of the former, see the Asian Art Museum, San
Francisco, B60P2034,
https://searchcollection.asianart.org/objects/13026/starshaped-tile. In the absence of in-situ documentation, attribution
is indeed a problem.
↩︎
Dieulafoy, La Perse, 147; and Wilber,
The Architecture of Islamic Iran, fig. 6. The
spacing of Wilber’s plan is misleading (too long), and
an alternative plan is pending in
The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition
of a Living Iranian Shrine.
This online exhibition is an independent project led by
the author since 2021 and will be hosted by the platform
Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online (University of
Michigan) at
https://khamseen-emamzadeh-yahya-varamin.hart.lsa.umich.edu. ↩︎
Friedrich Sarre,
Denkmäler persischer Baukunst (Berlin: Wasmuth,
1910), 59, pl. 65,
https://archive.org/details/denkmlerpersis01sarr/page/59/. Sarre visited the site on two occasions: 30 December
1897 and at some point in 1899–90. I am grateful to Jens
Kröger and Miriam Kühn for sharing this information.
↩︎
Dieulafoy, La Perse, 148. Bracketed
interpolations mine. Dieulafoy seems to reference a
Qajar edict apparently passed in 1876 that banned
Christians from entering religious sites. While this
edict is often cited in primary and secondary sources,
the text itself has not been located and remains
ambiguous.
↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 207, records the
widest part of the tomb as 8.5 zarʿ (cubits),
or 8.84 meters. I have favored the conversion rate used
during the Qajar period (1 zarʿ = 104
centimeters).
↩︎
For a list of the six intact examples dated between 612
AH/1215 and 734 AH/1334, see Blair, “Art as Text,” 409,
table 1. On the dispersed mihrab once in the tomb of
Shaykh ʿAbdosamad (ʿAbd al-Samad, d. 1299–1300) at
Natanz, see Anaïs Leone, “New Data on the Luster Tiles
of ʿAbd al-Samad’s Shrine in Natanz, Iran,”
Muqarnas 38 (2021): 336–48. On the dispersed
mihrab once in the tomb of Imam ʿAli at Najaf, see
Alireza Bahreman,
Bāzshenāsī va moʿarefī-ye meḥrāb-e farāmūsh shodeh
ḥaram-e moṭaḥar-e emām ‘Alī
[Recognition of and introduction to the forgotten mehrab
of the tomb of Imam ʿAli],
Honarhā-ye Tajasommī 26, no. 1 (1400 SH/2021):
55–67.
↩︎
This sheet has since been replaced by a permanent
barrier. For additional recent images of the tomb, see
the many figures in Overton and Maleki, “The Emamzadeh
Yahya”; and Overton, “Framing, Performing, Forgetting.”
As of August 2023, sixty-three photographs of the site
have been posted to Google Maps, all taken between 2021
and 2023. Such crowdsourced images are excellent
resources for seeing the shrine in a more current state.
Google Maps, Imamzadeh Yahya Varamin,
https://maps.app.goo.gl/rcLwGQL7dFygqwNk7. ↩︎
For similar steel vases once mounted on an ʿalam
(standard), see Annabelle Collinet, “Performance Objects
of Muḥarram in Iran: A Story through Steel,”
Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World
1 (2020): 241, fig. 16.
↩︎
Similar votives can be seen in Viollet’s 1912–13
photograph of the Menar-e Jonban (Shaking Minarets) in
Isfahan (BULAC, Fonds Viollet, PRS 180, HV 752). For a
comparable print, see Henry-René d’Allemagne,
Du Khorassan au Pays des Backhtiaris: Trois mois de
voyage en Perse
(Paris: Hachette, 1911), 4:56. On nazr, see
Christiane Gruber, “Nazr Necessities: Votive
Practices and Objects in Iranian Muharram,” in
Ex Voto: Votive Giving Across Cultures, ed. I.
Weinryb (New York: Bard, 2015), 246–75.
↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 208. Today,
Emamzadeh Yahya is generally known as a sixth-generation
descendant of Imam Hasan (d. 670), the second Imam. See
Kambiz Haji-Qassemi, ed.,
Ganjnameh: Cyclopaedia of Iranian Islamic
Architecture,
vol. 13,
Emamzadehs and Mausoleums (Part III) (Tehran:
Shahid Beheshti University Press, 2010), 82.
↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh does not describe the cenotaph at
all, but it could have been covered by textiles or
inaccessible behind the screen. It is unclear if the
original luster cenotaph was present at the time of his
visit, or Dieulafoy’s. Dieulafoy,
La Perse, 149, describes the luster revetment
as including the walls, cenotaph, and mihrab (“le
lambris, le sarcophage et le mihrab”), but she does not
describe the cenotaph in any detail.
↩︎
It is also possible that this configuration was in place
during Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh’s 1876 visit. He records the
tomb’s dimensions as 8.5 by 6.75 zarʿ (8.84 ×
7.02 m), which suggests that one side was shortened by
something, perhaps by the screen in question. As Hossein
Nakhaei pointed out to me, the width of the screen (1.75
zarʿ) plus the length of the short side of the
tomb (6.75 zarʿ) equals the full diameter (8.5
zarʿ). See Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh,
Rasaʾel, 207. I thank Nakhaei for exchanges on
this complex issue.
↩︎
Consider the tomb of Shaykh ʿAbdosamad at Natanz, which
was also plundered for its Ilkhanid luster. In this even
smaller space, a Safavid wood screen shields a Safavid
cenotaph dated 1045 AH/1635–36 and clad in
haft rangi (lit. seven colors) tilework. This
Safavid cenotaph replaced the original luster one, and
the now-stripped luster mihrab is just behind it. See
Leone, “New Data,” 349, fig. 22; and the YouTube video
“Tomb of Shaykh Abd-al Samad at Natanz,” 1:31, in
Overton, “Framing, Performing, Forgetting,”
https://youtu.be/-5q4jGA5x_I. ↩︎
I found this photograph by chance in Myron Bement
Smith’s archive in August 2022 (thanks to Lisa Fthenakis
for facilitating research). While it is currently a rare
image, comparable ones likely exist in Iranian archives,
especially those in Varamin.
↩︎
Further discussion of the ritual objects captured in
this photograph, including the elaborate
ʿalam, is pending in
The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition
of a Living Iranian Shrine
(see note 81). For a comparable basmala bird dated 1372
AH/1952–53, see Amsterdam, Tropenmuseum, TM-4136-11,
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11840/132480. Thanks to Mirjam Shatanawi for bringing this to my
attention.
↩︎
Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh, Rasaʾel, 207. For a
photograph of the Qom mihrab (acc. no. 32790) on display
in Tehran, see Overton, “Framing, Performing,
Forgetting,” fig. 10.
↩︎
Star tile, 661 AH/1262–63, New York, Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 91.1.100,
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/444453. Sura al-Fatiha takes up most of the space, sura
al-Ikhlas about a quarter, and the date is written out
at the end (“in a month of the year one and sixty and
six hundred”).
↩︎
Moya Carey,
Persian Art: Collecting the Arts of Iran for the
V&A
(London: V&A Publishing, 2017), 97–105. The
information on Sèvres was kindly shared by curator
Delphine Miroudot via chat during my Zoom lecture “The
Emamzadeh Yahya: The Afterlife of an Iranian Shrine” for
the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Islamic Art in Solitude
online lecture series on 23 March 2023.
↩︎
On this collection, see Sandra S. Williams, “Reading an
‘Album’ from Qajar Iran,”
Getty Research Journal, no. 12 (2020): 29–48.
Thanks to Frances Terpak, Moira Day, and Mahsa Hatam for
facilitating several viewings during my fall 2021
residency and thereafter.
↩︎
Paul Chevallier,
Catalogue des objets d’art et de haute curiosité
antiques, du moyen-âge & de la renaissance,
composant l’importante et précieuse Collection
Spitzer, dont la vente publique aura lieu à Paris . .
. du lundi 17 avril au vendredi 16 juin, 1893 à deux
heures
(Paris: Imprimerie de l’Art, E. Ménard, 1893), lot nos.
1012–29, plate titled “Faiences Orientales et
Hispano-Moresques.”
↩︎
Charles James Wills,
In the Land of the Lion and Sun; or, Modern Persia,
Being Experiences of Life in Persia during a Residence
of Fifteen Years in Various Parts of That Country from
1866 to 1881
(London: Macmillan, 1883), 36. Bracketed interpolations
mine.
↩︎
Wills, In the Land, 191–92. Emphasis in
original.
↩︎
This summary builds on the seminal article by Tomoko
Masuya, “Persian Tiles on European Walls: Collecting
Ilkhanid Tiles in Nineteenth-Century Europe,”
Ars Orientalis 30 (2000): 39–54.
