In Esfahan

We have just passed a couple of pleasant days in Esfahan, a really lovely city.

We spent quite a bit of time in and around Imam Square, which is the second-largest public square in the world, with only Tien An Min being bigger.

There are many handicraft shops and cafés in and around the Square, also a palace and a mosque, the latter built about 400 years ago as the private mosque of Shah Abbass the First. I believe the palace was also his. The mosque contained a feature that was quite amazing to me, I hope I can describe it properly. In the middle of the floor is a flagstone, and if you stand on that and look straight up to the point of the dome, you see a beam of light that, no matter what time of day, shines in the direction of Mecca. The light is created by a series of reflective tiles embedded within a high window, and constructed in such a way that they will catch the sunlight coming from any direction and reflect it onto the ceiling, at the exact middle point and pointed in the exact direction. I have thought it through, and cannot figure out exactly how that could be done, but it is so! And if you stand anywhere else in the mosque, i.e. not on that one central flagstone, you don’t see any light-beam up there at all.

Our group was fascinated by the miniature paintings for sale here and, yes, Geoff and I bought one. We watched a master at work — they use a super-fine brush with only TWO hairs taken from the back of a cat’s neck (please note, no cats were harmed in the making of these brushes…?). The one we bought shows a camel train resting at a caravanserai, and is done with thousands of tiny dots, rather than with brushstrokes. I wish I could show you a photograph, but the craftsman wrapped it very carefully for travel, so you will just have to come and visit us at home to see it.

On the walk back to our hotel one day, my eye was caught by an unusual fountain: a gentleman reading beneath an umbrella. It reminded me of my father, who could blissfully read without noticing the world around him, and who could undoubtedly have read on a busy street under a dripping brolly!