USA | Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) | Spring Flora and Fauna

Rode from Meyersdale westward on the GAP to Rockwood and then rode back to Meyersdale and continued south to Big Savage Tunnel. Still no word from the GAP panjandrums on when the tunnel will be opened for the year. Anyhow, the trail is totally snow and ice-free from the Big Savage Tunnel to Rockwood. Saw the first robin of the year back on March 1—oddly enough the same date I saw the first robin last year—and have been seeing more and more of them every day. For my love affair with robins see Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage: Frostburg to Garrett.

Also saw half a dozen wedges of Canadian geese winging it north for the season. A few took a break on a frozen pond just north the Sand Patch Crossroads.

Canadian Honkers

I also stopped to collect bark from the yellow birth south of Sand Patch. I got a whole garbage bag full. There is nothing better for starting campfires.

Yellow Birch

Not much vegetation yet, but I did see the young leaves of dandelion

Dandelion

Also the early leaves of ox-eyed daisies. 

 Early leaves of Ox-Eyed Daisies

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Stonycreek Glades | John Croner Sr. | John Croner Jr.

 Recently my thoughts turned to my ancestor, John Croner Jr. (Jan. 5, 1779–Dec. 17, 1848), who lived in the Stonycreek Glades just north of the town of Berlin, the Cloaca Maxima of Somerset County, Pennsylvania.  According to one history of the Brethren Church in Brothersvalley Township, where the Glades are located, John Croner was a practitioner of herbal medicine:

It was said that he traveled all over the mountains and glades collecting herbs and flowers for his medicines. He was one of the two doctors in the area and was busy all the time in his practice. Not much is known about either Dr. John Groner (old spelling of Croner) or his father Elder John Groner.

In fact, very little is known about the elder John Groner (Croner), and what we do know is confusing. Efforts to document his life are complicated by the appearance of what appears to be two different John Croners around this time. According to One Source:

When John Croner was born in 1753, in Pennsylvania, United States, his father, William Croner, was 20 and his mother, Dama Croner, was 18. He married Elizabeth Magdalene Speicher on 3 January 1774, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, British Colonial America. They were the parents of at least 3 sons and 4 daughters. He died on 17 December 1806, in Brothersvalley Township, Somerset, Pennsylvania, United States, at the age of 53.

According to this chronology, however, he would have been only seventeen or eighteen years old when he turned up in the Glades as a settler. This seems unlikely.  Five of his children are listed: Barbara Croner (1774–1841); Dr. John Croner (1779–1848; Magdalena Croner 1781–1866); Leah Croner (1783–?); and Abraham Croner (1785–?). Thus according to this source the John Croner named here was the father of Dr. John Croner Jr.

Another genealogical Account maintains, however,  that the elder John Croner. was born “about” 1728 in Lancaster County, just west of Philadelphia. This would have put him in his early forties when he settled in the Glades. According to This Version of events he was not married to Elizabeth Magdalene Speicher but to two different women: Elizabeth (born c.1730), last name unknown, and then to Magdalene, last name unknown. It is highly suspicious that the wife of the first John Croner was named Elizabeth Magdalene, while the two wives of the second John Croner were named Elizabeth and Magdalene. In any case, since divorces were frowned upon, if not forbidden, by the Brethren Sect to which the Croners belonged, it seems safe to assume that his first wife Elizabeth mentioned in this account died and John Croner Sr. later married a woman named Magdalene. It is not clear from the account which of this John Croner’s wives was the mother of John Jr., nor how many other children they may have had. Although it would appear that we are dealing with two different John Croners, both are credited with being the father of John Croner Jr. born in 1779, and both reportedly died on Dec. 7, 1806. This leads to the conclusion that the compilers of the genealogies somehow conflated the two John Croners into one.

John Croner Sr., in all likelihood the one born c.1728, arrived in the Glades in either 1770 or 1771, when he was in his early forties. As we have seen the John Croner born in 1753 was married in Lancaster County in eastern Pennsylvania in 1774, further evidence that this was a different person. The second John Croner, the one born c.1728, “built a log house over a small spring,” in the Glades in 1771, according to one account. Another account maintains, however, that an early settler by the name of Francis Philippi actually built the log cabin sometime prior to 1771, and that John Croner Sr. somehow, perhaps by purchase, acquired the dwelling and took up residence in 1771.

