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THE BRIDGE TO NEW JULFA: A HISTORICAL LOOK AT THE ARMENIAN-IRANIAN COMMUNITY OF ISFAHAN
Posted by Ajam Media Collective â~K... October 23, 2012 â~K... 1
Comment
Part I of a guest post written by Afsheen Sharifzadeh, a student at
Tufts University focusing on Iran and the Caucasus.
Winter in Isfahan, Safavid-era Bridge "Pol-e Khaju"
It's January 6th. Yet another snowy winter afternoon in Isfahan, but
somehow curiously unlike the rest. A blanket of white fluff cloaks the
medieval metropolis and all of its timeless splendor, shielding the
antique avenues, turquoise-dome rooftops, cypress tree colonnades,
and magnificent bridge arcades from the yearning eyes of even the
most impassioned beholder. The puffy white shrouds gather to form a
crown atop the Zagros mountains in the distance, setting the scene of a
glorious winter wonderland. At midday a few chariots prance through the
plaza of the Meydân while the bazaar barons sit reclined, playfully
puffing their waterpipes and sipping hot black tea over conversation.
Across the river, a crowd of cheerful, fur-clad folks gathers at the
foot of a burgeoning cathedral, summoned there by the alluring sirens
of church bells. One by one, amidst a sea of incessant kissing and
well-wishing, families scurry in to take photos next to the lavishly
decorated pine tree before lighting candles and reading prayers from
the Bible. Perhaps some of the little ones are still sleepy from the
late-night fireworks, or nostalgically thinking back to the gifts they
had asked for atop Dzmer Pap's (Santa Claus) lap weeks before. Surely
nothing a holiday feast's worth of harissa and mouth-watering Persian
food alongside family can't remedy. The priest breaks bread and pours
homemade red wine for his parishioners, and soon the adults are off
on the quest to create the perfect dinner party. This is a portrait
of a typical Christmas Day among the Armenians of Isfahan, not far
off from their brethren in Tehran, Tabriz, Fereydunshahr (P'eria),
Urmia, Hamedan, and Los Angeles.
[screen-shot-2012-10-22-at-10-58-00-pm.png?w=750]
Christmas decorations in a neighborhood in New Julfa, Isfahan
[Christmas-Shopping-Tehran1.jpg]
Christmas Shopping in Tehran
The ~120,000 Armenians remaining in Iran today are designated two seats
in the Iranian Parliament (Majles) and granted freedom of worship,
as well as the right to a Christian, Armenian-language education in
private secondary schools. And while the Armenians are certainly adored
by their Iranian compatriots at large-with whom their kinship dates
back at least nominally to the Aryan invasion of the Near East-they
are often overlooked in spite of their centuries-long contributions
to their homeland. After all, Armenians were paramount in opening up
Persia to the West before the age of Imperialism, and they introduced
a number of both Western and Eastern innovations to Iran including
European firearms (1722) and the printing press (1636). It was Iranian
Armenians who attracted Christian evangelists to open European language
schools, including the forerunner to the French-language Jeanne d'Arc
Academy in Tehran; who received and hosted European visitors to the
capital throughout the Safavid period; and who recruited European
instructors to teach at Persia's first modern institute of higher
learning, Dâr ol-FunĂ"n (est. 1851).
Throughout the 19th century, Iranian Armenian tailors and jewelers
introduced European fashions, and Armenian photographers and filmmakers
were among the first in those professions. A hero from among their
ranks, Yeprem Khan, played a pivotal role in the Iranian Constitutional
Revolution of 1905, and young Armenians were "martyred" alongside their
Muslim brothers during the Iran-Iraq War. Perhaps some of us are more
familiar with the big Iranian Armenian names in the Persian music
industry like Vigen, Andy, Helen, Martik, Serjik, Elcid, or sports
luminaries such as footballer Andranik Teymourian and worldwide
tennis idol Andre Agassi, or even Iran's first female astronomer
and physicist, Alenush Terian. It is in light of all of this that
the people most aptly call themselves Parskahay ("Perso-Armenian"),
as distinct, long-time actors in the dynamic but inclusive nation
they call home.