↩︎
On contemporary French activities at Persepolis, see Ali
Mousavi, “In Search of Persepolis: Western Travellers’
Explorations in Persia,” chap. 5 in
Persepolis: Discovery and Afterlife of a World
Wonder
(Boston: De Gruyter, 2012).
↩︎
Carey, Persian Art, 84–86. The Sèvres museum
also acquired luster from Ferdinand Méchin, a dealer who
traveled in Iran in the 1860s and sold a variety of
ceramic fragments and tiles to South Kensington. Carey,
Persian Art, 76.
↩︎
Julien de Rochechouart,
Souvenirs d’un voyage en Perse (Paris:
Challamel, 1867), 314. In the next line, he names
“Véramine.”
↩︎
“Les briques de Natinz [Natanz] que je possède.”
Rochechouart, Souvenirs d’un voyage, 315.
↩︎
Carey, Persian Art, 97–100, 102–5, and 99, fig.
91 (an Emamzadeh Yahya star tile).
↩︎
Masuya, “Persian Tiles,” 54, appendix. Dieulafoy also
photographed the luster mihrab in situ in the Masjed-e
Maydan (“Perse 1,” 77, no. 155). On this mihrab’s
afterlife, see Markus Ritter, “The Kashan Mihrab in
Berlin: A Historiography of Persian Lustreware,” in
Persian Art: Image-Making in Eurasia, ed. Yuka
Kadoi (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018),
157–78; and this essay, pp. 77–80.
↩︎
See the many images in Leone, “New Data”; and the
YouTube video “Tomb of Shaykh Abd-al Samad at Natanz” in
Overton, “Framing, Performing, Forgetting,”
https://youtu.be/-5q4jGA5x_I. ↩︎
Hagop Kevorkian in London to Charles Freer in Detroit,
25 August 1913, 2, Washington, D.C., National Museum of
Asian Art Archives (NMAAA), Charles Lang Freer Papers,
FSA A.01, box 19, folder 28,
https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/dc38d01133a-fc80-4781-a382-bb38471c4e89. Although aspects of Kevorkian’s detailed account in
this six-page letter are plausible, his implication of
the Mostowfi al-Mamalek cannot be considered ironclad
until it is verified against Iranian sources. On page 2,
Kevorkian himself mentions a “communique [sic]
made through the Persian Legation.”
↩︎
D’Allemagne,
Du Khorassan au Pays des Backhtiaris, 2:130–32.
He further states that the mihrab was brought to Paris
by one of Mozaffar al-Din’s ministers and hidden in the
shah’s luggage, thus echoing Kevorkian’s narrative.
↩︎
Sarre, Denkmäler persischer Baukunst, 67, pl.
77. The caption reads “wahrscheinlich aus dem Imamzadeh
Jahja in Veramin” (probably from the Emamzadeh Yahya in
Varamin).
↩︎
Letter from Kevorkian to Freer, 25 August 1913, 2.
↩︎
Hagop Kevorkian in London to Charles Freer in Detroit,
undated telegram presumably sent before the letter of 25
August 1913 cited in note 118 above, NMAAA, Charles Lang
Freer Papers, FSA A.01, box 19, folder 28,
https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/dc38d01133a-fc80-4781-a382-bb38471c4e89. ↩︎
In 1925, the tiles entered the Oriental Department of
the State Hermitage Museum. I thank Dmitry Sadofeev for
sharing this information.
↩︎
Exhibition of Persian Art & Curios: The
Collection Formed by J. R. Preece, Esq., C. M. G.,
Late H.B.M.’s Consul General at Ispahan, Persia, exh. cat. (London: Vincent Robinson Galleries, 1913),
no. 1 and color plate.
↩︎
Undated telegram from Kevorkian to Freer (see this
essay, note 122).
↩︎
The shrine’s wood door, dated 971 AH/1563–64, was also
stolen at some point after Eʿtezad al-Saltaneh’s visit
in 1863. See Haji-Qassemi, Ganjnameh, 13:82;
and Nakhaei, The Great Mosque, 55.
↩︎
One of the biggest internal thefts that overlapped with
the mihrab’s embargo in Paris was the stealing of
manuscripts from the Golestan Palace Library by the
royal librarian, who was assisted by a ring of Qajar
officials and diplomats. See Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam,
“L’affaire du vol de la Bibliothèque Royale du Palais du
Golestan à Téhéran, ca. 1907,”
Studia Iranica 32, no. 1 (2003): 137–47.