Jorg Frantz Phillippi, later Francis Phillippi, was born on October 1, 1729, in Alsace, France. On September 15, 1749,  he arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Phoenix and first settled in Lancaster County, west of Philadelphia. A French citizen when he arrived in the New World, he took an oath to the king of England and by 1753 was serving in the Virginia Militia under George Washington during Washington’s ill-fated march on Fort Pitt (current-day Pittsburgh). His religion is unknown, but he was probably not a Brethren, who were strict pacifists. This would soon get them trouble when they even refused to fight against the British in the Revolutionary War. In 1755 Philippi served as a wagoner in the army in General Braddock, whose march on Fort Pitt also ended disastrously. Philippi reportedly was shot in the leg and escaped on his own across the mountains into what is now Somerset County. At some point between 1755 and 1771 he built a log cabin in the Glades. Like many who first settled in the Glades, included a contingent of Amish, he eventually moved to the rich lands bordering the Casselman River to the south, settling in the village of Casselman.  He crossed the River Styx in 1798 and was buried in New Centerville, four miles north of Casselman village. An inscription on his Tombstone says, “He was the first white man to see Somerset County.” This is almost certainly inaccurate. Hunters, trappers, and traders dealing with the Native population had penetrated into Somerset County during the first half of the eighteenth century and explorer Christopher Gist had passed through the Glades in 1750, just a year after Philippi arrived in the New World. 

Tombstone of  Francis Phillippi. An inscription on the tombstone claims: “He was the first white man to see Somerset County.”  

By 1773 the log cabin in which John Croner Sr. lived was also being used as a meeting house for local Brethren. His son, the doctor John Jr. born in 1779, eventually took over the cabin. While living here he also turned it into a doctor’s office. Here he kept the medicinal plants he gathered in the area. The doctor also practiced blood-letting or blood-cupping. The cabin eventually became known as “Old Schweppy.” The word schweppy derives from shreppa, which is turn is a corruption of the German word schröpfen, which means cupping, or drawing of blood through suction over lanced skin. In Pennsylvania Dutch (Dutch being a corruption of Deutsch or German), the language spoken by early German settlers, the standard German ö regularly shifts to e, and so schröpf would naturally become schrep in local speech. The final a in shreppa is a common Pennsylvania Deutsch feminine/neuter noun ending. Eventually shreppa was further corrupted into schweppy. 

An historian who examined the cabin in the late 1950s wrote:

In talking about it (Old Schweppy), there is an air of mystery cast about it. As well as this author can get its meaning, it seems to indicate that it was the doctor’s office or laboratory, or place for operations, or a place for “bleeding” or “blood letting.” It was here where the doctor kept his herbs, etc. The medicine cabinets are still in the walls.

The same historian gives a detailed description of the cabin as it appeared in the 1950s: 

In the] back of the house was the oven that baked the coarse bread. The basement once had a huge fireplace in it. There was an opening to the good spring just outside the wall. The water flowed through the basement. This was for protection against the Indians and wild animals. The wall is high and made of thick stones. The upper wall is logs with wide rough clapboards covering. The main floor is really the second floor with steep steps that indicated that they were once hanging. There on the west wall is the built-in cabinet for the medicine bottles and books and instruments. There are many ancient tools strange to this author. The windows are ancient in design and material. Heavy oak shutters once hung there with rifle loop holes in them. The sleeping loft is most interesting. One enters it from a ladder type stairs, also indicating that it might have been hanging. The steps or ladder was lifted up each night for protection. The interior is dark save for a small window at each end, high in the ends beneath the steep roof. Four candle sconces were in the room, one on each wall. There are flax “Skutching” machines and ancient flax spinning wheels much as they were left a hundred years ago, in the attic.

The cabin still existed as late as 1977, when one Local History claimed it was “the oldest remaining house in Somerset County.” The current owner of the property allowed the cabin to fall into ruins and now no trace of its remains. 

Old Schweppy, as of 1977 “the oldest remaining house in Somerset County.” 