[Vank_Cathedral_Armenian_Quarter_Esfahan_Iran-433.jpg]
New Years 2011 services at Vank Cathedral, New Julfa, Isfahan
[ox281286236647065766.jpg]
Priest prepares for New Year's services at Vank Cathedral, New Julfa,
Isfahan
But perhaps the most fascinating historical narrative of Iranian
Armenians takes us back four centuries, to the Safavid period. Shah
Abbas I (ruled 1587-1629) is one of the most celebrated Safavid
Kings, in part due to his vision of geopolitical centralization and
his reconquest of lost peripheral provinces from the neighboring
Ottomans and Uzbeks. But among his most unique contributions was
the establishment of a world-class commercial district in his new
capital city, Isfahan, wherefrom Iranian silk was exchanged for
European silver. What's more, this district was governed by a private
land-owning merchant oligarchy comprised of an independent council and
a Christian provost (kalântar) appointed by the Shah, whose vision it
was to bypass the land route through the Ottoman Empire and redirect
the silk trade through central Iran and the Persian Gulf. It was here
in Isfahan that, not unlike the Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman Empire,
a group of elite Armenian silk traders were brought to serve as the
backbone of the Safavid economy and establish a sphere of commercial
and financial transactions in over a hundred cities spanning from
Burma, India, and China to Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Venice,
Amsterdam, Sweden, and Mexico.
[Vank_Cathedral,_Armenian_Quarter,_Esfahan,_Iran.jp g]
Exterior View of Vank Cathedral- Isfahan, Iran
The Safavids are known to have introduced a considerable number of
Caucasian elements into the Persian society, and this phenomenon
continued throughout the Qajar period. Ultimately the story of New
Julfa represents an aberration from the mercilessness and hardship
associated with earlier Caucasian campaigns under Shah Tahmasp
I, who forcefully uprooted and oftentimes converted over 70,000
Armenian, Georgian, and Circassian families and resettled them in
Gilan, Mazanderan, Fars, and within Isfahan and scattered villages
in the city's environs as part of his destructive scorched-earth
policy against Ottoman advances in the Caucasus. Among the war
prisoners of Caucasian campaigns, young men were trained as royal
pages (ghulâmân-e khâssa or qapı qulları) and came to serve as
important constituents of Safavid civil and military administration,
while Caucasian women quickly became the favorite concubines of the
Safavid harem. Georgian and Circassian Queen-Mothers formed factions
and competed to promote their own sons to the throne throughout
the Safavid period, and a certain politically-keen Circassian woman
named Pari-Khan Khanum acted as a king-maker in two instances in the
middle of the 16th century. Krusinski even insists that the influence
of Georgian [and Circassian] harem women accounted for the Safavid
tolerance of the empire's Christian population. Of Shah Tahmasp II's
nine sons who reached adolescence, five were born of Caucasian mothers:
four Georgians and one Circassian.
[shah+Abbas+fresco.jpg]
Shah Abbas I receiving Vali Muhammad Khan of Bukhara, Chehel Sotun,
Isfahan (c.1657)
The narrative of New Julfa, however, is instead a story of planned
population movement accompanied by at least outward religious tolerance
on the part of the Safavid Porte. In 1605 the Shah issued a farmân, or
royal decree, ordering the destruction a wealthy town of Armenian silk
traders on the Araxes River called Julfa and forcing its inhabitants
on a year-and-a-half exodus to a luxurious custom-designed suburb
of the Safavid capital Isfahan. Once there, the deportees would join
the empire's elite and serve as an indispensable organ to the Safavid
economy. But despite the exceptional provisions taken by Shah Abbas,
the exodus of the Julfans was not an easy one--contemporary accounts
such as that of the Armenian chronicler Arak'el of Tabriz detail the
plight and suffering of the Julfan Armenians, hundreds of whom perished
during the harsh winter they were forced to spend in Tabriz. Over half
a century later in 1652, Shah Abbas II would again dispatch troops
to the Caucasus with the sole purpose of destroying the ruins of Old
Julfa a second time, perhaps to symbolize the finality of the Julfan
Armenians' residence in Isfahan and their indispensable value to the
Safavid state.