↩︎
Nasiri-Moghaddam,
L’archéologie française en Perse, 135–43.
↩︎
For Sarre, see this essay, note 120. For the telegram,
see note 122.
↩︎
Exhibition of Muhammedan-Persian Art, Exhibition of
the Kevorkian Collection, Including Objects Excavated
under His Supervision Exhibited at the Galleries of
Charles of London at 718 Fifth Avenue in New York,
March–April, 1914, exh. cat. (New York: Lent & Graff, 1914), cat.
no. 335,
https://archive.org/details/exhibitionofkevo00kevo/. See also Blair, “Art as Text,” 416.
↩︎
“Fritware tile and drug jar (albarello), Iran,
probably Kashan, (15) dated 1261–2; (16) 1180–1200,
museum nos. 1072–1875; 369–1892.” Quoted from the
gallery label for objects fifteen and sixteen in the
display “The Spread of Tin-Glaze and Lustre, 800–1800.”
↩︎
For a photograph of the V&A display, which welcomes
visitors into the Jameel Gallery, see Overton, “Framing,
Performing, Forgetting,” fig. 7.
↩︎
Quoted from the Hermitage gallery placard, “Tiles from
the Imamzadeh Yahya Mausoleum in Varamin.” I thank
Dmitry Sadofeev for sharing his excellent photographs of
the renovated galleries.
↩︎
For facilitating research in Godard’s archive, I thank
Sophie Paulet and Alejandra Tafur Manrique.
↩︎
It is possible that the north ayvan leading
into the tomb would have been a renovation of an
Ilkhanid feature. It is not, however, visible in
Dieulafoy’s 1881 view of the site in “Perse 1,” 65, no.
129.
↩︎
Talinn Grigor, “Recultivating ‘Good Taste’: The Early
Pahlavi Modernists and Their Society for National
Heritage,” Iranian Studies 37, no. 1 (2004):
17–45.
↩︎
For an English translation of this law’s twenty
articles, see Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam, “Archaeology and
the Iranian National Museum: Qajar and early Pahlavi
Cultural Policies,” in
Culture and Cultural Politics under Reza Shah: The
Pahlavi State, New Bourgeoisie and the Creation of a
Modern Society in Iran, ed. Bianca Devos and Christoph Werner (New York:
Routledge, 2013), 139–43, appendix.
↩︎
Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, eds.,
A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the
Present
(London: Oxford University Press, 1938–39), 2:1679, no.
53, and vol. 5, plate 400. In this publication, the
mihrab was identified correctly as from the “Imamzada
Yahya, Varamin” and was at the time on loan to the
University Museum, Philadelphia. For its display in New
York in 1940, see Edward Allen Jewell, “Persian
Exhibition of Art is Opened,” New York Times,
April 24, 1940, 20.
↩︎
Blair, “Art as Text,” 417. Negotations were led by
Duke’s adviser Mary Crane, a graduate student at New
York University. See Keelan Overton, “Filming,
Photographing and Purveying in ‘the New Iran:’ The
Legacy of Stephen H. Nyman, ca. 1937–42,” in
Arthur Upham Pope and A New Survey of Persian Art, ed. Yuka Kadoi (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 364.
↩︎
Hagop Kevorkian in New York to Doris Duke Cromwell in
Honolulu, 28 December 1940. Honolulu, Archives of the
Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design.
↩︎
For its terrible condition at the time, see Yedda
Godard, “Pièces datées de céramiques de Kāshān à décor
lustré,” Athar-e Iran 2 (1937): 314, fig. 139.
↩︎
Dieulafoy, La Perse, 147 and 149. The mihrab of
the Emamzadeh Shah Hossein is captioned “mihrab a
Véramine” and reproduced on a page mostly devoted to the
Emamzadeh Yahya. This likely contributed to confusion.
For details of the collage, see Overton and Maleki, “The
Emamzadeh Yahya,” fig. 17; and Overton, “Framing,
Performing, Forgetting,” fig. 13.
↩︎
Fig. 1. —View of Jane Dieulafoy’s photography album “Perse 1,” pp.
34–35, showing photographs taken in Khorramdareh and Qazvin
in May 1881.
On the right page is the domed tomb of the Emamzadeh Shahzadeh
Hossein at Qazvin (975–1008 AH/1568–1600). Paris, Bibliothèque
de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, 4 Phot 18 (1).