Iran | Tabriz | Church of St. Stephanos

At ten I met Hamid and Masud in the lobby for our trip to the Church  of St. Stephanos. Although of course mainly concerned with the history of the Ilkhanate in Iran, I am also interested in monuments which pre-date the Mongol occupation and have managed to survive down to the present day. There are wildly differing opinions about how old St. Stephanos Church is, but it is possible that at least some parts of it were built before the Ilkhanate period. 

An inch of fresh snow has fallen overnight, but the roads are bare by the time we start out. Just beyond our hotel we pass by a large parking lot where an Ashura ceremony is taking place. In front of a flat-bed truck with loudspeakers a group of actors in notionally seventh century costumes play out the deaths of Muhammad’s grandson Husain and his family and supporters at the hands of the Umayyads. The Umayyad villains are dressed in red. In a ring around the actors are several hundred spectators, almost all the women dressed in black chadors. Hamid does not offer to stop, and I do not ask to. I get the feeling this ceremony is not intended as a spectator event for non-Muslim foreigners. I read to him Evliya’s account of Ashura from 1640s, and he points outs the ritual blood-letting described by Evliya was outlawed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the president of Iran from 1981 to 1989, although it is still practiced in some other countries. 

The city of Tabriz sits in a bowl surrounded by rust-covered hills, now lightly dusted with snow. North of the city we emerge out onto rolling steppe broken up by outcroppings and ridges of red rock. When the Mongols first arrived in this region in 1220 the expansive steppe had immediately caught their attention, since it provided adequate grazing for their horses, something not always available in other parts of Persia. Also, the terrain was very similar to some areas of Mongolia, which may have helped assuage any homesickness they were experiencing on a long campaign far from their homeland. 

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After passing through several small towns we arrive at the small city of Julfa, on south bank of the Aras River, about seventy miles northwest of Tabriz. The river here is the border between Iran and Azerbaijan, or, more precisely, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, an exclave separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by a southern extension of Armenia, which joins with the Iranian border about twenty-seven miles east of here. Although considered a part of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan, covering 2120 square miles—almost twice the size of Rhode Island—and with a population of 410,000, has been an autonomous region since 1990 and is governed by its own elected legislature. On the north side of the Aras River is the Azerbaijan (Nakhchivan) city of Julfa. This Julfa made international headlines back in the 1990s when the nearby Armenian Christian cemetery containing thousands of elaborately carved tombstones, many considered historical monuments, were reportedly destroyed by Azerbaijanis, despite the protests of UNESCO and other international bodies. 

Map courtesy of Nationsonline (click on photos for enlargements)

According to legend, the Julfa on the north side of the Aras was found by Tigranes I, King of Armenia from 115 b.c. to 95 b.c. It would have been part of the Kingdom of Greater Armenia, which lasted from  321 b.c to 428 a.d., and at its height stretched from the the Caspian Sea in the east to near the Black Sea in the west and from Georgia in the north to the Mesopotamian plain in the south. 

Greater Armenia (© Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons)

By the time the Mongols arrived in the thirteenth century it was a sizable city populated almost entirely by Armenians. In the following centuries it became a major trade entrepôt linking the Iranian Plateau, Inner Asia, and India with Russia, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean Basin. In the late sixteenth century is was captured by the expansionist Ottoman Turks. In 1603 the Safavid ruler Abbas Shah retook the city, but he soon realized he could not hold it against the continuing onslaughts of the Ottomans. In 1605 he deported the citizens of the city—over three thousand families —deep into Safavid territory, most of them eventually taking up resident near Esfahan, and burned the city to the ground rather than let it slip into Ottoman hands. Later a village grew up amidst the ruins and a larger settlement was established adjacent to it. The Persians eventually retook the area, and this new settlement became part of the Nakhchivan Khanate, a Persian vassal state. Following the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828 the Khanate was ceded to Russia, and Sulfa became an official border crossing point between Persia and the Russian Empire. In time the Iranian city of Sulja grew up on the south side the Aras River. The two Julfas are currently linked by a road bridge and a railway bridge. 