[vank_cathedral_armenian_quarter_esfahan_iran-417.jpg?w=550&h=367]
Interior of Vank Cathedral, New Julfa, Isfahan
Shah Abbas I named this new suburb of Isfahan "New Julfa", (Nor Jugha
in Armenian), which was strategically located across from the Old
city and the royal grounds via the iconic Si-o-Se Pol bridge built
by the ghulâm Allahverdi Khan Undiladze, himself a Georgian convert
and close confidant to the court. The architects of the suburb were
ordered to build churches and mansions in the Islamic Persian style,
but ultimately the suburb picked up a unique artistic heritage of its
own that incorporated many Armenian and Western European elements. Many
of the homes were palatial in structure, with formal reception areas,
and echoed the lavishness of the Safavid palaces themselves. Indeed
contemporary travelers such as Jean Thevénot and Jean-Baptiste
Tavernier express awe in their accounts at the wealth and grandeur
of this quasi-autonomous Armenian suburb.
Gabriel de Chinon, a french traveler to the city, clearly states that
apart from the Shah's palace there was no place as beautiful as the
house of the Shafraz family in New Julfa.
[screen-shot-2012-10-22-at-8-36-51-pm.png?w=672&h=428]
Artist's Rendition of Safavid-era Isfahan, which is typically
described as the pinnacle of garden cities interspersed with
harmoniously-designed pavilions and spacious thoroughfares
It follows that as the suburb was surrounded by gates, only its
intended inhabitants were permitted to live there. Isfahan had grown
to be a remarkably cosmopolitan city as the capital of the Safavids,
with sizeable communities of Armenians, Georgians, Circassians, Turks,
Indians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and also Chinese, Indians, Dutchmen,
Spaniards, Englishmen, Italians, Frenchmen, Germans and the like. In
time, Isfahan became home to no less than 24 Armenian churches and
the Armenian population of New Julfa and scattered villages in the
city's environs grew to include some 50,000 souls. However a vast
constituent of Isfahan's Armenian population in the early 17th century
was in fact located across the bridge in the Old City center and had
been settled there among Muslims in the aftermath of earlier Caucasian
campaigns. These Armenians, who were low-income artisans and laborers,
were forbidden from living among the silk merchants in New Julfa. By
the mid-17th century, it is related that their "Christian habits"
of ringing church bells and wine-drinking had thoroughly irked their
Muslim neighbors, who eventually convinced Shah Abbas II to expel
them from Isfahan entirely.
[gruzini-w-iranie-1.jpg]
FereydĂ"nshahr (Arm: P'eria, Georgian: P'ereidani, Martqopi), home
to a Safavid-era Armenian settlement as well as Iran's last extant
Georgian-speaking community, Isfahan province, Iran
New Julfa thus represents a unique episode of royal favoritism
for an ethno-religious minority in Safavid Persia, even vis-a-vis
other Armenians in the kingdom. The Shah was bent on maintaining
the integrity of the New Julfan community so they would not succumb
to the fate of other Caucasian deportees-namely disintegration,
assimilation, and social and economic dissolution. By keeping the New
Julfans unconditionally content, the Shah was overlooking royal and
clerical biases against non-Muslims in order to guarantee economic
prosperity for his realm. But while Shah Abbas I came to foster very
warm personal relationships with the Armenian merchant families of
Isfahan-and the New Julfans quickly reached heights of opulence beyond
that imaginable for many of their Muslim counterparts-the future of
this delicate diaspora in central Persia was all but certain.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Posted by Ajam Media Collective â~K... October 23, 2012 â~K... 1
Comment
Part I of a guest post written by Afsheen Sharifzadeh, a student at
Tufts University focusing on Iran and the Caucasus.