Photograph by the author, March 2022.
Fig. 4. —The architectural monuments of Varamin observed by Eʿtemad
al-Saltaneh in 1876.
The citadel (qaʿleh), represented through dashed
lines, is now lost, but the surrounding sites (ca. 1260–1490)
all stand to various degrees. Drawing by Kanika Kalra.
Fig. 5. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916). Views of
the Congregational Mosque of Varamin (Masjed-e Jameʿ, 722–26
AH/1322–26) from Dieulafoy’s photography album “Perse 1,” June
1881, p. 58. At left is a general view of the mosque’s
entrance ayvan; at right is a detail of the
ayvan leading into the domed qibla sanctuary. Albumen
silver prints from gelatin glass negatives (dry plates).
Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de
l’Art, 4 Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.
Fig. 6. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916). Views of
the Emamzadeh Shah Hossein (early 1300s) at Varamin from
Dieulafoy’s photography album “Perse 1,” June 1881, p. 64.
Albumen silver prints from gelatin glass negatives (dry
plates). Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire
de l’Art, 4 Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.
Fig. 7. —Luster tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin on display
in the renovated Iran galleries of the State Hermitage
Museum in Saint Petersburg, September 2022.Middle: top panel of the cenotaph naming “the Imam,
Yahya,” dated 10 Moharram 705 AH/2 August 1305 and signed by
Yusof b. ʿAli b. Mohammad b. Abi Taher and ʿAli b. Ahmad b.
ʿAli al-Hosseini; left and right sides: stars and
crosses from the tomb’s dado; and upper: tiles from
different sites, including the tomb of Shaykh ʿAbdosamad at
Natanz (upper left). Photograph by Dmitry Sadofeev.
Fig. 8. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916). Views of
Varamin from Dieulafoy’s photography album “Perse 1,” June
1881, p. 65. At the upper right is a general view of the
Emamzadeh Yahya (660–707 AH/1261–1307). At left are its guards
and a mollah. Below is a group of Turkomans at the village’s
market. Albumen silver prints from gelatin glass negatives
(dry plates). Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut National
d’Histoire de l’Art, 4 Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.
Fig. 9. —Jane Dieulafoy (French, 1851–1916). Two
views of the interior of the Emamzadeh Yahya from Dieulafoy’s
photography album “Perse 1,” June 1881, p. 66 (detail). At the
upper left is the luster mihrab dated Shaʿban 663 AH/May 1265
and signed by ʿAli b. Mohammad b. Abi Taher. At the lower
right is the squinch of the adjacent corner niche. Albumen
silver prints from gelatin glass negatives (dry plates).
Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de
l’Art, 4 Phot 18 (1),
https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/62746.
Fig. 10. —Mihrab void and southwest corner niche of the Emamzadeh
Yahya, Varamin, April 2018.
Photograph by the author.
Fig. 11. —Annotation of Jane Dieulafoy’s 1881 photograph of the
Emamzadeh Yahya’s luster mihrab in situ (“Perse 1,” p.
66).
Yellow elements are carved stucco, and black is luster
tilework. The numbers indicate chapters and verses of the
Qur'an. Dashed lines in the outer border of the mihrab
delineate individual tiles, which sometimes span verses.
Annotations by the author.
Fig. 12. —A large ceremonial standard (ʿalam) and votives
affixed to the screen in front of the mihrab void in the
Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin, April 1958.
Photograph dated on the reverse and stamped “U. S. I. S. Iran
Press Section.” Washington, D.C., National Museum of Asian Art
Archives, Smithsonian Institution, The Myron Bement Smith
Collection, FSA-2023-000001.
Fig. 13. —Interior of a Tehran house with a luster cabinet captioned
“Cachis persans (Téhéran)” (Persian tiles [Tehran]), ca.
1880s.
Photograph by Antoin Sevruguin (ca. 1851–1933), albumen print.
Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2017.R.25.
Table 1. —
Timeline of Key Events, ca. 1860s–1940
Date
Event
1862–75: First wave of luster tilework thefts: Natanz,
Qom, Varamin
1863
January: Eʿtezad al-Saltaneh visits Varamin
ca. 1860–70
museums in Sèvres and London dispatch agents to
research ceramics and acquire tiles
1867: publication of Julien de Rochechouart’s
Souvenirs d’un voyage en Perse
1875
South Kensington Museum (now Victoria & Albert
Museum) receives a large set of luster tiles from
the Emamzadeh Yahya
1876
apparent Qajar edict banning Christians from
entering religious sites
December: Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh visits Varamin and
publishes his account in
Ruznameh-ye Iran
state of the Emamzadeh Yahya as observed by Eʿtemad
al-Saltaneh: marqad (tomb or grave) in the
center of the tomb, luster mihrab in situ, some dado
tiles off the wall, motevalli (caretaker)
present
1880–1900: Second wave of luster tilework thefts:
Damghan, Kashan, Qom, Varamin
1880
March: Musée National de Céramique, Sèvres, receives
its first Emamzadeh Yahya tiles
1881
June: Jane Dieulafoy visits Varamin
state of the Emamzadeh Yahya at the time of
Dieulafoy’s visit: entrance portal standing but
vault collapsed, conical tower intact, luster mihrab
in situ, mollah and guards present, apparent edict
of 1876 in place (see above)
1883
January: publication of Dieulafoy’s first
Le tour article, including Varamin
1885–86
Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy excavate at Susa over two
seasons
1887
publication of Dieulafoy’s travelogue
La Perse
1888
inauguration of the Musée du Louvre’s Department of
Oriental Antiquities, including the Susa galleries
1889
Naser al-Din Shah’s third tour of Europe, including
Paris
ca. 1880s
Antoin Sevruguin photographs the luster cabinet in a
Tehran home
ca. 1890s
underglaze tiles dateable to the late Qajar period
are installed on the dado of the tomb of Emamzadeh
Yahya to mask the empty walls of the stolen luster
tiles
1893
sale of the Frédéric Spitzer collection in Paris
combining Iranian and Spanish luster
1900
the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is in Paris, said by
Hagop Kevorkian to have been brought there by Mirza
Hasan Ashtiani Mostowfi al-Mamalek for the
Exposition Universelle
July–August: Mozaffar al-Din Shah visits Paris for
the Exposition Universelle; signing of the third
Franco-Persian archaeological convention
ca. 1900–1930
major renovation of the Emamzadeh Yahya; the
original entrance portal and conical tower are
completely lost
1906–11
Constitutional Revolution of Iran
1909
case launched by the Qajar government to investigate
the thefts of manuscripts from the Golestan Palace
Library
1910
publication of Friedrich Sarre’s
Denkmäler persischer Baukunst, including a
general view of the Emamzadeh Yahya and its mihrab
on display in Paris, likely in a shop
1911
publication of Henry d’Allemagne’s
Du Khorassan au Pays des Backhtiaris, including a section titled
“Histoire du mihrab de Véramine”
1912
February: Henri Viollet visits Varamin and
photographs the congregational mosque
October: Kevorkian travels to Iran to negotiate the
purchase of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab, still
stored in Paris
1913
May:
Exhibition of Persian Art & Curios,
London, inclusive of the luster mihrab from Kashan’s
Masjed-e Maydan
25 August: Kevorkian writes to Charles Freer
offering the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab for sale
1914
the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is displayed in
Exhibition of Muhammedan-Persian Art, Exhibition
of the Kevorkian Collection, New York
1920s
1921: coup d’etat; foundation of the Society for
National Heritage
1925: rise of the Pahlavi dynasty
1927: end of the French archaeological monopoly
1928: André Godard arrives in Iran to serve as
Director of the Persian Antiquities Service and head
of the National Museum in Tehran
1930s
Iran:
3 November 1930: passing of the Antiquities Law
1930–33: registration of Varamin’s congregational
mosque, tomb tower of ʿAlaoddin, and Emamzadeh Yahya
as national heritage
1934–37: construction and inauguration of the
National Museum in Tehran
International:
1931: the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is displayed in
the
International Exhibition of Persian Art,
London
1938: publication of Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis
Ackerman, eds.,
A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to
the Present, including the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab
Godard and Donald Wilber photograph the renovated
Emamzadeh Yahya
1940
April–May: the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is displayed
in Six Thousand Years of Persian Art, New
York
June: Mary Crane negotiates with Kevorkian for Doris
Duke’s purchase of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab
28 December: Kevorkian writes to Duke celebrating
the sale of the mihrab
Fig. 14. —View of the south (back) facade of the Emamzadeh Yahya at
Varamin during or after the major renovation of the early
twentieth century, likely early 1930s. Photograph by André Godard (French, 1881–1965). Paris,
Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts de l’Islam, Archives
Godard, 1APAI/9025.