Iranian Julfa is now the center of the Aras Free Trade Zone (AFTZ), established by the Iranian government in 2003. The thirty-seven square-mile free trade zone, which borders on the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan, serves as a conduit for goods to and from Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the UAE, and Taiwan. Machinery parts, electrical   appliances, helicopters, glassware, glue, tea, turmeric, various types of dried nuts, clothes, tires, and much else pass through the free trade zone, but perhaps the most important trade items, and certainly the most visible, are cars. The approaches to Julfa are lined with car dealers with hundred of cars lined up on their lots. Hamid, it turns out, is a car buff. His dream, he says, is to own the latest model BMW. He ogles the cars on the lots and at one point shouts, “Look at that! An American muscle-car!” (I didn’t catch the make, and I forgot to ask what a “muscle car” actually is). He asks if on our return from Church of St. Stephanos he can make a couple of quick stops at car dealers to check prices. Expensive cars, like Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, he claims, are five to ten thousand dollars cheaper here than in Tehran, where he lives. 

In Julfa itself we drive by another Ashura ceremony much like the one we saw in Tabriz. In front of a flatbed truck with loudspeakers a group of costumed actors, the Umayyad villains in red, play out the solemn drama of the deaths of Muhammad’s grandson Husain and his family and supporters. Several hundred spectators surround the actors. Just past the Ashura ceremony our driver spots a crowd of men in front of a one-story shopping center. Many are holding plastic clamshell containers in their hands and shoveling what looks like rice into their mouths with their fingers. Apparently part of the Ashura ceremony involves dispensing free food to the public. Evliya Celebi commented on this practice in Tabriz in the 1640s:

Another marvelous and noteworthy spectacle is the Ashura ceremony held every year on the tenth day of Muharram. All the notables and citizens, young and old, come out to [the] polo grounds where they pitch their tents and stay for three days and three nights. They boil innumerable cauldrons of Ashura pudding, in remembrance of the martyrs in the plain of Karbala, and distribute it among rich and poor alike, devoting the religious merit accrued thereby to those martyrs’ spirits.

 “You should try the Ashura meal. It’s free!” says Hamid. In the vestibule of the shopping center four men are ladling a simple rice and mutton plov out of an enormous basin. The leader spots me, an obvious foreigner, and asks Hamid where I am from. Hamid says I am an American. “From America!” shouts the man, “Tell him if he accepts this food he must convert to Islam!” This was apparently meant as a jest, since many of the bystanders burst out laughing. He handed me my clamshell portion with a big smile on his face. Several men came forward to shake my hand. A couple guys insist I pose with them while their friends take photos with their cell phones. Another guy hurries up with spoons for the city guys and their foreign guest who of course cannot be expected to eat with their fingers. Masud has instant coffee, tea bags, a thermos of hot water, and a big box of Persian pastries in the trunk of our car. We stand around the open trunk and enjoy our impromptu lunch of rice and mutton. I am reminded of the rice with raisins often handed out during ceremonies at Buddhist temples in Mongolia. 

About two miles west of Julfa, hard by the banks of the Aras River, we stop at the Khajeh Nasar Caravanserai. Usually, Hamid claims, it is possible to enter the interior of the caravanserai, but today the big entrance door is closed and locked, perhaps because of Ashura, and we must be content with viewing the outside of the structure. The caravanserai had been built by the Armenian trader Khajeh Nazar Armani. He was one of the Armenians deported, as mentioned earlier, to the Esfahan area by Shah Abbas back at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In Esfahan Khajeh Nazar Armani flourished as a trader, amassing a sizable fortune, and soon caught the attention of Shah Abbas himself. With Shah Abbas’s approval he returned to his homeland and built two caravanserais, the one here and another directly across the river. The caravanserai on the north side of the river apparently no longer exists. The remaining caravanserai, measuring about 130 feet by 200 feet, consists a courtyard lined on three sides by quarters for traveling merchants and storage rooms. A handsome structure of brick and cut stone, it no doubt rated the seventeenth century equivalent of five stars. In the seventeenth century the next stop south of the caravanserai was reportedly the town of Shoja, about six and half miles away. This may indicate the the Iranian town of Julfa, now three miles from the caravanserai, may not have existed at this time. 

Khajeh Nasar Caravanserai. The cliffs in the distance are in Azerbaijan.

Unable to enter the building I stroll to the bank of the Aras to take photos. About two hundred yards away two soldiers step out of a checkpoint guardhouse and stare in my direction. “We better go,” says Hamid, “Taking photos of the caravanserai is OK, but they may wonder why you are taking photos of Azerbaijan, across the river.” 