Winter in Isfahan, Safavid-era Bridge "Pol-e Khaju"
It's January 6th. Yet another snowy winter afternoon in Isfahan, but
somehow curiously unlike the rest. A blanket of white fluff cloaks the
medieval metropolis and all of its timeless splendor, shielding the
antique avenues, turquoise-dome rooftops, cypress tree colonnades,
and magnificent bridge arcades from the yearning eyes of even the
most impassioned beholder. The puffy white shrouds gather to form a
crown atop the Zagros mountains in the distance, setting the scene of a
glorious winter wonderland. At midday a few chariots prance through the
plaza of the Meydân while the bazaar barons sit reclined, playfully
puffing their waterpipes and sipping hot black tea over conversation.
Across the river, a crowd of cheerful, fur-clad folks gathers at the
foot of a burgeoning cathedral, summoned there by the alluring sirens
of church bells. One by one, amidst a sea of incessant kissing and
well-wishing, families scurry in to take photos next to the lavishly
decorated pine tree before lighting candles and reading prayers from
the Bible. Perhaps some of the little ones are still sleepy from the
late-night fireworks, or nostalgically thinking back to the gifts they
had asked for atop Dzmer Pap's (Santa Claus) lap weeks before. Surely
nothing a holiday feast's worth of harissa and mouth-watering Persian
food alongside family can't remedy. The priest breaks bread and pours
homemade red wine for his parishioners, and soon the adults are off
on the quest to create the perfect dinner party. This is a portrait
of a typical Christmas Day among the Armenians of Isfahan, not far
off from their brethren in Tehran, Tabriz, Fereydunshahr (P'eria),
Urmia, Hamedan, and Los Angeles.
[screen-shot-2012-10-22-at-10-58-00-pm.png?w=750]
Christmas decorations in a neighborhood in New Julfa, Isfahan
[Christmas-Shopping-Tehran1.jpg]
Christmas Shopping in Tehran
The ~120,000 Armenians remaining in Iran today are designated two seats
in the Iranian Parliament (Majles) and granted freedom of worship,
as well as the right to a Christian, Armenian-language education in
private secondary schools. And while the Armenians are certainly adored
by their Iranian compatriots at large-with whom their kinship dates
back at least nominally to the Aryan invasion of the Near East-they
are often overlooked in spite of their centuries-long contributions
to their homeland. After all, Armenians were paramount in opening up
Persia to the West before the age of Imperialism, and they introduced
a number of both Western and Eastern innovations to Iran including
European firearms (1722) and the printing press (1636). It was Iranian
Armenians who attracted Christian evangelists to open European language
schools, including the forerunner to the French-language Jeanne d'Arc
Academy in Tehran; who received and hosted European visitors to the
capital throughout the Safavid period; and who recruited European
instructors to teach at Persia's first modern institute of higher
learning, Dâr ol-FunĂ"n (est. 1851).
Throughout the 19th century, Iranian Armenian tailors and jewelers
introduced European fashions, and Armenian photographers and filmmakers
were among the first in those professions. A hero from among their
ranks, Yeprem Khan, played a pivotal role in the Iranian Constitutional
Revolution of 1905, and young Armenians were "martyred" alongside their
Muslim brothers during the Iran-Iraq War. Perhaps some of us are more
familiar with the big Iranian Armenian names in the Persian music
industry like Vigen, Andy, Helen, Martik, Serjik, Elcid, or sports
luminaries such as footballer Andranik Teymourian and worldwide
tennis idol Andre Agassi, or even Iran's first female astronomer
and physicist, Alenush Terian. It is in light of all of this that
the people most aptly call themselves Parskahay ("Perso-Armenian"),
as distinct, long-time actors in the dynamic but inclusive nation
they call home.