Aras River, with the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic on the other side

We drive on to checkpoint, where we are stopped, but Masud banters with the two young conscripts, who look to be teenagers, and they wave us on without asking to see our papers. Not far past the checkpoint, at the base of the cliffs on the left, a stone tower with a cone-shaped roof looms above high stone walls. This is the Nakheirchi Church. Hamid explains that in Azeri, the language of Azerbaijan which is spoken by most people in this area, nakheir means “herd of cattle”. A nakheirchi is a cattle herder. According to local legend a cattle herder built this church so that his fellow herders would have a place to pray while they were out tending their cattle. The gate to the high-walled compound is locked, whether for Ashura or not Hamid does not know, so we drive on. 

Nakheirchi Church

The Aras River valley narrows here, flanked on either side by barren rust and mustard-tinted cliffs and ramparts. I would like to take photos, but Hamid points to the  manned guard towers on the Azerbaijani side of the river and suggests that this is not a good idea. Another six miles west up the Aras valley a defile lined with trees leads into the soaring ramparts to our left. We turn off on a narrow lane and half a mile later come to the Church of St. Stephanos parking lot. It is deserted except for a guy with a broom sitting on a bench. He informs us that church grounds are open, but the church itself is closed for Ashura. 

Lane leading to the church

A short walk up a tree-lined lane brings us to the substantial walls of of the church compound. Off to the right is a prodigious spring which debouches into pond where a small flock of ducks gambol. This spring is no doubt why the church was originally established on this site. Scattered among the trees are benches and picnic areas. Hamid, who had been here before, says that the lush oasis-like surroundings tucked in here amidst the otherwise sere and barren terrain  attract day-trippers from as far away as Tabriz and beyond. On other holidays the place can get quite crowded. This is first time he has ever seen the place deserted. We check the large gates leading into the church compound, but they are indeed locked. I will have to be content with viewing the church from outside the compound.

 Spring with wonderful water; no doubt why the church was founded here.

Pond fed by the spring

Fortress-like walls of the Church compound

 Church behind the fortress walls

 Entrance to the church compound

Front of the church

Greater Armenia, which included the valley of the Aras River, became Christian in a.d. 301, making it the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion. (The little known statelet of Osrhoene, in what is now southeastern Turkey, with its capital in Edessa (modern-day Sanliurfa), may have actually been the first officially Christian state, but it proved so ephemeral that most historians ignore it and credit Armenia). In the centuries following its adoption of Christianity Armenia would have been in the heartland of the Faith, not an outlier as it is today. The name of the church here in the Aras valley links it to the very earliest days of Christianity. Stephen (Greek = Stephanos), was one of the seven deacons appointed by the Twelve Apostles to distribute food to the poor and needy. According to the New Testament Acts of the Apostles, he was stoned to death after he made a speech which was deemed blasphemous by the local Jewish authorities. This won him the title of Protomartyr, the very first martyr of Christianity. Saul of Tarsus, later the Apostle Paul, witnessed the execution, and Stephen’s steadfast devotion to Christianity may have had something to do with his own eventual conversion to the faith. 

According to legend, a church was founded on this spot in the first century a.d. by Saint Bartholomew, one of the original Twelve Apostles. This tale is no doubt apocryphal; in any case, no one is claiming that any of the current structures date from this era. According to a sign post on the grounds at least one part of the church does date back to at the seventh century. Other sources, most of them admittedly ephemeral (scholarly literature on the subject is scarce), make no mention of this seventh century edifice but instead claim that the complex was built sometime in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, or twelfth centuries. 

It is tempting to think that the St. Stephanos complex was built during the rule of the Bagratuni Dynasty (884–1045) when Armenia freed itself from Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate and went on to enjoy more than a century and a half of independence. During this period Armenia experienced a cultural renaissance, especially in the field of architecture. The capital city of Ani (now in Turkey) became known as the city of “40 gates and 1001 churches.” Among the churches was a magnificent cathedral built in 998-1000 under the direction of the renowned architect Tiridates. There is, however, no direct evidence linking the Church of St. Stephanos to the Bagratid era. 

Bagratuni Armenia (© Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons)

In 1236 Armenia, then ruled by the Zakarian Dynasty, became a vassal state of the Mongols, who had arrived in the area as early as 1220. At first Christianity flourished under the Mongols. Sorqaqtani, the mother of the first Ilkhan, Khülegü, was a staunch Nestorian Christian, as was Khülegü’s wife, Dokuz Khatun, who like a true nomad maintained a movable church in her camp. Khülegü’s son, the second Ilkhan Abaqa, likewise encouraged Christianity, although he himself apparently leaned toward Buddhism. He did marry a Christian, the Byzantine princess Mary Palaiologina, the illegitimate daughter of Byzantine emperor Michael VIII. Christianity’s favored status in the Ilkhanate ended with the accession of the Ilkhan Ghazan in 1295. He converted to Islam the same year and almost immediately launched a campaign against other religions. Buddhists, not being “People of the Book”— followers of the Abrahamic religions who have a revealed scripture and recognize one and only one God—were ordered to convert to Islam or leave the territory of the Ilkhanate and their temples were destroyed. Christians and Jews lost the privileges they had enjoyed earlier and were forced to pay a special poll-tax. In effect, they  became second class citizens. Apparently they were allowed to keep their churches and synagogues, so it is possible that the Church and Monastery of Stephanos survived the Mongol era intact. 

One Armenian scholar goes on to claim, however, that over the centuries many of the original buildings in the complex, including those which survived the Ilkhanate, were destroyed by earthquakes and that most of the now remaining structures were built or rebuilt during the reign of the Safavid Shah Abbas the Second (1642–1666). Thus the history of this notable landmark—it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site—remains surprisingly speculative. 

According to one modern source:

The beautiful murals on the dome and the relief works above and below it are crafted with a precision that must place this work among the few artistic marvels of the world. Not limited to the domes, the murals, and the ornamentation of the vaults and arches at the entry, this beautiful artistry extends to all the arches and vaults of the western walls, to the pillars, columns and capitals, and to the decorative work both in the interior and exterior of the building.

Unfortunately, none of this is visible from outside the compound walls. I climb the hill behind the complex in hopes of getting a view of the interior of the compound. I am rewarded with panoramic view of the church set against the background of the colorful cliffs on the other side of the Aras River, but few of the details of the church itself or the monastery buildings can be seen. I tell Hamid to go back to the car and wait for me while I spend an hour mediating on the thousand years or more of history encapsulated here. A kaleidoscopic array of images flit through my mind, but when I try to envision what will be here one thousand years hence my mind comes up blank.

 View of church from above

 Detail of church 

 Detail of church. Notice how the stones of the steeple seem to mimic the colors in the cliffs beyond. 

Iran | Tabriz | Covered Bazaar | Tea

Wandered by Tabriz, a city of some 1.7 million souls—the fifth largest city in Iran. In 1655 the legendary Turkish gadabout Evliya Çelebi ((1611–1682; his mammoth Book of Travels—ten volumes, only eight have survived—is what his translator calls “probably the longest and most ambitious travel account by any writer in any language.”) spent two months in Tabriz and observed:

. . . in the entire kingdom of Persia there is no city and no countryside as fine as Tabriz, the ravisher of hearts . . . It is a large and ancient city with delightful climate, lovely boys and girls, lofty buildings and numerous foundations and institutions. May God allow that it will once again belong to the Ottomans [the Ottoman Turks had occupied Tabriz from 1585 to 1603] . . . may God Most High cause it to flourish forever!

Hotel in Tabriz where I stayed (click on photos for enlargements)

View of Tabriz from my hotel room

While in the city I visited the famous Tabriz Bazaar, said to be the largest covered bazaar in the world. It covers 66.7 acres, with 3.41 miles of passageways and 5500 shops. The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, while ranking as the biggest single tourist attraction in the world, with over 91,000,000 visitors a year, has between three and four thousand shops. The largest mall in the United States, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota covers more space than the Tabriz Bazaar—96.4 acres total with 56.8 acres devoted to 530-some shops—but many would argue that it is not a covered bazaar in the classic sense of the term but rather a New World mutation.

Gallery in the Tabriz Bazaar

Of course I gravitated to the tea shops. Here tea is sold by the kilo out of big wooden bins, as God intended, not in ridiculous little tea bags.

Tea for sale in the Tabriz Bazaar

 Green tea (Chai Sabz) grown in Lahijan, a city in Gilan Province in northern Iran, just south of the Caspian Sea). The sign indicates that this tea is Chin Bahara (spring pick). I like that they say when the tea is picked. Freshness is crucial with green tea.

Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage | Flora |Black-eyed and Brown-eyed Susans

See Black-eyed and Brown-eyed Susans over at Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage.

Brown-eyed Susan

Iran | Sultaniyya | Mausoleum of Ilkhan Ölziit

Wandered by the town of Sultaniyya, site of the mausoleum of Öljeitü (Ölziit in Mongolian), the eighth Ilkhan. Ölziit was the great-grandson Khülegü Khan, founder of the Ilkhanate, and the great-great-great-grandson of Chingis Khan. It was Ölziit (r. 1305–1316) who had moved the capital of the Ilkhanate from Tabriz to Sultaniyya, 175 miles to the southeast. At the insistence of his mother Uruk Khatun, a Nestorian Christian, he had been baptized as a Christian and given the name Nicholas. When he was still in his teens, however, he married a Muslim girl, and apparently under her influence he converted to Islam. At first he was a Sunni Muslim, but he eventually became disillusioned by Nit-Picking Sunni Jurists and switched to Shiism. Perhaps to burnish his credentials as a Shiite he hatched a scheme to move the bodies of the two proto-martyrs of Shiism, Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and Ali’s son Husain, from their shrines in Iraq to Sultaniyya and house them in an enormous mausoleum of his own making. It is not quite clear if he also intended the building to be a mausoleum for himself.  The mausoleum was built, but the plan to move the remains of Ali and Husain to Sultaniyya came to naught.  The building ended up as the repository for Ölziit’s own remains. 

The structure is 161 feet high, with a dome eighty-four feet in diameter, reportedly the third largest brick dome in the world. Larger are the brick domes of the Cathedral of Florence in Italy (138 feet), and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (103 feet). Apart from brick domes, the largest dome in the world is the steel dome of Cowboys Stadium in Texas, built by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, the Khülegü of our age (click on photos for enlargements).

For comparison, here is the dome of Hagia Sophia

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

The vast interior of the mausoleum is undergoing renovation 

Interior of the mausoleum

The interior of the mausoleum was once covered with decoration. This eight-foot high panel is one of few surviving examples.

Catacomb under the mausoleum. This space may have been built for the remains of Ali and Husain.

The open walkway just below the dome

The open walkway just below the dome

Decoration of walkway

Decoration of walkway

Detail of decoration

View of Sultaniyya from open walkway.  Sultaniyya, once the capital of the Ilkhanate, is now a sleepy little town with a population of just over 5000. The freeway from Tehran to Tabriz passes by three miles away and many people make a side trip to Sultaniyya for its justly famous kebabs. We had  mutton kebabs in Sultaniyya and they certainly lived up to their reputation.  

Iran | Alamut | Assassins

Wandered by Alamut, the old stronghold of the Nizari Ismailis, better known in the Occident as the Assassins. The fortress was founded in 1090 by Hassan-i Sabbah and lasted until 1256, when it was finally conquered by Khülegü Khan, grandson of Chingis Khan. 

Elburz Mountains west of Alamut (click on photos for enlargements)

The village of Gazor Khan on the left and the Alamut massif on the right

Sign welcoming tourists to Gazor Khan

The Alamut Massif

When we arrived at the village we were told by local people that there had been a big snow storm the week before and the backside of the massif was still covered with deep drifts. They claimed it was impossible to reach the fortress at the top. We decided to try anyhow and started up the first of the staircases leading to the summit.  We had not gone far when a group of Iranian tourists, three men and two women from Tehran, came stumbling down. They confirmed that it was impossible to reach the fortress because of the snow. This was quite a disappointment, considering that visiting the ruins of Alamut was one of my main reasons for coming to Iran.   

The first staircase. Although it does not look so daunting in this photo, it was actually quite treacherous. Above this staircase, the back side of the mountain was completely drifted shut.

The massif of Alamut in the foreground

Another view of the massif. The fortress buildings can just be seen at the top

Another view of the fortress at the top of the massif

Another view of the fortress at the top of the massif (middle of photo). The column-like structures on the snow covered ridge behind the massif look manmade, but actually they are natural rock formations.