[Vank_Cathedral_Armenian_Quarter_Esfahan_Iran-433.jpg]
New Years 2011 services at Vank Cathedral, New Julfa, Isfahan
[ox281286236647065766.jpg]
Priest prepares for New Year's services at Vank Cathedral, New Julfa,
Isfahan
But perhaps the most fascinating historical narrative of Iranian
Armenians takes us back four centuries, to the Safavid period. Shah
Abbas I (ruled 1587-1629) is one of the most celebrated Safavid
Kings, in part due to his vision of geopolitical centralization and
his reconquest of lost peripheral provinces from the neighboring
Ottomans and Uzbeks. But among his most unique contributions was
the establishment of a world-class commercial district in his new
capital city, Isfahan, wherefrom Iranian silk was exchanged for
European silver. What's more, this district was governed by a private
land-owning merchant oligarchy comprised of an independent council and
a Christian provost (kalântar) appointed by the Shah, whose vision it
was to bypass the land route through the Ottoman Empire and redirect
the silk trade through central Iran and the Persian Gulf. It was here
in Isfahan that, not unlike the Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman Empire,
a group of elite Armenian silk traders were brought to serve as the
backbone of the Safavid economy and establish a sphere of commercial
and financial transactions in over a hundred cities spanning from
Burma, India, and China to Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Venice,
Amsterdam, Sweden, and Mexico.
[Vank_Cathedral,_Armenian_Quarter,_Esfahan,_Iran.jp g]
Exterior View of Vank Cathedral- Isfahan, Iran
The Safavids are known to have introduced a considerable number of
Caucasian elements into the Persian society, and this phenomenon
continued throughout the Qajar period. Ultimately the story of New
Julfa represents an aberration from the mercilessness and hardship
associated with earlier Caucasian campaigns under Shah Tahmasp
I, who forcefully uprooted and oftentimes converted over 70,000
Armenian, Georgian, and Circassian families and resettled them in
Gilan, Mazanderan, Fars, and within Isfahan and scattered villages
in the city's environs as part of his destructive scorched-earth
policy against Ottoman advances in the Caucasus. Among the war
prisoners of Caucasian campaigns, young men were trained as royal
pages (ghulâmân-e khâssa or qapı qulları) and came to serve as
important constituents of Safavid civil and military administration,
while Caucasian women quickly became the favorite concubines of the
Safavid harem. Georgian and Circassian Queen-Mothers formed factions
and competed to promote their own sons to the throne throughout
the Safavid period, and a certain politically-keen Circassian woman
named Pari-Khan Khanum acted as a king-maker in two instances in the
middle of the 16th century. Krusinski even insists that the influence
of Georgian [and Circassian] harem women accounted for the Safavid
tolerance of the empire's Christian population. Of Shah Tahmasp II's
nine sons who reached adolescence, five were born of Caucasian mothers:
four Georgians and one Circassian.
[shah+Abbas+fresco.jpg]
Shah Abbas I receiving Vali Muhammad Khan of Bukhara, Chehel Sotun,
Isfahan (c.1657)
The narrative of New Julfa, however, is instead a story of planned
population movement accompanied by at least outward religious tolerance
on the part of the Safavid Porte. In 1605 the Shah issued a farmân, or
royal decree, ordering the destruction a wealthy town of Armenian silk
traders on the Araxes River called Julfa and forcing its inhabitants
on a year-and-a-half exodus to a luxurious custom-designed suburb
of the Safavid capital Isfahan. Once there, the deportees would join
the empire's elite and serve as an indispensable organ to the Safavid
economy. But despite the exceptional provisions taken by Shah Abbas,
the exodus of the Julfans was not an easy one--contemporary accounts
such as that of the Armenian chronicler Arak'el of Tabriz detail the
plight and suffering of the Julfan Armenians, hundreds of whom perished
during the harsh winter they were forced to spend in Tabriz. Over half
a century later in 1652, Shah Abbas II would again dispatch troops
to the Caucasus with the sole purpose of destroying the ruins of Old
Julfa a second time, perhaps to symbolize the finality of the Julfan
Armenians' residence in Isfahan and their indispensable value to the
Safavid state.
[vank_cathedral_armenian_quarter_esfahan_iran-417.jpg?w=550&h=367]
Interior of Vank Cathedral, New Julfa, Isfahan
Shah Abbas I named this new suburb of Isfahan "New Julfa", (Nor Jugha
in Armenian), which was strategically located across from the Old
city and the royal grounds via the iconic Si-o-Se Pol bridge built
by the ghulâm Allahverdi Khan Undiladze, himself a Georgian convert
and close confidant to the court. The architects of the suburb were
ordered to build churches and mansions in the Islamic Persian style,
but ultimately the suburb picked up a unique artistic heritage of its
own that incorporated many Armenian and Western European elements. Many
of the homes were palatial in structure, with formal reception areas,
and echoed the lavishness of the Safavid palaces themselves. Indeed
contemporary travelers such as Jean Thevénot and Jean-Baptiste
Tavernier express awe in their accounts at the wealth and grandeur
of this quasi-autonomous Armenian suburb.
Gabriel de Chinon, a french traveler to the city, clearly states that
apart from the Shah's palace there was no place as beautiful as the
house of the Shafraz family in New Julfa.
[screen-shot-2012-10-22-at-8-36-51-pm.png?w=672&h=428]
Artist's Rendition of Safavid-era Isfahan, which is typically
described as the pinnacle of garden cities interspersed with
harmoniously-designed pavilions and spacious thoroughfares
It follows that as the suburb was surrounded by gates, only its
intended inhabitants were permitted to live there. Isfahan had grown
to be a remarkably cosmopolitan city as the capital of the Safavids,
with sizeable communities of Armenians, Georgians, Circassians, Turks,
Indians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and also Chinese, Indians, Dutchmen,
Spaniards, Englishmen, Italians, Frenchmen, Germans and the like. In
time, Isfahan became home to no less than 24 Armenian churches and
the Armenian population of New Julfa and scattered villages in the
city's environs grew to include some 50,000 souls. However a vast
constituent of Isfahan's Armenian population in the early 17th century
was in fact located across the bridge in the Old City center and had
been settled there among Muslims in the aftermath of earlier Caucasian
campaigns. These Armenians, who were low-income artisans and laborers,
were forbidden from living among the silk merchants in New Julfa. By
the mid-17th century, it is related that their "Christian habits"
of ringing church bells and wine-drinking had thoroughly irked their
Muslim neighbors, who eventually convinced Shah Abbas II to expel
them from Isfahan entirely.
[gruzini-w-iranie-1.jpg]
FereydĂ"nshahr (Arm: P'eria, Georgian: P'ereidani, Martqopi), home
to a Safavid-era Armenian settlement as well as Iran's last extant
Georgian-speaking community, Isfahan province, Iran
New Julfa thus represents a unique episode of royal favoritism
for an ethno-religious minority in Safavid Persia, even vis-a-vis
other Armenians in the kingdom. The Shah was bent on maintaining
the integrity of the New Julfan community so they would not succumb
to the fate of other Caucasian deportees-namely disintegration,
assimilation, and social and economic dissolution. By keeping the New
Julfans unconditionally content, the Shah was overlooking royal and
clerical biases against non-Muslims in order to guarantee economic
prosperity for his realm. But while Shah Abbas I came to foster very
warm personal relationships with the Armenian merchant families of
Isfahan-and the New Julfans quickly reached heights of opulence beyond
that imaginable for many of their Muslim counterparts-the future of
this delicate diaspora in central Persia was all but certain.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress