The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture 9780271089706

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The Persian Revival

The

Persian Revival The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture

Talinn Grigor

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

Publication of this book was supported by a grant from the Persian Heritage Foundation. Parts of chapters 2 and 3 were originally published as “Persian Architectural Revivals in the British Raj and Qajar Iran,” Journal of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 36, no. 3 (2016): 384–97. © 2016, Duke University Press. Republished by permission. www.dukeupress.edu. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Grigor, Talinn, 1972– author. Title: The Persian revival : the imperialism of the copy in Iranian and Parsi architecture / Talinn Grigor. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Examines Europe’s discovery of ancient Iran, first in philology and then in art history, and explores the Persian Revival movement in light of imperial strategies of power, selfhood, and statehood in British India and Zand-Qajar-Pahlavi Iran”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021011963 | ISBN 9780271089430 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Architecture—Iran—History—19th century. | Architecture—Iran— History—20th century. | Imperialism and architecture—Iran—History—19th century. | Imperialism and architecture—Iran—History—20th century. Classification: LCC NA1484 .G753 2021 | DDC 720.955—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov /2021011963

Copyright © 2021 Talinn Grigor All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992. Frontispiece: Charles Chipiez, perspectival reconstruction of the Gate of All Lands at Persepolis (figure 16).

To bubujiks and fuzzlelumpabump

Contents List of Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments xiii

Prologue: Fallacy of Origins  1 1. Ancient Iran in Western Art Historiography  7 2. The Persepolitan Style in British India  69 3. The Persian Revival as Iranian Modernity  135 Epilogue: Copy’s Imperialism  209

Notes 217 Bibliography 231 Index 249

Illustrations 1. Map of the Persian Gulf with the “ruin of Persepolis” at the center of the Iranian Plateau, one of the few sites marked by Carsten Niebuhr  11 2. Relief of an Achaemenid soldier, Persepolis, which was sketched by James Morier for his travelogue, A Second Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor 18 3. William Ouseley, sketch of the relief of the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian at Darabgird  21 4. William Ouseley, bird’s-eye perspective of the terrace of Persepolis  21 5. Robert Ker Porter, sketch of a relief of a winged standing figure, Cyrus the Great, at Pasargadae  23 6. Robert Ker Porter, sketches of Achaemenid reliefs: elevation of the Achaemenid tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam; a lamassu at the Gate of All Lands at Persepolis; relief of Darius with a lotus, under a parasol, at Persepolis; relief of the king slaying a lion, on the gate of the Palace of Darius at Persepolis  24 7. Robert Ker Porter, sketch of the Sassanian relief of the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian and Philip the Arab at Naqsh-e Rostam  26

10. Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, floor plan of Sarvestan Palace  32 11. Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, elevation drawings of the Achaemenid double-lion- and double-bull-headed column capitals from Persepolis  33 12. Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, elevation drawing of the Sassanian Taq-e Bostan grotto  34 13. James Fergusson, two-story reconstruction of the Apadana and the smaller Palace of Darius behind it at Persepolis  38 14. Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy, perspectival reconstruction of the Palace of One Hundred Columns at Persepolis  41 15. Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy, restoration of the Palace of Sarvestan in Fars   42 16. Charles Chipiez, perspectival reconstruction of the Gate of All Lands at Persepolis  44 17. Charles Chipiez, perspectival reconstruction of the Palace of Darius at Persepolis  46 18. Charles Chipiez, elevation reconstruction of the Apadana (labeled Palace of Xerxes) at Persepolis  47

8. Charles Texier, elevation drawing of columns at Persepolis  29

19. Charles Chipiez, perspectival reconstruction of the terrace of Persepolis  47

9. Charles Texier, elevation drawings of the existing and restored “harem” at Persepolis  30

20. Auguste Choisy, map tracing the “currents of influence” in architectural forms  49

21. Josef Strzygowski, map of “the Indo-Germanic migrations”  64 22. Southwest elevation of Adur Farrobay Atash Bahram fire temple, Yazd, Iran, 1934  75 23. Seth Bomanji Mervanji Mevawala Adaran fire temple, Byculla, Bombay, India, 1914  84 24. View of Dr. Dababhai Naoroji Avenue and the Bai Pirojbai Dadabhoy Maneckji Vatcha Adaran fire temple, designed by architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri, Fort, Bombay, India, 1881  87 25. Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, illustrations of the relief of Darius on his throne, attended by courtiers and supported by soldiers, and the relief of Darius with attendants, under a parasol, with a faravahar overhead, at Persepolis, Iran.  93 26. Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, illustrations of Sassanian reliefs: the investiture of the Ardeshir at Naqsh-e Rajab, the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian and Philip the Arab at Naqsh-e Rostam, the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian at Bishapur, Shapur II’s suppression of a revolt at Tang-e Chogan, a deer-hunting scene on the eastern wall of the large grotto at Taq-e Bostan, and the sculptural composition in the large grotto of Taq-e Bostan  94 27. Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, drawing of the facade of the Palace of Khosrow at Ctesiphon, Iraq  95 28. Seth Dadabhai Naoshirvanji Modi Atash Bahram fire temple, designed by architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri, Surat, India, 1931  105 29. Seth Pestonji Kalabhai Vakil Atash Bahram fire temple, Surat, India, 1823  105

( x )  Illustrations

30. East elevation of the Seth Hormusji Bomanji Wadia Atash Bahram fire temple, Dhobi Talao, Bombay, 1830, showing the first full set of Persepolitan columns  107 31. North elevation of the Seth Sorabji Khurshedji Thuthina Adaran fire temple, Chowpatty/ Walkeshwar, Bombay, 1859  109 32. One of the two lamassus flanking the main entrance of the Seth Dadabhai Naoshirvanji Modi Atash Bahram fire temple, designed by architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri, Surat, India, 1931  113 33. Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, drawing of one of the four lamassus guarding the Gate of All Lands at Persepolis, Iran  114 34. Seth Manekji Navroji Seth Adaran fire temple, Fort, Bombay, India, 1891  115 35. Detail of the entrance of the Seth Manekji Navroji Seth Adaran fire temple, Fort, Bombay, India, 1891, following the design of the grotto of Taq-e Bostan  117 36. Main elevation of the Athornan Anjoman Atash Bahram fire temple, better known as Iranshah, designed by architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri, Udvada, India, 1891  118 37. Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, reconstruction of the south elevation of the Palace of Darius at Persepolis, Iran  120 38. Main elevation of Ervad Sorabji Hormusji Ranji Adaran fire temple, Grant Road, Bombay, India, 1914  120 39. Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, drawing of the relief of the king’s combat with a beast, Persepolis, and a relief of marching nobles at the Seth Shapurji Sorabji Kappawala, Tardeo, Bombay, India, 1941  122

40. Main elevation of the Bhagarseth Anjoman Atash Bahram fire temple, Navsari, India, 1925  123 41. Main elevation and the “open” floor plan of the Zarthoshti Anjoman Atash Bahram fire temple, Dhobi Talao, Bombay, India, 1897  124 42. East elevation of the Anjoman Adaran fire temple, Tehran, Iran, 1913–16  128 43. South elevation of Anushirvan Dadgar High School, Tehran, Iran, 1934–36  128 44. Tile panel on the south elevation of Anushirvan Dadgar High School, Tehran, Iran, 1934–36  130 45. Frontispiece of the December 1936 special issue of Iran Bastan, showing a portrait of Reza Shah Pahlavi and a portrait of Adolf Hitler under the Iran Bastan logo of the faravahar with a swastika   132

51. Mirza Abd ol-Mottalleb Esfahani, four portraits of Iranian historical and legendary figures: (a) Keyumars, (b) Jamshid, (c) Shapur, and (d) Purandokht  166 52. Sketches of a bird’s-eye-view of the plateau of Persepolis, the Sassanian relief of the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian at Naqsh-e Rostam, the Sassanian relief of Ardeshir I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rostam, a relief of Cyrus at Gate H at Pasargadae, the Sassanian relief of Shapur II’s suppression of a revolt at Tang-e Chogan, and the Sassanian relief of a deer-hunting scene on the eastern wall of the large grotto at Taq-e Bostan  168 53. Main elevation of Afifabad, also known as Baq-e Golshan, Shiraz, Iran, 1863–67  173 54. Lotf Ali Khan, drawing of the Sassanian relief of Ardeshir I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rostam, Fars, Iran  174

46. James Fergusson, reproduction of Eugène Flandin’s 1840 lithograph of the 1831 relief of Fath Ali Shah fighting a lion, Sorsor-e, Iran  136

55. Baq-e Eram, designed by architect Mohammad Hasan Me’mar, Shiraz, Iran, 1875–97  175

47. Ernst Herzfeld, photograph of a portion of the talar facade of a residence in Shiraz, which he labeled “Shiraz (Iran): Close View of Dado Sculpted with Human Figures”  147

56. View of a dado with copies of Achaemenid reliefs, including a king slaying a unicorn, and a standing soldier, Narenjestan-e Qavam, Shiraz, Iran, 1879–1885  177

48. Stone bas-reliefs of Zand soldiers, removed from the dado of a Shirazi residential pavilion and later relocated to the Pars Museum, Shiraz, ca. 1780  148

57. View of the Persian pavilion, resembling a Zoroastrian fire temple, designed by French architect Jacques Drevet, at the Exposition universelle, Paris, France, 1889  178

49. Stone bas-reliefs of Achaemenid soldiers on the main facade of the Apadana at Persepolis, 550–330 bce 149 50. Eugène Flandin, rendering of the talar (pillared hall) of Baq-e No (the New Garden), Shiraz, Iran  151

58. South elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920  183 59. Medallions on the central pavilion of the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House reproducing Sassanian reliefs, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920: Ardeshir I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rostam,

Illustrations  ( xi )

Shapur II’s suppression of a revolt at Tang-e Chogan, and Shapur I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rajab  184 60. Medallions on the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House reproducing Sassanian reliefs, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920: Shapur I at Tang-e Chogan, Shapur I holding the hand of Valerian at Bishapur while Philip the Arab kneels in front of him, and a fragment of the deer-hunting scene from Taq-e Bostan  185 61. Tile portraits of three Iranian rulers, Shapur I, Purandokht, and Karim Khan Zand, on the interior dadoes of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920  186 62. Lithograph of a relief showing a king slaying a unicorn, Persepolis, and a medallion on the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920  187 63. Medallion of Cyrus on the east elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920  188 64. Southeast elevation of Shapuri House, designed by Abd ol-Qasem Mohandesi, Shiraz, Iran, 1935, displaying an image of Cyrus after the relief on Gate H at Pasargadae  189 65. An illustrated page depicting nobles from Apadana bearing gifts to the king of kings at Persepolis, and vertical medallions on one corner of the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920  190 66. Two medallions on the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920, reproducing the ancient reliefs: two Achaemenid guards facing each other, from Persepolis, and Shapur I’s triumph over Valerian at Naqsh-e Rostam  191

( xii )  Illustrations

67. West elevation of Saray-e Roshan, also called Seyr ol-Eslam, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1910–20  192 68. Detail of the pediment of Saray-e Roshan, displaying the drunken Noah with his sons, the faravahar, and two Corinthian columns with pinnacles, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1910–20  193 69. Two illustrations from articles published in the newspaper Ettelaat about the Iranian Pavilion at the Brussels International Exposition, Brussels, Belgium, April 27 to November 6, 1935  198 70. East elevation of the National Bank, designed by German architect A. Hemmrich, Tehran, Iran, 1933–35  199 71. West elevation of Tehran’s police headquarters, designed by Iranian-Armenian architect Ghalitch Baqlian and Haj Hosayn Beheshti, Tehran, Iran, 1933  201 72. West elevation of the police prefecture in Darband, northern Tehran, Iran, ca. 1935  202 73. North elevation of the Iranian Parliament building known as the Baharestan, designed by Iranian architect Karim Taherzadeh Behzad, Tehran, Iran, 1935  204 74. South elevation of the Museum of Iranian Antiquities, known as muze-ye iran bastan, designed by French architect André Godard, Tehran, Iran, 1935–37  206 75. View of Darioush Winery, Napa, California, designed by the Santa Monica–based Ardeshir and Roshan Nozari Architectural Firm, 1998–2004, showing the double-bull-headed columns.  213

Acknowledgments This is a book that I began long ago, intended as my second project. A couple of other books and life things came in between. Many generously helped along the way, and to them I am profoundly grateful: my editor, Eleanor Goodman, for her astute faith in this story from the first contact; my copyeditor, Keith Monley, for his immaculate and transformative work; Cyrus Samii for first mentioning the Parsis; and Annabel Jane Wharton for first asking if I had heard of Strzygowski. Houri Berberian, Christina Maranci, Layla Diba, Afshin Marashi, Mana Kia, Yves Porter, Finbarr Barry Flood, Margaret Cool Root, Sussan Babaie, Leah Theis, Mineh Der Grigorian, Moneh Der Grigorian, and Greg Der Grigorian generously helped in shaping the narrative. I am indebted to my colleagues: at the Getty, Carolin Behrmann, Anthony G. Cokes, Courtney Martin, Lisa Young, Jenny Rose, John Onian, Francesca Torcini, Thierry de Duve, Mary Roberts, Esra Akcan, Avinoam Shalem; in Cambridge, Caroline Jones, Arindam Dutta, Nasser Rabbat, Jeff Spur; in Tehran, Sholeh Zahedi, Armineh Arakelian, Yousef Behdari, Fereidoon Borumandi, Razmik Azizian; in Bombay, Nawaz Mody, the staff of the Cama Oriental Institute, and those who were willing to engage during my visits to the fire temples; and in Princeton, Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Jo-Ann Gross, Amin Moghadam, Khodadad Rezakhani, and Daniel Sheffield. For our conversations, I am also grateful to Massumeh Farhad, Touraj Daryaee, Monica Ringer, Jennifer Rose, Jennifer Jenkins, Matthew Canepa, Rebecca M. Brown, Alfredo Cisternino, Daniel Goldstein, Ruth Player, Morna O’Neill, Werner Joseph Pich, Tamara I. Sears, Wolfgang Sonne, Yavuz Sezer, Michael Stausberg, Frances Terpak, Deborah Thompson, Herica Valladares, Reva Wolf, Alisa Luxenberg, Mercedes Volait, Nan Wolverton, Ali Rad Yousefnia, and Suzanne Marchand. The book has benefited from the generosity of the following institutions: the University of California, Davis, Office of Research and Office of the Dean of the College of Letters and Science; Cornell University’s Humanities Institute; the Getty Research Institute; the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA); the College Art Association; the Society of Architectural Historians; the Social Science Research Council; the Cama Oriental Institute; the Persian Heritage Foundation; the Farhang Foundation; Brandeis University’s Fine Arts Department and Center for German and European Studies; Florida State University’s Council of Research and Creativity; and Princeton University’s Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies.

• Prologue Fallacy of Origins

T

he lavish yet bizarre architectural facades with winged men and distorted bulls first caught my fancy during my dissertation research. The mushrooming of what I call here the architecture of the Persian Revival in the 1930s seemed to appear out of nowhere. The accepted wisdom at the time was that it was all Reza Shah’s idea, which made little historical sense, even then. He was not exactly a Renaissance man. At that time, few had delved deep into the study of the formation of Iranian nationalism in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, and even fewer among art historians. None had argued for a connection between the two art-historical branches of the Persian Revival: Parsi and Iranian. And few had drawn connections between Europe’s Orient-or-Rome debate of 1901 and the art history of modern Iran and India. So, while I began with the intention to write the history of architectural revival in the 1920s and 1930s in Pahlavi Iran, my research pushed me further back in time in search of the beginnings of the artistic manifestations of that revival. It also landed me in Vienna and Mumbai. The more I investigated, the more I realized that the iconic Pahlavi architecture— for instance, the National Bank building, the Tehran Police Headquarters, and the Museum of Iranian Antiquities—was the culmination of a story that began much earlier and far away from its proliferation in the heart of 1930s Tehran. The Persian Revival’s antecedents have thus dictated the structural logic of this book, which has turned out to be an architectural history of grand facades fit for the eclectic long nineteenth century. In chasing the ideological trends related to the various forms of the revival, which might qualify as many revivals, and focusing on architectural style, this study is an art history of taste, of extravagant elevations that served as instruments of colonial prestige and national public instruction: first progressive, then despotic; at times

bigoted but mostly playful. It tells the story of a staunch nationalism that long cured in universalist, reformist, Freemasonic, and anticolonial ideals. Its artifacts were copies of copies. Influence, however, was no one-way process, nor modernity the dominion of one. The narrative begins with Europe’s discovery of ancient Iran first in philology and then in art history, starting with the effects of the 1699 Treaty of Carlowitz and the 1722 fall of the Safavid Empire. In 1901, Europe’s racial and linguistic discourses erupted into the Orient-or-Rome debate. Pivoting on the passions around the debate, it proceeds with the art history of the Persian Revival movement in light of imperial strategies of power, selfhood, and statehood in British India and Zand-Qajar-Pahlavi Iran. Drawing on a wide range of Persian Revival narratives bound to architectural history—from European travelogues to Bombay architecture, from Masonic paraphernalia to Persian reliefs and pillared halls—this study foregrounds the complexities and magnitude of artistic appropriations of Western art history, which were carried out in order to grapple with colonial ambivalence and imperial aspirations. It explores how reformist Iranians and Indians turned Europe’s fetish of ancient Aryan Persia upon itself. The ensuing conversations that shaped Iranian and Indian cities were visual expressions of struggles for reform as well as rare moments in architectural embrace of contemporary (bad) taste, originality (and its copies), and universality (as a tribal trope). Around these art-historical debates and edifices, locals negotiated a unique brand of modernity. Chapter 1 traces European engagement with ancient Iran from 1765 to the eruption of the Orient-or-Rome debate in 1901 and the subsequent use of this visual history and historiography in Parsi and Iranian invention of the Persian Revival style. Chapter 2 examines the Parsi invention of a Persian racial and artistic lineage centered on Bombay from the 1830s to the 1910s and the export of this exilic architecture into Qajar Iran in the 1910s. And chapter 3 traces the evolution of the Iranian brand of the Persian Revival, starting from the artistic revivalistic interventions of Karim Khan Zand in eighteenth-century Shiraz and continuing through the long Qajar century of significant leaps in cultural revivals that culminated in the official adoption of the style by the Pahlavi state in 1925. An epilogue raises theoretical questions about the influence of the copy in its colonial context. Instead of asking what art is, it ponders what art does, especially when casting into the imperial domain. Premised on postcolonial and critical theories, the book argues that while Western imperialism was instrumental in shaping high art as a mercantile-bourgeois ethos, it was also a project that destabilized the hegemony of a Eurocentric historiography of taste. Despite art history’s neglect, Persian Revival architecture is significant for three reasons. First, it confirms the global circulation and connectivity of aesthetic discourses, thus complicating the art-historical faith in Western origins and native copies. If the Enlightenment had bestowed high civilizational credits on historical longevity and ( 2 )  the persian revival

artistic sophistication, nineteenth-century Iranians and Parsis felt that they had a lot of both, and they honed them against Europe’s expansions. The Persian Revival was the most alluring expression of that art-historical arrogation. Methodologically, this study argues that there are no bad copies in art history, only edifices that reveal broader forms of sociopolitical resistance expressed in aesthetic discourses. To relegate them to the category of bad art and thus to ignore them, as we have, is to miss the point. Instead of marching into a losing battle, Iranians and Parsis commissioned revivalistic facades as evocations of their best, most modern selves. Examined here for the first time as an art-historical subject matter with the potential to respond to broader art-historical questions, the Persian Revival style is parsed not by what it is but by how it has been ignored due to what it lacks; not by what it meant but by how it functioned in the discursive field of visual meaning, articulating a politics of visuality and visibility; not by what it was (i.e., beautiful, original, Persian) but by what it did (i.e., endorsed or resisted colonialism, legitimized or poked fun at power). After the Persian Revival became a recognizable style, its purchase on Iranian identity expanded globally to anywhere that Iranians and Parsis set foot; any Iranian deli or restaurant in Los Angeles or Toronto will testify to its resilience. Second, the Persian Revival is significant because it enables us to rethink the dialectics of text and artifact. This book attempts a new interpretation of the network of travelogues on Iran, native writings deploying modern visual technologies, and histories of world architecture and thus bares how they sowed the seeds of both the Persian Revival and such monuments of Iranian art history as Arthur Pope’s Survey of Persian Art (1939). The nineteenth century witnessed a paradigm shift in the function of visuality and visual proof. Indeed, the presence of drawings and plans, asserting detached accuracy, constituted the evidence itself. In part due to the rapid evolution of the sciences, the physical object took the place of philological speculation in such disciplines as anthropology, prehistory, craniology, and archeology, shaping the evaluation of both Aryan theory and non-Western art history. “Linguistic imperialism,” as Leon Poliakov notes, slowly gave way to a closer look at the object.1 The dependence of the object on the text, and therefore the resentment of some art historians toward philology—or rather hostility toward a favoring of textual sources over visual evidence—reverberates in the current production of Iranian art history. Although drawing on multiple and rarely cross-pollinated areas of knowledge, this study is based on the discipline of art history. Cold War area studies dealt a blow to the advancement of non-Western art history because they subordinated art-historical analysis to textual sources and thus skewed the parameters and methods by which a body of artifacts came to be classified as Iranian art. Here I contend that while the Persian Revival must be properly and thoroughly contextualized within its historical setting, the wide range of complicated domains prologue  ( 3 )

out of which it evolved—that is, literary, epistemic, linguistic, archeological, Iranian, Indian, European, Masonic, nationalist, romanticist, universalist—it is a moment in the history of art that can only be explained through the methodological tools of that discipline. The Persian Revival, like its European counterpart, the Gothic Revival, while started as a literary movement, cannot be aptly understood without art-historical scrutiny. By the 1930s, the origin of the Gothic itself had been traced back to Iran.2 It should come as no surprise that Austrian scholar Josef Strzygowski—the first occupant of the first chair of non-Western art history—dissented against the “tyranny of text” over the artifact and accused its champions of being armchair art historians. Nina Garsoïan, the scholar who masterfully straddled Armenian, Byzantine, and Sassanian histories, underscored her “conviction that only a juxtaposition of the surviving visual evidence with the fragmentary textual material could lead to some understanding of the civilization that produced them.”3 This Persian Revival story straddles three continents, stretching from Vienna to Tehran to Bombay, with a few detours in Shiraz, Surat, London, Paris, New York, and the Napa Valley. The third reason the Persian Revival is significant is that it occasions a new discussion about old debates regarding art history’s global turn. As Strzygowski insisted a century ago, many art historians of non-Western art continue to elude the snare of the armchair despite multiple obstacles hindering access to their objects of study, including inadequate funding and sabbaticals and the risk of incarceration or detention in the country where their objects of study are found. For this book, access to the edifices in Iran was truncated due to circumstances triggered by rigged elections and economic sanctions, while entrance to Parsi fire temples was curtailed by religious orthodoxy. There were other challenges. First, in Parsi studies the primary focus has been given to the religious and socioeconomic history of Parsi communities to the exclusion of architecture; the Persian Revival Parsi temples do not appear in mainstream architectural studies of the British Raj either. Second, when these temples are discussed, their architectonic qualities are rarely addressed because in Zoroastrianism what matters is the sacred fire. In dating, for instance, the date of the establishment of the fire often supersedes the date of the edifice. Historical accounts, as well as secondary sources, habitually confuse the two and privilege the former. Third, given the dense urban context of the buildings explored here, it was challenging to produce unobstructed photographs in India. In Iran, likewise, I was forbidden to photograph many of the Persian Revival edifices due to their present functions as ministries, banks, and police headquarters. Fourth, the clusters of knowledge—art history, archeology, Iranian studies, Parsi studies, Masonic studies, and so forth—that benefit this work rarely cross-pollinate. During discussion of the prehistory of a Persian antique revival, a late medievalist colleague spoke about her “gripe with modern historians who make so much of the focus on pre-Islamic Persian history,” adding, “they act like it wasn’t there before, which ( 4 )  the persian revival

is just simply not true, instead of asking what was new about how it was articulated.”4 This study is about the complex processes of different branches of that articulation. The Persian Revival architecture was itself a material enunciation by Iranians and Parsis, who mapped the unstable discursive effects of postcoloniality. This was often about collective anxiety but also an elitist aspiration. By that token, my narrative, like those about whose anxieties and aspirations I write, remains within the boundaries of art-historical and discursive interpretations. To understand how the ancient Iranian legacy was received and revived, I have refrained from linguistic, archeological, or literary examinations— these fall within neither my expertise nor the aims of this work. When addressing the copying of Achaemenid and Sassanian originals or the historical veracity of the Orient-or-Rome debate or, indeed, the Aryanness of Persians and Parsis, my narrative remains in the discursive realm of modernity. The question of what really happened is suspect to me. I have instead tried to explain how a collective of modernists crafted a discourse about what they thought happened, because the Persian Revival is not a function of historical retrievals but a fascinating historicist imagining in brick and stone.

prologue  ( 5 )

•1 Ancient Iran in Western Art Historiography Based on evidence gathered in his excavations, the German archeologist Ernst Herzfeld hypothesized that Achaemenid inscriptions revealed that the name Iranian derived from the ancient term Aryanam Khshathram, the Empire of the Aryans.1 In November 1934 Reza Shah Pahlavi decreed that foreigners call his country by its local name: not Persia, but Iran, signifying the Land of Aryans. While historians ascribe this symbolic shift to the king’s chauvinism, they overlook the fact that four decades earlier the matter had been raised and fervently contended by Europe’s art historians. Described as “one of the most heated controversies of modern scholarship,” the Orient-or-Rome dispute was inflamed by the simultaneous publication of two books in 1901.2 On the one hand, the Italian archeologist Giovanni Teresio Rivoira in his Le origini dell’architettura lombarda argued that the origin of all Western, principally Gothic, architecture is to be found in Roman ingenuity. On the other hand, in his Orient oder Rom, the Vienna School art historian Josef Strzygowski contended that Western artistic sources ought to be traced to the Indo-Germanic spirit, pointing instead to the Orient. Each man insisted on the scientific basis of his theory. Remarkably, decades later Strzygowski continued to implore enthusiasts and skeptics alike to trace Western artistic connections “not to the ancient Near East . . . not to Persia but to Iran.”3 The history of the Orient-or-Rome debate is lengthy and thorny. At the time, it pulled influential figures into its orbit of origin myth, scientific accuracy, and historical truths. Those who got involved in this passionate art-historical controversy came from all walks of life and all over the globe: prominent art historians, particularly Alois Riegl and Franz Wickhoff; well-known Orientalists, including Herzfeld, André Godard, and Arthur Upham Pope; and influential scholars, diplomats, and philanthropists in Iran, such as Mohammad Ali Forughi, Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, Hosayn Ala,

and Keikhosrow Shahrokh, and in India, specifically Dadabhai Naoroji, Khurshedji Cama, and Manekji Petit. This small but influential group of men—sharing an intellectual and imperial Zeitgeist—believed in the civilizational merit of art history and pursued matching political ideologies, often grounded in racial and aesthetic theories. That they so passionately clashed over the Orient-or-Rome debate as early as 1901 speaks to a structural defect in art history’s global claim at the time. Not only can the Orient-or-Rome debate be revisited as a quarrel, albeit a big one, among Vienna School art historians about the origin of late antique art, but it can also be scrutinized through a postcolonial lens to question the validity of the art-historical canon and its hegemonic historiographical methods—something that the debate tried to do. It was probably one of the earliest global turns, so to speak, that grappled with the universalist assertion of the discipline. A return to its history must therefore foreground the agency of those who backed one or the other side. In examining the intellectual processes through which the Persian Revival became an Iranian and Parsi art movement, this chapter argues that the evolution of Europe’s interest in Persian antiquity was deeply embedded in the domain of imperial discourse. To support this argument, it considers the visual and textual accounts that circulated among Iranian and Parsi reformists at the time that they were ready to commission structures, whether a temple in Bombay or a bank in Tehran. Moreover, the chapter demonstrates the discursive processes through which this set of iconographies and architectural prototypes became canonical. It ends by showing how this visual economy became a dominant countercolonial discourse about Iran as a foundational civilization. With these in mind, the next section, immediately below, traces the linguistic-racial theories on “Oriental Aryans” that generated a rich visual culture on ancient Iran in the form of European travelogues from 1768 to 1854. From the middle of the century to 1899, these evolved into a canon of architectural history that set Persepolis at the beginning of Western civilization: the intellectual bedrock of 1901. Known to ancient Persians as Parseh and to modern Iranians as Takht-e Jamshid, Persepolis was the ceremonial seat of the first major transcontinental empire of the ancient world and the first Persian royal dynasty, the Achaemenids, from its founding by Darius I in 550 bce to the defeat of Darius III and the capital’s sacking by Alexander in 330 bce. The Sassanian dynasty, which ruled over the Iranian Plateau from 224 to the Muslim conquest of Iran in 651, claimed ancestry from the Achaemenids and left its artistic legacy on the vast territories of Iranshahr, the designation of their empire as the Dominion of the Aryans. From around 600 bce to 651, Zoroastrianism, or Mazdaism, served as the state religion of the successive Iranian empires. Throughout the centuries, diverse entities recycled Persepolis as the seat of symbolic power.4 During the modern period, it seduced the West as the locus of the much sought-after, and at times fabricated, grandeur of ancient Persia. At the same time, it called upon ( 8 )  the persian revival

Parsi and Iranian protonationalists to revive, in concrete architectural terms, Iran’s equally glorious and fabricated historical greatness. The importance of the ruins to diverse groups of people also acted as a source for archeological rivalries, diplomatic contentions, linguistic clashes, conservation legislation, and, as traced below, several centuries of European art history.

Mapping the Persianate in Architecture, 1722–1851 The 1699 Treaty of Carlowitz, which ended the sixteen-year war between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League, not only signified the end of Ottoman dominance in central Europe but also incited various shifts in epistemic paradigms. The Persian Revival, as an architectural style, was a reaction to the transformations in conceptions of collective subjecthood throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While the treaty’s significance as the historical end to Muslim expansion is well recognized, its impact on modern Iranian art has not been visited. Marking a reversal of political expansionism, 1699 was also a moment when Europe’s standard of aesthetic judgment ascended as normative. By then, the once-mighty Safavid Empire was in turmoil. In the same year, Baluchi tribesmen breached Iran’s eastern frontier and wreaked havoc on Kerman, a major urban center within a day’s march of the capital. Ruled by a “feeble” monarch, Shah Soltan Hosayn (r. 1694–1722), who had given “his life over to drink and debauchery,” the Perso-Shi’a superpower was finally besieged by Afghan armies.5 On October 23, 1722, they marched into Isfahan—known by custom as the majestic “half of the world”—and deposed the Persian king. The Ottoman decline, coupled with the fall of the Safavids, meant that, for Europe, the contemporary Orient lost its allure as the land of the plenty and the erotic. Europeans instead began to cast their fantasy gaze on the ancient Orient, in search of the ancient Persians. Western cultural hegemony gained a firm foothold in West Asia with the fall of the Safavids. Persianate ethos slowly ceased to serve as the foundational gauge for the interpretation of events, texts, and tastes. From then on, the “Persianate ecumene”— stretching from the Caucasus to Xinjiang—witnessed a reversal of its cultural influence as a world power, or rather as the benchmark of taste since the post-Mongol age.6 If until then Europe had mattered little to the self-image of the Indo-Iranian peoples, Safavid collapse led Persianate scholars and artists to grapple with new conceptions of universal history by reevaluating the place of Iran in that universe during the turbulent long nineteenth century. Europe now mattered much. Henceforth, gradually but surely, Iran’s antiquities—historical texts and, later, archeological findings—were recast according to the terms of the present. So much of that present was about coming to grips with colonial anxieties and ambitions, on the part of both the colonizer and the ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 9 )

colonized. An elite aesthetic movement, the Persian Revival, was the most conspicuous articulation of this new Iranian and Parsi historicity. Shifting perceptions of the Persianate geo-culture had a parallel European context. At the zenith of seventeenth-century Safavid Iran, contemporary Persian art forms, including poetry, carpets, jewels, weapons, and illustrated manuscripts, were esteemed as expressions of a political power to be feared; following the Treaty of Carlowitz, post-Safavid Iran exhausted its Oriental allure. As Suzanne Marchand argues, “Europeans gradually lost respect for modern Persian courtly life, and interest in ‘the Persians’ now focused on the contemporaries of Zoroaster or Cyrus.”7 European imagination transferred this discursive attraction to ancient Persia. As the eighteenth century progressed, a new generation of Europeans began to search for Eastern wisdom and beauty, not between the lines of Sa’di’s Golestan (1258) via Adam Olearius’s 1654 German translation or in his 1647 travelogue amassed as the secretary to the Holstein diplomatic mission to the court of Shah Safi (r. 1629–42), but rather by flipping through Carsten Niebuhr’s remarkably accurate illustrations of Persepolis and Bisotun.8 In European cartographic and visual depictions, ancient Iran began to take conceptual center stage. As the only surviving member of the Royal Danish Arabia Expedition (1761–67), the young German cartographer’s travels were extensive and determined. In August 1763 Niebuhr sailed from Sanaa to the coast of West India. During his fourteen-month stay, he mapped Bombay and Surat, including their large Parsi communities, describing them as “tender, tranquil, and hardworking” and mentioning a “fierce fire” in “one of their temples in Bombay.”9 Niebuhr’s prolonged contact with the Parsis undoubtedly influenced the next stage of his expedition. After disembarking in southern Iran in February 1765, he surveyed Shiraz, Bisotun, and Kermanshah, devoting twenty-four days to the detailed analysis of the Persepolis terrace with perspective, detail, and map drawings. While these, particularly the depictions of cuneiform inscriptions, catalyzed Europe’s attraction to ancient sites, his survey methods and travel itinerary—cartographically and visually coupling Parsi India with Achaemenid ruins—served as a discursive strategy beyond that. A map included in Niebuhr’s travelogues represents the southern half of the Iranian Plateau pivoting around the “ruin de Persepolis” as if it were the center of the Orient (fig. 1); Persepolis for him was “the jewel of his journey.”10 Except for the port cities, Firuzabad, and Shiraz, the territories of southern Iran remain unmapped. For the first time in Western cartography, Persepolis was cast not as a forgotten pile buried under centuries of dust but as a marked destination at the epicenter of West Asia. While earlier Western travelers had depicted Persepolis with precision, notably Dutch artist Cornelis de Bruijn (1704) and French traveler Jean Chardin (1711), Niebuhr’s drawing was the first to brand Eurasia with this single “ruin.” Here, with telling foresight, the Persianate metamorphosed into the ideal of Persepolis. ( 10 )  the persian revival

Fig. 1  Map of the Persian Gulf with the “ruin of Persepolis” at the center of the Iranian Plateau, one of the few sites marked by Carsten Niebuhr. From Carsten Niebuhr, Voyage de M. Niebuhr en Arabie et en d’autres pays de l’Orient: Avec l’extrait de sa description de l’Arabie & des observations de Mr. Forskal (N.p.: Libraires associés, 1780), 1:464, plate E. Photo courtesy of Firestone Library, Princeton University.

Tokens of Persianate civilization continued to circulate among cultivated Europeans throughout the eighteenth century. Instead of spending an adventurous afternoon exploring the details of an Ardebil carpet, members of the aristocracy and intelligentsia recited Abraham Anquetil-Duperron’s French translation of the Zoroastrian sacred book, Zend-Avesta (1771).11 Few outside academia cared that Sir William Jones had trashed it in a fifty-two-page brochure, mocking it as “trois volumes d’inepties” (three volumes of nonsense) and “bigarré” (motley).12 Wrongly pronouncing the translation a forgery, Jones asserted that the Parsis of Surat had tricked Anquetil into buying the gibberish of a contemporary manuscript, from which he had then produced his translation. These were the same Zoroastrian priests who had taught Anquetil Classical Persian and Pahlavi, which formed the basis of not only his career but also a branch of Oriental studies. As Marchand exclaims, “Widely read and eagerly discussed by a large number of Europe’s poets, philosophers, and theologians,” Anquetil’s Zend-Avesta was a “scholarly sensation.”13 The heated debate between Jones and Anquetil over the authenticity of the Avesta, crammed with vicious personal and nationalistic attacks, looks strikingly like a dress rehearsal for the 1901 Orient-or-Rome debate. In both cases, the idea of Iran served as the conceptual battlefield. Six months after his 1762 return to Paris, Anquetil delivered a talk in which he assumed a direct link between “the Aryans” and the ancient Iranian “ariya” people mentioned in the Avesta.14 The disciplinary network between language, race, archeology, and eventually art history sustained the legitimacy of these early European discussions. In 1788 Jones in turn launched the rubric of an Indo-European language category by claiming that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, and Persian belonged to an original “Aryan mother tongue.”15 With a few exceptions, this notion evolved to support pseudoscientific theories linking language and race. Lecturing to the Asiatic Society of Bengal four years later, Jones insisted that “it is no longer probable only, but absolutely certain, that the whole race of man proceeded from Iràn.”16 Although he died in Calcutta in 1794, before fulfilling his “burning desire” to decipher the “runic letters on the pillars of Persepolis,” the significance he and Anquetil conferred on Aryan Iran shaped Europe’s monogenetic theories vis-à-vis the Persianate world. Pity, though, for if Jones had arrived in Fars, as he had planned, in 1794, he might either have discovered the inscriptions on the pillars, especially those in the Palace of One Hundred Columns (sixth century bce), which instead remained unknown until the 1930s, or alternatively have noted their devastation, caused by Alexander’s sack of Persepolis in 330 bce.17 The Persian Revival—like the Gothic Revival a century earlier—began as a literary movement, the origins of which can also be traced eastward—that is, east of Iran.18 As German philologist Friedrich Schlegel, who anthropologized the bond between language and race, avowed in 1803, “Everything, absolutely everything, is of Indian origin.”19 When Anquetil arrived in Surat in March 1758, he stumbled onto one of the ( 12 )  the persian revival

Persianate sources of the Persian Revival, or perhaps more likely, he stumbled upon yet another round of local appropriation and reinterpretation of Iran’s Zoroastrian/ Mazdaic cultural legacy. Here in Surat, the Zoroastrian Parsi priests Dastur Darab bin Suhrab and Dastur Kavus bin Faraydun must have owned a forged manuscript. It just was not the one they sold to Anquetil. The Dasatir texts, literary forgeries, were authored by the Fars-born Zoroastrian high priest in exile Azar Kayvan (1533–1618) and his disciples in Patna from the 1570s on.20 Nurtured by the religious reforms in the Mughal court, the Azari literary movement, founded by Kayvan, was an offshoot of the Islamic Safavid revival of the philosophy or theosophy of the Light of the East, itself a revival of the ancient Zoroastrian philosophy of Light.21 Known as the Zoroastrian eshraqi, or Illuminative School, the Azari movement should therefore be seen not so much as a modernist literary Persian revival as a late medieval Persian survival rooted in Islamicate interpretations of Iran’s antiquity. As in the numerous examples of the Gothic Survival in late seventeenth-century architecture in Oxford and Cambridge as well as in France, Poland, Germany, and Spain, the Azari movement can be seen as a holdover or survival of a medieval tradition, upon which the moderns would rely to enact their Persian Revival. In the footsteps of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (977–1010), the Dasatir texts recount the deeds of ancient Iranian prophet-kings in significant historical events that, in some cases, never took place. Featured are fictional figures such as Mahabad, Kayumars, and Sassan V, followed by historical figures, including Zoroaster, Key Khosrow, and Alexander. Among the Dasatir texts, the first part of Kayvan’s own Dabistan-e Mazahib (The school of doctrines) was composed in an invented language, claimed to be from the time of Zoroaster. Like the Shahnameh, the Dabistan’s second part was composed of a kind of Persian that deliberately excluded Arabic words. Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson, whose works betrayed no awareness of the Azari movement, would likely have marveled at the inventiveness of the Dabistan as an enduring tradition, conceived decades before the British appearance on the shores of India. Constituting an occultist movement within the broader Perso-Islamic context of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Azari intellectuals were drawn from the major religions—that is, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Hinduism—represented in the pluralistic Mughal court of Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). They embraced the occult as a universal science. “The story of Western early modernity,” as Matthew Melvin-Koushki notes, “is just as profoundly an Islamicate and occultist one.”22 It is perhaps worth mentioning that later on as well, in the late nineteenth century, those Iranians and Parsis who advocated the Persian Revival were not only drawn from Muslim, Zoroastrian, and Christian backgrounds but also often attracted to the occultism of Freemasonry. Like many of their counterparts in other intellectual centers of ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 13 )

the Persianate world, the Azaris were in search of a single esoteric universal truth, as would be Parsi and Iranian Masons. In an attempt to “recover the suppressed memories and marginalized views of ancient Persians,” as Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi puts it, Azaris produced a series of texts that “subsumed Islamic prophetography by reassembling and re-encoding scattered fragments of Islamic and Mazdean textual traces.”23 According to the Dasatir narrative, Iranian history, which started much earlier than the Achaemenids, was divided into the Pishdadiyan, Kayaniyan, Ashkaniyan (Achaemenid, 550–330 bce), and the Sassanian (224–651) dynastic periods. In nationalist rivalry, the longevity of Iran’s history proved useful to the supporters of the Persian Revival. Along with an Iranocentric historiography of the universe, the Azaris held to the monogenesis of languages. They dubbed the parent tongue the “celestial language” (zaban-e asmani).24 Jones was familiar with the work of Siraj al-Din Khan Arzu, who had argued for a tie between Sanskrit and Zend, the language of the Avesta. He had undoubtedly read Francis Gladwin’s English translation of excerpts from the Dabistan in 1789, for in his quest to refute the authenticity of Anquetil’s Zend-Avesta, Jones claimed that the Dasatir—which, as Daniel Sheffield notes, Jones had never seen—“rather than the Avesta, contained the authentic beliefs and ancient language of pre-Islamic Iran, those of Zarathustra.”25 Twenty-four years after Jones’s death, when Molla Firuz published the Dasatir in Bombay (1818), it became evident that it was Jones, not Anquetil, who had been tricked by a Zoroastrian priest. The ensuing debates over the authenticity of the Dasatir and its 1809 Persian publication were essential in linking these eighteenth-century Irano-Aryan universal histories and the late nineteenth-century Persian Revival. It was Johann Friedrich Kleuker’s 1777 German translation of Anquetil’s ZendAvesta—along with Herodotus’s Histories (440 bce)—that persuaded G. W. F. Hegel to claim that (art) history began with the Iranian Zoroastrian civilization.26 Professing that the human race entered continuous history with the Persian Empire, he classified the Persians as the first historical people. In his seminal work, The Philosophy of History (1837), Achaemenid art and Zoroastrian religion connect ancient Eastern wisdom to German Volk via India.27 Hegel, like his compatriots, had sought “light” in the East in a “philosophical effort to comprehend the universe within the contours of an encyclopedic, organically structured thought-system.”28 The first manifestation of his notion of Spirit, as the underpinning idea of style, is Zoroaster’s light.29 Moreover, Hegel assigns a vital classificatory status to Persian art, which went beyond mere “emergence” to occupy the realm of “development” that would lead to “freedom.” In Persia, according to him, universal history witnessed “the first stirrings of freedom and true religion,” as Persian governance—unlike that in India and China—was based upon “a universal principle of law which applied to both rulers and ruled.”30 ( 14 )  the persian revival

In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel devotes three pages to the Zoroastrian system of the good lord (Ormuzd) and evil (Ahriman). The battle for the domination of the earth—and the conceptual role of Mithra, the Zoroastrian divinity of contracts, as mediator in that struggle—is deployed to elaborate on dualism, that which Derrida later dubbed “the trace.” In his analysis of Zoroastrian myth-philosophy, Hegel explains the dialectical relationship between good/light/Ormuzd and evil/darkness/Ahriman by expounding on the creation of the world according to the Avesta. He concludes with a lesson on dualism.31 Contingent upon the development of style, “Free Spirit” is thus born in a Zoroastrian conception of dualism in Persia.32 As one of the German founding fathers of art history, Hegel’s treatment of Achaemenid art shaped the development of the field itself. After Hegel, few serious art historians could dismiss Persian art. The eruption of the Orient-or-Rome debate had, in part, its origins in Hegel’s philosophy of history. As a handmaiden to the bids on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century universal histories, the discipline of art history came of age amid the debates about the ethics of imperialism. Standards of aesthetic judgment encroached upon disputes about the empire, as, for instance, in Hegel’s take on Persian art in the philosophy of universal history. It is not that discussions about global art history involved a struggle to position the Orient somewhere in its taxonomies; it is instead that the securing of a clear positionality for the Orient—as the undeniable origin of Europe’s art and hence always situated vis-à-vis Europe—could mask itself as scientific universal art history. In this historiography, the collecting and cataloging of visual material about West Asia took center stage in the politics of knowing and owning. Textual claims were now being supported by visual evidence produced by adventurer-diplomats and, later on, by learned Orientalists and architectural historians. The nineteenth-century colonial rivalry between Britain, Russia, and France over the Persianate territories quickly intensified the value of documenting Iran visually. In the tracks of Napoleon I’s Description de l’Égypte (1809–29)—fusing scientific evidence with strategies of classification— the nineteenth century saw a rise in the production of hefty travelogues on Iran with a particular interest in its antiquities.33 Western visual evidence on Zoroastrian/Mazdaic sites began to supplement that produced in the Qajar and Parsi contexts. By the middle of the nineteenth century, these efforts created an environment in Europe, Iran, and India among certain social circles—economically privileged, politically progressive, and culturally worldly—in which Iran’s antiquity occupied a porous category position. European travelogues, which progressively became sophisticated in their visual technology, were crucial to an accurate visual grasp of the philological arguments about ancient Iran. From small-scale amateur sketches of a broken vase on the side of a paragraph, for instance, this visual discourse evolved into lavish and large-scale multivolume and multicolor ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 15 )

architectural drawings and cartographic foldouts. Their technological sophistication mirrored Europe’s imperial ambitions. Given the interest in Iran’s antiquity in the eighteenth century, in addition to the fact that most traveler-artists were educated in Europe’s classical tradition, it is not surprising that a good share of the prevalent art history focused on Achaemenid and Sassanian sites. To protect its most prized imperial possession, India, the British government dispatched several diplomatic missions to Iran, which, in turn, opened the age of European travelogues on Persia. In February 1800 Sir John Malcolm arrived in Bushehr from Bombay and worked his way up to Shiraz, Isfahan, and Tehran to establish an alliance with Iran’s new Qajar dynasty (1789–1925). Sent to India at the age of twelve in the service of the East India Company, the Scottish statesman-historian was well prepared for the task. A robust diplomatic relationship between Iran and Britain would, it was hoped, safeguard against Russian and French advances into India. Scheming to invade India, Napoleon in 1806 dispatched his “favourite orientalist adviser and dragoman,” Pierre-Amédée Jaubert, to the court of Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834).34 Jaubert had been a prominent member of Napoleon’s 1789 Egyptian expedition, and his work, for instance, his Voyage en Arménie et en Perse (1821), fulfilled the French desire both to get to know Qajar Iran and to map the Orient, itself epitomized by the Description de l’Égypte.35 In May 1807 General Claude Mathieu de Gardane followed Jaubert on a four-month mission to Iran with the instruction to gather “information designed to make known a country.”36 Although the mission was a diplomatic failure, Gardane succeeded in amassing enough “scientific” data to produce a description of Persia that could steer French troops through Iran to accomplish Napoleon’s ambition to invade India. Following Gardane’s inability to establish accord with Fath Ali Shah, the British government dispatched Malcolm on two additional missions to Iran in May 1808 and in July 1809. Much like Napoleon during his 1798 Alexandrian campaign, Malcolm brought with him to Iran an extensive party of 656 experts and attendants, 163 of whom were Iranians.37 When he returned to India and settled in Bombay, Governor-General Lord Minto granted him funds and staff to “set in order the vast mass of materials he had collected for a historical and descriptive account of Persia.”38 His two-volume travelogue, The History of Persia from the Most Early Period to the Present Time (1815), was written as a universal history of the Persianate world from the “Paishdadian dynasty” to the 1808 British agreement with Fath Ali Shah. From the first lines, Persian Revival witnesses and histories underpinned the travelogue’s narrative. “According to all Mohamedan writers, except the author of the Dabistan,” Malcolm wrote, the history of Iran began with the first Persian king, “Kaiomurs,” adding that the successor to the Pishdadian throne was “Houshung,” who “founded some noble cities” and “invented many useful arts.” In contrast, his grandnephew “Jemsheed” founded Persepolis.39 To ( 16 )  the persian revival

his already-extensive history of Persia, Malcolm added an eighty-page appendix to discuss the discrepancies between the universal histories produced by Iranians and those produced by Europeans.40 Classically trained, Malcolm explained the significance of Persepolis, Susa, and Taq-e Bostan with reference to Greek and Roman literary traditions. “Among the traces of a nation’s former glory,” Persepolis was “far the grandest that yet remain. . . . [I]t once rivalled the noblest fabrics of Greece or of Rome.”41 After reviewing the sources, ranging from the Greeks to the Quran, from the Shahnameh and the Dasatir to contemporary Persianate texts, he delved into an analysis of the reliefs at Taq-e Bostan. While no drawings were included, The History of Persia proved influential due to Malcolm’s accurate description of notable sites along with his painstaking citation of historiographical sources about the origin of the Persians. As Bombay’s governor between 1827 and 1830, Malcolm further bolstered the ties between Iran’s antiquities and India’s Parsi elite. The travelogue’s legacy was extended into Persian-speaking circles when in 1872 and 1882 “a Persian living in India” named Mirza Hayrat translated both volumes into Persian.42 Increasingly, these European travelogues, with their emphasis on accurate visual representations of ancient Iran, were becoming accessible to Iran’s and India’s educated elite. After Malcolm, British diplomat James Morier surveyed Iran. In 1810–12, he traveled across Iran by way of Bombay as secretary to two diplomatic missions led by Harford Jones and Gore Ouseley. Each trip resulted in an impressive travelogue supplemented by wood engravings: A Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor to Constantinople (1812) and A Second Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople (1818). Citing and often confirming or correcting the descriptions of Achaemenid and Sassanian ruins by Chardin, de Bruijn, and French traveler Jean de Thévenot, Morier paid particular attention, not to Achaemenid, but to Sassanian sites. Located in Fars, Naqsh-e Rostam, Naqsh-e Rajab, and Bishapur were depicted for the first time by a European.43 He methodically described Naqsh-e Rostam’s rock-cut reliefs, focusing on the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian (260 ce). In his Second Journey, Morier sketched the same scene, a figure kneeling in front of a mounted horse, this time at Bishapur (49, 81). In the footsteps of Chardin and de Bruijn, he paid a visit to Pasargadae and Persepolis and matched textual descriptions to the extant tomb of Cyrus II (r. 559–530 bce). After a disappointing visit to a certain “Nokara Khoneh,” which, based on “descriptions made by Persians,” was to have antique value, Morier arrived at Persepolis on April 27, 1810 (73). Here, he commented on the “quantity of sculptured remains,” which he confessed he “did not hesitate to appropriate” in order that they be “sent to England” (75). Speaking of art in biological terms, as “a specimen of the style of the whole,” Morier reproduced the relief of an Achaemenid soldier from the Apadana. This sketch later ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 17 )

Fig. 2  Relief of an Achaemenid soldier, Persepolis, which was sketched by James Morier for his travelogue, A Second Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, Between the Years 1810 and 1816 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1818), frontispiece and 65. Photo: author.

served as the frontispiece of his travelogue (fig. 2).44 His study of the drawings by Chardin, de Bruijn, and Niebuhr of Persepolitan sculptures yielded the conclusion that they were “correct in outline, but imperfect in the details of dress, arms, etc.” (76). Considering that archeological fragments offered the “best models” of the “nations that invaded Greece,” his excavations and in-situ drawings contributed to a more accurate knowledge of the site (76). Despite the issuance of an order by the “Governor of Merdasht” that forbade any Iranians from digging for Morier, thus ending his antiquarian inquiries in Iran, his oeuvre proved foundational to the development of Achaemenid and Sassanian art history. His work also laid the groundwork for the larger colonial discourse on ancient Iran. ( 18 )  the persian revival

Across the domains of travel literature, Indo-European linguistics, British imperialism, and the historiography of Iranian art, Gore and William Ouseley could be considered a node. In effect, they carried forward William Jones’s legacy of Persian studies in such institutions as the Asiatic Society of Calcutta and the Royal Societies of Edinburgh, Göttingen, and Amsterdam, of which they were fellows.45 Having pursued Persian studies in Paris and Leiden between 1788 and 1796, along with a prolonged posting in India, William Ouseley provided inclusive historiography of Iran’s antiquities. Like Morier and Malcolm, his multivolume, multilingual, and multiscript travelogue, Travels in Various Countries of the East, More Particularly Persia (1819– 23), was a result of a diplomatic and historical mission in 1810–11. That he was an avid reader and collector of Persian and Arabic manuscripts, including “the oldest copy” of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, and was trained in the classical tradition added to the inclusiveness of his account.46 His travelogue contains five maps and fifty-five careful drawings, ranging from landscapes to cityscapes, floor plans and elevations to details of coins, artifacts, reliefs, cuneiform, Arabic and Persian inscriptions. Nearly half depict Zoroastrian/Mazdaic artifacts and edifices. Adopting Jones’s orthographic system, Ouseley entered the Persianate world through the mediation of India’s Parsis. This access was narratological and historiographical, as well as physical, in the sense that he arrived at the port of Bushehr through Bombay, as Niebuhr had in 1765 (1:xii). At the end of his second chapter, while still in Bombay, Ouseley begins his account of Iran with an encounter with the Parsi high priest Dastur Molla Firuz, whom he considered the most reliable source on ancient Iran, given that the Parsis “resident at Bombay . . . constitute . . . a highly respectable class of the population” (1:97).47 This narratological opening allows Ouseley to trace the history of the Parsis, their origin in Iran, and the early history, religion, and language of ancient Persia, with an emphasis on the construction of fire temples.48 As the heir to British Persian studies, Ouseley set Anquetil against Jones in his account only to “let [the former’s] personal foibles be forgotten” (1:144–45). Finally, in March 1811 Ouseley landed in the port of Bushehr, where his “antiquarian researches commenced of the first day” (1:212). With a particular interest in the second king of the Sassanian dynasty, Ouseley sought out and depicted images of Shapur I (r. 240–70). He identified the legendary king, known as a builder, and chased the figure to Naqsh-e Rostam, Naqsh-e Rajab, Darabgird, Bishapur, and Rey.49 Given Ouseley’s familiarity with gems, coins, and medals, he “easily recognized . . . the mighty Shapur” mounted on a horse and facing his “captive” begging for “mercy” (1:282, plates xvii, xviii, xxxv). Ouseley’s fascination with the reliefs of the well-known triumphs of Shapur over his Roman counterparts had an Orientalist resonance. At Naqsh-e Rostam, Naqsh-e Rajab, and Bishapur, Shapur on his high horse was depicted trampling on the body of Roman emperor Gordian III (r. ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 19 )

238–44) and his successor, Philip the Arab (r. 244–49), while a supplicating Roman emperor Valerian (r. 253–60) knelt at his feet. Describing this posturing as “barbarous but expressive attribute [of ] the royal conqueror,” Ouseley outlines the significance of this iconography, long familiar to his Western audiences (1:282).50 At Darabgird, he drew the same relief with “scrupulous accuracy; for the figure of the Roman chief, may be a real portrait of the unfortunate Valerian” (2:147–48) (fig. 3). “Persian accounts of that victory,” Ouseley concludes, “must have proved so flattering to the conqueror’s fellow-countrymen” (1:286).51 Indeed, this image of a pleading Valerian kneeling before Shapur was to make a conspicuous comeback in the Persian Revival movement (see figs. 26, 52, 60, 66). On July 11, 1811, Ouseley arrived at the plain of Marvdasht, half a mile from Persepolis. Sketching a bird’s-eye view from the same spot as Chardin, de Bruijn, and the German explorer Engelbert Kaempfer, he describes the totality of the terrace as “two recesses excavated in the mountain; these without hesitation may be styled the sepulchral monuments of ancient kings” (2:234) (fig. 4). He devotes the next two hundred pages to Persepolis, interchangeably using the Greek term “Persepolis” and the Persian term “Takht-e Jamshid.” He provides architectural details of the terrace and matches his narrative to specific points in his drawings while cross-referencing his account with those by Chardin, de Bruijn, Niebuhr, Kaempfer, Pierre-François Hugues d’Hancarville, Pietro della Valle, and Robert Gordon, among others, creating a stepping stone in the development of Iran’s art history. Ouseley’s careful inclusion of both ancient and modern authors in explaining the history of ancient Iran through its archeology and architecture contributed to the blossoming discourse on the Persian Revival. Robert Ker Porter followed Ouseley as the next major, and nondiplomatic, European traveler to Iran. Ker Porter’s two-volume travelogue, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. &c. During the Years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820 (1821– 22), was unique in two important ways: his window of entry into Iran was Russia instead of India, and he was a professional artist with experience in historical and royal subject matters. After schooling in Latin and Greek, he had studied painting at London’s Somerset House, making a public name for himself with the exhibition of a 128-foot panorama, Storming of Seringapatam, in 1800. Four years later he joined the court of Alexander I in Saint Petersburg as a historical painter.52 As he mingled with the Romanov aristocracy, his charm and artistic skills soon attracted the attention of the president of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Alexey Nikolayevich Olenin, who commissioned him to lead an expedition to Iran. Olenin sent Ker Porter off to the East with a plea to document the antiquities with accuracy: “draw only what you see! Correct nothing; and preserve . . . the true character of the originals.” Scolding those gone before his protégé, Olenin further instructed Ker Porter not to “give to Persian figures a French tournure, like Chardin; nor a Dutch, like Van Bruyn . . . ; nor a German, . . . like Niebuhr; nor ( 20 )  the persian revival

Fig. 3 (above) William Ouseley, sketch of the relief of the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian at Darabgird. From William Ouseley, Travels in Various Countries of the East, More Particularly Persia, vol. 2 (London: Rodwell & Martin, 1821), plate xxxv. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California. Fig. 4  William Ouseley, bird’s-eye perspective of the terrace of Persepolis. From William Ouseley, Travels in Various Countries of the East, More Particularly Persia, vol. 2 (London: Rodwell & Martin, 1821), plate xl. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

an English grace, like some of your countrymen; in your portraits of the fragments at [Naqsh-e Rostam]. Adieu.”53 In his preface, Ker Porter juxtaposes Olenin’s letter with three drawings of the Apadana reliefs by “Chardin 1674,” “Niebuhr 1765,” and “Le Brun 1704,” as if to establish his claim to historiographical truth (plate between 1:vi and vii). Like Ouseley and Morier, Ker Porter was classically trained and interpreted Iranian art through that lens. Unlike Ouseley, who focused on Sassanian sites, Ker Porter spent much of his time at the Achaemenid ruins of Pasargadae and Persepolis, while also covering all the standard Sassanian edifices. His avowal “to copy line by line, defect or beauty . . . to the minutest particle” was bolstered by his reputation as an accomplished artist with “experience in military objects” that “facilitated” architectural studies (1:ix). “His drawings of Achaemenid and Sassanian monuments,” as Jennifer Scarce underscores, “were the most accurate produced at the time.”54 The travelogue manuscript contained two hundred drawings, including “engraved line blocks, maps, and aquatints.”55 Ninety-seven of these were eventually published in the 1821–22 edition. Executed by a skilled painter and draftsman with a keen eye for archeological details, Ker Porter’s exquisite drawings represent his outstanding contribution to Iran’s art history. The way Ker Porter and other travel writers interpreted Iranian history affected modern narratives about Iran’s relationship to its antique past. The sources they foregrounded amplified in each subsequent iteration of Iranian art history. Significant for the discussion on universal Persianate history, Ker Porter’s list of the Persian monarchs cited Azar Kayvan’s Dabistan, “a work compiled from ancient Gueber fragments,” to establish “Mah-Abad” as the first Persian dynasty (1:xiii). That Ker Porter relied on the Dasatir as a historiographical source for an art-historical narrative validated the Azaris version of national history. In his annotated list, the Mah-Abad was followed by the “Paishdadian” and the “Kaianian” (Achaemenid) dynasties before the arrival of the “Greeks” (1:xiii–xvi). Following the Parthian dynasty, the Sassanians took a prominent place, trailed by the Safavid and Qajar dynasties. Like “the Dynasty of the Greeks,” the Seljuks and the Mongols were inserted as foreign intruders. In European travelogues, this new national historiography fortified the pretense to art-historical accuracy. After passing through Tbilisi, Yerevan, Tabriz, Tehran, and Isfahan, Ker Porter arrived at Pasargadae on June 13, 1818, where he produced its first site plan that we know of and was “delightedly surprised at discovering a sculpture [of Cyrus the Great] in bas-relief ” (1:492). Although he repeatedly compares his drawing to those by Morier and Ouseley, Ker Porter was the first European to “discover” and provide a detailed description of the standing winged figure at Pasargadae (fig. 5). As the only archeological portrayal of Cyrus the Great known to that date, Ker Porter’s depiction played a key role in the revival of Cyrus as the founder of the Iranian nation. The descriptive ( 22 )  the persian revival

Fig. 5  Robert Ker Porter, sketch of a relief of a winged standing figure, Cyrus the Great, at Pasargadae. From Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. &c. During the Years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1821), plate 13, between pp. 492 and 493. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

effort to situate the relief in art history’s canon foregrounded its significance. Underscoring his commitment to “undeviating accuracy,” Ker Porter wrote, The proportions of the figure are not in the least defective, nor can any fault be found with its taste, being perfectly free from the dry wooden appearance we generally find in Egyptian works of the kind; and, in fact, it reminded me so entirely of the graceful simplicity of design which characterises the best Grecian friezes, that I considered it a duty to the history of the art, to copy the forms before me, exactly as I saw; without allowing my pencil to add, or diminish, or to alter a line. May I be excused in repeating here, that such undeviating accuracy to the utmost of my power, is the principle to which I bound myself in the execution of all the drawings I made in the East. (1:493) ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 23 )

(b) (a)

(d) (c)

Fig. 6  Robert Ker Porter, sketches of Achaemenid reliefs: (a) elevation of the Achaemenid tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam; (b) a lamassu at the Gate of All Lands at Persepolis; (c) relief of Darius with a lotus, under a parasol, at Persepolis; and (d) relief of the king slaying a unicorn, on the gate of the “Palace of Darius” at Persepolis. From Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. &c. During the Years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1821), plate 17, between pp. 516 and 517; plate 33, between pp. 590 and 591; plate 48, between pp. 656 and 657; and plate 53, between pp. 672 and 673. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

Based on ancient Egyptian, biblical, and Jewish sources, Ker Porter concludes that identification of the figure is “far beyond [his] pretensions,” and so he classifies it simply as a “superior spirit” (1:493–95). From here, Ker Porter moves to the tomb of Cyrus, describing it as “a succession of gigantic steps, [which] completes, in a beautiful pyramidal shape, the pedestal of this royal tomb, majestic in its simplicity and vastness” (1:499).56 The royal necropolis of Naqsh-e Rostam he characterizes as “these singular relics of Persian greatness” (1:516) and devotes to their description some fifty pages. Ker Porter first studies the Achaemenid tombs in both facade details and section drawings. He sketches, with remarkable attention to specific icons and decorative motifs, including the faravahar (Zoroastrian winged good spirit), the eternal fire burning on a vessel and Persepolitan double-headed capitals, all of which were later appropriated by Persian Revival architects (fig. 6; compare to fig. 25) (see 1:517–18, plates 17, 18). However, his tour de force is his set of drawings of the Sassanian reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam, nine of which are included in the travelogue. Exhaustive, precise, and large scale, each is coupled with an extensive art-historical account, identifying figures and scenes (see 1:520–75, plates 19–28).57 Referred to as “the third bas-relief,” Ker Porter’s plate 21 consists of the now well-known image of Shapur I’s victory over Valerian. True to his art-historical method, both in text and image, the author parses, in characteristic meticulousness, that which he saw in front of him. “Found in a perfect state,” he opens a paragraph, the relief “consists of four figures.” He then notes, “The principal one is mounted on horseback,” with hair that “flows . . . in thick bunches of curls,” and his “face is well cut with a marked expression of stern pride” (fig. 7). After adding specifics, Ker Porter focuses on the king’s captives: “[Shapur’s] right arm is stretched out, while he grasps in that hand the clasped hands of a person, who stands in that posture of submission before the head of his horse” (1:540). Between the descriptions of the “face” of the king in “pride” and the “submission” of his captives, the narrative reinforces the Persian triumphal interpretation of the scene as an “act of submission and vassalage.” “The other Roman,” he continues, “is bent on one knee, with his arms extended in a supplicating posture; and the expression of his face declares the same” (1:542). After the long description of this bas-relief, Ker Porter discloses the identities of the figures as “Shapoor/Sapor I” on the horse, Roman Emperor Valerian taking a knee, and Cyriades standing in front of Shapur, with a “satisfied smile” as the new emperor of Rome (1:542–43). Ending his analysis of Naqsh-e Rostam with the cubical structure facing the Sassanian reliefs, Ker Porter launches into a history of Persian temple architecture, citing Herodotus, Strabo, and the Dasatir, “a very ancient [Pahlavi] work, and the Dabistan, . . . [which] give accounts to support the conclusions we may draw from Xenophon and others” (1:567). Three drawings from Naqsh-e Rajab’s Sassanian reliefs lead the narrative to Persepolis, where Ker Porter arrived on June 23, 1818 (see 1:571–75). His survey at this site produced ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 25 )

Fig. 7  Robert Ker Porter, sketch of the Sassanian relief of the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian and Philip the Arab at Naqsh-e Rostam. From Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. &c. During the Years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1821), plate 21, between pp. 540 and 541. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

a comprehensive floor plan of the terrace, which follows a 150-page art-historical account of Persepolis alone. Moving up the terrace, Ker Porter draws “the animals” facing east from the Gate of All Lands, described as “a very extraordinary formation” of “gigantic” size and “monstrous” appearance (see fig. 6). He notes that these animals (lamassus) “have the body and legs of a bull,” with an “enormous pair of wings,” which “project from the shoulders, extending high over the back, and covering the breast, whence they might seem to spring, as the whole chest is cased with their plumage. The huge feathers which compose the wings are exquisitely cut; corresponding to each other, with the usual care so peculiar to the earliest sculptors of this country” (1:591). In the following pages, he ponders the meaning of the “bull-man,” citing Anquetil and Antoine Silvestre de Sacy, and concludes that the four lamassus guarding the gate are “emblematic references to a just sovereignty” of the Achaemenid kings (1:593.).58 Persepolis’s description carries on to the end of volume 1 with analysis of spaces, terraces, pillars, reliefs, and motifs. Ker Porter characterizes the fight between a lion ( 26 )  the persian revival

and a bull on the northern staircase of the Apadana as “most spirited and admirable” (1:598). He insists that the decorative lotus (or lily) flower has “a particular sanctity” for the Persians and links it to Le théâtre d’honneur et de chevalerie of 1620 (1:627), a genealogy of Christian kings and princes composed by French lawyer André Favyn, which provides him with the definition of the Persepolitan lotus as “‘the symbol of divinity, of purity, and abundance, and of a love most complete in perfection, charity, and benediction.’” Making a connection between ancient Persia and Christianity, Favyn adds, “‘As in Holy Scripture, that mirror of chastity, Sussanna, is defined Susa, which signifieth the lily flower; the chief city of the Persians bearing the name for excellency. Hence the lily’s three leaves in the arms of France, meaneth Piety, Justice, and Charity’” (1:628). With its symbolic ties to ancient Iran, Christianity, and Freemasonry, the lotus/lily would, in due course, find its way from Ker Porter’s Persepolis into Persian Revival facades. At his next stop, Ker Porter depicts Darius I (r. 522–486 bce) holding a lotus (see fig. 6). Situated between the Apadana and the Throne Hall, a figure with “gigantic dimensions” was carved into the doorway of the Council Hall. According to Ker Porter, Darius is “represented in the act of walking,” shadowed by two attendants, one holding a parasol and the other a fly-chaser. “The admirable taste and fine finish of this bas-relief . . . redoubled” the artist’s “regret at the demolished state of the faces and hands” (1:656). Above Darius hovers the faravahar, whose meaning Ker Porter explains based on the Avesta and “an extract” from the Dasatir: it is the “spiritual prototype of the king” (1:657). At the “Palace of Darius,” he similarly focuses on the “colossal” doorway reliefs of the king slaying various fantastic animals “in a style of answering magnificence” (1:672) (see fig. 6). Three of his drawings on the motif are included in the travelogue to illustrate his claim that they represent “the ease with which the united powers of religion and regal authority, may vanquish the enemies of the true faith,” in this case, Mithraism, and “a similar superstition”—“an unremitted contest between Ormuzd, the light of the universe, and Ahriman, the origin of darkness” (1:673). Ker Porter ends the first volume with a discussion on “ancient Persian architecture,” concerning looming debates on the origin of the arch (1:702–3). In the second volume, he traces his surveys of Bisotun and Taq-e Bostan in Kermanshah before crossing over to Iraq and the ancient Assyrian territories.59 On his return to Saint Petersburg in March 1820, Ker Porter delivered archeological fragments from Persepolis, including the Persian Warrior (fifth century bce), to his patron, as he had promised. These later passed into the Persian collection of the Hermitage Museum, as did an album of Achaemenid and Sassanian sketches.60 The latter contains Ker Porter’s “100 unpublished archaeological drawings,” as mentioned by Director of the State Hermitage Boris Borisovich Piotrovski.61 Voicing confidence in Qajar kings and princes, Ker Porter advocated the excavation of Persepolis by “a man ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 27 )

of research” who could obtain support from “the liberality of the present royal family of Persia, to dig; but not deface, nor carry away.”62 That king came in 1931 in the person of Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1925–41), and the researcher in that of Ernst Herzfeld (1879– 1948). That Ker Porter devoted 228 pages and eighty-nine plates of his travelogue to Achaemenid and Sassanian sites pointed to the role of ancient Persian art in European discussions on race and taste. Indeed, his work became a significant art-historical marker in the project of the Persian Revival, from which advocates of the movement picked and chose images as if perusing a shopping catalog. The motifs of the faravahar, the lotus, the winged Cyrus, the king slaying a unicorn, the lion and the bull, and Darius under a parasol became standard and were systematically repeated during the Persian Revival, between the 1880s and the 1930s. Many patrons in Bombay, Shiraz, and Tehran glanced over the magnificent folios of Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia before describing them to local craftsmen, who dutifully copied them on grand facades. The number of European travel narratives rose significantly by the 1840s and 1850s. Those with art-historical weight included the following: In the Papers of the Russian Geographic Society, Russian baron Clement A. De Bode published on Achaemenid antiques after his 1840–41 visit to Iran, and Boris A. Dorn published on Sassanian coins. Danish linguist Niels Ludvig Westergaard’s interest in the Avesta, Pahlavi, and Sanskrit brought him close to the Zoroastrians of Yazd and Kerman and the Parsis of Bombay in 1841–44. Through these networks he not only managed to acquire eight Zoroastrian manuscripts, which later entered the Royal Library in Copenhagen, but also gained rare access to temples and funeral towers (dakhma). His study of contemporary Zoroastrian language and architecture was coupled, in 1843, with his investigation of the Achaemenids and Sassanian cuneiform inscriptions at Naqsh-e Rostam and Persepolis, about which he published upon his return to Denmark in May 1844.63 Following the series of French officials dispatched by Napoleon on failed diplomatic missions, several able artists and architects arrived in Iran. Charles Felix Marie Texier was an École des Beaux-Arts–trained architect who explored and excavated in Iran in 1839–40.64 Better known for his discoveries in Anatolia, his travels resulted in the two volumes of Description de l’Arménie, la Perse et la Mésopotamie (1842–52). While volume 1 traces his journey from Turkey through Armenia—with a particular interest in the medieval Armenian city of Ani—to Isfahan, the second volume is devoted to the then-standard list of antique sites: Persepolis, Pasargadae, Naqsh-e Rostam, Naqsh-e Rajab, and Bishapur. Instead of a nineteenth-century travelogue, however, Description de l’Arménie resembles a twenty-first-century art-history textbook. Brief textual chapters are followed by paragraph-long captions of plates, which are then followed by exquisite architectural drawings. Out of a total of 176 plates, 90 are devoted to ancient sites. Geographical maps, floor plans for entire sites (including five floor plans for Persepolis), panoramic bird’s-eye views, broad perspectives of such structures as the Apadana, ( 28 )  the persian revival

Fig. 8  Charles Texier, elevation drawing of columns at Persepolis. From Charles Felix Marie Texier, Description de l’Arménie, la Perse et la Mésopotamie, vol. 2 (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1852), plate 107. Photo courtesy of Firestone Library, Princeton University.

and elevations and sections of entire facades are complemented by drawings of decorative and structural details. Illustration of the typical iconographic and decorative details—that is, a king slaying a lion, Darius with an attendant holding a parasol, a lion slaying a bull, or lamassus at the Gate of All Lands—is followed by studies of the structural and architectural typologies at Persepolis.65 In addition to details of column capitals and bases, Texier also provides a comparative analysis of all columns at Persepolis, showing the proportions of the capitals to the shafts and to the bases in an elevation drawing (fig. 8). Here, five different columns recorded on the terrace are juxtaposed, in the Beaux-Arts tradition, in order visually to compare and contrast the length of each shaft to the dimensions of each capital and base. In his study of a Persepolitan column, Texier articulates the minuscule details of the bull-headed capital, not necessarily as a decorative or sculptural element but as an architectural and structural prototype—in effect, as an architectural order. The careful depiction of the bull’s curls on a column capital matches the accuracy of the floral motifs on its respective column base. If the precision and elegance of his plan and section drawings are not sufficient indication, the comparison of Persepolitan columns surely ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 29 )

Fig. 9  Charles Texier, elevation drawings of the existing and restored “harem” at Persepolis. From Charles Felix Marie Texier, Description de l’Arménie, la Perse et la Mésopotamie, vol. 2 (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1852), plate 117. Photo courtesy of Firestone Library, Princeton University.

divulges Texier’s exhaustive École des Beaux-Arts education and his desire to embrace Persia in Western art-historical archeology. Unlike earlier travelers, Texier aimed to provide an architectural history of Achaemenid and Sassanian sites. Among the first to do so, his illustrations contain not a mere description of what he saw, but a projection of what it might have been. He architecturally reconstructed two Persepolitan edifices: Plate 117 presents two elevations of the “harem,” one under the other (fig. 9). The top elevation, dominated by seven doorways, is labeled “état actuel” (current state), while the lower elevation, complete with a facade of ornate staircases that lead to a terrace of four bull-headed columns supporting a massive roof, is identified as “restitution.” Plate 118 similarly offers two sections of the same edifice, cut at the center: the one above shows the “current” ruined state, while the one below reveals a richly decorated reconstructed interior. With full artistic freedom, Texier restores the Achaemenid interior based on his extensive knowledge of Assyrian and Babylonian art and architecture. On the following plate, he concludes his architectural examination by visually juxtaposing the palace of Fath Ali Shah to the “coup de baine” (section of bathhouse) at Persepolis.66 If the former were the first attempt to imagine the past at Persepolis, the latter was an effort to reveal a typological ( 30 )  the persian revival

continuity from the reign of Darius the Achaemenid to that of Fath Ali Shah Qajar. Despite their (in)accuracies, these revivals on paper foretold the budding of a movement in stone: the Persian Revival.

Europe’s Quest for an Aryan Architecture, 1851–1901 Eighteen fifty-one, the year of the Great Exhibition in London, also became a great year for publications on Iran’s ancient art. During that year, three new publications hinted at the consolidation of the subfield: William Sandys Wright Vaux’s Nineveh and Persepolis: An Historical Sketch of Ancient Assyria and Persia; James Fergusson’s Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored, with forty-two illustrations; and Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste’s Voyage en Perse, accompanied by 344 “first class” plates.67 In effect, 1851 can be considered the year in which the Persian began to become a Style. Each of these tomes was a significant contribution to Europe’s knowledge of Iran, past and present. They were pivotal in plugging the discourse on colonial conquest into the scientific domain of architecture. Each incorporated in its narrative an embryonic historiography of ancient Persian art, although it was first and foremost an art-historical study, carried out no longer by diplomats or linguists but by architects, artists, art critics, and art historians. Among the French who followed Texier into Iran, painter Eugène Flandin and architect Pascal-Xavier Coste traveled between 1839 and 1841. They joined Édouard Comte de Sercey’s ambassadorial dispatch and arrived first in Tabriz from Istanbul and progressed toward the south of the country. After their return to Europe in February 1942, they each devoted long years in publishing the materials they had amassed. The final result of their cooperation exemplified nineteenth-century travel writing and art history on both ancient and early modern Iran. The eight volumes of Voyage en Perse (1843–54) were the French answer to Ker Porter’s Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia (1821–22) or, one might say, the Persian counterpart to Description de l’Égypte. It should not come as a surprise that Voyage en Perse compared in its method and scale to Description de l’Égypte, because Coste was a good friend of the latter’s editor, Edme-François Jomard, whom he had met during his years at the École des Beaux-Arts and who had arranged Coste’s post as Mehmet Ali Pasha’s architect in 1817. Coste’s precise floor plans, sections, and elevations in Voyage en Perse, particularly those of the Safavid structures in Isfahan (fig. 10), spoke to the desire to document Iranian architecture accurately. His work was founded on decades of training as a practicing architect, with experience as the chief architect of Lower Egypt between 1825 and 1829, as a professor of architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1829 to 1861, and as Louis Philippe I’s appointed chief architect of Marseille from 1844 to his death in 1879. ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 31 )

Fig. 10  Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, floor plan of Sarvestan Palace. From Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, Perse ancienne (Paris: Gide & Baudry, 1843), plate xxviii, as reproduced in Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, History of Art in Persia (London: Chapman & Hall, 1892), 166, fig. 78. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

The publication of Flandin and Coste’s extensive work was amicably divided between them, both in terms of artistic medium and intellectual workload. Volumes 1 and 2, written by Flandin and published in 1851, contain the exclusively textual description of their travels, with historical accounts, contemporary reflections, and art-historical descriptions; volume 3, also by Flandin, focuses on the history and art history of ancient Persian sites; volumes 4 to 7 combine the large and impressive illustrations by both Flandin and Coste; and the final volume includes Flandin’s drawings of what he called Modern Persia. Working in lithographs, Flandin published picturesque drawings of a range of sites, both ancient and contemporary, including, among many, Persepolis of the Achaemenids, Naqsh-e Rostam of the Sassanians, Chehel Sotun of the Safavids, and Golestan Palace of the Qajars. Each large-scale lithograph conveys a general feel for the natural and topographic setting of its landscape, hinting at the presence of an edifice—for instance, the reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam—without attempting to provide a scientific depiction that could lead to further studies in iconography or inscription deciphering. Flandin compensates for this by publishing accurate details of architectural reliefs and decorations at many locations, echoing the drawings by Ouseley, Ker Porter, and Texier. Coste opts for engravings of architectural site plans, floor plans, sections and elevations, and renderings. His illustrations are conspicuously crisp. Unlike Ker Porter and Texier, who tracked Zoroastrian/Mazdaic edifices, Flandin and Coste documented most of the key known sites both before and after the Muslim ( 32 )  the persian revival

Fig. 11  Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, elevation drawings of the Achaemenid double-lion- and double-bull-headed column capitals from Persepolis. From Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, Perse ancienne (Paris: Gide & Baudry, 1843), plates xciii and xcii, as reproduced in Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, History of Art in Persia (London: Chapman & Hall, 1892), 91, fig. 31, and 303, fig. 150. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

conquest of the seventh century. They paid attention to Safavid Isfahan in addition to ancient sites such as Persepolis, Pasargadae, and Taq-e Bostan (figs. 11–12). Their collection was an attempt to document all periods of architecture on the Iranian Plateau. The inclusion of many of the sites was standard, while others appeared for the first time. Flandin drew, for example, the then little-known Temple of Anahita in Kangavar, midway between Hamadan and Kermanshah. The artists depicted both high and low: monumental mosques and palaces, including Tabriz’s Blue mosque, Tehran’s Masjed Shah, and the Soltanieh, as well as the neglected rural vernacular, including, for instance, a one-room house in the village of Alvar. They invested uniform artistic effort to document these sites on a more or less equal footing, with similarly meticulous sections, elevations, and plans. When Coste and Flandin arrived in Tehran on the first of March 1840, they were in all likelihood greeted by Texier, who shared a great deal with Coste: a French worldview, a Beaux-Arts education, a keen interest in West Asian archeology and history, and overlapping dates for travels in Iran. Texier’s knowledge of sites must have been ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 33 )

Fig. 12  Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, elevation drawing of the Sassanian Taq-e Bostan grotto. From Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, Perse ancienne (Paris: Gide & Baudry, 1843), plate iii, as reproduced in Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, History of Art in Persia (London: Chapman & Hall, 1892), 135, fig. 63. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

useful to Flandin and Coste in fostering their mutual interest in Achaemenid and Sassanian history.68 On October 25, they left for Persepolis, where they camped for two months and conducted archeological soundings and architectural studies.69 Flandin’s account of Fars’s antiquities remains faithful to the pseudoscientific language of Description de l’Égypte. He begins his depiction of Persepolis with the measurements of the terrace: “the height . . . surpasses 10 meters; its length, from north to south, is 473 meters, and its width measures 286 meters.”70 Although he speaks of “sentiment of a religious admiration” toward “a civilization” that created a monument with such “greatness” and “solidity” to “resist twenty-two centuries” and “many revolutions that have devastated Persia,” Flandin’s text refrains from too many Orientalist digressions. On their return home via Baghdad, Ctesiphon—the last Sassanian seat of power, which fell to the Muslim Arab armies in 637 and was often skipped by earlier travelers—was the “first place [they] disembarked” (2:501). Flandin depicts the facade of Khosrow’s Palace, with “a tall and mysterious vault” at the center, as “immense” (2:502–3) (see fig. 27). The final stronghold of Zoroastrian royal history, Ctesiphon, was a fitting place to end Flandin’s narrative on ancient Persia. The massive body of knowledge that Flandin and Coste left behind served as a firm foothold not only for those who produced the history of Persian art but also those who appreciated that art history for the cause of the Persian Revival. ( 34 )  the persian revival

Trained at Oxford as an antiquarian and employed by the British Museum, Vaux— the author of the second book on ancient Iran published in 1851—was well prepared to expand the art-historical narrative on ancient Iran. His Nineveh and Persepolis moved away from the travelogue genre in favor of linear art history from the Assyrians to the coming of the Macedonians to Persia. Focusing on Persepolis, to which no other monument “can at all compare,” Vaux notes that it had been “described” by “every traveller who has passed through Persia” and that by the time of his writing, in 1851, Darius and Xerxes had been identified as its “chief builders.”71 Commenting on the local perception of antiquities, Vaux adds that “the obscure tradition in the mouths of the modern inhabitants ascribes” the ruins of Persepolis to “King Jamshid, and serves to show that, while the modern inhabitants know but little of their real history, they are willing to assign to them the most venerable antiquity” (315). Vaux concurs with “the author of ‘Rough Notes of a Rough Ride from the East’” (T. B. Hart?), who writes that the ruins stand in “‘stately solitude’” as embodiments of “‘the pride of ages,’” insisting that the empires “‘of which no trace remains’” were “‘sufficient to verify the narrations of their splendid existence.’” This author further argues that these “‘noblest’” edifices reveal that the Western “‘march of intellect is but an idle boast,’” adding that Europe could never claim to civilizational heights if it were “‘not for the models we imitate,’” by which he means Persepolis (315–16). Critiquing the Hegelian linear progression of artistic taste and style, Vaux situates Persepolis squarely, but subtly, at the beginning of art-historical time. Vaux begins his chapter on Persepolis by dividing ancient Iran’s edifices into two classes: those erected before Alexander and those constructed by Sassanian monarchs (315). He then traces the cuneiform inscriptions at Bisotun and explains Sir Henry Rawlinson’s role in their translation (395–440 and 425–29). In the footsteps of Ker Porter, Vaux leads his reader through Fars’s Achaemenid and Sassanian sites by illustrating each: a panoramic view of Persepolis (315), a winged bull and a king slaying a lion at Persepolis (321, 328), a tomb and a “statue” of Cyrus at Pasargadae (345), Shapur I and Emperor Valerian at Naqsh-e Rostam (366), two fire altars near Naqsh-e Rostam (373), the mountain at Bisotun (397), and Darius’s relief and famed inscriptions at Bisotun (398). He sketches amateurly. Except for sites that were not visited by Ker Porter— for instance, Darius at Bisotun—Vaux reproduces Ker Porter’s drawings of Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam to “enhance the value of this book” (320). A comparative analysis of those images copied from and credited to Ker Porter with those sketched by Vaux himself reveals his training as an antiquarian and a curator, rather than an artist. His art-historical narrative, similarly, relies on Ker Porter and Rawlinson, in addition to earlier works by Chardin, de Bruijn, Niebuhr, Malcolm, Morier, Silvestre de Sacy, Emile Botta, Henry Layard, and Westergaard. Nevertheless, the influence of the Dabistan and the Dasatir in Vaux’s version of Persian history remains palpable. Aware of the stakes for contemporary Iranians and Indians, he refers to these Parsi texts in ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 35 )

several places and underscores their “strong disposition to connect the ancient history of the Persians with that of the Hindus” (111).72 The third book to appear in 1851 on ancient Iranian architecture was The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored, the first in a series of studies on global architecture that situated Achaemenid Persia at its beginnings. The famed author of the “first history of world architecture,” entitled A History of Architecture in all Countries from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (3 vols., 1865–67), James Fergusson launched the scholarly genre of “world art history” from the East, from India. According to David Watkin, this ambitious work, covering a wide region and many periods, became “instantly popular” and remains a “remarkable achievement.”73 One could argue that Fergusson was able to write such a global history of architecture, over vast geographies and eras, because he had Asia under his belt. The Palaces was his early attempt to move west, from Hindustan to the Iranian Plateau. The “acknowledged historian of Indian and Eastern Architecture, and indeed of all architecture,” as dubbed by later critics, Fergusson states in his preface that the book itself “is a work of architecture,” its author’s only aim “to render the ancient architecture of . . . Persia intelligible, and to enable it to take its place among the various styles . . . recognised by the learned.”74 Fergusson describes Cyrus II as the founder of the “largest and the wealthiest inheritance the world could then afford” (86). Fergusson’s work in India from 1835 to 1845 was instrumental to his rare global interpretation of Achaemenid art and the methods unique to its study, including his explanation for the lack of knowledge about Iran’s “most brilliant period” (87). Due to the prominence of the oral tradition, he explains, “all that we know of Persia . . . we learn only from her enemies,” adding that neither the Avesta nor the Dabistan have contributed to our understanding of Persian architecture (87, 190). He thus establishes a methodological difference in how Persia’s architecture could be reconstructed as art history. For Fergusson, since “it is too much to hope that we have now the means of judging fairly what the Persians were,” the structures of Persepolis stand as the only “native utterance” about themselves (87–88). Throughout his prolific career, Fergusson remained an advocate of the native voice (as is the current author), insisting on “a careful examination of the Persian authorities” on the meaning of Iranian architecture (169). In defense of the merit of Persepolis, he expanded his methodology to comparative global art history, insisting “these buildings are . . . invaluable as materials for general history, but far more so for elucidating the history of art; for they are the contemporary buildings with those that adorn the Acropolis at Athens, and here consequently, and here only, does the Persian meet his rival on a fair field, and offer us the means of judging correctly as to the merits of either competitor, in this one test of civilisation and of taste” (88). Acknowledging de Bruijn, Niebuhr, Ouseley, Rawlinson, and Ker Porter, Fergusson emphasizes that he has not seen any research related to Persepolis by Texier, Flandin, or Coste; by so doing, he positions himself as a pioneer ( 36 )  the persian revival

on this trendy topic. As the book’s title indicates, his effort was unique in that it did not merely entail information gathering; unlike others, his was a project of restoration. In other words, the study was the first modernist endeavor to revive—holistically and scientifically—the ancient site of Persepolis. Fergusson launches the section on Persepolitan architecture with the statement that “there are few chapters in the history of the world of more intrinsic interest in themselves, or which are more familiar to us, than that of Persia during the period [of ] the Achaemenids” (86). In search of a narrative on world architecture, he taxonomizes Persepolis through an Assyria parentage to the beginning of art history. “We have in Persepolis,” Fergusson asserts, “the skeleton of a complete style of Eastern architecture” (85). While he provides a useful floor plan of the terrace, his sketches are nowhere as precise as those by Ker Porter, Flandin, or Coste. Divulging that he has “never . . . seen any original specimens” of Persepolitan sculpture and “know[s] them only by drawings,” Fergusson, in a footnote on the last pages of his book, implies that he never visited Iran (364). The merit of The Palaces lay neither in the data nor its drawings but instead in Fergusson’s astute ability to examine architecture using a comparative method. The square hall of the Apadana, he conjectures, “could not . . . have been so crowded if it had not been that it was built to support something more important than itself ” (127). Based on structural analysis, he concludes that the main palaces (both the Apadana and the smaller Palace of Darius next to it) each bore a second floor, for which he provides a graphic reconstruction (fig. 13). With “neither academical nor classical” education, he drew on technical and structural inferences as much as on his vast knowledge of Assyrian, Indian, and Greek architecture.75 His structural, morphological, typological, and decorative analysis across multiple civilizations was to have a significant impact on the shape of the discipline of non-Western architectural history. Revivalism, as indicated by the book’s title, underpinned its primary purpose, manifested in an exciting discussion in the final chapter. Here, Fergusson focuses on his broader concern with contemporary debates on style, pondering how to “rank” Achaemenid architecture “among the aesthetic utterances of mankind” (339). In effect, The Palaces anticipated his claim of “truthfulness of design” and “the shame of copyism” in his History of the Modern Styles of Architecture (1862), hailed by Nikolaus Pevsner as “his most important book.”76 It is in Assyria and Persia that Fergusson worked out some of his most germane arguments about historicity, style, and contemporary relevance. While there was no explicit categorization of ethnicities in The Palaces, by the time of the publication of History of Architecture in All Countries, architecture had become an open text that revealed the stratification of the “four races” based on “style.” In the History, Persian architecture takes up several chapters, premised on the theory of Aryan style.77 Fergusson, in deciphering the architectural histories in India and Iran, was also ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 37 )

Fig. 13  James Fergusson, two-story reconstruction of the Apadana and the smaller Palace of Darius behind it at Persepolis. From James Fergusson, The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored: An Essay on Ancient Assyrian and Persian Architecture (London: J. Murray, 1851), fig. 18, facing p. 170. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

instrumental in developing a model of civilizational rise and decline. His contributions as advisor to the Nineveh Courts at the Crystal Palace exhibition—motivated by his theory of “early greatness” and “subsequent decline”—helped fuel revivalistic trends in Iran and India.78 For Fergusson, the East had a special place in not only weaving a global architectural history but also solving contemporary problems. A “living” civilization, India, unlike Greece and Rome, provided viable solutions. In India, he contended, “every problem . . . [could] be studied . . . more easily than anywhere else; every art [had] its living representative.”79 Introduced in The Palaces and developed in the History was his argument that a correct and comparative analysis of ancient buildings was key to solving contemporary architectural predicaments80—a claim deliberated—and fiercely contended—during the Battle of the Styles and the Orient-or-Rome debate not only by European architects and historians but also by reformist Parsis and Iranians. At the end of The Palaces, Fergusson encouraged his readers to “trace every feature of the Greek Ionic back to the Persian original” (342).81 Half a century later, Josef Strzygowski added immediacy to this same request. He urged his readers to “trace” all “origins back” to “Persia and India.”82 The fourth volume of George Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World (1862–67) devotes six hundred pages to Achaemenid Persia. Rawlinson’s ( 38 )  the persian revival

older brother’s decipherment of Bisotun’s trilingual inscriptions—Persia’s own Rosetta stone—starting in 1835 and his subsequent publication of The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun (1846–51) had rendered the two brothers, Henry and George, authorities on Iranian art history. More than a hundred sketches of building and decorative fragments were inserted into the rich philological, archeological, and art-historical account of the Achaemenids in the volumes of The Five Great Monarchies. Quoting Fergusson on Persepolis as “by far the most remarkable group of buildings now existing” in Asia, Rawlinson focuses his art-history chapter on the structures at Persepolis, for “here the greatest of the Persian monarchs . . . built the greatest of their works.”83 He amasses the scholarship of the authors discussed above, including Fergusson and Flandin, whose illustrations he reproduces. Rawlinson duplicates Flandin’s reconstruction of the “Palace of Darius” only to object to Fergusson’s proposed second floor (see fig. 37).84 He praises the reconstructive work done by his peers and points to the relevance of ancient Persia to both contemporary Europe and the mandate of the Persian Revival: Persepolis rose again from its ashes in the superb and costly volumes of [Coste and Flandin], who represented on the grandest scale, and in the most finished way, not only the actual but the ideal—not only the present but the past— placing before our eyes at once the fullest and completest views of the existing ruins, and also restorations of the ancient structures, some of them warm with colour and gilding, which, though to a certain extent imaginary, probably give to a modern the best notion that it is now possible to form of an old Persian edifice.85 The history of Persian art entered the domain of modernity. Its authors were no longer gathering data to fill diplomatic reports that would enable generals to invade India. Art history now served its purpose: reconstituting a past wherein the promise of modernity was best glimpsed. The French archeological missions under the Third Republic, including those led by Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy in 1884–86 and by Jacques de Morgan from 1897 to 1912, had a notable impact on the art-historical narrative of ancient Iran. While the history of Iranian archeology was essential to the modern interest in Iranian antiquities, my narrative focuses on the public sphere of ideological discourses that led to the construction of revivalistic architecture. The sources used by Parsi and Iranian patrons—who at times served as mediators during diplomatic negotiations for archeological digs or as amateur photographers and excavators of ancient sites—in commissioning revivalistic buildings did not include archeological reports. The five volumes of the Dieulafoys’ L’art antique de la Perse: Achéménides, Parthes, Sassanides (1884–85), itself a by-product ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 39 )

of an archeological mission, including Monuments de Persépolis (vol. 2, 1884) and Les monuments voutés de l’époque achéménide (vol. 4, 1885), proved essential to the architecture of the Persian Revival. Multiple aspects of the Dieulafoys’ work, such as its history-spanning narrative, reconstructive drawings, and unusually excellent illustrations, appealed to the revivalistic desires of the local elite. Reconstruction and restitution, in effect, underpinned the ideological purpose of their massive project. The high-quality photographs that they reproduced of iconic edifices at archeological sites—for instance, the lamassus, the king with parasol, and “Shapur and begging Valerian”—were later used as models by patrons and craftsmen.86 Architectural, structural, and decorative imaginings filtered through many of their drawings, which were quoted and copied by later authors. Notably, the Dieulafoys saw in the connection they drew between ancient palace floor-plan layout and contemporary palatial design the essence of national continuity. “There are, in fact, such striking analogies between Persepolis and the plans of the palaces of Cyrus and modern Persian rulers,” they insisted, “that this distinction is the only one that has ever suited them.”87 They also reconstructed the window patterns of the Palace of Darius, which later were similarly copied in the decorative program of Parsi temples and Pahlavi police stations.88 In addition to their archeological methods, high-quality photographs of entire sites, and drawings of small objects and architectural fragments, the Dieulafoys tried their hand at Persepolitan revival. L’art antique de la Perse unveils a series of full-color renderings of “restorations” of various buildings, including the Palace of Darius, the Palace of One Hundred Columns (fig. 14), the entablature of the Palace of Xerxes, and Sarvestan.89 In the plates, entirely reconstructed floor plans of these are also included.90 At the Palace of One Hundred Columns, they have fantasized two lamassus flanking the colonnaded facade of the palace, one at each end, while the close-up of the elevation of Xerxes’s palace displays an intricate brick decorative pattern. In the Dieulafoys’ reconstruction, the Sassanian Sarvestan Palace acquires a completely new facade with tripartite arch configuration topped by Persepolitan crenellations—indeed, a leap of imagination (fig. 15). Appropriately, the Dieulafoys close the massive five volumes with a section on “the Persian origins of the French architecture of the Middle Ages.”91 The seeds of 1901 were firmly planted. An advocate of universal history was the American Philip van Ness Myers, whose Remains of Lost Empires: Sketches of the Ruins of Palmyra, Nineveh, Babylon, and Persepolis (1875) was a result of his travels in Europe and Asia in 1871–72. Following the trail of ruins from Palmyra to the Himalayas, he expressed feelings of “astonishment and admiration” when he arrived at Persepolis. With only two sketches of the terrace and the lamassus—the latter incorrectly captioned “Profile of Xerxes”—Myers insisted that Persepolis imparted “all the knowledge we possess” about Iran’s ancient architecture. ( 40 )  the persian revival

Fig. 14  Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy, perspectival reconstruction of the Palace of One Hundred Columns at Persepolis. From Marcel Dieulafoy, L’art antique de la Perse: Achéménides, Parthes, Sassanides, vol. 3 (Paris: A. Morel, 1885), plate viii. Photo courtesy of Firestone Library, Princeton University.

Fig. 15  Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy, restoration of the Palace of Sarvestan in Fars. From L’art antique de la Perse: Achéménides, Parthes, Sassanides, vol. 4 (Paris: A. Morel, 1885), plate viii. Photo courtesy of Firestone Library, Princeton University.

He lamented how Persia “has no care, nor even curiosity, respecting the memorials of her former grandeur”92—a sentiment shared by many Europeans who traveled in Iran, which validated the White Man’s burden to care for this now-universal cultural heritage. Perhaps it was this burden, expressed in Myers’s grief, that pushed the French classicist and archeologist Georges Perrot and French architect and Iranologist Charles Chipiez to produce, in 1890, their extravagant virtual reconstructions of the buildings at Persepolis in Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité—not only to study and document, to preserve and protect, but also to reconstruct, to imagine anew. Five hundred pages of text accompany 256 drawings and 12 color plates on Persia alone. Earlier pseudoscientific attempts, such as those by Texier, Fergusson, and the Dieulafoys (see figs. 9, 13–15), were replaced with an unreserved artistic reimagining of how Persepolis must have been. After laying the historical and geographical foundations of their narrative, Perrot and Chipiez list their sources, which indicate that by this time a standard body of texts constituted the canon of Persian art history. The usual suspects include Chardin, Niebuhr, Ker Porter, Texier, Coste, and Flandin, in addition to the Rawlinsons and the Dieulafoys. By the 1890s Persian art and Persian style were considered academic subject matters. Authors could choose one authority over another; they could justify their use of certain drawings over others on the grounds, for instance, that Coste had “spent forty days” at Persepolis, while “Dieulafoy only four.”93 Indeed, in terms of visual reliability, Coste outdid the Dieulafoys hands down. Still, none could outdo the Dieulafoys’ archeological contribution, which only goes to show that in the final decade of the century, one could talk of Persian art history as a solid field. Relying heavily on the Dieulafoys’ scholarship and on the état actuel drawings of the archeological site by Flandin and Coste, Chipiez reconstructed the monuments at Persepolis with a dozen spectacular plates, both in elevation and perspective, many in vivid colors. The outcome is bizarre yet almost predictable. In Chipiez’s virtual revivals, the evolution of Europe’s fetish with Persepolis arrives at its likely teleological end. The plates are remarkable in the way in which architectural and construction techniques, archeological and historical data, and modernist visions have synthesized into images that, while seeming Disneyesque today, must have been exhilarating to the fin de siècle audience. Each illustration has an uncanny resemblance to the Parsi and Iranian buildings of the Persian Revival that began to mushroom in Bombay, Surat, Tehran, and Shiraz in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (here examined in the next chapters). Chipiez’s reconstructions are striking in particular because it is almost impossible to tell which came first: the temples erected by wealthy Parsis in Bombay or the Chipiez drawings made in Paris. The Persian Revival style was, hence, an engagement with current European discourses as much as an attempt to revive an illustrious past. In the first complete reconstruction of the Gate of All Lands—or what Perrot/ Chipiez captioned as “Propylaea of Xerxes” after the Greek usage—a perspectival view ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 43 )

Fig. 16 Charles Chipiez, perspectival reconstruction of the Gate of All Lands at Persepolis. From Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, vol. 5 (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1890), plate iii, between pp. 694 and 695. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

revealed the morphology of the gate as a cube open on all four sides (fig. 16) (692 / 295). Complete with a frieze of enameled lions capped by a cornice, the building had openings front and back that were each flanked by a pair of lamassus, while a pair of bull-headed columns held up each side facade. “The elements that still remain of these supports,” the authors notes, “are quite sufficient to enable us to restore them with certainty” (691 / 294). While the lintel and cornice were re-created based on the Dieulafoys’ drawings of other Achaemenid lintels and cornices, the brick facade seems to have been Chipiez’s invention. “Our restoration needs scarcely to be justified,” they explain, “though it differs from that proposed in Coste’s plan, in that the sides are higher, more massive, and therefore stand better” (692 / 295). Perrot and Chipiez further insist that Coste did not understand that the massive doorways of “all the palaces” in ancient times were connected to walls of brick, not stone. They conclude that while Coste’s “restored structure” looks “thin and poor,” their own captures the correct “effect” (692 / 295).94 The ( 44 )  the persian revival

new image that Perrot/Chipiez proposed for the Gate of All Lands, the first edifice to greet a visitor to Persepolis, opened a view onto a fully modernist imagining of the past as utopia. In his elaborate reconstruction of the Palace of Darius (fig. 17), Chipiez takes issue with Fergusson, who had proposed that the both the Apadana and the smaller Palace of Darius next to it incorporated multiple floors. “Aught more whimsical than the restoration of Fergusson, who places a second order of pillars above the ceilings of the hypostyle halls,” Perrot wrote, “cannot well be imagined, and will not bear the test of close inspection” (338). Chipiez’s structural analysis—demonstrated in his isometric projection of the woodwork of Xerxes’s hypostyle hall—reinforces Perrot’s art-historical contentions (Chipiez’s fig. 27, between pp. 82 and 85). They present a case that the second floor in a royal palace of this magnitude would have required a “monumental staircase” for which there was no “sufficient space” (338). Both Fergusson and Perrot/ Chipiez claim that they have used sober scientific reasoning to arrive at two opposing conclusions. Each side is certain of the veracity of its projection. Chipiez, nevertheless, goes on to reconstruct nine other major structures on the Persepolis terrace in a like manner.95 These colorful plates elevated the century-long tradition of documenting archeological fragments to a new vision of an entire sociopolitical ecology. On his drawing board, the Palaces of Xerxes, Darius, and Apadana came to life as a holistic ecosystem of spaces, gardens, structures, ornamentation, and urbanism, a new modality of viewing both the past and the future. From the domain of fragmented ruins captured by earlier travelers, the narrative on Persian architecture entered a modernist totality, complete with kings and nobles, colors and draperies, birds and flora. Chipiez’s elevation reconstruction of the what he calls the Palace of Xerxes on the location of the Apadana is a decorative elaboration of Texier’s plate 103, entitled “Restoration of Hypostyle Hall” (fig. 18). Faithful to the structure proposed by the earlier author, the latter has added an interior setting in his restoration. With Chipiez, the Persian Revival stepped into the utopian imaginings of the nineteenth century (fig. 19; compare to fig. 4). These fantastic architectural drawings, however, were seldom taken seriously by archeologists or art historians—I, for example, was never made aware of them as an eager student of modern Iranian architecture—but they served as blueprints to the Persian Revival structures of Bombay and Tehran. The resemblances—a little kitsch and a lot off the mark—between these drawings and those buildings are uncanny, while a comparison between the antique sites and the revival buildings always falls short. This pushes us to conclude, counter to our intuition, that the prototypes for the Parsi- and Iranian-revival edifices lay not in Achaemenid and Sassanian sites but instead in the visual discourse invented around them during the long nineteenth century. The Persian Revival, therefore, was not an appropriation of Iran’s antiquity, as has been argued, even in my own earlier works. The ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 45 )

Fig. 17  Charles Chipiez, perspectival reconstruction of the Palace of Darius at Persepolis. From Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, vol. 5 (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1890), plate ix, between pp. 730 and 731. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California. Fig. 18 (opposite top)  Charles Chipiez, elevation reconstruction of the Apadana (labeled Palace of Xerxes) at Persepolis, corresponding to the three separate structures on the middle right of the perspectival reconstruction of the terrace in Fig. 19. From Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, vol. 5 (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1890), plate iv, between pp. 696 and 697. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California. Fig. 19 (opposite bottom)  Charles Chipiez, perspectival reconstruction of the terrace of Persepolis. From Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, vol. 5 (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1890), plate X, between pp. 746 and 747. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

Persian Revival was a co-option, a reimagining, and a reinvention of Europe’s appropriation of Iran’s antiquity. It was all in the colonial discursive domain and hence served the postcolonial countercolonial agenda. In line with Fergusson’s methodology, famed British architectural historian Banister Fletcher produced his seminal History of Architecture on the Comparative Method (1896), wherein he places the Achaemenids at the start of Western civilization.96 Echoing Fergusson’s “true” versus “copying” styles, Fletcher divides his history of world architecture into two separate styles, historical and nonhistorical. This is premised on the notion that nonhistorical styles did not provide a “solution of constructive problems,” as Europe had done from the classical period up to the Renaissance. The East had not much to offer, according to him, because “decorative schemes” always “outweighed” structural priorities, an Orientalist casting of the East as effeminate in architecture as in character.97 While Fergusson had considered ancient Iranian and Indian architecture as examples of the true style, Fletcher split the two into different camps. This seemingly minor shift was to have broad implications for the historiography of Iranian art. A History of Architecture begins with a narrative of the “Historical Styles,” which in turn opens with ancient Egyptian architecture. This is followed by western Asiatic architecture, which Fletcher divides into Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian periods.98 Here, under typological categories, he compares the various buildings on the Persepolis terrace with earlier Babylonian and Assyrian examples. Relying on texts by the Dieulafoys, Flandin, Layard, Texier, Perrot, and Chipiez, in addition to the Assyrian galleries at the British Museum, he categorizes Achaemenid, but not Sassanian, architecture under the “Historical Styles.” By so doing, he solidifies the foundational significance of ancient Iran in the progress of Western civilization and, at the same time, fractures Iran’s architectural history into two irreconcilable halves: the pre-Islamic versus the Islamic periods.99 It seems strange that while Achaemenid architecture represents the spearhead of Fletcher’s historical styles—and thus the root of Western architecture—analysis of major Sassanian palaces, including Sarvestan (ca. 430), Firuzabad (450), and Ctesiphon (540), appears in passing only to state that they served as prototypes for the nonhistorical styles of the “Persian Saracenic” and “Indian Saracenic” periods.100 Because of Fletcher’s categorization, the historiography of architecture from then on was split between Aryan and Islamic Iran, while others were outlining these stratifications on a world map. Borrowing the cartographic methods of early travelers like Niebuhr (see fig. 1), art historians in the final years of the nineteenth century began to map the journey of architecture from Iran to Europe.101 French architectural historian Auguste Choisy’s two-volume magnum opus, Histoire de l’architecture (1899), traced the “currents of influence” in architectural forms off of the Iranian Plateau in three westward directions: (1) from Asia Minor to Constantinople, (2) from Armenia to the regions of ( 48 )  the persian revival

Fig. 20 Auguste Choisy, map tracing the “currents of influence” in architectural forms. From Auguste Choisy, Histoire de l’architecture (Paris: Librairie Baranger fils, 1899), 2:80. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

Transcaucasia, and (3) from the Syrian provinces to the southern coast of the Mediterranean (fig. 20).102 While Niebuhr had hinted at a symbolic centrality of Persepolis, Choisy rendered that proposition a scientific certainty. Like Fergusson and Fletcher, Choisy situated Achaemenid and Sassanian architecture at the beginning of world history in the following order: prehistory, Egypt, Assyria, Iran, and India. In the fourth century “the point of departure,” according to him, was Persia, because the Greeks presented “nothing but an aged civilization” and the Romans were in “plain decadence.” Sassanian architecture, with its impressive barrel vault at Ctesiphon and domed construction at Sarvestan, occupies a central place for Choisy. “One single nation holds,” he avidly states, “the memory of a great past, and that is Sassanian Persia.” His innovative isometric drawings, which synthesize plan, elevation, section, and perspective into a single illustration, further enable Choisy to sustain a narrative premised on formal, structural, and morphological inquiries. “Persia alone,” he concludes, “is the successor to the Asiatic traditions.”103 Choisy’s argument on stylistic migrations held the seed of the clash that was about to burst over the origin of Western architecture. Sassanian architecture reemerged as a battleground within three short years. By the late nineteenth century, ancient Iran had moved from the sphere of patchy Orientalist fantasies into a discourse in academic and public domains. By then, Europe’s literary and linguistic canons, as well as foundational beliefs in art and architectural histories, had become unsustainable without ancient Iranian and Indian civilizations. The century-long production of illustrated travelogues and memoirs, diplomatic and archeological reports, and art and architectural histories had secured the place of the Achaemenids as the cradle of Western civilization. Europe’s educated elite could now imagine Persepolis, Bisotun, and Naqsh-e Rostam with absolute certainty in a real ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 49 )

place (i.e., global geography) and a real time (i.e., universal history) at the beginning of human artistic creation. Nevertheless, the reconstructions of ancient Iran in the histories of world architecture would have been trifling—or at least dull to its primary audience, cultivated Europeans—if it were not for the prevalence of nineteenth-century race theories. Race made this distant imagining of architecture pertinent to the colonial present. Although the Avestan and Sanskrit term arya (Aryan) had been the focus of philological and ethnographic debates since the 1770s, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that architectural historians searched for a link between style and race in an attempt to ascribe an epistemic significance to their profession. In this quest, Persia loomed large. On February 23, 1792, William Jones had opened his lecture at the Asiatic Society of Bengal with the contention that “the first race of Persians and Indians, to whom we may add the Romans and Greeks, the Goths, . . . originally spoke the same language and professed the same popular faith,” adding that “it is no longer probable only, but absolutely certain, that the whole race of man proceeded from Iran.”104 In 1808 German Indologist Friedrich Schlegel had performed an “anthropological twist” on Jones’s discovery of the affinity between Sanskrit and European languages “by deducing from the relationship of language a relationship of race.”105 A methodological paradigm was established: the category of a language implied a category of a race. While leading philologists Friedrich Max Müller and Ernest Renan after 1871 warned against the con/fusion of race (nature) and language (culture) to no avail, the link between artistic classification and racial stratification was alluring for art historians in the age of imperialism.106 Building on the tie drawn by Johann Winckelmann and Hegel between art and Zeitgeist, architectural historians such as John Ruskin, James Fergusson, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Alois Riegl, and Auguste Choisy labored to produce in volumes of scholarship a “comprehensive vision” of world history that saw “in art a mirror of the spiritual evolution of the peoples.”107 Many, as traced above, positioned Achaemenid Iran—along with Egypt and Assyria—at the starting point of Western art. French diplomat and amateur Iranist Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was pivotal to the ties between racial theories, antique Iran, and historiography. More influential than Baron de Montesquieu (Lettres persanes, 1712) and Chevalier Ramsay (Les voyages de Cyrus, 1727) in popularizing the idea of Persia, he represented a broader European interest in Oriental Aryans during the second half of the nineteenth century.108 Gobineau poured his intellectual prowess into eighteen hundred gloomy pages of universal human history in a determined search for the original home of the Aryans. When released, his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (1853–55) set, as Leon Poliakov contends, “the division between Aryans and Semites . . . as dogma,” and by the 1860s it became “a part of the intellectual baggage of all cultivated Europeans.”109 Described ( 50 )  the persian revival

as the “first systematic treatment of ‘Aryan History,’” the four-volume Essai begins its chronicle with the dissemination of the Aryans from their ancestral home in central Asia at the dawn of civilization and follows it through Europe’s modern decadence, thereby advancing the basic idea that race creates culture.110 “Language,” Gobineau insists, “while being an excellent index of the general elevation of races, is in a special degree the measure of their aesthetic capacities.”111 The racial purity and creativity of the Aryan tribes who dispersed around the globe, in effect, marked the evolution of art itself. Many followed Gobineau in search of Oriental Aryans in the vast territories and long histories of Asia. After the “amazing success” of Ernest Renan’s search for an Aryan Jesus in his Vie de Jésus (1863), Jules Michelet published Bible de l’humanité (1864) and declared, “My book is born in the full light of the sun among our forefathers, the sons of light—Aryans, Indians, Persians, and Greeks.”112 Four years later, French colonial judge Louis Jacolliot, in his La Bible dans l’Inde (1868), searched for the “Indian roots of Western occultism,” insisting that India was “the birthplace of the human race.” Between 1888 and 1900, A. V. Williams Jackson published a series of influential studies on Avesta and Zoroastrianism, and German linguist Karl Geldner issued a new edition of the Avesta (1895).113 In 1896–99 Belgian archeologist Franz Cumont mapped the migration of Mithraism and Manichaeism from Iran to the Roman Empire in his massive Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra. These were among the authors who began to destabilize the established Rome-centered Western historiography by drawing attention, as Marchand notes, to the “pure, if primitive, power of the Germanic tribes and the abiding, if undynamic, endurance of the Orient.”114 Gobineau’s contribution to the Persian Revival rests on the revered status he allotted to Persians in human history and his subsequent activities in Iran. He was no armchair scholar. In the year his Essai was published, he arrived in Tehran first as the secretary to the French mission and then as France’s chargé d’affaires at the court of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848–96) from October 1856 to 1858. He returned as the French minister to Iran in 1862 and 1863. “Resolutely ignored” by his compatriots in Europe, Gobineau during his two Iranian missions amassed the intellectual gravitas that he had craved from his European peers.115 His experiences and networks there sustained years of writing on assorted Iran-related topics. His memoir and travelogue, Trois ans en Asie (1859), remains a useful source on Qajar society. A probe of Khorsabad inscriptions, Traité des écritures cunéiformes (1864), has been described as “a monument to learned madness.”116 Although tainted by racism, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale (1865) was a result of his extensive networking in Iran, particularly among Babi circles. Based on the epic legends of the Shahnameh, Histoire des Perses (1869) was reviewed by Renan as “rubbish.” And a book of short stories, Nouvelles asiatiques (1876), recycled themes from the Essai and the Histoire des Perses.117 ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 51 )

In these writings, Gobineau’s “keen observation” on multiple aspects of Qajar life, including art and architecture, is marred by an agenda to corroborate, without giving much weight to earlier research, his Aryan theory outlined in the Essai.118 He visited Bisotun and other archeological sites and published, for instance, Lecture des textes cunéiformes (1858). This is a “genealogical history of the Iranian nations” that ignores and contradicts studies by such leading figures as the Rawlinsons and Jules Oppert.119 Similarity, except for Chardin and Morier, Gobineau disregards the long history of Western travelogues in his Trois ans en Asie. Focused on the present, it confirms his talent in diplomacy rather than archeology or art history. His amateurism in these disciplines, coupled with a weak knowledge of Persian, underpins his studies on Iranian cuneiform, genealogy, and art history. Much like his Aryan theory, these works elicited a populist audience, including the Iranian political elite and self-styled Orientalists such as Edward Granville Browne. Due to his relentless networking and the populist language and theories of this scholarship, Iranian nationalism adopted Gobineau’s Aryan myth as early as the 1880s—that is, decades before his fascist followers in Europe (as explained in chapter 3). Traced in the Essai and elaborated in the Histoire des Perses, Gobineau’s history, in effect, revives the tradition of the Dasatir, rearranged in a new framework of racism. It begins with the migration of Aryans out of central Asia, led by Cyrus II, into India and Iran, from which they then moved to Assyria and Egypt, finally arriving in Greece and Rome. The great deeds of Persian heroes are credited to “la monarchie perse, gouvernée par l’èsprit arian, de même la Grèce.”120 Gobineau maintains that the Achaemenid reign, on a par only with that of the Romans, would never have ended “so long as they kept the same purity of blood” by filling their “ranks with Persians, that is to say with real Aryans.”121 After Indians, Egyptians, and Assyrians, Gobineau classifies “the Zoroastrian-Iranians who dominated Anterior Asia under the names of Medes, Persians, and Bactrians” as a branch of the Aryan family.122 The Greeks, Chinese, Mexicans, and Peruvians follow suit.123 Gobineau concludes his historical list by setting Iranians apart: “Of the first seven ancient civilizations, six belong . . . to the Aryan race, and the seventh, that of Assyria, is indebted to this same race for the Iranian renaissance, which remained its most illustrious historical moment.”124 Throughout his writings, Gobineau sustained an insistence upon the foundational role of ancient Persia in universal human history, often referring to Iranians’ self-perception as “une nation trés ancienne,” adding, “et comme ils le dissent eux-mêmes, le plus ancienne . . . du monde” with a centralized state.125 His populist writing helped fuel the Persian Revival and helped Iranians and Parsis replace Iran’s post-Mongol Perso-Islamic universal history with a race-based Iranian national history. When French magazines boldly asserted, on the occasion of Mohammad Reza Shah’s celebrations at Persepolis in 1971, that “ils n’ont pas changé depuis 2500 ans,” they were merely reiterating Gobineau’s 1855 opinion.126 ( 52 )  the persian revival

More far-reaching in its influence on nineteenth-century histories of world architecture was Gobineau’s racial theory. His myth of Aryan migration provided architectural historians a conceptual framework and a language to explain the global evolution of form and style that would remedy pressing contemporary concerns: how to classify the history of human artistic production from the dawn of civilization elsewhere to its teleological culmination in modern Europe. Fletcher’s famed 1896 “Tree of Architecture” frontispiece to his History of Architecture on the Comparative Method charted, word by word, Gobineau’s developmental “list” of “the white race.”127 The first civilizations that gave birth to an architectural tradition included Peruvian, Mexican, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Assyrian, Indian, and Chinese and Japanese.128 The rhetoric of race was deployed to make increasingly refined distinctions between the different architectural forms, pushing the notion that “if there is a race, then there is an architecture.” Gobineau’s influence is evident with a casual look at the histories of world architecture in the last decades of the century. In 1851 Fergusson had not mentioned the Aryans in The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored, but by the time the History of Architecture in All Countries from the Earliest Times to the Present Day appeared, in 1867, he had restructured the history of global architecture to accommodate Gobinist racial classification. Although in The Palaces Fergusson does write about India’s “Sanscrit-speaking [sic] people” and mentions the “Indo-Germanic inhabitants” of Persia, he does not name the Aryans, even in his analysis of the discovery and decipherment of Achaemenid inscriptions.129 His History of Architecture, however, proved radically different. Heeding Müller’s warning, Fergusson argues for the significance of architecture in universal history. In light of the shortcomings of philology, he insists that only archeology—and by extension architecture—can reveal anything concrete about racial taxonomy. “Ethnology will never take the place which it is really entitled to,” Fergusson notes, “till its results are checked, and its conclusions elucidated, by the science of Archaeology.”130 His chapter “Ethnography as Applied to Architectural Art” stratifies art based on four races—Turanian, Semitic, Celtic, and Aryan—to reveal how style is an indicator of race.131 Under the Persians, he questions the “pure Aryan” origin of the “kings of Persia” by analyzing the Achaemenid tombs at Naqsh-e Rostam, for, according to him, “there are not . . . any series of rock-cut sepulchres belonging to any dynasty of pure Aryan blood.”132 In History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (1876), Fergusson similarly explains the art history of the subcontinent on the race-aesthetic binary by contrasting the architecture of the northern Indo-Aryans to that of the southern Dravidians.133 Canonizing Gobinism by 1896, Fletcher reproduces the amalgamation of Indians, “the Aryan or Sanskrit-speaking race,” with the Etruscans and Greeks, into the “same Aryan race.”134 Among the late nineteenth-century historians of world architecture, it was perhaps no accident that Perrot and Chipiez—the authors of the most fantastic ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 53 )

graphic reconstructions of Persepolis—relied heavily on Gobineau’s racial theories for their history of Iranian art. While they never mention the Essai in History of Art in Persia, Gobineau and his Aryan account of Iranian history tow the footnotes of their books.135 They praise his work as “valuable and enlightening,” Trois ans en Asie as “a subtle analysis of the Persian character, its originality and unchangeableness.”136 The settling tribes of the Iranian Plateau, Perrot confirms at the opening of the book, belonged to the “Aryan family, and were closely related to tribes” of India (8). The Aryan race, he further explains, including the tribes of the Medes and Persians, “held the post of honour from their first appearance on the scene of history down” to the “prostrating” Arab invasions. Persians stood out, for, according to Perrot, they safeguarded the religion of their “cradle-land,” “respect for truth,” and “purity of life” shared by “all the sons of Arya” (11, 14). By the time of the rise of the Achaemenids, Perrot reminds his readers, Ionians “found themselves dwarfed by the moral superiority” of the Persians (14). These same Achaemenids proceeded to erect Persepolis—a testament to the existence of “the only Aryan language written with cuneiform characters” (33).137 He notes the Iranic Aryan monuments of the Median atesh-gah fire temples, “which Gobineau has alone mentioned”; this leads him into a discussion about fire altars in ancient Iran, including those in Naqsh-e Rostam, Pasargadae, and Firuzabad (242–43). Perrot concludes his account of Persian art by underscoring that “everybody knows” that the origin of Mithra in the Roman Mediterranean basin “must be sought in Persia” and that Achaemenid art “embodies all the labours and plastic creations of the oldest civilized peoples, of whom Greece and Rome were destined to become the heirs” (417, 501). While explicitly racist theories are muted in his evolution of forms, Choisy’s cartographic depictions of form migration underpinned a historical determinism and a pseudoscientific genealogy of race. In Histoire de l’architecture (1899), Choisy approaches architecture through climatic, geographic, technological, and sociopolitical principles. Never having traveled farther than Greece, he depended on scholarship by the Dieulafoys for Iran and by Fergusson for India for his study on ancient Iranian architecture. With a nuanced admiration for Aryan Persia, he credits to “races aryennes le sentiment inné du beau.”138 Within a decade, ancient Iranian and Indian architectures were grasped in the full light of an Aryan history. “Rejecting entirely Fergusson’s classification of styles,” English art historian Ernest Binfield Havell, in his Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation (1915), reminds Europeans that “our Indian comrades-in-arms are of the same stock” and are fighting for “Aryan civilisation.”139 The “history of India,” he concludes, is nothing but “the history of Aryan institutions, traditions, and culture.”140 For Havell, as for earlier architectural historians, western Asia—with its invention of radiating arches and other structural innovations “centuries before Rome”—constituted the “great culture-centre of the ( 54 )  the persian revival

Indo-Aryan race.”141 In the age of imperialism, architectural style had become a standard measure of racial difference.

Iran and the Orient-or-Rome Debate, 1901–1941 The year 1901, like 1851, was a marker in the discourse on Iranian art history. From then to his death in 1941, Viennese art historian Josef Strzygowski performed on the century-long intellectual platform of the East in offering a universal history of art. He positively argued that art history itself could not be complete without an eastward look. “Did Christianity,” he asked, “travel from its birthplace in Palestine westward only and not eastwards also?”142 Despite half a century of hallway whispers and vexed silences, scholarship on Strzygowski has swelled exponentially within the last two decades; Suzanne Marchand, Christina Maranci, and Jaś Elsner were among the early pioneers.143 Others have traced his productive life and work; I focus on the urgency Strzygowski injected into art-historical deliberations that pivoted around the architecture of the “Eastern Aryans in Iran.”144 After 1901 Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian architectures were no longer the sole domain of far-off Orientalists, thrill-seeking linguists, and restless archeologists, or of architectural historians with ambitious goals for comprehensive universal histories, like Fergusson, Fletcher, Choisy, and Perrot. Strzygowski went out to the East and brought the debate right back home, into the heart of Europe, to the Vienna School, where other, far more pertinent—that is, pertinent to the primary audience of art history—battles were being fought around Europe’s intellectual, ideological, and imperial politics.145 Due to Strzygowski’s relentless insistence on this “eastward” look, the giants of the discipline clashed over Iran in the four decades following 1901. Still, the Orient-or-Rome dispute that erupted so violently was an expression of European anxiety. In this art-historical debate, the relevance of Persian art remained in the discursive domain of and about Europe, while parallel to the debate, Iranians and Indians charted their discourse on taste and empire through co-option and mimicry for postcolonial motives of their own. After traveling to Russian-ruled Armenia in 1889, Egypt in 1894–95, the newly independent Bulgaria, the western Ottoman Empire, including Istanbul and Jerusalem, and Russia between 1888 and 1890, Strzygowski published a series of works that supported the view that Christian architecture had early spread into Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and Armenia. While few in Vienna paid attention to his advocacy of Eastern Christianity in his Armenian Evangeliary (1891), all eyes landed on Strzygowski when he attacked Franz Wickhoff ’s Vienna Genesis (1895). In his “epoch-making” Orient oder Rom (1901), Strzygowski criticized Wickhoff ’s imperial Rome–centered ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 55 )

genealogy of late antique art.146 The reviews followed instantly, since the former’s five well-illustrated and persuasive chapters had trashed the latter’s insular belief that “the post-classical art of the Levant” was nothing but “a little gift from Rome.”147 A year later, in his Hellas in the Embrace of the East (1902), Strzygowski slammed Alois Riegl’s Late Roman Art Industry (1901), which had similarly claimed a Hellenistic origin for late antique art, including Sassanian and Byzantine art. He further provincialized Rome in such studies as Das Etschmiadzin-Evangeliar (1891), The Newly Found Orpheus Mosaic in Jerusalem (1901), Hellenistic and Coptic Art in Alexandria (1902), Asia Minor: A New Country for the History of Art (1903), and Coptic Art (1904).148 Riegl lost no time issuing a personal rebuttal, “Late Roman or Oriental?” (1902), to Strzygowski’s “sharp polemic.” In the section on architecture, he dismissed any “veritable art of space” in the ancient East because Mesopotamian monuments showcased “merely barrel-vaulted, corridorlike spaces, and not the mighty, round, domed buildings and cross-vaulted halls of the Romans.”149 Likewise, in 1903, when several art historians clashed over the identity of the Qasr al-Mshatta palace, near Amman, Strzygowski, in his monograph Mschatta, insisted that the Umayyad palace had a Sassanian prototype at Ctesiphon and clearly expressed the “Irano-Mazdaean artistic spirit.”150 He was proved wrong. Outside the Vienna School, Giovanni Rivoira took up the Wickhoff-Riegl mantle in Le origini della architettura lombarda (1901–7) and contended, with no small degree of “patriotic spirit,” that “the ultimate origin of everything that really counts in mediaeval architecture” was Roman.151 An engineer employed in the Posts and Telegraphs Department in Rome, he was no match for Strzygowski, a rising star in the Viennese art-historical circles. Rivoira nevertheless amassed a vast amount of data during his travels in Greece, Spain, Germany, and the Levant between 1899 and 1901. His technical descriptions, structural drawings, and photographs traced such monuments as Hagia Sophia to the ancient Roman Thermae—for which Strzygowski had given a Sassanian prototype—and the Gothic form to the Lombardic vaulted basilica.152 As an engineer, he focused on the evolution of structural typologies, including the pendentive and the arch in Roman territories as diverse as Germany, England, Ireland, France, and Spain.153 To refute the influence of Sassanian Persia in the evolution of Europe’s medieval architecture, Rivoira objected to the Dieulafoys’ dating of the vaults and arcades in the Palace of Khosrow (Taq-e Kasra, 242–540) at Ctesiphon and the Palace of Firuzabad (450) to show that “they do not go back to such remote times as some writers suppose; Dieulafoy among them.”154 Without naming him, Rivoira attacked Strzygowski by rebutting his primary source on Iran. In 1908 Rivoira visited Istanbul and the Balkans to document medieval architecture and to broaden his Rome-centered architectural history against Strzygowski’s contention. From here, he moved on to Armenia to strengthen his case against the heart of his adversary’s scheme, but his trip ( 56 )  the persian revival

was cut short due to an outbreak of cholera. Rivoira’s next study tour, in Spain and North Africa two years later, resulted in Muslim Architecture (1914), which deployed similar typological methods to track the genealogy of Islamic architecture to ancient Rome.155 With what seems to have been the sole purpose of refuting Strzygowski’s core thesis, again, Rivoira devoted an entire chapter of his study on Islamic architecture to a study on Armenian churches—Strzygowski’s typological hinge. However, by categorizing Armenian architecture—which includes some early outstanding examples of Christian church art—as a derivative of Islamic art, Rivoira was striking at the very taxonomy proposed by Strzygowski, therefore invalidating his entire thesis. To a contemporary reader, devoting an entire chapter to Armenian architecture in a book entitled Muslim Architecture, without also including, say, Georgian or Syrian Christian art, seems forced indeed. In his early works, Iran mattered marginally to Strzygowski’s conception of Western architecture, yet gradually his Urheimat—an artistic motherland—drifted further and further eastward. By the end of World War I, Iran had taken a crucial position in the development of architecture as an “intermediary or distributing point of the artistic currents,” “the heart of Asia, on which depend the . . . arts of China, India, and the Hellenistic West,” and the “melting-pot of Asiatic style—receiving, distributing and creating.”156 It is worth noting here that Strzygowski wrote prolifically, relentlessly, and impressively. The collective body of his scholarship, while increasingly repetitive over the decades, nevertheless evolved and moved consistently eastward, making it very difficult to isolate and determine the details of his global thesis. His vast amount of writing reads like reoccurring historiography of his art history, repetitively referring to his earlier titles, travels, and talks, wherein he at times admitted shifts in his conclusions. His artistic origin kept trotting and bouncing around, although always centripetally tied to Iran. In his mind-boggling amount of writing from 1901 to 1941, meanings of art-historical terms, geographical designations, and dynastic periods altered and morphed. In them, concepts such as Parthians and Sassanians, Iranians and Persians, the North and the South, East and West, were moving historical targets. These shifts in his thesis and terminology, in addition to the vast territory and topics he wrote about in multiple languages, render the totality of his scholarship difficult to grasp and his thesis challenging to determine. The contradicting details, though, were moved by one worthy aim: the urgency to study art globally. Strzygowski was the occupant of the very first chair of non-Western art history, but he remained adamant in his global attitude toward the history of art. “A wider outlook is required by the present-day scientific inquirer into the arts than that of the traditional ‘historian,’” he pleaded, adding, “he cannot accept a West European art that has the sole . . . influence of the Mediterranean peoples.”157 Picking up Fergusson’s argument about the key role of architecture in understanding human taxonomy ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 57 )

and creativity, Strzygowski analyzed architectural history through typological and structural evolutions. Rejecting Gobineau’s theory of blood, he argued for form as an expression of long-held socioreligious practices and building traditions that could, if studied globally and over a longue durée, reveal categories of the human lineage. Like Fergusson, Strzygowski insisted on turning architecture into science, with in situ and material observation of the artifacts, typologies, and morphologies. The logical end to this chain of arguments was clear: one could discern race through architecture. In effect, Strzygowski was putting forward an ethno-tectonic thesis. Strzygowski’s insistence on a global art-historical approach, supported by his vast knowledge of marginalized areas of art history—that is, Byzantine, Coptic, Armenian, pre-Islamic Syrian, Germanic, Slavic, Croatian, Serbian, Scandinavian, and prehistoric, among others—was “formidable,” according to Robert Hillenbrand, “even by today’s standards.”158 One could argue that it was instead formidable especially by today’s standards. In September 1913, with funding from the German Ministry of Culture and Education, Strzygowski, accompanied by Armenian architectural historian Toros Toramanian, Armenian architect Leon Lissitzian, and German ethnologist Edmund Kuttler, traveled to Armenia to study medieval architecture. During this trip, he probably joined a short expedition with his assistant and protégé Ernst Diez, which took them in March–April 1913 to the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan.159 The brick structures they saw in this historic region on the Silk Road between central Asia and Anatolia impressed them. They were determined to bring these forms into the fold of the discipline of art history. “In Khorasan, however,” Strzygowski later wrote, “art-historical research is, with the expedition of my art-historical institute [at the University of Vienna],” just beginning.160 His travels in Anatolia, Ottoman- and Russian-ruled Armenia, Georgia, and Russia set him on four decades of labor to prove his thesis: “the importance of the universal religion of Mazdaism on the development of art” and thus Western architecture “as being not of Hellenistic, but of Mazdaistic origin in its signification, and of Iranian origin in its form.”161 Inspired by migration theories developed by philologists and archeologists, Strzygowski proposed a genealogy of Aryan forms trailing the migrations of Zoroastrian/ Mazdaic religion, with the concentration of “Eastern Aryans” on the Iranian Plateau, on the one hand, and the “Western Aryans of the South” around the Mediterranean, on the other.162 Franz Cumont’s collections from Textes et monuments published under Les mystères de Mithra (1900) and Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (1906), with a chapter on Mithraism, made a particular impression upon Strzygowski, who often consulted Cumont’s work in mapping the migration of archetypes off of the Iranian Plateau in eastward and westward directions.163 In Mithraism and Iranian Mazdaism, both scholars located Iran’s “creative activity” as a new cultural force that revitalized the West in the first period of Christian art, which eventually led to Europe’s ( 58 )  the persian revival

renaissance.164 Zoroastrianism, in Strzygowski’s view, did not merely influence Europe’s “whole so-called Middle Ages”; rather, the very culture of the Middle Ages was a global “Mazdaistic expression of art,” where neither Hellenism nor Buddhism were able to resist its impact.165 In November 1911, during a lecture at King’s College, London, Strzygowski asserted that one could speak of Christian art before the thirteenth century only in terms of its dependence on Persian or Sassanian art.166 He pointed to the first major center of Christianity, its “real originators,” the Parthian and Sassanian Empires, where, unlike Rome, Christians were “freely tolerated.”167 Persia, he noted, became the “nursery of Christian architecture and of its original decoration.”168 In Europe’s art-historical circles, few dared to second him, and even fewer were willing to publish him. Strzygowski complained that he could not “continue indefinitely producing books of monumental size which stand no chance of being printed,” and yet he went on to generate a vast amount of new work: large and small books, booklets, articles, public lectures, reviews—“The Persian Trumpet Dome” (1909), “The Problem of Persian Art” (1911), “The Sassanian Church and Its Domestic Interiors” (1915), The Art of the East (1916), Altai-Iran and the Migrations (1917), “Persian Hellenism in Christian Ornamental Art” (1918), The Architecture of the Armenians and Europe (1918–19), and The Origin of Christian Church Art (1920).169 In 1920 Strzygowski, pointing to Iranian sources, to the legend of Bar Saba, the bishop of Marv during the reign of Shapur II (309–379), argued that the first Christian church ever was designed on “the plan of the Parthian palace” at Ctesiphon.170 From Ctesiphon, as the eastern capital of Christian culture, Iranian “East-Aryan prototypes” trekked as far as Ukraine, Kashmir, and India.171 The Architecture of the Armenians and Europe, a “manifesto of Aryan art,” as noted by Maranci, forced open the gates of artistic origins to the heart of ancient Iran.172 By then, German art historian Friedrich Sarre, who had traveled across Iran in 1897–98 and, like Strzygowski, argued for Rome-Iran artistic ties, had published Iranian Rock Reliefs (1910), with Ernst Herzfeld, and The Art of Ancient Persia (1922–23).173 Impressively detailed and illustrated with maps, drawings, floor plans, and high-resolution photographs of Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian edifices, they had helped raise the academic bar on the importance of ancient Iran. Strzygowski divided the art of the Iranian Plateau into two temporal and material categories: first, Iranian Zoroastrian popular art found in northern Iran, stretching across the territories from today’s Khorasan in the east to Armenia in the west, and second, Persian royal art dominating southern Iran, in the province of ancient Parsa, or today’s Fars.174 He regularly severed “Iranian” art from the court art of the Achaemenids and Sassanians, suggesting that although the former is lacking material evidence and its characteristics can “never be deduced from study of the grandiose art of the Sassanian court,” the popular art of the north stands nevertheless as the true expression of Iran’s ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 59 )

Aryan population, articulated in some aspects of the courts of the Achaemenids, the Parthians, and the Sassanians.175 Though confusing, what Strzygowski intended to establish was an essential and ethno-tectonic framework for global art history. He aimed to distinguish the everyday architecture of the Irano-Aryan Volk as the true expression of centuries-long organic practices from the building tradition of the royal courts of the Achaemenids and Sassanians, whom he saw as having been influenced by the opulent and corrupt Mesopotamian and Mediterranean power cultures. “The Northern Iranians,” he repeated in 1932, “must not be confused with the Persians of the Southern Iran, who had already adopted, during the Achaemenid period, the Mesopotamian notion of art as subservient to the royal power.”176 The North, according to him, developed the dome on a square base from wooden prototypes distinctive to Aryan fire temples, while the South, represented by such formal architecture and decorations as those found at Pasargadae, Persepolis, and Naqsh-e Rostam, was “contaminated” by the Semitic artistic traditions of Mesopotamia. This latter, while still ethnically Aryan, borrowed and developed the Semitic basilica plan in its architecture, and representational art in its ornamentation.177 Strzygowski’s main task consisted of mapping what he called the “original geographical distribution of types.”178 He proceeded to make ethno-typological distinctions and to hypothesize relations between the domed basilica and the Armenian domed cruciform church. “The revelation of this series of churches in the heart of Asia Minor,” concurred a contemporary critic, “establishes for the history of architecture a new link connecting the East and the West.”179 Contending that the morphological evolution of these two basic elements—the dome and the square base—was pivotal to the migration and transformation of architectural traditions in different Indo-European societies, Strzygowski maintained that the type had originated in the hearth, in the Indo-Germanic and Zoroastrian religious rituals of circumambulating the fire.180 He explained, “We find in Iran and Armenia the dome over the square plan, in Mesopotamia the barrel vault, in the Mediterranean area the timbered roof.”181 Medieval Armenia, to which Strzygowski had access through his professional network during his excavations at Ani and about which no major Western scholar had published, figured as both a temporal and a spatial transition point between ancient Iran and early modern Europe.182 “Armenia was the only point at which,” he insisted, “the West- and East-Aryans of the South came into direct contact; and there Christianity . . . preferred Mazdean to Hellenistic forms.”183 The dome over the square became the archetypal hinge upon which Strzygowski’s universal architectural history revolved, for it evolved from wooden structures imported with the Aryan migrations into Iran:184 “The ancient Aryan migrations are connected with a form of wooden architecture which was carried by the Greeks to the Mediterranean and by Iranians and Indians to the Far East, and had a decisive influence upon ( 60 )  the persian revival

the development of architecture.”185 This typology-oriented, comparative, and in situ methodology, promoting a new approach to artifacts by determining their parent forms, depended on this archetype, early examples of which he had documented during his 1889 trip to Armenia. The churches of Hripsimeh (618), Bagaran (631), Mastara (650), and Akhtamar (915–21) were among his outstanding examples of radiating, or central, buildings “inherited from the old Indogermanic stock.”186 An inscription dating the construction of the Cathedral of Bagaran to the reign of the Sassanian king Khosrow Parviz (r. 590, 591–628) was Strzygowski’s evidence of “Persian influence.”187 Tracing the Bagaran type back to a corner hall in Sarvestan led to the conclusion that the domed structure “originating in Persia found its development in Armenia.”188 Perfected by Sassanians in their royal and religious complexes, the “cupola on squinches over the square” was Strzygowski’s key migrant architectural typology. The following quote, originally in German, from 1920 and paraphrased over the years in several of his publications, maps the geography of Strzygowski’s domed-cube type and its material mutations: I found that the squinch, a structure placed across the corner, built by the Iranian peasants of the present day in unburnt brick, and also found in ancient Persian palaces in concrete, stone, and burnt brick, has a certain relation to the similar corner structure in Kashmir, where, in small stone temples, we find an imitation of an earlier wood roof with beams laid across the corner. . . . A similar method of construction is followed to-day in wooden churches of the Ukraine, which show cupola-types in the same arrangement as at Périgueux, S. Mark’s at Venice, the church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, or the church of S. John at Ephesus . . . arranged in the form of a Greek cross. These dispositions are frequent in Iranian architecture of all periods. Can it be that they are a translation into stone of an older wooden prototype of the unburnt brick of Iran, finding its way thence to the Near East and Europe, especially in the form of the Armenian church on a square plan with the cupola on squinches?189 Strzygowski, who was unique among his colleagues to give abundant agency to locals, argued that by 806 the type “appeared on Frankish soil in the Church of S. Germigny-des-Prés” through “Persian or Armenian architects connected with the immigrant Goths from the Black Sea Region.”190 In Traces of Indo-Germanic Faith in the Fine Arts (1936), he illustrated three interior corners to demonstrate their lineage: the corner beneath a wooden dome of a Ukrainian church, the brick squinch of a caravanserai in Sabzevar, Khorasan, and the stone squinch of the St. John Church of Mastara.191 Strzygowski’s logical conclusion was that such revered edifices as Milan’s Saint Lorenzo, Ravenna’s Saint Vitale, and Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia were mere ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 61 )

“expressions of Iranian art on European soil”—indeed a pill hard to swallow by his peers in Paris, Rome, and Vienna.192 The elaborate four-pier plan in Armenia led him to the more unadorned brick Zoroastrian fire temples, that at Susa being the oldest example cited by Strzygowski, with the basic configuration of the chahar-taq (lit. four-arch): a dome on a cube open on four sides.193 Having perhaps visited Khorasan in 1913, Strzygowski could boast at best a partial repertoire of Iranian architecture. He concentrated on specific monuments that had been made available in the West by others, including the Dieulafoys, Herzfeld, and Sarre. A close look at his large body of scholarship reveals that while he made great use of his Armenian examples, where he had spent a significant amount of time and had live contacts, his Iranian and Indian cases were limited to a repeating few. We yet lack direct correspondence between Strzygowski and Iranian or Indian partners, unlike that with his Armenian connections. The catalog that he illustrated in different studies included Taq-e Kasra (third to sixth centuries) at Ctesiphon, with its massive barrel-vaulted ayvan, which was first excavated in 1928; the small-scale twin fire altars (Sassanian period) at Naqsh-e Rostam; the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae (559–529 bce); the relief of the investiture of Ardeshir II at Taq-e Bostan; the well-preserved Sarvestan building with mortar-masonry squinch-anddome construction built by Bahram V (r. 420–38); and the Palace of Ardeshir I at Firuzabad (450).194 Strzygowski’s incorrect dating of Sassanian monuments to the Parthian era to fit his Aryan ethno-tectonic migration was due to incomplete data on Iranian architecture as well as his heavy reliance on secondary sources.195 The remapping of artistic connections between Europe and Iran permitted Strzygowski to link architectural typologies to socioreligious practices and, from there, to argue that buildings embodied “Persian religious spirit.”196 Architecture, unlike painting and sculpture, he believed, was the work of the whole race, as John Ruskin had maintained in The Stones of Venice (1851–53). Contradicting Riegl, Strzygowski went further and maintained that the evolution of artistic form was based not on Kunstwollen (the Will of Art, or artistic volition) but instead on Müssen and Drang (necessity and urge).197 Both “necessity” and “urge” were Hegelian terms used in his introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1833) cast in Avestan language: “the true . . . has the urge to develop. . . . [T]he Idea is the centre, at the same time the periphery, the source of light . . . it is the system of necessity.”198 For Gobineau too, utility was a core characteristic of “men of White race.”199 Aryan architecture, which was born of necessity, was viewed as expressive of the superiority of Indo-Europeans and indicative of the moral fiber of its inventors.200 Strzygowski’s architectural use of necessity and urge—particularly as it related to the fire under a chahar-taq—echoed within Zoroastrian history. Before the development of the cult of the fire temple in the late Achaemenid era, the hearth fire of a Zoroastrian household ( 62 )  the persian revival

had both religious and practical functions. “Offerings to the hearth fire,” according to Mary Boyce, “largely served a practical purpose, since they helped to sustain something which was needed in every home.”201 Thus the practicality of the fire and the architecture that bore it spoke to the valor of the race. Strzygowski claimed ultimate significance for the Zoroastrian chahar-taq of Aryan migrations in a lecture at the École française d’Extrême-Orient, published in 1927 in the Revue des arts asiatiques. He again discussed the Armenian Bagaran Cathedral and its ties to the domed brick Palace of Sarvestan, while listing fire temples mentioned by Herzfeld in Khorasan, Sistan, and Shahrestan.202 Rejecting the importance of the then well-known royal architecture of the Achaemenids and the Sassanians, of “their palaces and reliefs” in Fars, he insisted that the research on Iranian architecture must revolve around the Zoroastrian fire temple: the chahar-taq type.203 Employing Herzfeld’s discovery against him—a stone fire-holder lifted on a square base at Kuh-e Khajeh (third century) in Sistan—Strzygowski noted that Herzfeld still did “absolutely not want to admit that Iran is a point of artistic departure.”204 The cult of fire, the essential architectural expression of which was the chahar-taq, Strzygowski concluded in his lecture, implied an “axial continuity” of architecture since the Indo-European migration between the “North on one side, oriental Europe, and Iran on the other,” having in common the “same dual ethics of Light and Darkness, of the Good and the Bad.”205 The following year, 1928, championing the thesis of the Iranian-Germanic artistic axis, he insisted that “the universal creative force” inspiring artistic production was “the spirit of the Aryan race,” the “Aryan instinct” shared by all Indo-European nations, and that in modern times it was “the duty of the North to trace its culture back to Armenia, Persia, and India.”206 By the mid-1920s, four separate networks linked Strzygowski’s theories to modern Iran and India.207 In a 1932 letter to leading French medievalist Henri Focillon, Strzygowski wrote from Vienna, “In front of our eyes begins to emerge an Asia of a clear Nordic spirit, where Iran plays an intellectual role as decisive as the one played in Europe by ancient Greece.”208 In early July 1934, as Hindenburg congratulated Hitler for the Night of the Long Knives purges, Focillon—who went into self-exile at Yale University’s Art History Department, from where he continued his activism in support of de Gaulle’s France Libre—warned Strzygowski that art history was more “than just the North and the South.”209 Focillon’s forewarnings fell on deaf ears amid the horrors of racism. Two years later, Strzygowski published two maps of the Indo-Germanic migrations of Aryan architecture off of the Iranian Plateau and into northern Europe, while bringing his career to a close with such titles as “The Spiritual Content of Iranian Art: Fire Temple and Avesta” (1935) and “Iran, Asia’s Hellas” (1937) (fig. 21).210 The Orient-or-Rome contentions, however, were not about content alone. The debate raised other pressing matters: namely art-historical methods, especially ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 63 )

Fig. 21 Josef Strzygowski, map of “the Indo-Germanic migrations.” From Spuren indogermanischen Glaubens in der bildenden Kunst, planmässig vorgeführt (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1936), 301. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

concerning the taxonomy of non-Western art and how it fits in Eurocentric art-historical narratives. As early as 1913, Strzygowski tried to establish a “model institute” that would actively conduct object-focused and in situ expeditions throughout Asia. In 1922 he boasted to a New York audience that the institute aimed to “revolutionize spiritual innovation” suffocated by Vienna’s “inveterate courtly-ecclesiastical and scholastic” methods.211 Prioritizing monuments over written sources, the center sought to fix art history’s methodological defects, its inability to “raise the spirit of the essential problems of scientific research and education.”212 “We have completely forgotten,” Strzygowski again complained to Focillon, “to follow in the footsteps of these data and to write a history of art that takes into account the raw materials, the technique, and the utilitarian destination, in the sense of Gottfried Semper’s theories.”213 Strzygowski’s mention of Semper was strategic. The German architect and art historian had been one of the seminal figures of the history of world architecture in a lifelong search for the origin of art forms. In The Four Elements of Architecture (1851) and Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics (1860–63), Semper had proposed a technical-materialist approach to global art history. Semper, too, relying on the works of Flandin, Coste, Fergusson, Layard, Botta, Rawlinson, and Texier, had argued for the crucial role of the Achaemenids in Western art history.214 He had pushed further, premised on his utilitarian reading of Iranian archeology. In Style, the illustration of the capital from the Palace of One Hundred Columns supported the claim that “the Persian solution exhibited a genuinely Zoroastrian spirit of functionality.”215 Great monumentality was achieved here in Persia, in the hands of the first “lawgiver,” Cyrus the Great, credited by Semper as the “consolidator ( 64 )  the persian revival

of a definite architectural style.”216 It was to him, personally, that Semper attributed the passage from the use of wood to the use of stone in human history, the “sober clarity” of Persepolitan plans where the “basic plan of everything was the same,” and the ground plans of royal residences based on mathematical systems.217 It was in Persia, Semper insisted, that the “most remarkable columnar system” was “perfected by the Persians in costly stone.”218 That Riegl had attacked Semper in 1893 as viciously as he attacked Strzygowski in 1902 speaks to the enduring tensions of the discipline. When attacked for his Orient oder Rom, Strzygowski condemned Riegl and Wickhoff—neither of whom had traveled farther than Egypt—for their ignorance of the Orient.219 A year later, in 1903, during the clash over Qasr al-Mshatta’s facade, Herzfeld, in his turn, called Strzygowski an armchair art historian.220 Against Strzygowski’s accusations of ignorance about “the Orient and its artistic monuments,” Riegl defended his methods in his emotional essay “Late Roman or Oriental?”221 He confronted Strzygowski by questioning the validity of accumulating data. In defense of the position that knowledge is useful only to the extent of “knowing-how-to-ignore certain facts at the right moment,” Riegl asked, “of what essential worth is the familiarity with a monument as a historical fact?”222 Dismissing data collecting in the Orient as a regression to “Hegelian overestimation of conceptual categories,” Riegl concluded that Strzygowski’s object-oriented method did not “mark him as an innovator, a builder of new inroads, but rather as a ruthless and radical defender of the old.”223 That both Strzygowski and Rivoira insisted on the scientific objectivity and empirical evidence of their theories contributed to the brutal and personal nature of the Orient-or-Rome debate. That both had traveled extensively in the areas about which they wrote distinguished them from their peers at home, whom they justly accused of being armchair scholars. Strzygowski’s frequent references to “my own research” and “experience gained” in such and such places testified to the centrality of the object in situ to his art history.224 As the first chair of non-European art history, Strzygowski articulated the structural deficiencies of the discipline against the claims of the discipline. As such, he pointed to the obstacles to and hardships in producing non-Western art history. Not unlike today’s scholars of non-Western art, he built his archives by mining obscure and chaotic collections, chasing edifices and artifacts in remote geographies and cultures, juggling foreign dialects and protocols, venturing into propositions that were not privileged by an anchor in a well-defined subfield of one’s field, advancing hypotheses that went against the grain of accepted norms, tolerating decades of institutional isolation, being dismissed by patrons and publishers, and finally being written out of art history itself.225 Yet Strzygowski never retreated from insisting on the merits of a global approach to the study of art. Strzygowski amassed a vast amount of data, both textual and visual, in part because he had to in order to argue what he believed about the universality of art history, and ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 65 )

often he was the first to do so. He occasionally admitted his own mistakes: “in the attempt to answer the questions, I often make false steps . . . that is only natural when one is throwing light on wholly unknown terrain.”226 While his obnoxious personality was well known among the Vienna School circles, his racial prejudices came to light during his dealings with non-Europeans. Despite his advocacy of “local genius,” Strzygowski cast a colonial gaze on others.227 Toros Toramanian, for instance, had played a significant role in the success of Strzygowski’s Architecture of the Armenians and Europe, having led the archeological digs at Ani and having made his drawings available to the Polish-Austrian art historian.228 After the book’s publication, Toramanian profusely complained to many, including Alexander Tamanian, the chief architect of Yerevan, about Strzygowski’s stinginess with credit and compensation.229 In reply, Strzygowski told Toramanian in a July 1925 letter: “as for what you call ‘our cooperation,’ I must say that you have never worked with me, but rather have made available to me your materials.”230 As both an advisor to and a disciple of Strzygowski, Toramanian established the field of art history in the new Armenian Republic. Generations of Armenian art historians were trained with Toramanian’s scholarship on the impact of medieval Armenian art on Europe’s Renaissance and thus rejected Strzygowski’s link between Armenian churches and Iranian fire temples, for, as Toramanian put it, “it is clear enough that the architectural traditions . . . of Armenian Christians bore no likeness to those of Persia.”231 Several Armenian architects, including Léon Gurekian (1871–1950), pursued a separate, although still Aryan, line of argument for the origin of Armenian architecture divorced from Iran. On May 25, 1908, Gurekian invited Rivoira—who at the time was putting the finishing touches on his Le origini dell’architettura lombarda—to meet, in order to persuade him that Armenia, not Rome, had produced the birth of Romanesque architecture.232 These kinds of invitations were fruits of the Orient-or-Rome debate, which would last for decades. Although he never joined the Nazi Party, Strzygowski paid allegiance to Hitler by signing the 1933 professors’ confession and by contributing to his richly illustrated Festschrift.233 He died before witnessing the horrific implications of an Aryan artistic axis. Lecturing in 1947, the classical architectural historian and director of the British School in Rome, John Ward-Perkins, said that his colleagues should remember that it was Strzygowski who “first enlarged our horizons” and that it was Rivoira who “first championed the Roman element in Late Classical and Byzantine architecture,” but they should “forget once and for all the terms in which [these theories] were offered.”234 In the ensuing decades, architects and art historians alike went on to forget both the context as well as the content of these heated arguments. In his 1965 survey of Byzantine art, Richard Krautheimer dismissed Strzygowski’s lifelong-held theories as “neither demonstrable nor plausible.”235 ( 66 )  the persian revival

Nevertheless, the conditions that lent themselves to the Orient-or-Rome debate a century ago persist, and its tensions remain unresolved. Strzygowski’s attack on classical humanism and his valorization of a cross-cultural approach to art history laid the grounds for the course the field has since taken. He urged that the Greco-Roman “limits [on the origins of Christian art] . . . be extended,” saying that once the “geographical horizon is widened, the vital and creative force is discovered in local genius.”236 A critical reevaluation of the subject questions the validity of the art-historical categories of East/West, Orient/Occident, and anthropological/art-historical knowledge. At the annual meeting of the fellows of the Mediaeval Academy of America a year after Strzygowski’s death, even Herzfeld had to admit that “the principal points of his thesis are now generally accepted.”237 The political claims in the Orient (Iran) were manifest expressions of the thoroughly art-historical dispute in and about Rome (Europe). The Orient-or-Rome debate helped define not only the parameters of Iran’s subsequent political culture but also the conception of Iran as a modern nation-state, presented to the (Western) world as ethnoculturally homogeneous and pure and thus equal, if not superior. The history of the debate is also the key to understanding the Persian Revival: those who invented and celebrated its hybrid architecture and those who wrote its histories, whether accurate or inaccurate. Its significance, however, does not concern Iran alone. An examination of the debate supplies the missing historiographical link between local grievances and Western imperialism and questions the depth of our Orientalist historiography. For even as the investigation of architectural influences has become the focus of Orientalist and Western artistic concerns, the debate continues to elude us. As early as 1910, founder of the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University Allan Marquand wrote, “an absolute antithesis between Rome on the one hand and the Orient on the other is an unfortunate one,” adding, “the value of Strzygowski’s work consists, not in his attacks on classical or Christian scholars, but in the enthusiasm and the energy with which his scholarly efforts have opened up new vistas into the art of Asia Minor and Armenia, Syria, Egypt, and Constantinople.”238 In 1949 English art historian David Talbot Rice, who visited Armenia in 1930, described Strzygowski’s ideas as “revolutionary,” “extremely penetrating” not only for “the light [they have] thrown on a number of vital problems” but also for their “comparative” method.239 Mere inclusion is insufficient, however. Beyond the need to address the original anxieties of the debate, the premise of the initial question ought to be contested. A return to Strzygowski’s work serves as a rhetorical as well as an empirical strategy that might lead to a more in-depth grasp and critique of both the Orient-or-Rome debate proper and our constructs of historical (arti)facts. As Keith Moxey notes, “it is in the clash of rhetorics, rather than through appeals to ‘what really happened,’ that historical insight is obtained.”240 As a result, whether Strzygowski’s version of art history is what ancient iran in western art historiography  ( 67 )

happened, whether the domed square is truly of Iranian origin, and whether Armenian churches had a role in its migration to Europe have no relevance to this study. Instead, these now-historical debates form a foundation on which to suggest that formal exchanges and cultural hybridities have been the norm, not the exception, and that the notion of hybridity is a historical given in artistic traditions. Strzygowski’s theories had global implications for art history, revivalistic architecture, and imperial ideology in as diverse territories as his scholarship penetrated during and after his lifetime: Armenia, Georgia, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and Turkey, along with India and Iran.241 The attempt to turn art history into a relevant category of scientific knowledge using universalistic discourses was the teleological outcome of the alluring search for Persia. Having flirted with the idea of ancient Iran, the Orient-or-Rome debate had been a European art-historical crisis in making since 1699. It was a systematic aspect of the imperial project that involved, as Vasant Kaiwar and Sucheta Mazumdar note, “the reduction of an empirical maze of differences to a few universalizable categories from which general laws could be derived.”242 Before being colonized by their nationalism, Iranian and Indian modernists challenged their European counterparts on the principle of post-Enlightenment imperialism: rhetoric on universalism and expansionism of high culture. The Persian Revival was to jump out of the pages of universal architectural histories right into the grand facades of the bustling streets of Bombay and Tehran. The Persian had become a Style.

( 68 )  the persian revival

•2 The Persepolitan Style in British India In April 1854, when Manekji Limji Hataria (1813–1890) landed in the port of Bushehr, contact between the Parsis of India and their coreligionist Zoroastrians in Qajar Iran had been sporadic and mostly theological since the fall of the Sassanian Empire (224– 651). Hataria, an experienced traveler, diplomat, and entrepreneur, had been sent to Iran by the Society for the Amelioration of the Conditions of the Zoroastrians in Persia (known in Iran as Anjoman-e akaber-e saheban/parsian), founded by affluent Parsi philanthropists of Bombay. Guaranteed by the buying power of the privileged Parsi community, Hataria’s assignment was sizeable: he was to improve the legal, infrastructural, and sociopolitical conditions of Iran’s Zoroastrians, numbering some seven thousand souls and concentrated in the provinces of Yazd and Kerman. His forty-year stay in Iran, supported by steady Parsi money and British diplomatic protection, proved pivotal not only to new modalities of cultural flows between India and Iran but also to the rapid flourishing of the Persian Revival. In 1822 six fire temples adorned the cityscapes of West India. By the end of the century, Parsis had augmented that number tenfold. Many of these structures were erected in what they dubbed the “Persian Style,” on floor plans described as “open.” Furthermore, out of the total of nine highest-grade Zoroastrian temples, six were built in West India during the long nineteenth century. From the 1830s to the 1930s, the Persian Revival style evolved simultaneously and codependently in two different geo-cultures: the western coast of the Indian subcontinent, with large Parsi urban populations, as in Bombay and Surat, and the major cities of Qajar and Pahlavi Iran, in particular Shiraz and Tehran. Hundreds of public and private buildings, including temples, palaces, residences, ministries, banks, schools, mausoleums, and commemorative monuments, were designed on Sassanian prototype plans and were adorned with Achaemenid and

Sassanian decorative motifs. While the Qajar brand of the Persian Revival is examined in the next chapter, this chapter traces its Parsi birth and evolution vis-à-vis broader colonial and art-historical discourses within British India. As Ian Baucom and Preeti Chopra have demonstrated, the appearance of the Gothic style in British India was both a “visual therapy” and “a joint enterprise” that redefined English identity as hybrid and enabled Parsi subjects to help build the empire as (if ) Englishmen.1 Here, I argue that the Parsis, in a mimetic grab, co-opted British theories on architecture and invented a style of their own, for their own distinct purposes, apart from but alongside the Gothic Revival. While Gothic patronage displayed Parsis as outstanding citizens of the empire and thus the civilized world, the simultaneous appearance of the Persian Revival in Bombay and other Parsi-populated sites served to insert Parsis into the taxonomies of universal histories as Aryan Persians, heir to the foundational civilization of Cyrus and Darius. The Parsi brand of the Persian was a direct expression of the imperial discourse on race and taste. “Beneath the relentlessly positivistic rhetoric,” as Tim Barringer observes, were “embedded many of the cultural attitudes which underpinned the imperial project.”2 An important sphere of Parsi charity, architectural patronage was the most original and expressive attribute of the Persian Revival. While at times considered “kitsch” or “bad,” Parsi architecture expressed strategies of emancipated selfhood and emerging ethnocultural merit. Within the broader context of architectural practices in the British Raj, where Gothic, Classical, and Indo-Saracenic Revivals were at the forefront of debates, commissions in Persian Revival styles intensified to serve as proxies for Parsi civilizational claims, particularly right after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Via hundreds of grand Persepolitan facades of fire temples scattered over West India Aryan Parsis aimed to distinguish themselves from the Hindu and Muslim subjects of the empire and transform economic profit into cultural capital. Instead of reiterating the truistic binaries that ascribe revivalism to a nationalist impulse, I explore in this chapter the processes of artistic revival by triangulating the complexities of the Parsi metropolitan and colonial conditions in British India vis-à-vis the domain of Western racial discourses, art historiography, and contemporary architectural debates. Imbedded in imperial history, the Parsi brand of the Persian Revival reveals an ambivalent counternarrative to British imperialism that was invested in the local appropriation of Western cultural and civilizational ideals. Individual Parsi patrons, who believed in and benefited from British jurisprudence and education, negotiated the currents of colonial identity formation through a unique conception of good taste. While the neo-Gothic intended to showcase the cosmopolitan identity of the exilic community, the neo-Persian exhibited its racial, historical essence. Charity and social work may have been a religious duty that was honed to secularize the Parsi brand of Zoroastrianism, but building, publishing, and collecting were civilizational tropes that enabled its adherents to participate in the minutiae of the ( 70 )  the persian revival

Great Game. Operating from multiple margins, reformist Parsis not only reworked Indo-Persian politics by challenging Qajar autocracy but also invented a new kind of architecture that claimed to be very old, pure, and authentic. This so-called Persian architecture of bull-headed columns, pediments with faravahars (farovashis in Gujarati), and Parsi open plans that allowed laypeople to see the sacred fire was in due course imported into Iran. While the discursive contours of Parsi art history have not been drawn with any precision, the impact of the Persian Revival is irrefutable. Imperial paradigm shifts, markedly the Indian Rebellion, were cast in racial terms, where the sheer proliferation of “Persian”-style temples indicated the germination of an indigenous emancipatory attitude toward power and the instrumentalization of architecture to mediate the manifold contradictions of postcolonial hierarchies. Cosmopolitan, economically autonomous, and culturally elite, the Parsi intelligentsia acted as the sole guardian of the Zoroastrian religion and its material patrimony. The emancipatory possibilities of architecture provided seemingly aloof public facades that aimed to convey explicit ethical and aesthetic values. While projecting an image of Parsi prestige and prosperity, this architecture ironed out conflicting communal loyalties and imperial agendas. Parsi architects and Parsi-studies historians have written extensively about the design and function of Zoroastrian fire temples in West India, art historians and British Raj experts have scrutinized the role of the Gothic Revival in the formation of imperial ideologies and identities, literary historians and early modern experts have traced the exchanges between Parsis and Iranians in the revival of ancient Iran, and scholars in the field of Parsi studies have explored many aspects of Parsi agency in the modernization processes of nineteenth-century British India. While I am not an art historian of the Indian subcontinent, my intention in this chapter—centered on the Persian Revival style—is to draw out the connections between these multiple spheres not made previously. Focused on the art history of Parsi fire temples, I demonstrate that these peculiar structures were a by-product of a network, a holistic system of selfhood embedded in imperial discourses about ancient civilizations, good taste, and modern processes. The story of Parsi architecture cannot be complete without understanding the broader architectural discussions about styles and power and without consideration of the agency of Parsis in a global charity that made an impact on Iranian modernity or a Freemasonry that left an imprint on British modernity. Underpinning these projects and discourses was the Parsi belief that they were the heirs to the Achaemenid Empire.

Searching for the Iranian Urheimat, 1830–1857 As the Parsi representative to Iran, Hataria settled first in Kerman, and then in Tehran, and his presence there ignited a period of active reconstruction of Zoroastrian/Mazdaic the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 71 )

infrastructure. His “zeal, courage, and persistency” fueled the nascent Qajar artistic revival that had been initiated by Fath Ali Shah three decades earlier, in the 1820s.3 From his landing on the shores of the Persian Gulf to his death in Tehran in 1890, Hataria, in his amateurish way, determinedly undertook art-historical data collecting on ancient Iranian edifices and revival commissions in architecture. Archeology, architecture, literature, collecting, diplomacy, and education were a few of the domains in which Hataria dabbled to revive the glory of his ancestors. Cleansing and purifying were as much techniques of recovery as strategies of reform. “Parsi reformers,” notes Monica Ringer, “justified religious reform as a ‘return’ to original, authentic practice and prophetic intent even as they adopted contemporary British social values as their own measure of authenticity. . . . [R]eform . . . consisted of the archaeological cleansing of historical detritus to recover the original, essential truth of Zoroaster’s message.”4 This desire to revive through a search for pure forms, backed by unprecedented wealth, set ablaze the Persian Revival in both Qajar and Parsi architecture. From Bushehr, Hataria headed directly to Ctesiphon—to the barrel vault of the last Sassanian king, Yazdgerd III (r. 632–51)—to begin collecting data on Achaemenid and Sassanian archeological sites as a deliberate feat of a revival of not just architecture but Iran itself—Iran as the “paradise,” in his estimation, that had “fallen into the hands of the denizens of hell.”5 Through the imagery of decline and degeneration, Hataria mounted a framework for modern Zoroastrian idioms of collective subject formation. Geographically speaking—or rather in the tradition of nineteenth-century Romanticism and historicist nostalgia—he engineered his revival journey to begin at the exact spot where Iran’s Zoroastrian royal history had ended: at the Palace of Khosrow (Taq-e Kasra, 540), located two weeks’ march from his landing port. The world’s broadest single-span vault of unreinforced brick, covering an impressive 11,940 square feet without centering, the catenary arch of Khosrow’s Palace had been a legend since the fall of Ctesiphon to the Arabs in 637.6 The tenth-century geographer Ebn al-Faqih had described it as “one of the marvels of the world”; for Hataria, Taq-e Kasra embodied the single most symbolic monument in Iranian art history.7 A pivotal figure in the “rediscovery of the pre-Islamic heritage,” he was, as argue both Michael Stausberg and Daniel Sheffield, “the first to posit the ‘continuous decline’ model of post-Sasanian Zoroastrian history that became very important in the development of Iranian nationalism” and “almost paradigmatic among Parsi . . . and Western historians of Zoroastrianism.”8 As Hataria stood in front of the colossal barrel vault flanked on each side by a massive wing, Taq-e Kasra germinated an idea of rebirth in the psychological aspiration of home, of Urheimat. Although still lacking any coherent rhetoric, Hataria, with his discursive effort, aimed to heal the historical rupture at Ctesiphon and to empower a restaging of Zoroastrian universal history. In search of the “mythical days of the ancestral empire,” Hataria ( 72 )  the persian revival

left Baghdad on April 10, 1854, and stationed himself in Shiraz to survey Persepolis, Pasargadae, Naqsh-e Rostam, Firuzabad, and Darabgird.9 On July 6 he marched north and eighteen days later arrived in Yazd, where he established himself among the Zoroastrian community and stayed for the next fourteen months, during which he conducted studies of the community’s infrastructure, both historical and current. In the summer of 1855, Hataria moved permanently to the capital city, Tehran, where he used his extensive network to accomplish what he had set out to do. Henceforth Persia became home, India a sojourn. Before embarking in 1863 for a two-year stay in Bombay, he also surveyed Taq-e Bostan and Bisotun in Kermanshah.10 His travelogue, Travels in Iran: A Parsi Mission to Iran (1865), attests to the fact that his itinerary was governed by his desire to study Zoroastrian architectural sites. Safavid Isfahan, for instance, seems to have been a mere footnote in his expeditions. The retrieval and preservation of ancient Iran’s artistic heritage conditioned his broader mission. From the outset, he deployed scientific methods to nurture his revival project. He “spent long days in traveling and making inquiries and collecting documentary evidence,” while meticulously recording his process of evidence gathering, as traced by Stausberg.11 Trusting that it was “the duty of every faithful person to collect, publish, and revive the knowledge, skills, industries, rules, regulations, and politics of the ancient Parsis,” he invested a lifetime of travels from Bombay to Punjab, from Afghanistan to Rajasthan, from Hormoz to Baghdad, and from Shiraz to Kurdistan to collect some three thousand coins in addition to countless vessels, photographs, paintings, manuscripts, and books in various languages associated with Zoroastrian culture.12 During the transformative four decades of Naser al-Din Shah’s reign (1848–96), Hataria acted as the singular amasser, cultivator, and dispenser of modernist knowledge on ancient Iranian art and architecture. His accumulating was outdone only by his building. Hataria’s efforts at revival thus cast two centuries of European theories on language, race, and art onto the domain of architectural design. Questions regarding how to restore and reconstruct and which historical era and style to copy were bound up with the broader objective of purification. Alongside his other initiatives, his restoration of existing Zoroastrian fire temples and erection of new ones—as a return path to a golden age—set off assorted discussions about art-historical accuracy and stylistic appropriateness. He was a formidable figure by all accounts, and his architectural decisions were shaped by diasporic anxieties and imperial epistemology. Hataria’s largesse was matched by the personalities and purses of the Bombay-based men who sponsored his projects in Iran. Cotton industrialist Mervanji Framji Panday (1812–1876) was notable among them. Moved by the stories of his mother, Golestan Banu, who had herself escaped Iran as a child, he formed the Amelioration Society in 1853.13 The organization’s goal, to advocate on behalf of Iran’s Zoroastrians, drew influential Parsi reformists such as Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917), Nowrozji Furdunji the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 73 )

(1817–1885), Khurshedji Nasarvanji Cama (1816–1885), and equally prominent conservatives, including Dinshaw Maneckji Petit (1823–1901), Rustom N. Wadia (1876–1919), and Muncherji Mervanji Bhownagree (1851–1933), to a common cause.14 Manekji Nasarvanji Petit (1827–1891), Framji Nasarvanji Patel (1804–1892), M. F. Panday, and D. M. Petit served as the society’s first four presidents.15 The ties between the first members were not just ideological, though; they were also familial and therefore, no doubt, the reason for the society’s longevity and success. D. M. Petit had married Bai Sakarbai, sister of M. F. Panday, while M. N. Petit was D. M. Petit’s older brother.16 Upon the arrival of Hataria’s first report to Bombay, the society held a meeting on January 11, 1855, to “consider the resolutions to be adopted.” To the alarm of the members, “the most pathetic” details in the report revealed the “impoverished condition of the Iranis” and the “deteriorating conditions of Iran” itself.17 In contrast to earlier accounts—for instance, Molla Firuz’s Wisdom of the Religion of 1786—Hataria testified to the near extinction of Zoroastrianism and its material heritage in the ancient homeland.18 The society’s mission in Iran, invested in its representative, Hataria, was reversing the historical inevitability of this “extinction.” This entailed, first and foremost, the production of the first Iranian survey of Achaemenid and Sassanian archeology and architecture, Mohammad Naser Forsat’s Asar-e ajam (1896). Appealing to a diasporic anxiety of racial duty and historicist urgency, the “first, and obvious, ‘external’ object of Parsi charity” was decided upon during the January meeting.19 Through communal subscription aimed at permanently bettering the daily lives of Iran’s Zoroastrians, these Parsi men vowed to abolish the heavy poll tax on Zoroastrians and bequeath upon them the right to build, to travel, and to educate. Tailored as an instrument of “progressiveness” and a means to dislodge the clerics from their historical leadership position, mercantile Parsi charity was channeled from one of the wealthiest cities of the Raj into some of the most impoverished regions in provincial Iran to realize multiple construction projects.20 Hataria excelled as the node in these socioeconomic and heritage campaigns. Ignoring the Qajar prohibition on the preservation of Zoroastrian edifices, he began to restore and erect a series of major buildings for Zoroastrian purposes. Within a year of his arrival, he restored the Adur Farrobay Atash Bahram temple of Yazd (fire 1790, current temple, replacing Hataria’s, 1934, fig. 22), the Atash Bahram being the highest grade of the three Zoroastrian fires. This temple in Yazd, one of Iran’s most populated Zoroastrian towns, had been mentioned by earlier travelers. Financed through the Dinshaw Manekji Petit’s funds, the new temple protected the flame donated in 1790 by Surat’s Nasarvanji Koyaji. Ouseley reported as early as 1819 that his brother, Gore Ouseley, had transferred funds to a certain “Feridu’n a Gabr” for the Yazd fire temple.21 In 1865 Hataria reported that Seth Nasarvanji Koyaji (Kohyar in Persian) had erected a new “atash bahram” in Yazd and, through a waqf endowment, had purchased and rented land, the Baq-e Chenar, ( 74 )  the persian revival

Fig. 22  Southwest elevation of Adur Farrobay Atash Bahram fire temple, Yazd, Iran, 1934. Photo: author.

to finance the maintenance of the temple, but Hataria observed that because the renter never paid rent, the temple was in a “sad plight.”22 In 1857 Hataria rebuilt another temple in Kerman, while restoring the Adaran—the second grade of Zoroastrian fire—temples in the villages of Qanat Ghesan in Kerman and Khoramshah in Yazd.23 In the following decades large funerary towers (dakhma), modeled after the ones in Bombay, with high walls to conceal the exposure of corpses—such as the 1674 Malabar Hill one designed by Modi Hirji Vatcha—were constructed in Yazd, Kerman, and Sharifabad under Hataria’s direction.24 At the foot of Kerman’s dakhma, Edward Browne and his Zoroastrian companion, Feraydun, had found the inscription date of April 25, 1867, and the curse that Hataria had left there to frighten trespassers: “O friend! when thou passest by the corpse of thine enemy / Rejoice not, for on thee will the same fate fall.”25 When the Yazdi priests refused to expose the bodies in Hataria’s dakhma, preferring the old, “traditional” clay and mud to the “modern style” in stone, he absolved them “due to [their] want of education.”26 This did not deter Hataria in 1865 from erecting two additional stone dakhmas in Qanat Ghesan and Ray. Each was built intentionally without a doorway, so that bodies were lowered down with a chain onto the pavis, the flat tiled surface for the exposure of cadavers.27 With M. F. Panday’s aid, Hataria also built a water reservoir “of a considerable size” at Kuh-e Chakmaku and a “dome of great size, together with cooking places,” at Akda.28 Through his mediation, Parsi the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 75 )

charity was allocated to other Zoroastrian pilgrimage amenities, including sanctuaries and water tanks at the shrines of Banu Pars and Pir-e Sabz. Furthermore, when Naser al-Din Shah lifted the ban on Zoroastrian education, Hataria organized the construction of schools, seeing to some twelve by the time of his death in 1890.29 In contrast to the conspicuousness of Parsi edifices, fear of visibility and hence of destruction governed the design principles of Zoroastrian architecture in the nineteenth century. Under Qajar law, Zoroastrians were denied many privileges granted to Christians and Jews in a European protectorate, while Parsis enjoyed unprecedented economic and educational liberties under British rule. Whereas Parsis constructed ships and dockyards for the mighty British navy, Iran’s Zoroastrians were prohibited from raising their modest homes taller than one short floor.30 Rooms were to have no more than two openings, and the erection of wind towers (bad-girs) was not allowed for Zoroastrian residences. Forbidden also either to renovate existing or to build new fire temples, Zoroastrians instead appropriated ordinary houses for sanctuaries, in which they burned and protected their sacred flames.31 Village temples were undistinguished from village homes because extinguishing the fire remained an ongoing Muslim practice. Many travelers lamented the critical condition of Zoroastrians and the paranoiac nature of their architecture by underscoring the liberties permitted to their Parsi brethren.32 They relayed scattered and inconsistent data. Gobineau claimed that Iran’s Zoroastrians “know nothing of their religion,” and instead praised Parsi “merchants” for their progressive steps toward “purifying” Zoroastrianism.33 Jackson insisted that the “unpretentious dwelling” of Kalantar Dinyar Bahram, the head of Yazd’s Zoroastrian community, was the prototype of modern fire temples.34 In addition to “several Towers of Silence” (dakhmas) in Yazd, Lord Curzon in 1888 found four fire altars, which “in the prudent obscurity of private houses sustain[ed] the undying flame.”35 Parsi authors, in turn, produced a large body of literature featuring the civilizational urgency of the situation. In 1858 Dosabhai Framji pointed to the “miserable conditions” of Iran’s Zoroastrians who sought Parsi aid in order to be “rescue[d]” from Qajar “oppression.”36 Having been given the honor to enter Yazd’s Atash Bahram temple, Jackson found it “a simple, unpretentious building,” which from outside “would hardly have been possible to recognize . . . as a temple at all.” After passing through several corridors and antechambers, he stepped into “the large oblong chamber, or chapel, adjoining the sanctum sanctorum,” where the fire burnt.37 In the design of Iran’s fire temples, the main drive had been prudence. As Zoroastrians became a tiny minority of no significance after the spread of Islam in Iran, their temples turned into structures that hid, rather than displayed, their identity. These edifices thus served as mere vessels whose function was to make the sacred flame invisible. “Accordingly it became the custom,” noted Mary Boyce, “to make the sanctuary very small and to hide [the fire] away in the furthest recesses of the building, with access only by a tiny inconspicuous door, no ( 76 )  the persian revival

bigger than a cupboard’s.”38 To substitute for the hidden fire, as well as to confuse any intruders, Zoroastrians in Sharifabad and other villages in Yazd installed smaller flames in the prayer hall for the temporary use of the laity. Set on a polished pillar, these were appropriately called kalaks (“tricks” in Persian). By the late 1890s, when Zoroastrians were granted the right to build, the tradition of designing temples as a distinct architectural type had died. Iran’s Zoroastrians would look eastward for inspiration. Hataria’s network enabled him to accomplish his most significant feat. As a British subject, he was protected by the British ambassador in Tehran, Sir Henry Rawlinson, who in 1836 had been posted at Kermanshah by the East India Company and had subsequently presented to Mohammad Shah (r. 1834–48) the first Persian-language translation of Darius’s cuneiform script at the Achaemenid site of Bisotun.39 Their shared passion for ancient Iran compelled Rawlinson to secure Hataria’s first royal audience before Naser al-Din Shah in Tehran’s Golestan Palace. When in June 1873 Queen Victoria arbitrated a meeting between the king and a group of Parsis at Buckingham Palace—including N. Furdunji and D. Naoroji of the Amelioration Society—the king abolished the poll tax on Iran’s Zoroastrians with a decree of August 1882.40 Co-opting the colonial system of the protectorate, Parsis became the custodians of Zoroastrianism and its cultural patrimony in the Qajar Empire. In one place, they were the colonized; in the other, the patrons and protectors. No matter how “valiant,” however, Hataria could not have played such a crucial role in the Persian Revival movement without the systems and ideals of what Christine Dobbin has dubbed the English-educated “Bombay intelligentsia” of the mighty British Empire.41 In that sense, the Persian Revival was a thoroughly nineteenth-century product of the certainties and the ambivalences of empire making. The Amelioration Society’s embrace of Iran as an object of reform was not the first time the Parsi elite had gathered around an enlightened cause; the society itself was a manifestation of a century-long self-conscious push for Parsi economic integration in Western imperialism. Freemasonry and other secularist membership networks such as the Amelioration Society and the Royal Asiatic Society, organized by native reformists, enabled not only renewed connections between Iran and India but gave birth to a new kind of Persian revivalist ideology and symbolism. The Zoroastrian/Mazdaic doctrine of goodness (i.e., good thought, good deed, good word), spirit of charity, and call for mental and physical purity were echoed in Masonic philosophies of brotherly love, charity, and truth. “Parsis could objectively claim,” as Simon Deschamps maintains, “a certain level of compatibility with masonic moral and spiritual values.”42 There is also little doubt that Parsi Masons were fully aware of Chevalier Ramsay’s Les voyages de Cyrus (1727) and of the Masonic reference to Cyrus the Great, who in 538 bce freed the captive Jews, enabling them to return to Palestine and rebuild Solomon’s Temple, itself carrying central Masonic significance.43 the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 77 )

As of its founding on December 15, 1843, many reformist Parsis with revivalistic inclination began to join the Rising Star of Western India in Bombay, the first “native” lodge in the empire. The founder, Maneckji Cursetji, had, as an Indian, been denied entrance to the Old Lodge Perseverance a year earlier. After being initiated in France, he returned to Bombay to establish the Lodge Rising Star with the help of Provincial Grand Master James Burnes. Its first members played key roles in the development of Parsi reform: M. N. Petit and D. M. Petit were the first and fourth presidents of the Amelioration Society; M. M. Bhownagree and K. R. Cama were also members of the society; Ardeshir Cursetji Wadia (1808–1877) was chief engineer of the Bombay Dockyard, a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, and instrumental to the abolition of the poll tax on Iran’s Zoroastrians; Dosabhai Framji Karaka (1829–1902) served as editor of several reformist journals and was a teacher at Elphinstone College; and Mervanji Maneckji Seth (d. 1872), a master of the lodge, was a patron of one of the Persian Revival fire temples. On January 3, 1843, a Masonic procession through the streets of Byculla, Bombay, culminated in the laying of the foundation stone for the Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Hospital. Encircled by Parsi dignitaries, the British Brethren of Lodge Perseverance “descended into the trench” and raised the stone.44 As the “solemn music” began to play, “the Provincial Grand master deposited the coins and the Inscribed Plate in their respective places, and spread the cement with a trowel” (55–56). The inscription for the hospital, one of the first to teach Western medicine in Asia, listed “James Burnes, K. H., Provincial Grand Master of Western India,” immediately below Queen Victoria and Governor-General of India Lord Ellenborough, followed by two dates: “On Tuesday, the third day of January, In the year of the Christian Era, 1843, and of Masonry, 5843” (54). The ceremony was carefully choreographed. “According to the rules of Architecture, and in conformity with [Masonic] ancient rite and usages,” the stone was struck three times with the Masonic mallet, upon which a blessing was read by the provincial grand master, so that the hospital might “be a lasting monument” of “wisdom and taste, and of the noble spirit and the splendid liberality of its founder” (56–57). After the cornucopia and cups of wine and oil were poured over the stone, Burnes addressed Sir Rustomjee Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy (1783–1859). Surrounded by British Masons in their handsome regalia, Sir J. J. stood out as the generous patron of the building. He had made his wealth in cotton and opium trade with China. His donation to the Amelioration Society for the marriage settlement of poor Zoroastrian girls was a tiny fraction of his philanthropy. Burnes compared Sir J. J. to architecture, noting that through his patronage he had “attained the summit of the masonic structure, which is Charity” (64). “You are a wise Master Builder,” Burnes added, “a living stone, squared, polished, fashioned, and proved by the hand of the Great Master himself,” and concluded, “May you, Sir Jamsetjee, like the foundation we have laid, long be stable ( 78 )  the persian revival

and secure—may you, for years, be spared as the corner-stone of Charity” (65). Sir J. J., whose philanthropy earned him the first baronetcy of Bombay, in 1857, in turn praised the fraternity for “its great antiquity, its universal benevolence, its toleration,” and “pure charity to all mankind” (66). That the British state, Parsi patronage, civic duty, and Freemasonry met on the stage of architecture spoke volumes about their partnership in imperial practices. The inaugurations of imposing buildings such as the J. J. Hospital, during which homage was paid to native patrons through Masonic rites, were notable occasions for Parsis to occupy public space and to assert historicity and statehood through participation in formal ceremonies in the ritual- and symbol-crazed empire. Stone laying in “Masonic forms and pageantry,” as argues Vahid Fozdar, gave “spectators the impression that the Craft . . . was the organized ‘religion’ of the British-Indian state.”45 The philanthropy of civic architecture and the inauguration of benevolent institutions through Masonic rites validated Parsi partnership in not only the making of the British Empire but also the universalism of modernity. The civilizational merits of Parsi-sponsored buildings “in the service of British construction of India” were masterfully publicized in the equally well-oiled Parsi press. Style’s unsubtle signifier—that is, the intertextuality of architectural meaning—was instrumentalized as an attribute of power. The Gothic and the Classical Revivals, reserved for such hospitals as Sir J. J.’s, stood in stark contrast to the Persian Revival, though both belonged to the same regime of signs that visualized the intentional and sophisticated “subalternity of an elite.”46 Through patronage and the rituals involved in such an undertaking, the Parsis usurped the “disciplinary function of architecture,” as argues Baucom, which “had become one of the fundamental hypotheses of English’s imperial epistemology,” for they too knew how to read Ruskin, Pugin, and the Builder.47 During the second meeting of the Lodge Rising Star, in March 1844, six “Persian Moguls,” meaning Muslim Iranians, were brought forth as Masonic candidates.48 At this and several following meetings, the Master addressed the “native” brethren in Persian.49 For aspiring Parsis, who took great pride in being descendants of ancient Iranians, the use of Persian and the Avesta in the lodge was vital. The Persian language had been the lingua franca of the Mughal court for centuries and continued to be the language of the colonial elite until the East India Company’s act of 1837 replaced Persian as the official administrative language with regional vernaculars. In 1851 five additional members were initiated into the Lodge Rising Star, including Bombay’s Qajar consul Mirza Hasan Khan, two leading Muslim Iranian merchants, Mohammad Sadeq and Haji Mehdi Shirazi, and a certain “Maneckjee Limjee Anteria”—that is, none other than Manekji Limji Hataria of the Amelioration Society.50 As members in yet another global web, these men channeled Persian revivalistic practices through Freemasonry. the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 79 )

The promises of universal brotherhood, charity, and benevolence as well as membership in a global exchange of ideas, signs, and systems were appealing to both Parsi reformists in British India, as an elite minority, and Iran’s political elite, who sought fair rule in Qajar absolutism. If, as Masonic historians have observed, in nineteenth-century European metropoles joining Freemasonry meant opting for the status quo, in the colonial peripheries it signified choosing the exceptional, the vanguard.51 For Parsis or Iranians, membership in the craft was not about a rare occasion to socialize and interact with Europeans of high position on an equal footing. It was rather a unique partnership of a shared worldview of not just the present but of a past that in the discursive sphere fashioned much of the future. The engineering of discourse on Iranian civilization, primarily through Mithraism, was at the core of both Freemasonry and the Persian Revival.52 Masonry was seen as a “fraternal cosmopolitanism” that, in tandem with a universalist narrative on Aryan Irano-Indian civilization, “undermined the rule of colonial difference.”53 Its simultaneous claim to both universality and antiquity formed a cornerstone of Parsi secular reform. Midcentury English-educated Parsi sons of immensely wealthy merchants were in the singular position to straddle a British brand of modernity and Iran’s racial and cultural claim to antiquity. Like European Freemasons, they appointed themselves gatekeepers of “the secret wisdom of the ancients from generation to generation for millennia.”54 And so they built. Masonic philosophy encouraged this gatekeeping. On June 24, 1847, for instance, in an address to his Parsi brethren, Burnes insisted that “the symbol which I hold in my hand, the triangle within a circle, was used by Zoroaster” himself.55 Parsi membership in Western networks allowed Zoroastrianism “as a way of life” to become a “philosophy of life” that included the transformation of Parsi space.56 As the author of History of Lodge Rising Star, D. F. Wadia, put it in 1912: “The Parsees and Mahomedans especially of the Persian race take to Masonry as young ducks take to water. The moment they enter the holy precincts they find themselves in their own element.”57 Through the Masonic structure and its extensive global network, Persian revivalist ideas disseminated among the reformist elite across class, national, and religious boundaries. “One of the first global institutional networks,” Freemasonry provided “connection-building” for the discourse on Iranian civilization to evolve and spread.58 By 1870 the lodge’s charity had reached the orphans of Singapore and poor Zoroastrians in Iran.59 It also provided “the constant tension between alterity and universalism . . . between ‘othering’ and ‘brothering.’”60 As members of global institutions and fellowships, Parsis both reinforced and challenged the norms. Acting as mediatory agents of identities, they straddled the local and the global, thus transforming both. A Parsi community leader, a staunch reformist, a prolific scholar, a philanthropist, and an overt Freemason and Masonic author, Kharshedji Rustomji Cama (1831–1909) spanned the vast net of European and native Freemasonry, Western scholars and colonial ( 80 )  the persian revival

authorities, Parsi and Zoroastrian figures and institutions, and Qajar ideologues and politicians who were in some form or other interested in Iran’s antiquity. After graduating from Elphinstone College, Cama went to London to further his interest in ancient Persian subjects. After arriving in 1850, he studied Pahlavi and Avestan with French-German Assyriologist Julius Oppert, German Shahnameh expert Julius von Mohl, and German pioneer of Iranian philology Friedrich Spiegel. Upon his return, Cama was elected Worshipful Master in the Lodge Rising Star for the years 1861–62 and then again for 1893.61 He became an active member of the lodge and many other organizations, such as the Amelioration Society and the Royal Asiatic Society of Bombay. Cama also hosted in India such influential and pioneering figures in Avestan and Zoroastrian studies as Columbia University professor A. V. Williams Jackson and École des hautes études professor James Darmesteter.62 Jackson’s scholarship on Zoroastrianism in the 1880s and 1890s earned him a warm Parsi welcome during his 1901 and 1911 visits to Bombay. Cama also devoted a significant amount of his scholarship to translating the works of German academics, including Spiegel, Johann-Gottlieb Rhode, Andreas David Mordtmann, Adolf Rapp, and Alexander Kohut.63 His return to Bombay in 1861 marked the beginning of a prolific career in publishing, lecturing, teaching, building, and organizing, all aimed at settling the historical connections between Zoroastrian theology, Persian language, Indo-European race theories, progressive sociopolitical agendas, and a Masonic worldview. Cama argued for these ties in such works as A Discourse on Zoroastrians and Freemasonry (1876), A Discourse on Freemasonry Among the Natives of Bombay (1877), and A Discourse on the Mithraic Worship and the Rites (1876).64 In his journal, the Study of Zoroastrianism (Zarthoshti Abhyas), he went so far as to assert, “Zoroaster was a Freemason.”65 Gathered in the Scottish Masonic Hall on Gowallia Tank Road on March 21, 1874, the members of the Lodge Rising Star along with brethren from three other native lodges celebrated, “for the first time in the annals of Freemasonry,” the ancient Persian New Year, Nowruz.66 Cama inaugurated the event—his brainchild—with a lecture entitled “A Discourse on Jamshedi Naoroz.” Dressed in full regalia, he began by clarifying the cardinal bond between Freemasonry and Zoroastrianism and then elaborated on the name of the henceforth annual event: Jamshedi Naoroz Masonic Festival. “Tradition reports,” he claimed, “it was King Jamshed, the second Monarch of the Old Peshdadian dynasty, who . . . ordained that the first day” of the new year “should be fixed at the Vernal Equinox” and celebrated every year.67 Following the French Masonic model of the “Vernal Equinox Fête,” the brethren had decided to revive an old tradition through Masonic rituals, based on the logic “that practice was continued regularly for ages till the downfall of the ancient Persian Empire and the extinction of the power of the ancient Persian race brought on a temporary interruption.”68 A long quotation from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of kings, ca. the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 81 )

977–1010)—accepted by Parsis as an accurate history of ancient Iran and Zoroastrianism despite inconsistencies with the Avesta—followed Cama’s explanation of the affinities between Freemasonry and ancient Iran through astronomy, among other disciplines. Every ensuing year, on March 21, the Persian New Year was celebrated under “the combined auspices of all the native Lodges working in Bombay.”69 As a part of Cama’s larger effort to make ancient Iran central to modernity’s experience, he organized Masonic processions between Masonic temples and fire temples.70 His wish to construct a research center atop the Dadiseth fire temple in Bombay, however, did not materialize before this death in 1909.71 But in 1916 the keystone of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute was laid in Masonic pageantry by some thirty Parsi Freemasons in regalia.72 Representing the life of its founder, the entrance of the tall freestanding building is announced by two Persepolitan columns with bull-headed capitals, above which hovers a large faravahar. Stated in the deed of trust, the “purposes” of the institute were, and remain today, to “advance oriental studies in general and Iranian studies in particular.”73 The lasting impact of community leaders, scholars, and philanthropists such as K. R. Cama is revealed by the way they bridged diverse progressive institutions and networks. Their claim of a pivotal role for ancient Persian civilization in the development of world history, fostered by European scholars, paired well with their Masonic belief in a universal fraternity. The symbols on the official banner of the Lodge Rising Star duplicated Robert Ker Porter’s drawings of the iconography of the Achaemenid tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam (see fig. 6). The details of a fire altar with a burning flame and flanked by a round sun were faithfully transferred from the pages of the travelogue onto the Masonic banner, which, in turn, became a source for the decorative program of fire temples. In the ambivalence of the postcolonial ecosystem, signs and theories freely moved from one locality to another as if to stabilize fluctuating identity pockets. Persian revivalistic imagery reappeared in Masonic spaces, and Masonic architectural conventions reconfigured efforts to revive former Persian greatness. This condensation of time and reformulation of space, continually fixing the norms of a positive self, were the experience of modernity. The 1840s and 1850s were revolutionary decades during which a complex network of individuals, associations, and undertakings that fermented Parsi reforms grounded on the recovery of Iran’s racial and cultural legends and legacies rapidly developed. Radical political events in 1857 solidified these trends into a discourse with some precise contours. The Amelioration Society was a direct link to Iran. At the same time, architectural commissions, academic organizations, and Masonic networks enabled the Parsi elite to produce and disseminate art-historical knowledge—at times accurate and scientific but at others invented and imagined—on ancient Iran. Reaching its zenith in the 1890s, the Persian Revival architecture in India was the most flamboyant ( 82 )  the persian revival

expression of the aspirations of these reformists. Patronage of public and private buildings had constituted an economically reliable and publicly visible means for wealthy Parsi merchants to plug into the mainstream of British Indian society during the first half of the century. In the second half, it enabled their English-educated sons to showcase Parsi progress and prosperity and Persian-Aryan ancestry. By 1855 these families “literally owned about half ” of Bombay—a city described as “the first great cosmopolis of the modern age”—and 40 percent dealt in trade. The real estate was vital to the birth of the Persian Revival.74 The accumulation of Parsi power had come with the commercial involvement of family founders in the East India Company in the eighteenth century. The Wadias, who had helped build the Bombay Dockyard since 1736, for instance, were hugely invested in Bombay landed property and were known for brokering “the most influential European houses” there, while the Banajis attracted British attention for being “rich natives” who erected a vast English-style “country house.”75 Each family had endowed a first-grade fire temple in its name. Indeed, the men of these families saw themselves as full-fledged subjects of British India, who commingled with their Hindu and Muslim compatriots and, through philanthropy and economic success, became key to the workings of the empire and, in due course, to mainstream politics of Indian independence. Their Gothic Revival commissions in the final decades of the century not only showcased Parsi contributions to the British Indian state but rendered Bombay the most prominent Victorian Gothic city in the world. “No city, even in Great Britain,” as Gavin Stamp observes, “can boast such a remarkable concentration of Victorian Gothic Revival public buildings as Bombay.”76 As power passed from the company to the Crown after 1857, architectural commissions took on an added layer of importance as signifiers of both public philanthropy, structures erected as a civic duty aimed at equal partnership with the Crown, and private amelioration, infrastructure built as an act of modernist reform aimed at raising the cultural worth of the Parsi community. The two civilizing missions were inextricably linked. Like the Bengali elite, Parsis opened up physical, architectural spaces as a way to force themselves into a position of power in the postcolonial ambivalence of “statehood without citizenship.”77 Both Classical and Gothic Revivals were adopted to signal a standard of taste. Without naming them, James Fergusson applauded Bombay’s Parsi “merchants and civilians” for their “progress” in architecture.78 The wealthy among them espoused neoclassical styles for their residences for the same reason as the Bengali elite in Calcutta. As Swati Chattopadhyay notes, “neo-classicism was fashionable at the time [because] its scale had the possibility of creating grandeur, [because] it symbolized British rule and the elite were eager to follow their political superiors.”79 Neoclassical was a style of choice for many Parsi families probably because it signaled an appreciation for the canon of art history without so directly committing its patrons to the “Englishness” of the Gothic. The Parsis walked a delicate art-historical line the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 83 )

Fig. 23  Seth Bomanji Mervanji Mevawala Adaran fire temple, Byculla, Bombay, India, 1914. Photo: author.

straddling menace and mimicry. In 1880 Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney (1812–1878), an international banker, a Mason, and an Amelioration Society benefactor, commissioned Muncherji Cowasji Murzban to design his large residence, the Readymoney House (1880) in Malabar Hill, where Bombay’s governor Mountstuart Elphinstone had first erected a pitched-roof bungalow with an Ionic portico.80 Bomanji Dinshaw Petit followed suit with his own Chateau Petit, with the same choice of location, architect, and style.81 The neoclassical balconied facade of Readymoney House incorporated a portico that was itself topped by a pediment, a Masonic architectural import common in later Persian Revival temples such as Bombay’s Seth Adaran (1891, see figs. 34, 35), Anjoman Atash Bahram (1897, see fig. 41), Seth Pirojshah Ardeshir Patel Adaran (1908), and Seth Bomanji Mervanji Mevawala Adaran (fire 1851, temple 1914, Byculla, fig. 23), as well as Kekobad Rao Dadgah (1908) in Surat. In 1871 Sir J. J. likewise erected headquarters for a new organization he had founded in 1849: Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Parsi Benevolent Institute. The prominent four-story-high neoclassical building on Dadabhai Naoroji Road hinted at a shift in the internal power dynamics of the Parsi community.82 The institute was established in an attempt to take power away from the Punchayet, the Parsi administrative body first created in 1672. The attempt proved successful. In two years, Sir J. J. had “induced his friends to formally declare his institute a trust.”83 By the time he was ( 84 )  the persian revival

ready to relocate his trust, now entirely peopled by lay merchants, the “old guard controlling the Punchayet” had become “ineffective and redundant.” Sir J. J.’s patronage not only had materialized the massive neoclassical edifice but, consequentially, had further helped shift power from the priestly to the lay class. In an act of nondiscriminating benevolence, he joined forces with prominent Indian philanthropists, including Baghdadi Jew Davis Sassoon and Daivadnya Brahmin Jaganath Shunkerseth, to sponsor the Victoria and Albert Museum (1871) in Byculla, Bombay, in a grand neoclassical style. Unlike those in Calcutta, the British authorities of Bombay encouraged native capital investments.84 This coincided with Parsi syncretic desire to fulfill ancient religious duties while being at the vanguard of modern reform. By the mid-1870s in Bombay, both major urban restructuring and an “airing of the respective merits of the Gothic and the Classical” were well under way.85 The Battle of the Styles had validated the diverse vernacular styles—most notably the Indo-Saracenic style—that now, particularly in the colonies, were sought after as symbols of ethnic sovereignty. Reformist Parsis already owned a solid historicist narrative, onto which they grafted a vernacular style all their own. The first appearance, in 1859, of the Persian Revival and the sudden mushrooming of fire temples with Persepolitan porticos and bull-headed capitals were by-products of the imperial debates tied to national demarcation and stylistic appropriateness in South Asia. The 1857 rebellion had solidified these debates into a discourse; for Parsis, 1857 served as a marker of différance. As dynamic partners in empire building, Parsis were part of the imperial conversations that manifested in stylistic choices. The classical, Gothic, and Persian styles were adopted, each in its mimetic perfection, in order to project the elite taste of Parsi patrons. That they used the Persian Revival style so freely betrays the elasticity of the political meaning of style. This elasticity, more importantly, betrays the subalternity of a native elite. In the post-1857 era, according to Thomas Metcalf, Bombay remained “scrupulously aloof ” from the Indo-Saracenic “as a colonial building style.”86 If the maharajas and the nawabs of Madras “very swiftly adopted” the Indo-Saracenic style as a strategy to project “simultaneously Indian and progressive” selfhood, then Parsis espoused Gothic, almost exclusively, as their preferred style for public commissions.87 In 1869 Jehangir Readymoney famously paid for an elaborate Gothic fountain in the Broad Walk of Regent’s Park in London. After financing the rather rugged Gothic building of the Ophthalmic Hospital (1866) in Byculla, Bombay, he channeled funds to erect a series of buildings on the University of Bombay campus, including the Convocation Hall (1874) and the University Library (1878), designed by one of the most successful and prolific exponents of Europe’s Gothic Revival, Sir George Gilbert Scott.88 In 1878, Sir J. J. relocated the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy School of Art, which he had founded in 1857, to a new Gothic complex designed by M. C. Murzban.89 the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 85 )

Similarly, Jalbhai Ardeshir Seth of the influential Seth family hired Nasarvanji Daraji Mirza to design an eclectically Gothic residential building in 1894.90 When, a year later, Bai Dinbai Nasarvanji Petit donated a substantial sum to house the library that her husband, president of the Amelioration Society M. N. Petit, had earlier endowed in memory of their only son, the resulting building came to dominate the area of the Fort district that contained other important Parsi buildings, including the 1881 Vatcha fire temple, across the Dr. Dadabhai Naoroji Avenue (fig. 24). On March 16 of the following year, D. M. Petit, the fourth president of the Amelioration Society, led the laying-of-stone ceremony for the Jamsetjee Nasarvanji Petit Institute and Library (1898). The multistory structure, complete with floor-to-ceiling stained glass, was a stunning example of Venetian Gothic, devoid of any Iranian references. A pioneer of India’s steel industry, a Mason, and an Elphinstonian, Jamsetji Nusservanji Tata (1839– 1904) outdid his peers when in 1887 he erected his extravagant neoclassical Esplanade House in Fort, only to outdo himself in 1903, in scale, style, and prime location, with the opening of the Taj Mahal Hotel.91 Designed by Sitaram Khanderao Vaidya and N. D. Mirza, it was described as a hybrid of “Rajput Renaissance, Saracenic and Victorian Gothic styles.”92 The first to accept both native and European guests, the Taj was certainly an anticolonial political commentary in the language of style. Although an engineer-architect employed at the Bombay Public Works Department from 1857 to 1893, Khan Bahadur Muncherji Cowasji Murzban (1839–1917) aspired to the lifestyle of his wealthy clients and erected, in the Esplanade, his three-story residence, named Golestan (1884).93 However, unlike many of them, he came from a priestly family. Murzban’s grandfather, Fardunji Murzbanji (1787–1847), had been a distant relative of Firuz, the son of Molla Kaus, who, like Hataria, a century earlier had taken his son with him to Yazd and Kerman in search of accurate knowledge on the Zoroastrian calendar. A pioneer in Indian printing and journalism, Murzbanji’s press, Bombay Samachar (1814), was the first to make the Dasatir (Dabestan-e Mazaheb) and Khordeh Avesta (little Avesta) available to Gujarati readers, while his newspaper (1822) of the same name, backed by Sir J. J.’s money, fought for social and religious reform, including a campaign for the approval of Freemasonry among Parsis.94 In 1841 Murzbanji established another press to secure his son’s future. Within a decade, Daftar Ashkara Press initiated publication of Rast Goftar—the organ of the young reformists. Murzbanji’s extensive list of publications reveals a keen interest in ancient Iran: an abbreviated version of the Shahnameh (1833) in Gujarati, a history of Iranian kings (1840), an essay on how to calculate the Jamshedi Naoroz (New Year, 1841), a Persian verse about the Banaji Fire Temple (1846; consecrated on the basis of the Irani calendar with some controversy just a year prior), and a Gujarati translation of Sa’adi’s Bustan (1257/1849). M. C. Murzban must have grown into adulthood hearing the legendary stories about how his grandfather had been a “herald of social and religious reform ( 86 )  the persian revival

Fig. 24  View of Dr. Dababhai Naoroji Avenue and the Bai Pirojbai Dadabhoy Maneckji Vatcha Adaran fire temple, designed by architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri, Fort, Bombay, India, 1881. Photo: author.

among the Parsees, at a time when they were steeped in ignorance and superstition”; among his reading was his grandfather’s translation of Sa’adi’s other major work, the Golestan (The rose garden, 1258/1838).95 As the most respected architect of his time, Murzban, in erecting his own rose garden, brought things full circle. By 1884, when Murzban was ready to name his estate, Parsis felt that, as Delphine Menant insisted in 1898, “the national spirit [had been] dead” within Iran since the Arab invasion and that only “inestimable benefits secured by the wealthy Parsis of Bombay for the unfortunate Guebres” could revive that spirit.96 If, in his Golestan mansion, Murzban embraced the Romanesque style, five years later he displayed his dexterity by proposing a Transitional Romanesque Revival style for the State Records Office building, a wing of which was allocated to the famed Elphinstone College. “Nearly all” the public structures on the fashionable Esplanade Road were constructed “under his immediate supervision,” noted his biographer, adding that he was “himself the architect of some of the most pleasing structures.”97 Bombay’s ambitious Gothic Revival public works by Murzban seem countless, among them the General Post Office in Fort (1872), the General Telegraph Office in Fort (1878), the Alexandra Native Girls’ English Institute in Fort (1881), the Pestanji Hormasji Cama Hospital for Women and Children in Esplanade (1886), the Bomanji Edalji Allbless Obstetric Hospital in Esplanade (1890), the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 87 )

the Sir Dinshaw Manekji Petit Hospital for Women and Children in Byculla (1892), the Parsi Lying-in Hospital in Esplanade (1895), the Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney Building for the Elphinstone College and State Records Office in Fort (1889), and the Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Parsi Charitable Institution in Esplanade (1909).98 When Murzban, a Master Mason in the Lodge Rising Star and a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, retired from his post as the executive engineer of the Bombay Municipal Department, local newspapers described him as “a City Engineer of the highest order” and “an energetic public citizen.”99 In 1874 he traveled up and down Europe but never showed any curiosity toward Iran. I have found only one instance suggesting that Murzban was involved in the construction of a fire temple, the Seth Pirojsha Ardeshir Patel Dar-e Mehr (1908), and that in the neo-Romanesque style.100 Neither in temple design nor, for that matter, in any other building that I could find did he employ the Persian Revival style. It seems that Murzban disdained a style that was so distinctive of his family’s identity, against which he might have rebelled, perceiving any ties to Persia in architecture as an invented tradition not worth his professional time. Indeed, against the current of the Persian Revival, he remained one of the major players in shaping the hybridity of the empire. Parsis aspired to colonial power through patronage while operating from a range of margins as Zoroastrians, as original Persians, as British-Indian subjects, as (later) Indian citizens, and above all as a colonial intelligentsia, neither British nor Indian / both British and Indian. Through their unrelenting efforts to build, to collect, and to publish, they personified the privileged colonial elite who occupied a unique position in the matrix of the British Empire. As the “beneficiaries of colonial rule par excellence,” Parsis not only established institutions that advocated change in Iran and India but also created hybrid cultural norms, especially in architecture, that shifted the terms of colonial mingling, borrowings, and definitions of taste.101 Individual Parsi patrons, who believed in and benefited from British jurisprudence and education, negotiated the currents of colonial identity formation through a unique conception of good taste; as Tanya Luhrmann has put it, “the good Parsi was almost English.”102 Architectural commissions negotiated complex and continually shifting identity pockets at a time of rapid change. The Classical, Gothic, and Persian Revival styles that patrons commissioned during the nineteenth century were expressions of the adaptability of the Parsis as Arnold Toynbee’s “creative minorities” and projected the Parsi intelligentsia in terms of Partha Chatterjee’s “subalternity of an elite.”103 Architecture quite literally stabilized and grounded in solid foundations the uncertainty of in-between identities: while their Persian Revival commissions secured Parsi identity in a historicist footing by “a glorification of their own historical past,” their Gothic Revival buildings spoke demonstrably to the modern progress made by them.104 These English gentlemen, but not quite, thus embodied the need to mutate into the colonizer through cultural mimicry while posing ( 88 )  the persian revival

as a menace to the episteme of imperialism through the perfection of that mimicry. Homi Bhabha’s “mimic man,” himself a Parsi, was deployed through the tactful adoption of the Persian Revival.105 Architecture masked the inherent ambivalence of the Parsi cultural project.

Ancient Iran in Exile, 1851–1881 As the century entered the fifties, the Parsi intelligentsia began to cling to the idea of being true, yet displaced, Persians: a diasporic community that traced its home to the ancient land of Iran and the ethos of Achaemenid and Sassanian material culture. The year of the Great Exhibition in London saw the proliferation of art-historical scholarship on ancient Iran (as discussed in chapter 1). Eighteen fifty-one also marked a time of Parsi activities that aimed to increase knowledge on ancient Iranian art, a process with seeds in a colonial clash. The baptism of three Parsi boys in 1839 by the Scottish minister John Wilson, president of the Royal Asiatic Society in Bombay, followed by his 1843 anti-Zoroastrian publications, had shaken Parsi reformists—who had themselves, as young boys, witnessed the inability of the hereditary priesthood to defend the Zoroastrian theological position against Christian-missionary attacks. Realizing that their priests could not read the Avestan and Pahlavi texts, the British-educated laity had mobilized. If wealthy merchants like Sir J. J. and C. J. Readymoney had inadvertently revised Zoroastrianism through their liberal philanthropy, their sons’ generation deliberately and methodically choreographed the formula of return-as-reform; they embarked on secularizing a Parsi brand of Zoroastrianism wherein ancient Iran played a vital discursive role. In 1851 Elphinstone College instructor N. Furdunji and his former student twenty-six-year-old D. Naoroji established the Religious Reform Association (Rahnumai Mazdayasnan Sabha) with the financial backing of another future Amelioration Society member, K. N. Cama. The association was launched, as its president, Furdunji, put it, “to fight orthodoxy . . . to break through the thousand and one religious prejudices that tend to retard the progress and civilization of the community.”106 Its purpose was, according to D. F. Karaka, a co-reformist and Amelioration Society member, to “restore” Zoroastrianism to “its pristine purity.”107 At age twenty, Sorabji Shapurji Bengali (1831–1893), a future Mason in the Lodge Rising Star and a zealous Iran advocate, became its secretary. Bengali took over, in November 1851, as editor of the biweekly Rast Goftar (Truth teller), which was published by Murzban’s press.108 Started by Furdunji and Naoroji, the paper in no time became a weekly, when K. R. Cama, Furdunji, and Karaka joined K. N. Cama as co-owners.109 With the primary purpose of advocating modern transformations, the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 89 )

it was, as Delphine Menant simply described it, “the organ of the reformists.”110 In the same year, Bengali launched his second periodical, Jagat Premi (Friend of the world), which was a new and “systematized attempt to remind the Parsis,” regularly, “of the magnificence of ancient Iran, the land of their illustrious forefathers.”111 As Rast Goftar advocated future reforms such as women’s education, Jagat Premi looked back in praise of Achaemenid and Sassanian art, enhanced by high-quality illustrations. The weekly was, as Daniel Sheffield notes, “dedicated to the dissemination of new discoveries of ancient Iranian archaeology.”112 In 1852 it published, among others, a sketch of the Bisotun relief of Darius with his prisoners, followed the next year by images of Cyrus’s relief and tomb at Pasargadae. Written in Gujarati, Jagat Premi rendered ancient Iran legible and brought its histories and legends to the doorstep of ordinary Parsis. In the production of literature, Sir J. J. again stepped in. The Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Translation Fund was established to translate books related to the ancient texts of Parsi and Iranian culture into modern Gujarati.113 Many of the young reformists took advantage of the fund. Bengali won the 1856 award for “the best essay on the books and languages of the religion of Zoroaster and their antiquity.”114 His book consisted of a historiographical survey of books in Zend, Pahlavi, Pazand, and Persian. When Bengali exhausted the trust’s funds, Sir J. J. paid for the publication of the second volume out of his pocket. To implement Bengali’s theories in pedagogy and education, Sir J. J. in 1863 subsidized the foundation of the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Zarthoshti Madrasa.115 Others associated with the Amelioration Society were active throughout the fifties too. In 1853, the same year that his father, F. N. Patel, formed the society, Dhanjibhai Framji published a grammar of the Pahlavi language. To teach Persian, Zand, and Pahlavi languages to the priestly class, K. N. Cama followed suit in 1854 by forming the Molla Firuz Madrasa, and his second cousin, K. R. Cama, returned in 1861 from his studies with Spiegel, Oppert, and Mohl to teach Avestan and Pahlavi to aspiring priests; three years later he launched the Society for Research into the Zoroastrian Religion.116 In that year another Amelioration Society patron, Mancherji Hormasji Cama, commissioned Arthur Henry Bleeck to translate into English Spiegel’s Zend-Avesta (1854), which instigated a long list of Parsi translations and studies on ancient Iran.117 Among Parsi authors of ancient Iran, two—one generally overlooked, the other well recognized—stand out for our purposes: Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash (1848–1910) and Jivanji Jamshedji Modi (1854–1933). Both were vital to the transformation of activist and charity work, as undertaken by Hataria, into scientific scholarship. On the one hand, Modi’s prolific scholarship on ancient and modern Iran spanned some six decades, and his work was a cornerstone of the revival movement. Kiash, on the other hand, produced a more limited list, and my interest is focused on one, albeit exquisite, book, entitled Ancient Persian Sculptures, or The Monuments, Buildings, Bas-Reliefs, Rock Inscriptions, &c., &c., Belonging to the Kings of the Achaemenian and Sassanian ( 90 )  the persian revival

Dynasties of Persia (1889). On the first of April 1878, Kiash, a journalist and historian, disembarked on the shores of the Persian Gulf for a two-year tour of Iran. During his travels, his Gujarati translation of Sa’adi’s Golestan (1879), “with copious explanatory notes,” was published.118 Upon his return, on May 22, 1880, he began work on a Gujarati language travelogue, humbly entitled Travels in Persia (1882). Despite the fact that Hataria had preceded Kiash by a quarter of a century in his survey of ancient sites, Kiash was praised by his reviewers as “the first Parsee Traveller” to the Zoroastrian “ancient fatherland” to collect information on the ruins of ancient Iran during the time of Bombay’s “greatest prosperity and glory.”119 The travelogue consists of a four-hundred-page account of his journey through almost all the major Achaemenid and Sassanian sites in Qajar territories. Twenty-eight pages of skillful sketches—Sassanian reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam, Achaemenid tombs at Pasargadae, Darius and his prisoners at Bisotun, the grotto reliefs at Taq-e Bostan, and, certainly, Valerian at the foot of Shapur at Bishapur, Darabgird, and Naqsh-e Rostam—were incorporated into the narrative.120 In the footsteps of Charles Texier and James Fergusson, Kiash, in his last sketch, on a small scale attempts to reconstruct the Apadana and the Palace of Darius (see figs. 9, 13).121 In the context of imperial and minoritarian identity politics, knowledge was never valuable for its own sake but rather a handmaiden to the future. Kiash’s Travels in Persia must have been very popular among Parsi and British readers, as this convinced its author to take a second stab at a grander version of his work. In 1889 he unveiled his tour de force: the first compressive native survey of Achaemenid and Sassanian architectural sites that relied on (Western) art historiography and art-historical methods with exquisite illustrations. The 234-page book was again an immediate bestseller. His contemporaries, again misleadingly, praised Kiash as “the only Parsi scholar who has made, to any extent, a personal examination of the actual sculptured monuments of the Achaemenian and Sasanian dynasties in Persia itself, and published his result.”122 Supported by careful drawings, sketches, and plans executed in person on the ground, the descriptive narrative of the archeological sites was presented in English, Gujarati, and Persian. Remarkably, the text was typeset so that each illustration of a specific site corresponded to the pages on which the edifice was discussed in the three languages, one below the other in the order indicated above, a typesetting feat even by today’s standards. Under each image, captions were offered in the same three languages. “The very scanty remains of palaces, fire-temples, and mural pictorial records,” Kiash begins his tome, “which with difficulty survived the terrible Arab invasion of Persia in the year 632 A. D., are all that is left to us of the grandeur and glory which belonged to the ancient Monarchy and Religion that swayed the once all-powerful kingdom of ancient Persia.”123 Artistic leftovers denoted for Kiash a precise moment—632—between the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 91 )

a glorious before and a catastrophic after in a universalistic narrative. The twofold accomplishment of his book mirrored the Parsi reform strategy: a comprehensive scientific collection of knowledge about Iran’s ancient art and architecture whose aim was to further a model of an emancipated ethnic modernity. Amid this utopian projection, the author modestly situated himself in a specific historical moment: In the year 1878 I determined to visit the country also, and I passed through the chief places of interest, including most of its ruined cities, founded by Cyrus, Darius, Ardeshir, Shapoor, kings of the dynasties that held sway in those remote times. . . . As a descendant of that old race, who preferred exile to abandoning the religious worship they held so sacred, my feeling on visiting the ruined cities where that glorious faith had been cradled in past ages, was one amounting to awe for “The dead but sceptred sovereigns Who still rule our spirits from their urns,” and whose influence is still shed over us in our religion and pride of race. (preface) Kiash’s itinerary followed an art-historical trajectory, which, in turn, dictated the book’s organization in the following order: “Sculptures at Nacksh-i-Sapur,” “Persepolis or Takht-i-Jamshid,” “Sculptures at Nacksh-i-Rajab,” “Sculptures at Nacksh-i-Roostum,” “Pasargadae or Morgaub,” “Ecbatana or Hamadan,” “Mountain of Bi-Satoon,” “Takht-iBostan,” and “The City of Darab-Gerd” (contents). The sites’ textual descriptions are supported by a total of ninety-six full-page drawings, including elevations, site plans, floor plans, general perspectives, details of reliefs and motifs, comparative analyses of capitals, and sections of interiors and exteriors of edifices, as well as landscapes and depictions of coins. Many illustrations take their cues from earlier travelogues, particularly that of Ker Porter. At Persepolis, among many other sites, Kiash depicted the reliefs of Darius on his throne and under a parasol (his plates 26 and 27, fig. 25 here), an almost exact copy of Ker Porter’s plate 48 (fig. 6), as is the fight between the lion and the rhinoceros at the Apadana in Kiash’s plate 31. At Naqsh-e Rostam, the submission of Valerian to Shapur and the investiture of Ardeshir were highlights. The grotto details and hunting scenes at Taq-e Bostan are examples of artistic attention to detail, while the duplication of the grand vault of Ctesiphon demonstrates his skill in large scale (figs. 26, 27). Dedicating the book to Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, the viceroy of India from 1888 to 1894, Kiash intended to undo the “ruthless damage” that had been inflicted on Zoroastrian material culture by the “fierce onrush of those fanatical hordes” (Arabs) over the “conquered [old] race” (Persians). In sharing the White Man’s burden ( 92 )  the persian revival

Fig. 25  Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, illustrations of (left) the relief of Darius on his throne, attended by courtiers and supported by soldiers, and (right) the relief of Darius with attendants, under a parasol, with a faravahar overhead, at Persepolis, Iran. From Kavasji Dinshah Kiash, Ancient Persian Sculptures, or The Monuments, Buildings, Bas-Reliefs, Rock Inscriptions, &c., &c., Belonging to the Kings of the Achaemenian and Sassanian Dynasties of Persia (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1889), plates xxvi and xxvii, between pp. 90 and 91. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

with the British, the mission here was preconditioned by teleological, pedagogical, racial, and redemptive dispositions. “Where the all-effacing hand of time or the ignorant and wanton destructiveness of fanaticism has partially destroyed the object,” the author notes, “I have tried in my drawing to restore the original form and shape, where these were clearly indicated and could be safely done.” Kiash hoped that the completion of the book would “induce” Naser al-Din Shah to decree the preservation of the Achaemenid and Sassanian sites within the borders of modern Iran and that such a royal decree would “arouse the veneration of [Kiash’s] own people” toward Zoroastrian heritage in the British Raj. The main objective of the author, however, was cultural revival: to “bring back to life again the memory” of the great deeds of ancient “kings and priests and courtiers” (preface). The historiography of Western fascination with ancient Iran formed the academic backbone of the project. He listed his sources of authority on ancient Iranian art, which included the usual suspects: John Malcolm, the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 93 )

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f )

Fig. 26  Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, illustrations of Sassanian reliefs: (a) the investiture of the Ardeshir at Naqsh-e Rajab, (b) the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian and Philip the Arab at Naqsh-e Rostam, (c) the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian at Bishapur, (d) Shapur II’s suppression of a revolt at Tang-e Chogan, (e) a deer-hunting scene on the eastern wall of the large grotto at Taq-e Bostan, and (f ) the sculptural composition in the large grotto of Taq-e Bostan. From Kavasji Dinshah Kiash, Ancient Persian Sculptures, or The Monuments, Buildings, Bas-Reliefs, Rock Inscriptions, &c., &c., Belonging to the Kings of the Achaemenian and Sassanian Dynasties of Persia (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1889), plates xxxviii, between pp. 110 and 111; xli, between pp. 116 and 117; ii, between pp. 44 and 45; vi, between pp. 56 and 57; lix, between pp. 204 and 205; and lvi, between pp. 194 and 195. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

Fig. 27  Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, drawing of the facade of the Palace of Khosrow at Ctesiphon, Iraq. From Kavasji Dinshah Kiash, Ancient Persian Sculptures, or The Monuments, Buildings, Bas-Reliefs, Rock Inscriptions, &c., &c., Belonging to the Kings of the Achaemenian and Sassanian Dynasties of Persia (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1889), plate lxix, between pp. 194 and 195, following p. 234. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

William Ouseley, William Vaux, Fergusson, Ker Porter, James Baillie Fraser, Henry Rawlinson, Edward Thomas, James Morier, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. As a boy, Kiash had perused the writings and drawings of these authorities. He, like his co-reformists, was brought up on European literature about the wonders of ancient Iran found at the Elphinstone College. Graduation from Elphinstone defined these men as “the intelligentsia of the period.” In 1851 62 percent of its students consisted of Parsi boys from wealthy families.124 Its top pupils—the “Elphinstone reformers” D. Naoroji, K. R. Cama, J. N. Tata, D. F. Karaka, S. S. Bengali, and J. J. Modi—“swarmed” its Gothic Revival halls.125 In Elphinstone’s library, these boys immersed themselves in the canon of travelogues and art-historical literature that included John Chardin’s Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies (1686), Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier (Paris, 1676–77), James Morier’s Journey Through Persia (1812), John Malcolm’s History of Persia (1815) and Sketches of Persia (1861), certainly Ker Porter’s Travels (1821–22, with eighty-seven numbered plates, plus two frontispieces), James Baillie Fraser’s Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia (1834), William Ouseley’s Travels in Various Countries of the East, More Particularly Persia (1819–23) and Oriental Collections (1797–1800), William Sandys Wright Vaux’s Nineveh and Persepolis (1851), James Fergusson’s Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored (1851, with forty-two illustrations), George Rawlinson’s series on great Oriental monarchies (1862–76), Henry Rawlinson’s Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun (1846–51), Edward Thomas’s Early Sassanian Inscriptions, Seals, and Coins (1868), and the articles in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1834 on). Besides the Shahnameh, these boys also read what was widely available to educated Englishmen: Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum: An Episode (1853), Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859), Lady Sheil’s Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (1856), and Edward Backhouse Eastwick’s Journal of a Diplomat’s Three Years’ Residence in Persia (1864).126 Slipped into the back matter, the list of those who supported the publication of Ancient Persian Sculptures is revealing. The majority of the 164 subscribers purchased a single copy out of a total of 262 copies that were sold. That the book included at the end a list of subscribers spoke to the wide acceptance among Parsis of the importance of communal charity for knowledge production and of the foundational significance of this project itself—of studying up close, in situ, the architectural heritage of the Achaemenids and the Sassanians in the Urheimat. It is of little surprise that seventy-two copies were bought by eight associates of the Amelioration Society, seven of them as follows: its president at the time of the book’s publication, D. M. Petit, purchased twenty-five copies, the largest purchase by a single individual; Sir J. J. bought two copies for his own personal use and twenty-five copies for his Translation Fund; its founder, F. N. Patel, acquired five copies, while his cofounder N. M. Petit, ten; and M. M. Bhownagree, Edulji Nasarvanji Sethna, and C. Jahangir each bought one.127 Beyond the Amelioration ( 96 )  the persian revival

Society, ten were bought by J. N. Tata, two by S. S. Bengali, and one by D. F. Karaka, all of whom were deeply invested in disseminating knowledge on ancient Iran. The book, moreover, had immediate global success. The British Museum acquired a copy in 1891, followed by the Boston Public Library the following year.128 Jackson extensively quoted from it in his scholarship, including in his masterwork, Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran (1899), as did many after him.129 Kiash’s Ancient Persian Sculptures was both the by-product of an Elphinstonian education and the outstanding art-historical expression of Parsi revival-as-reform. Elphinstone College did not stop there. Described as “the most prolific Parsi scholar of modern times,” J. J. Modi was the intellectual product of the most prestigious organizations available to a Parsi of his time, including Elphinstone College, the Molla Firuz and Sir J. J. Madrasas, Bombay and Heidelberg Universities, the Royal Asiatic Society, the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute (for which he served as president), and, of course, the Lodge Rising Star.130 Like his mentor and friend K. R. Cama, Modi straddled a wide network of institutions, from the conservative Parsi Seth Jejeebhoy Dadabhai Adaran temple (fire 1836), for which he served as head priest, and Bombay Panchayat, as president, to the reformist K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, as secretary, and the Western-oriented Royal Asiatic Society and the Anthropological Society of Bombay. In these oft-rival spheres, he was an intellectual force to reckon with. He left behind volume after volume of scholarship on as diverse topics as the Shahnameh, Azar Kayvan and his Dabistan, modern Parsi history, and the horse on the relief at Naqsh-e Rostam, produced during a four-decade academic and ecclesiastical career.131 In 1900 he gathered some thirty, primarily native, scholars to produce a volume on Iranian subjects, and five years later he published a century’s worth of lectures on the same topics read at the Royal Asiatic Society of Bombay.132 His Masonic Papers (1907) delineates “Anderson’s Theory of Freemasonry,” explaining that “Adam was the first to have the knowledge of Geometry which is the foundation of Masonry and Architecture.”133 Like Naoroji and Cama, Modi was a co-intellectual with Arthur Gobineau, Max Müller, Friedrich Spiegel (to whom Modi dedicated an edited volume), the Rawlinson brothers, Ernest Renan, A. V. Williams Jackson, John Malcolm, James Fergusson, Banister Fletcher, Franz Cumont, Ernest B. Havell, Ernst Herzfeld, Aurel Stein, James Darmesteter, Lord Curzon, and Ananda Coomaraswamy, all of whom were cited by Modi and most of whom, in turn—his contemporaries, anyway—relied on and quoted his work.134 After his 1925 return from Iran, Modi published his travelogue in Gujarati and underscored, again and again, his “astonishment, as to how Iran[,] desiccated and depopulated as it is found to be, could have at one time in its past history, exercised such as powerful sway over other countries.”135 Between 1928 and his passing in 1933, he delivered eight public lectures as a fellow of the K. R. Cama Institute on “the influence of Iran on other countries,” focusing on the global impact of Persian art and the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 97 )

architecture. These lectures are crucial in connecting nineteenth-century Parsi artistic discourses and Josef Strzygowski, who himself came to embrace the pivotal role of ancient Iranian art through his evocation of the dome on a square base (chahar-taq) in the late 1920s. “The Dhamekh Stupa,” he wrote in 1928, “shows how deeply pure northern feeling can penetrate soil conquered by Aryans.”136 Modi and Coomaraswamy “adopted” Strzygowski’s theory connecting race to form to argue “that Aryans, a northern race, tended toward abstract symbolism, while Dravidians, a southern race, exhibited an extensive and deep-rooted system of popular cults.”137 Strzygowski’s Orient oder Rom (1901), Altai-Iran and the Migrations (1917), Architecture of the Armenians and Europe (1918–19), Origin of Christian Church Art (1920), and Influences of Indian Art (1925) were standard references in the works of Modi and Coomaraswamy. Modi launches his lecture on Persian architecture with Strzygowski’s argument on the global “influence of Sasanian Persia upon the Christians.”138 This is followed by the “Essentials of Architecture,” which include “truth” and “beauty.” Truth and beauty are, in turn, connected to the complex Zoroastrian concept of asha (truth, righteousness, order) as an integral part of the “esthetic and moral structure of Zoroastrianism.” Quoting Müller, Gobineau, and Darmesteter, Modi then establishes the “superiority of the religion of Persia over that of Greece” in order to expose the role of Iran in global arts (92). Referring to Fletcher’s “Tree of Architecture,” Modi concludes, “It is Persia’s glory that has brought the art to perfection” (97). Citing Herzfeld, Modi proposes that Aryans migrated out of Iran and into Europe—“European Architecture may be attributed to the migration of . . . the Goths into South Russia from Persia”—a theory backed by Giovanni Rivoira (97–99). Misreading Rivoira’s flow of artistic influence, he cites him to establish Sassanian originality. “The Sassanids,” he insists, “were the first to introduce vaulting into Persia under the Romans” (99). Modi then, with an examination of Fergusson’s scholarship, moves to Iran’s influence on Indian architecture. Supporting Strzygowski’s claim that the Mshatta palace had been built by Sassanian king Khosrow Parviz, Modi maintains that the Jain temples of Mount Girnar and Mount Abu reveal Persian influence, and concludes with Fergusson’s link between the arched doorways of some Gujarati mosques and those of Sassanian structures erected by Khosrow Parviz, the original and model (100–101). “Havell says,” Modi goes on, “the Iranians and Indo-Aryans were co-heirs of the Aryan tradition.”139 Modi then reiterates Havell’s theory on the Iran-India ties based on race-form arguments. In reference to the Palace of Pataliputra, near Patna, which had been in the news recently, he quotes him: “It has long since been known that the Mauryan architecture was . . . influenced by Iranian architecture” (101–3). In 1913 J. N. Tata’s youngest son, Sir Ratan Tata—who was drawn to the arts more than to his family’s industry, steel—contributed 20,000 rupees per year to David Brainard Spooner’s excavation of King Ashoka’s capital at Pataliputra. Harvard-trained archeologist and head of the ( 98 )  the persian revival

Archaeological Survey of India, Spooner had argued that the palace of Ashoka (who reigned 273–232 bce) was a copy of Darius’s Palace of One Hundred Columns at Persepolis. Modi lost no time in conducting extensive research on the Darius-Ashoka connection and, during his lecture on March 3, 1916, argued for the Iranian origin of Mauryan architecture.140 Spooner and Modi stressed that since Achaemenid times, Zoroastrians had had an influential role in Indian life and had thus reinforced Parsi status in the British Raj.141 Pataliputra was, according to Modi’s conclusion, a mere “Mauryan replica of Persepolis,” an idea commonly accepted for a long time.142 Many years later, for instance, Jawaharlal Nehru, an Indian independence activist and the first prime minister of India, maintained that Ashoka’s palaces were “influenced by the architecture of Persepolis,” since “Indian races” were a by-product of the intermingling of the Aryans and the Dravidians, “who were probably the representatives” of the dispersed Indus Valley civilization.143 From a tiny congregation among a sea of religions and sects on the Indian subcontinent, the Elphinstonian boys began to represent themselves as a noble race (i.e., Indo-Europeans), heir to civilizations (i.e., the Achaemenid and Sassanian Empires) foundational to the development of modern Europe. The grand facades of the Persian Revival served as billboards to reinforce their claim to a superior race. What might at first have looked like bizarre facades in effect conjured up a compelling evocation of Iranian history and offered a new modality of viewing the present. The Elphinstone alums, in their emphasis on architecture, however, diverged from Strzygowski, who, during a 1927 lecture, rebuffed the significance of the royal architecture of the Achaemenids and the Sassanians and instead focused discussion of Iranian architecture on the Mazdaean temple of fire.144 Although Strzygowski’s insistence on the chahar-taq as evidence of Aryan migration has been rejected, the idea of the dome on a cube as a primary typology of Iranian architecture has been accepted. Despite recent arguments against the existence of Zoroastrian fire temples before the fourth century bce, it seems that the “traditionalist” assumption that “a temple culture of fire was integral” to the faith “from the very inception of Zoroastrianism” remains intact.145 Achaemenid kings used open-air stands for prayer, including the twin plinths at Pasargadae, yet “precursor[s] of the chahar-taq” used in later temples have been unearthed at the Median sites (eighth–sixth centuries bce) of Tape Nush-e Jan and Ecbatana. The fire temple at Kuh-e Khajeh in Sistan, from the Parthian era (247 bce–224 ce), includes a “centralized chahar taq style” base that holds up a squinch dome on four columns “surrounded by an ambulatory corridor, a yazishngah or place for rituals of worship.”146 Archeology has also revealed that this chahar-taq structure of the fire sanctuary (atash-gah, lit. fire-place) had two additional side rooms into which the flame was taken and “concealed from view of the public,” only to return to the atash-gah during the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 99 )

ceremonies. This mobility theory of the fire was first proposed by André Godard and has been refuted since.147 The founder of the Sassanian dynasty, Ardeshir I (r. 224–42), adopted Zoroastrianism as the state religion of his vast empire, which he called Iranshahr (or Eranshahr, Dominion of the Aryans).148 He carried out a propaganda program in the form of coins depicting fire-holders, like those discovered at Kuh-e Khajeh by Ernst Herzfeld in 1925, base-reliefs inscribing the endowment of fires, and fire-temple constructions. As iconoclasts, subsequent Sassanian kings “forbade the use of images in worship,” and according to Boyce, “statues were removed from consecrated buildings, and sacred fires were installed in their place.”149 For the faithful in Iran and India, “fire occupied the central position in all rituals.”150 From inception, the structure of the temple was de-emphasized to maintain the aniconic tradition of Sassanian Zoroastrianism. While Middle Persian has a variety of names for fire temples, all simply mean “the house of fire.”151 In 1617 Dutchman Wollebrand Geleynssen de Jongh noticed that the Parsis of Broach had neither “churches nor holy places in which to worship, except in their houses.”152 Pointing his readers to Anquetil’s Zend-Avesta, Carsten Niebuhr similarly observed in 1780 that the Parsi veneration of the fire compelled them to “continually maintain a fierce fire as much in their temples as their homes,” adding, “I have seen in one of their temples in Bombay a fire that has been burning without intermission for two centuries.”153 William Vaux wrote in 1851, “The Atesh-Kadahs (or Fire-Temples) are merely edifices for guarding the sacred fire from pollution or extinction: in these the flame is kept continually burning; and the buildings are so constructed, that the rays of the sun never fall upon the fire.”154 The abundance of scholarship on the sacred fire contrasts with the scarcity of work on the structures that house them, a scarcity aggravated by the fact that non-Parsis, like myself, are barred from these spaces. While the historiography remains focused on the fire, the discussions around the chahar-taq type emerge as a linchpin in writing the modern architectural history of Parsi temples because in them scholarship in art history and scholarship in Parsi studies intersect. Under the Sassanians, the chahar-taq was a prototypical form used widely in royal, sacred, and profane edifices. As for the floor plan of the chahar-taq, scholars have finally agreed that since “Zoroastrian purity laws demand that every religious building be kept both actually and ritually clean,” the four arches of the chahar-taq were always protected by some kind of enclosure.155 “By the Sassanian period,” as Jamsheed Choksy notes, the chahar-taq had become “the quintessential form for fire precincts.”156 Bishapur and Firuzabad each housed a chahar-taq with a cupola supported on squinches, under which burnt a sacred flame. In Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité (1890), Georges Perrot illustrates the twin fire altars at Naqsh-e Rostam and Pasargadae and argues that “the atesh-gah is . . . the sole monumental type and representative of the religious architecture of Persia . . . the true national type created for the supreme rite of Magism, that ( 100 )  the persian revival

in which its whole cultus was summed up.”157 An elevation drawing of the restored fire temple of Firuzabad supports his claim.158 In adopting Zoroastrianism as the state religion, the Sassanians canonized the process of gradation, patronage, and consecration of sacred fires. They were standardized into three grades: (1) Atash Bahram (victorious fire), which requires the unification of sixteen kinds of fires and a year’s purification rites; (2) Atash Adaran (house of fire), requiring unification of four fires by eight priests within a month’s time; and (3) Atash Dadgah (fire in its lawful or fixed place), the hearth fire consecrated by two priests within a few hours. Slowly but surely, things changed as Islam expanded in Iran. Humiliating defeats at the hands of Muslim armies at the battles of Qadisiyyah (636) and Nahavand (641) pushed the cult-of-fire temples underground. Zoroastrianism was never again to become a state religion. From the vast and lavishly funded religious apparatus under the auspices of Sassanian kings and clerics—and represented by the domed sanctuary (gombad) at the top of the chahar-taq—the Zoroastrian fires went into hiding, increasingly shrouded with an architecture of paranoia. Like the design of the home-like temples of Iran’s Zoroastrians, the design of Parsi temples was, from the time of the arrival of Zoroastrians on the shores of India to the late eighteenth century, driven by anxiety to conceal the fire. We might parse this as an exilic tectonic. The Parsi connection to Iran was thus the sacred fire. Legend recounts that after their arrival in Sanjan, Gujarat, in 939, Zoroastrians sent back to Iran men who returned with the ash from an Atash Bahram to enthrone their flame.159 This provided a physical descent (silsila) to the first, and for the next eight hundred years only, Atash Bahram fire in India.160 In seventeenth-century Surat, the permanent places of worship continued to mimic private houses, to which priests brought their hearth flame.161 In Gujarat, one sacred fire was kept in Sanjan, as well as in several yazishngah structures, small buildings that served as places of ritual performance and religious ceremonies away from the sacred fire in whose presence no such acts could be performed. The exclusive place secured by the Parsis in the British Raj brought with it a paradigm shift in Parsi architecture. While the fire maintained its sacred place in Parsi religious and communal life, the newly found wealth and status of lay Parsi families ushered in transformations not only of the styles deployed by them in their architectural commissions but of the very function of architecture as an instrument of imperial power. Parsi wealth, as John Hinnells has astutely observed, was “both considerable and visible.”162 The Indian brand of the Persian Revival was precisely about the latter: the politics of visuality and visibility within global networks of urban modernity. Not just astounding economic success achieved by a tiny minority, but the Parsi insistence on upholding the Sassanian law—according to which one-third of one’s wealth was to be spend on the soul of the departed—rendered their charity so visibility effective. Like their Sassanian ancestors, Parsis fed the poor, housed the homeless, educated their girls, the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 101 )

erected vast infrastructure, and consecrated countless fire temples as an integral part of their “religious duty of benevolence.”163 If in the Middle Ages Zoroastrian charitable foundations, often administered by a family relative, helped preserve the “idyllic representation of Zoroastrian society, where everyone had their place and order was given prominence,” in the nineteenth century architectural patronage helped the Parsi elites to carve a dignified niche for themselves in the global matrix of the British Empire while also salvaging their souls. Zoroastrianism, as Boyce notes, is “a life-enhancing, not a world-denying faith”;164 its fundamental beliefs thus coincided well with the modernist impulse to build a bright future. Hinnells’s diagram that chronicles the commissions of Parsi fire temples between 1823 and 1920 reveals the extraordinary rate of rapid construction. Out of the fifty-some temples that existed in Bombay alone, only six predated the nineteenth century.165 This statistic is telling: out of the nine existing Atash Bahrams worldwide, eight were erected in the West Indian cities and towns of Bombay, Surat, Navsari, and Udvada. The yearlong and costly consecration process of five, including Surat’s Vakil (1823) and Modi (1823), as well as Bombay’s Wadia (1830), Banaji (1894), and Anjoman (1898), in addition to the new building of Udvada’s Iranshah (1891), occurred during the nineteenth century. Other Parsi temples, erected in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in West India, included eighty Adaran and sixty Dadgah flames.166 From an exilic tectonic emerged the opulent Persian Revival to rival its Gothic and Indo-Saracenic competitors. The interlacing of several factors specific to Parsi Zoroastrianism shaped the parameters of this architecture. First, Zoroastrianism rejected the idea of “evil in wealth, provided that it is gained with honesty, and dispensed with charitable generosity.”167 This meant that Parsi benefactors gave abundantly not only as a part of their religious duty but also as demonstrable participation in mainstream affairs of the empire. Building Bombay was at the forefront of that beneficent agenda. Second, the surge in Parsi wealth prompted the reorganization of domestic life. The introduction of non-Zoroastrian— predominantly Hindu or Muslim—domestic help into Parsi households disrupted the ritual purity of the home, where historically sacred hearth fires were enthroned.168 Faced with the difficulty in upholding Zoroastrian purity laws, in conjunction with the desire to reform the religion, lay patrons channeled a substantial amount of capital into building temples and housing the priests who cared for them. Third, in Zoroastrian temples, unlike mosques, “even if many people are present, there is no sense of congregational worship,” because “each person prays to Ahura Mazda alone, just as the religion consistently emphasizes individual responsibility.”169 This had a double significance in liberating the lay patron from priestly requests for spatial restrictions and giving the architect the freedom to innovate in design, particularly in the floor plan. The flexibility enabled by the design of spaces focused on individual persons—as opposed to ( 102 )  the persian revival

an entire congregation—opened the possibility of spatial, and by extension religious, reform through these new temples. Spatial reconfiguration was to transform the relationship between the faithful and the sacred fire. Fourth, unlike the communal (anjoman) subscriptions of dakhmas, the patronage of temples fell under private individual and family auspices, allowing for stylistic variations. Moreover, in accordance with Sassanian practices, these charities were managed dynastically, bequeathing the resulting edifices a tailored look. “The trust,” according to Boyce, “continues down the generations to be largely a family affair.”170 Families who were known for charitable buildings—the Wadias, with twenty-two temples, the Petits, with eight temples, the Jejeebhoys, with five temples, among others—each had liberal control over stylistic decisions. Like fashion, the Persian Revival was honed by the wealthy to project an image of the family first and the community at large second. Style meant something precise for those who were doing the selecting. In these expressions, most political grievances were made manifest in the specificities of aesthetics. Architectural facades, despite their historical inaccuracies—or, in fact, because of their interpretative instability—were concrete ways to negotiate the workings of imperial politics. In the imperial game that was the Persian Revival, the Qajar elite adorned the facades of their private residences, while their Parsi co-reformists erected public temples. Before the age of billboards, the grand facades of both Parsi temples and Iranian mansions were deployed as ideological, propagandistic, and pedagogical tools to convey the might of Iran’s ancient civilization. These were intentionally open texts, created to be consumed by the state and the public and thus establish social integration and status. Both the Parsi and Qajar brands of the Persian Revival traversed the entire stylistic spectrum from progressively innovative to dogmatically kitsch from the 1820s on. Persian Revival architecture nevertheless remained a domestic, intercommunal style. Wealthy Parsis, even those who spent a lifetime searching for Iran’s antiquity, did not use it for their secular commissions, including private residences. Classical or Gothic remained their choice. A faravahar on a chateau or bull-headed capitals supporting a portico would have seemed, in posh late nineteenth-century Bombay, pastiche. The elastic use of styles by Parsis, literally at their heart’s desire, spoke to the evident merit of architecture as a strategy of subtle resistance. The final factor distinctive to Parsi Zoroastrianism that shaped the Persian Revival was the schism that divided the community over the calendar. When in 1746 the Qadimi priests and laypeople (antiquarians) adopted the Iranian calendar based on the argument that Iran’s Zoroastrian priests held authority over religious matters by virtue of their proximity to the religion’s birthplace, the majority of the Parsis, the Shahanshahis (traditionalists/royalists), rejected their religious legitimacy. Instead, as Sheffield notes, they “sought to associate themselves with the past glories of Iran, glories which by seeking to reform the conditions of their contemporary coreligionists they sought to the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 103 )

renew.”171 A leap into antiquity was to secure the religious autonomy that would match their economic independence. No longer were affluent Parsi merchants, the Shahanshahis, to adhere to the rules and regulations of the economically disenfranchised and epistemically alienated Iran’s Zoroastrian priests. The homeland was now transferred to the times of Achaemenid and Sassanian kings through an appeal to pure scientific knowledge—that is, British linguistics, archeology, and art history. Alternatively, the Urheimat was to be rebuilt in British India. The relevance of the calendar controversy to the Persian Revival rests in the fact that the overwhelming majority of revival temples were erected by the Shahanshahis. True, the majority of Parsis were, and remain, Shahanshahis. However, a pattern reveals that the Qadimis intentionally avoided explicit use of Persepolitan elements, instead favoring the bungalow type, often referred to as the “vernacular style.” In contrast, Shahanshahi temples incorporated overt Achaemenid and Sassanian iconography in the decorative program and spatial configuration. In 1783 the animosity between the Shahanshahis and the Qadimis grew so much that on instruction from Molla Kaus—the father of Molla Firuz, who had accompanied him to Iran between 1768 and 1780 in search of accurate calendrical knowledge— the Qadimis erected the first Atash Bahram fire temple in Bombay. The gesture was poignant. The influential Dadyseth family, who had made their wealth in China trade, had sided with the Qadimis. At a substantial personal expense, Dadabhai Noshervanji Dadyseth (1734–1799) placed Molla Kaus in charge of the temple’s complex construction and consecration process. Located in the Kalbadevi district, the Seth Dadabhai Noshervanji Dadyseth Atash Bahram—both the extant fire and temple structure— was inaugurated on September 29, 1783, with large public attendance. Set at the center of a 6,338-square-yard garden “full of tall trees with colourful flowers,” the edifice was described as “so impressive that even the heavens seemed to have turned pale.”172 Molla Kaus, who had spent extensive time in Karim Khan Zand’s court in Shiraz, had selected the then-fashionable style of a bungalow held up on timber columns for the temple—a type unknown to Fars or in any way related to Iran’s Zoroastrian architecture. He and his patron, D. N. Dadyseth, had aimed for a monumental, but contemporary, shelter for the sacred fire. As long as the rites adhered to Iran’s Zoroastrian religious practices, imagined ancestral lineage through style seemed superfluous. The rivalry between the two sects came to a head in 1823, when two powerful families each decided to consecrate an Atash Bahram in Surat. The Modis and the Wadias filed a lawsuit against a dying lawyer, Pestonji Kalabhai Vakil, and lost. The theological question whether “it was permissible to have two Atash Bahrams in one place” and, if so, which should be erected first led to intervention by and a legal settlement from Surat’s High Court.173 On November 19, 1823, the widow of Dadabhai Naoshirvanji Modi, Bai Jaijee, and her brother Hormusji Bomanji Wadia (d. 1826) subsidized the Seth Dadabhai Naoshirvanji Modi Atash Bahram (fire 1823, temple 1897 and 1931, fig. ( 104 )  the persian revival

Fig. 28 (above)  Seth Dadabhai Naoshirvanji Modi Atash Bahram fire temple, designed by architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri, Surat, India, 1931. Photo: Jasmine M. Baria. Fig. 29  Seth Pestonji Kalabhai Vakil Atash Bahram fire temple, Surat, India, 1823. Photo: author.

28) based on Shahanshahi rites, while the Seth Pestonji Kalabhai Vakil Atash Bahram (fire and temple December 5, 1823, fig. 29) was enthroned a few days later following Qadimi rites. Bai Jaijee, who had taken the Modi project over from her mother-in-law when the latter had passed away, had wished “to tie the belt on the waist of life, to tie the belt-like life on the waist,” and completed the patronage of the temple with “indomitable spirit and dogged determination.”174 The opening event of the Modi Atash Bahram boasted twenty thousand attendees. A part of a big complex, the flame was housed in a pitched-roof structure two stories high. It was flanked by an elevated porch supporting the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 105 )

a terraced balcony at the entrance. The fire chamber—the atash-gah—was enclosed in a square room slightly offset to the northwest of the bungalow enclosure. No particular processional logic dictated the configuration of the floor plan. After losing the lawsuit in Surat, H. B. Wadia’s widow, Mithibai, and three sons, Bomanji, Rustomji, and Ardeshir Wadia, financed the next major temple—the first Shahanshahi Atash Bahram, a mere six hundred yards south of the Qadimi Dadyseth temple in Bombay.175 Early promoters of Achaemenid revival, the Wadias were members of the Lodge Rising Star as well as other reformist circles. Bomanji Wadia, for instance, had an important role in Sir J. J.’s plot to weaken the Panchayat through the transfer of money into the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Parsi Benevolent Institute. This indicates a link, although hardly recorded in English-language sources, between Parsi reformists and the first attempt at a Persepolitan temple in Bombay. In memory of their father and on the same site as their father’s bungalow Adaran (1805), in the Dhobi Talao area, the Seth Hormusji Bomanji Wadia Atash Bahram (fire and temple 1830) was consecrated on November 17, 1830. The complex was extended to the northeast of the existing Adaran, where the Atash Bahram temple was conceived around the square chamber of the atash-gah. As such, it adopted a hybrid morphology of a bungalow with a pyramid roof that sheltered a hypostyle arcade on two sides. The south elevation presents colonnaded halls separated by porticos, a liberal appropriation of the palaces on the terrace of Persepolis. Announced by a projected porch as the main entrance, the south portico wraps around the eastern facade to form the kusti (sacred cord) corridor, where ablution occurs, involving the physical retying of the kusti along with recitation of the kusti prayers, which ensures that the faithful are in the “right place with regards to thoughts, words, and deeds before engaging in religious activity.”176 Here, the eight-bay facade has been walled, forming the eastern corridor. The engaged lion-headed capitals lining the street side of this wall are identical to Flandin/Coste’s plate xciii, reproduced in Perrot/Chipiez’s figure 31 (see fig. 11).177 This street elevation displayed, for the first time, a full selection of details proper to a stylized Persepolitan decorative program: a row of eight lion-headed capitals, repeating floral motifs in low relief at the centers of the blind walls, chains of lotus flowers in bands around the wall perimeters, and a sequence of three-stepped crenellations capping the wall (fig. 30). The lotus flower that had been described in travelogues, including Ker Porter’s discussion of it as having had “a particular sanctity” for Persians, populates the southern and eastern crenellations, entablatures, window bands, and column capitals.178 The choice of a single lotus to crown the centerpiece between the two flanking lions on each capital of the eastern facade was depicted in the reconstructions of Flandin/Coste’s column capital and the Dieulafoys’ Xerxes Palace (see fig. 11). The designers took further innovative steps in stylizing the capitals on the southern elevation, where a bell-shaped and vertically fluted shaft culminates in a rectangular stepped capital with ( 106 )  the persian revival

Fig. 30  East elevation of the Seth Hormusji Bomanji Wadia Atash Bahram fire temple, Dhobi Talao, Bombay, 1830, showing the first full set of Persepolitan columns. Photo: author. Courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

two rows of lotus motifs. For the history of Parsi architecture and the Persian Revival, the Wadia Atash Bahram stands as the first intentional expression of architectural and decorative references to Persepolis. Built before the 1870s, when more accurate archeological data become available to Parsi architects, this temple was a determined attempt to break away from the bungalow-building tradition and begin another way of erecting temples. Although a hybrid of the two, the expansion of the complex allowed the patron and architect to engage the temple in a public statement about Shahanshahi allegiance, not to contemporary, but to ancient Iran, to the golden age of the Achaemenid Empire. To this visual assertion by the Shahanshahis, the Qadimis answered with the Seth Cowasji Behramji Banaji Atash Bahram (fire and temple December 13, 1845), located a thousand yards north on Queen’s Road (Charni Road)—one of Bombay’s busiest avenues.179 A large bungalow structure with a pitched timber roof, it appropriated the British adaption of the Bengalese hut, or “banggolo,” made of mud, cow dung, thatch, and bamboo, while enclosing the verandah.180 Designed by Naoroji and Khurshedji Rustamji Engineers, a corridor encircles three main spatial units arranged without following a processional logic.181 The large hall for ritual ablution meanders into a hall of ceremonies, culminating in the atash-gah and the sacred fire. The Banaji temple was the last of the great fire temples with a monumental structure built on the bungalow prototype. Eighteen fifty-seven was a watershed year for the “most loyal” subjects of the empire.182 Parsi architecture and its patronage were impacted by the change of political hands when racial discourses took center stage. “Aryan,” as Thomas Trautmann and Suzanne Marchand have shown, “was, for quite a time, a term used to forge a the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 107 )

bond between Indians and Englishmen” and “a bridge . . . to appeal to members of the Indian and Persian elite.”183 In the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion, when the British distanced themselves from the notion of common Aryan origins with Indians as a whole, the Parsi intelligentsia mounted a racial discourse of their own about their lineage to ancient Persians, away from Hindus and Muslims of the British Raj. While Western philologists and Orientalists had until 1857 advocated the ties between Europeans and Indians, after the Indian Rebellion race became a marker of difference.184 The Parsi claim to Persian (art) history could be read as a minority’s claim to a universal history as constructed by European art historiography. With enough discursive manipulation, the long and illustrious Achaemenid and Sassanian artistic legacy was to provide Parsis with a unique status in the uninterrupted history of (the white) man and endow a minority with a sense of racial superiority. The 1857 rebellion gave them a new platform on which to outline these differences. The long line of authorial voices—that is, Jones, Gobineau, Renan, Müller, and Spiegel—was adopted by both Parsi writers and their Western advocates.185 In The Parsees: Their History, Manners, Customs, and Religion (1858), Dosabhoy Framjee insists that “it is a fact creditable to the blood which flows in Zoroastrian veins, that the race has not degenerated by contact with those by whom fate has surrounded them,” and that “the ruins of ancient Persepolis tell of the splendour and the power” of ancient Iranians.186 During an 1862 lecture in Calcutta’s Dalhousie Institute, British official Samuel Laing avowed the “unity of Aryan languages and cultures,” earmarking Zoroastrianism in particular as “the most pure and rational of all religions.”187 Four years later, in “The European and Asiatic Races,” his March 1866 lecture before the Ethnographic Society of London, D. Naoroji informed his audience that George Rawlinson’s sculptural analysis at Achaemenid sites had revealed that “the ancient Aryan race is a noble variety of the human species” and that “Persians were remarkable for their stature and beauty.”188 “The Parsis pride themselves on being,” wrote D. F. Karaka in 1884, “the progeny of a mighty race” whose “grandeur, magnificence, and glory were unsurpassed by any other nation of ancient times.”189 After 1857 Parsi-sponsored architecture signaled an ethnic taxonomy. The consecration of Seth Sorabji Khurshedji Thuthina Adaran on May 29, 1859, by Bai Cuverbai, the widow of Qadimi priest Mobed Sorabji Khurshedji Thuthina, revealed the paradigm shift that had occurred two years before (fig. 31).190 The bungalow type was completely abandoned, uprooting any references to Indian architecture. Instead, contemporary Iran came to life. Located in the Chowpatty/Walkeshwar area, the Thuthina Adaran, in its principal elevation, looks like a Qajar building. This must have been a Qadimi design strategy to show calendrical loyalty to Iran’s Zoroastrians through architecture. Its morphology consists of a not-quite-resolved hybrid of a bungalow floor plan and a hypostyle elevation. Inside, the two-part prayer and ablution halls ( 108 )  the persian revival

Fig. 31  North elevation of the Seth Sorabji Khurshedji Thuthina Adaran fire temple, Chowpatty/Walkeshwar, Bombay, 1859. Photo: author.

are flanked by the atash-gah on the western edge of the rectangular building. Within a chahar-taq, the fire is accessed through a door on the east, while being visible through windows on the northern and southern facades. As at the Wadia Atash Bahram, the principal verandah wraps around the eastern elevation. A characteristically Qajar pish-taq (a portal projecting from the facade) crowns the entrance. For the first time, too, the winged motif of the faravahar appeared on the main facade of a Parsi temple. Reproduced by Ker Porter and Chipiez and adopted by Parsis in the mid-nineteenth century (see figs. 6, 17), the faravahar, along with the portrait of Prophet Zoroaster from the relief of the investiture of Ardeshir at Taq-e Bostan, came into its own as a characteristic of the broader Persian Revival movement, made popular with its appearance on notable structures, first in India and then in Iran.191 Like these temples, the faravahar icons and the portraits of Zoroaster were notable cases of invented tradition, which remains alive today. Below the arch of the pish-taq, the doorway of the Palace of One Hundred Columns, per Fergusson’s reconstruction of the Apadana, was reproduced, decorated with the lotus motif (see fig. 13). The twelve-column veranda, partially closed at one end, upholds a frieze that is inset with blind Persepolitan crenellations, much like Chipiez’s reconstructions (see figs. 16, 17). On each side of the pish-taq appears the sacred flame in a fire-holder whose form has been borrowed from Naqsh-e Rostam (see fig. 6). While the small-scale Thuthina Adaran was an expression of Parsi reaction to 1857, it was nevertheless canonized as a type to be copied. In 1921 its hybrid Qajar-Achaemenid elevation, with an outstanding pish-taq, was refined in the design of the Goti Adaran in Surat.192 Repaired and rebuilt several times (1831, 1857, and 1921) by such figures as Sir J. J. and Nasarvanji Bamanji Bhownagree, the Goti Adaran evenly distributes six elevation columns while elaborating on Thuthina Adaran’s Persepolitan volutes and the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 109 )

double-bull-headed capitals. The rapid socioeconomic transformations inside and outside the Parsi communities of British India from the 1820s to the 1850s had transformed their conception of the self. The Persian Revival style that they invented came to both shape and define them during the zenith of the British Raj.

Inventing the Persian Revival, 1881–1935 In 1881 a tall and narrow building appeared in the affluent Fort business district of Bombay (see fig. 24). It stands out in many ways. On the monumental four-story facade, green marble covers the street level. Four colossal engaged columns in pink stone rise from the second floor up to join the entablature. From the capital atop each column, a pair of bulls’ heads, sitting on five elaborate volutes, stare down. The cornice is decorated with a sun rising out of three identical pyramid shapes in green, blue, and pink stones. Below, the second and third floors are joined with three vertical windows. As if not eye-catching enough, two large sandstone lamassus face each other and form a portico. They flank the deep entrance of the edifice. Between the pair of lamassus and the column bases, two bands in white stone carry a total of thirty-two iterations of the lotus-flower motif, like that in the Wadia and Thuthina temples—symbols of purity according to biblical and Masonic traditions.193 Above the entrance portal between the massive heads of the lamassus, a sizeable golden faravahar hovers atop an inscription plaque that reads, “Bai Pirojbai Dadabhoy Maneckji Vatcha Agiary Estd. 19th May 1881.” The Vatcha Shahanshahi Adaran (fire and temple 1881) was undoubtedly the first elaborate appearance of the Persian Revival. It must have looked peculiar, if not startling. It certainly was a holistic statement. Commissioned by Bai Pirojbai to honor her husband, Pirojbai Dadabhai Maneckji Vatcha, it was designed by Parsi chief architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri. A Mason in the Lodge Rising Star, he was also a member of “the Committee which [had] charge of the erection and management of the Masonic Temple . . . in the course of erection [as of November 18, 1898] on the Esplanade.”194 Mistri, therefore, was probably the chief architect of Bombay’s Masonic temple. While further research is needed to establish a semantic link tying the graded labeling (i.e., first, second, and third grade) and consecration rituals of Parsi fire temples to Parsi-dominated Masonic temples, there must have been an architectural, stylistic, and decorative connection between the interior organization of the so-called Parsi open plan (discussed below) and Masonic lodge designs, both of whose realized buildings required elaborate and precise rituals of consecration.195 That Mistri was a proud Parsi, a Freemason, and the architect of numerous open-plan fire temples and at least one Masonic temple in Bombay must not have been a coincidence. Core Zoroastrian beliefs, such as asha (truth or order) and purity laws, were translated into modern ( 110 )  the persian revival

discourses of orderliness, hygiene, discipline, and whiteness by the reformists in these temples.196 In the bustling district of Fort, the Persian Revival temple, with its high elevation, recalled the legendary civilization (Achaemenids) of an incredibly successful but tiny minority (Parsis). The entire repertoire of standard Persian Revival elements was displayed on Vatcha Adaran’s impressive facade: lamassus, the lotus motif, the faravahar icon, Persepolitan columns complete with bull-headed capitals and volutes, two reliefs of fire-holders, and a pediment-type crown. Cultivating Shahanshahi attraction to Iran’s Achaemenid artistic legacy, Vatcha Adaran looked ancient and Persian. However, like the Gothic Revival in early modern Europe, the “effectiveness” of the “symbolism” offered by the revival of this Persian-looking architecture “depended largely on historical ignorance.”197 Lamassus had populated the pages of travelogues. Ker Porter had included two exquisite views of the lamassus guarding the Gate of All Lands at Persepolis and had described them as an “emblematic reference to a just sovereignty” of Achaemenid kings, a sentiment that resonated with Parsi patrons (see fig. 6).198 The Dieulafoys had inaccurately injected two lamassus into their palace restoration (see fig. 14), while Fergusson and Chipiez had depicted the Gate of All Lands with restored lamassus (see figs. 13, 16). The architects and artisans of Vatcha and subsequent Adarans had only to pull these images off the library shelf. However, in this first case, they probably did not, for if they had, they would have known that in ancient Iranian architecture, no two lamassus face each other. Possibly Mistri had looked at Texier’s plate 102, which shows two different elevations of the same pair of lamassus at the gate on a single page.199 A drafting decision rendered it confusing to read, as if there existed four lamassus, although even in these confusing elevations no two face each other. The decision to arrange the lamassus at Vatcha Adaran face to face, alternatively, might have been made to accommodate the sidewalk, which the building straddles, or because of archeological or drafting confusions. Historical inaccuracies in the Persian Revival owed much to the fact that those who designed these structures seldom had direct access to archeological sites such as Persepolis, Bisotun, Taq-e Bostan, or Naqsh-e Rostam, located in politically unstable Qajar territories. The fact too that nineteenth-century British excavations were primarily carried out in Mesopotamia must have had an essential role in Parsi contact with Achaemenid and Sassanian architecture. Those who did see ancient fragments must have done so in places like the British Museum in London, which housed primarily Assyrian and some Achaemenid artifacts.200 For example, the opening of the main entrance hall and grand staircase of the British Museum on April 19, 1847, showcased not only “vivid colors” and “rich gilding” on walls and flooring, based on classical tradition as per Robert and Sydney Smirke’s design, but also two massive lamassus facing each other.201 The new design was well-publicized and “won much praise” in such periodicals as the widely read professional paper The Builder. the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 111 )

On the first of May 1847, the Louvre Museum opened to an eager public its Assyrian Gallery, which displayed Emile Botta’s discoveries from Sargan II’s Palace, including two lamassus facing each other. None other than Flandin, a key source for the Persian Revival, had been Botta’s chief draftsman at Khorsabad; during the installation of the lamassus, he had been told that as an artist, rather than a curator, he should stay out of it.202 Whereas the most casual visit to Persepolis would have mended this misreading of Achaemenid art history, Mistri’s source for Achaemenid artifacts might have been filtered through a British production of artistic knowledge. Although in 1881 his lamassus in Vatcha Adaran faced each other, in all subsequent temples that I could locate they were pivoted to stand next to each other, as they were at the Rustamji Nasarvanji Rustomfaramna Adaran (fire and temple 1929, Dadar), the Nasarvanji Hirji Karani Adaran (fire 1847, temple 1935, Colaba), the Boyce Dhana Patel Adaran (fire 1834, temple 1940, Tardeo), the Nasarvanji Maneckji Petit Adaran (Fasli, fire and temple 1940, Churchgate), all in Bombay, as well as the Atash Kadeh (temple 1993) in Isfahan, Iran. In 1931 D. D. Mistri was commissioned by the Modis of Surat to expand the 1823 Modi Atash Bahram eastward. This was to transform the original bungalow into a truly Shahanshahi Persian Revival structure. An area eighty-two by twenty-nine feet was added to the interior space and provided the temple with a processional spatial configuration. “Major structural modifications were carried out with the substantial funds which were collected thanks to the zeal and enthusiasm of Davar Tehmuras Kavasji Modi” and his committee established in 1925.203 On the eastern elevation, Mistri designed a protruding gateway, recalling the Gate of All Lands, guarded by two winged bulls in the Achaemenid tradition. The lamassus closely followed the drawings of Kiash’s “gigantic figures of the portal of Xerxes” and Ker Porter’s lamassus (figs. 32, 33; see fig. 6). Intended to recover the lost history of Persepolis, the Modi Atash Bahram was instead a reproduction of copies of copies, inadvertently bordering on pastiche. “The imposing façade of the main building which dates back to this period,” according to one author, “was designed in consonance with the immortal architectural master-pieces at Persepolis.”204 Here Mistri rectified his lamassus to stand next to each other, the passage between leading to a veranda. With double-bull-headed columns that surround the building, the two-story elevation not only displays an ornate frontage but also conceals the 1823 pitched roof of the bungalow behind. By the 1890s the Persian Revival had, at last, come into its own. The temples that were expressly designed and constructed to serve as Zoroastrian houses of worship fall into four general but fluid stylistic subcategories under the larger Persian Revival rubric: (1) the lamassu variety, (2) the Taq-e Bostan variety, (3) the Apadana variety, and (4) the pedimented variety. Most of these edifices seem to have been composed of an indiscriminate collage of specific Achaemenid and Sassanian fragments, as if the ( 112 )  the persian revival

Fig. 32  One of the two lamassus flanking the main entrance of the Seth Dadabhai Naoshirvanji Modi Atash Bahram fire temple, designed by architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri, Surat, India, 1931. Photo: author.

Fig. 33  Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, drawing of one of the four lamassus guarding the Gate of All Lands at Persepolis, Iran. From Kavasji Dinshah Kiash, Ancient Persian Sculptures, or The Monuments, Buildings, Bas-Reliefs, Rock Inscriptions, &c., &c., Belonging to the Kings of the Achaemenian and Sassanian Dynasties of Persia (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1889), plate xxi, between pp. 78 and 79. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

hardly ever mentioned architect freely selected and assembled them into an overall architectural morphology and decorative program. Most of the successful ones incorporate a mix of verandas with bull-headed and volute columns, pediments bearing faravahars, lotus and other Persepolitan-plant motifs, the fire-holder propped up on the roofline, Persepolitan door frames, and three-step crenellations. The Vatcha Adaran could be considered the prototype for the lamassu variety. The Seth Manekji Navroji Seth Adaran (fire 1733, temple 1891, fig. 34) could similarly be cataloged under both the lamassu and the pedimented varieties, for it displays impressive examples of both. It could also stand as the prototype for the Taq-e Bostan variety. The two-story-high and three-bay-wide facade popularized “the Persian element,” inspiring many subsequent design compositions with its hybrid of Achaemenid, Sassanian, Romanesque, and Baroque elements.205 As mentioned, fluidity and transferability—in other words, genuinely artistic freedom—governed the design of these astonishing edifices. In 1891 J. A. Seth “entirely rebuilt” his family’s 1733 fire temple located in the Fort district of Bombay. By then, patrons and architects had had the benefit of accessible ( 114 )  the persian revival

Fig. 34  Seth Manekji Navroji Seth Adaran fire temple, Fort, Bombay, India, 1891. Photo: author.

information on the arts of ancient Iran through such works as Kiash’s Ancient Persian Sculptures (1889). We know that many of the sponsors of these temples owned a copy or two. Financed by the Mervanji Maneckji Seth Charitable Funds, which also had investments in the Lodge Rising Star, this structure has a facade decorated with fluted columns, lion-headed capitals, pomegranate flowers, and two lamassus guarding the arched entrance.206 Chipiez’s reconstruction of the lamassus at the Gate of All Lands rematerialized in stone here (see fig. 16). In the central pediment, elevated on two sets of lion-headed columns, a protruding sun rises out of a body of water. A contemporary Masonic medallion issued in 1893 by the Lodge Rising Star similarly displays a sun-like star rising out of the sea. On the elevation, the prominent triangular gable set over columns must have been a Masonic introduction, because pediments do not exist in Iranian architectural history, either before or after Islam. The pediment, therefore, is wholly foreign to Iran. However, an overwhelming number of these new fire temples, as well as other reformist structures in India and Iran, were appointed with an opulent pediment, which, I believe, carried Masonic associations for the patrons.207 On top of the pediment rises a fire-holder, nearly identical to that on both the Masonic banner of the Lodge Rising Star and Ker Porter’s Achaemenid tomb drawing (see fig. 6). Likewise, the four side-bay windows echo the Romanesque double-arched windows between the pediment and the entrance. Flanked by two fluted columns, the entry arch is a Baroque reinterpretation of the decorations that run above the Sassanian grotto of Taq-e Bostan. Readily available, these details of the flying ribbons had been illustrated by many, including Kiash, Ker Porter, Flandin, Coste, the Dieulafoys, Chipiez, and Rawlinson (fig. 35; see figs. 12, 26).208 The scheme of an arched entryway mimicking Taq-e Bostan’s grotto, framed between Persepolitan capitals and lamassus, was repeated in later temples, including the Bai Dhunbai and Cawasji Dadabhai Dadgah (fire and temple 1926) in Bangalore and the Seth Rustamji Nasarvanji Rustamframna Adaran (fire and temple 1929) in Dadar, Bombay. The next subcategory of the Persian Revival was the most popular: the Apadana variety, dominated by a colonnaded main elevation, as were many of the hypostyle palaces at Persepolis. Its prototype is the much-venerated Iranshah (king of Iran), or the Athornan Anjoman Atash Bahram (fire 941, temple 1742, 1830, and 1891, fig. 36), in the village of Udvada, Gujarat. The origin and history of the flame are well documented, while the extant temple has rarely been analyzed.209 From the early migrations of Iranian Zoroastrians to India until the late eighteenth century, the Iranshah remained the only holy flame housed in a temple. Most religious rites were performed to the hearth fires either in private homes or in the open air, although there is some suggestion of a handful of undocumented and moderate mudbrick structures. The present temple seems to be a by-product of four sets of reconstructions, renovations, and extensions. Karaka ( 116 )  the persian revival

Fig. 35  Detail of the entrance of the Seth Manekji Navroji Seth Adaran fire temple, Fort, Bombay, India, 1891, following the design of the grotto of Taq-e Bostan. Photo: author.

wrote in 1884 that “the building in which this sacred fire is now located was built in the year 1830 at the expense of Messrs. Dadabhai and Mancherji Pestanji Wadia, in memory of their father, Pestanji Bamanji Wadia.” He added that “when originally brought to Udvada,” the fire was “kept in a place built at the expense of a Parsi of Nargol. Thence it was removed to a building provided by one Bhikhaji Edalji of Surat, and subsequently to another erected by Jamshedji Nanabhai Gazdar of Bombay.”210 By the 1890s the Wadias and the Petits had again come forward to finance a new temple in the now fully developed Persian Revival style, adhering to the Apadana variety. The renovated and enlarged temple of the Wadia brothers was replaced under the patronage of the twenty-six-year-old widow of Manekji Naoroje, Motlibai Maneckji Wadia (1811–1897)—whose philanthropy supported hospitals, orphanages, and famine and flood relief—in partnership with the fourth president of the Amelioration Society, Dinshaw Maneckji Petit. M. M. Wadia and D. M. Petit had picked D. D. Mistri for the vital task of giving a final shape to the oldest and the most venerated Zoroastrian flame the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 117 )

Fig. 36  Main elevation of the Athornan Anjoman Atash Bahram fire temple, better known as Iranshah, designed by architect Dinshaw Dorabji Mistri, Udvada, India, 1891. Photo: author.

in India, which was reconsecrated on October 31, 1894. Here, a decade after his design for the Vatcha Adaran, Mistri took it upon himself to perfect his “Persepolitan style” by omitting any lamassus, by elevating and widening the veranda, by increasing the number of visible columns, and by refining the architectural proportions and ornamental details.211 The characteristic pitched roof of the “vernacular style” was reconfigured to accommodate the portico of Achaemenid palaces. Fergusson, to whose work Mistri must have had easy access, had argued in 1851 for a second floor for both the Apadana at Persepolis and the smaller Palace of Darius next to it (see fig. 13). At Iranshah, Mistri opted for Fergusson’s theory of the second floor, although both Rawlinson and Perrot/ Chipiez had proved Fergusson historically erroneous. He might also have had a second concern: how to accommodate the form of the climatically convenient bungalow, using cheaply available timber and hemmed in by site-related and programmatic demands, to a desire to look ancient. Here, Mistri was working with a problem of synthesis: how to reconcile the practical needs of a capable architect with the antique-futuristic vision of a wealthy patron. ( 118 )  the persian revival

Accessed through a gateway on the southern side, the pilgrim enters a long and narrow courtyard only to turn left and face the principal elevation of the temple. While not much open space was available to accommodate the royal gardens and pools of Achaemenid kings, the front plane of Mistri’s open veranda was extended upward in the solid wall of the second story, giving the temple an imposing front facade. On the eve of the opening, the Times of India described it as “built in Persepolitan style, the frontage presenting a very grand appearance, the facade being wrought in Coorla, Porebunder and Drangdra stones. . . . [T]he massive stone columns in the front are real works of art, the base and capital being superbly engraved.”212 This main elevation presents an image of Iranshah as if Persepolis. It is divided into ten bays, with eleven volute and bull-headed columns and two pillars at each end of the veranda. The four central bays jut forward to meet a set of stairs that leads into the portico, across which stand the doors into the assembly and prayer hall (ghahanbar-khaneh). The motifs of the lotus flower and other Persepolitan plants decorate the skirting of the veranda and its door and window frames. A balustrade runs between the columns, framing the portico. On the north end, an outside staircase proceeds to the second floor. Here, the extended eaves of the roof stretch to cover the ten blind windows that mirror the bays below, probably added sometime between 1905 and 1916, as revealed by contemporary photographs. At Iranshah, the Apadana type reconstructed by Texier, Ker Porter, the Dieulafoys, Flandin, Coste, Chipiez, and Kiash came to life on Mistri’s drafting board (fig. 37; see figs. 9, 14, 17, 18).213 From archeological ruins buried under centuries of debris to exquisite illustrations in travelogues, the Iranshah was now an architectural revival of a utopian life at Persepolis, a paradisal reincarnation of an invented tradition that was the Persian Revival. The Apadana variety was reconstructed in several later designs, including the Ervad Sorabji Hormusji Ranji Adaran (fire 1867, temple 1914, Grant Road, fig. 38), with a similar second floor but whose bull-headed columns span both floors, ending under the cornice, as they do in the temple of Vadodara (1923) in Baroda, designed by V. R. Talwalkar. Unlike Iranshah, the Ranji Adaran has a conspicuously large faravahar that appears on a rectangular pish-taq extending from the roofline at the center of the structure. The faravahar must have been inspired by Kiash’s plate describing four Achaemenid variations on the motif from Persepolis. In Saddar, Karachi, the Apadana formula was employed at the Seth Hirjibhoy Jamsetji Behrana Adaran (fire 1849, temple 1875, 1918); in Jamnagar, Bangalore, the Ervad Tehmulji Mahiyarji Mirza Dar-e Mehr (fire 1895, temple 1931) reproduced a neighborhood version of the variant with a curved main facade.214 In 1941, when the Persian Revival had passed its zenith, the Seth Shapurji Sorabji Kappawala, in Tardeo, Bombay (fire 1857, temple 1941), under the patronage of Maneckbai Kappawala, revealed the modernist potentials of a Persepolitan revival, while the Navsari Atash Bahram showed the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 119 )

Fig. 37 (above)  Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, reconstruction of the south elevation of the Palace of Darius at Persepolis, Iran. From Kavasji Dinshah Kiash, Ancient Persian Sculptures, or The Monuments, Buildings, Bas-Reliefs, Rock Inscriptions, &c., &c., Belonging to the Kings of the Achaemenian and Sassanian Dynasties of Persia (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1889), plate xxxiii, between pp. 96 and 97. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California. Fig. 38  Main elevation of Ervad Sorabji Hormusji Ranji Adaran fire temple, Grant Road, Bombay, India, 1914. Photo: author.

the adaptability of the variety. At the Kappawala Adaran, the faravahar adorning the tall entablature is an exact copy of Kiash’s faravahar. At the same time, the relief of soldiers marching toward the entrance on each side of the elevation reproduce, with uncanny accuracy, albeit slightly stylized, his standing figures at Persepolis, including a turbaned man in an image labeled by Kiash as “a king’s combat with wild beasts” (fig. 39). When, after an ecclesiastic dispute between Bhagaria and Sanjana priests, the Iranshah fire was removed from Navsari, a new Atash Bahram was consecrated in 1741. An early twentieth-century photograph of the demolition of Navsari’s old temple reveals the ever-present chahar-taq as the configuration of the inner sanctum, the atash-gah.215 The temple that housed this flame went through several rebuildings and renovations: 1810 by M. K. Desai and N. M. Wadia, 1891 by C. Eruchji, and the extant structure 1925 by means of the subvention of C. Temulji and the Parsi community at large.216 Designed by Navsari architect Seth Framji Jamsetji Bilia, the main elevation of Bhagarseth Anjoman Atash Bahram (fire 1765, temple 1810, 1891, 1925, fig. 40) reveals a single-story Baroque composition of eight bays divided into two parts: five bays follow the Apadana variety with a veranda, as the other three bays resemble a Masonic temple with a prominent pediment. A pish-taq rising over the architrave, itself supported by four volute columns, contains the faravahar motif, a fire-holder, a sun, and a king holding a bow, as depicted in Ker Porter’s Naqsh-e Rostam tomb (see fig. 6). The depiction of volutes in Kiash’s “Pillars of chehel minar” at Persepolis must have been in front of the craftsmen. The pedimented entrance on the opposite section offsets the veranda of the elevation. This showcases three monolithic doorframes resembling those at the Palace of One Hundred Columns. The frieze is decorated with the motif of a Persepolitan plant, while the doorframe with that of the lotus flower. On the roofline, two large fire-holders rise out of the pish-taq and the pediment. The elevated edifice is accessed by two sets of stairs, each leading to one side of the complex. This Atash Bahram is unique in its design for displaying two varieties of the Persian Revival: the Apadana and the pedimented varieties, conceived side by side as one unit. Probably a Freemasonic interjection into Parsi temple architecture, the pedimented variety was first seen in the Zarthoshti Anjoman Atash Bahram in Bombay’s Dhobi Talao district (fig. 41). Its location, a mere 280 feet south of Wadia Atash Bahram; its public consecration, on October 17, 1897, with some ten thousand attendees; and its erection by means of community subvention, including funds collected in China and Iran, confirmed the canonization of the Persepolitan style.217 The project was launched in 1886 by the eminent scholar Dastur Jamaspji Minochehrji JamaspAsa (1830–1898), who served as the high priest of Punjab and Aden and the president of the Society for the Promotion of Researches in the Zoroastrian Religion, as well as a member of the Royal Asiatic Society. He had led the movement for building a separate Atash Bahram for the Bhagaria priests in Bombay and set the keystone for it. the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 121 )

Fig. 39 (left) Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, drawing of the relief of the king’s combat with a beast, Persepolis. From Kavasji Dinshah Kiash, Ancient Persian Sculptures, or The Monuments, Buildings, Bas-Reliefs, Rock Inscriptions, &c., &c., Belonging to the Kings of the Achaemenian and Sassanian Dynasties of Persia (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1889), plate xxx, between pp. 94 and 95. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California. This drawing served as the blueprint for (right) a relief of marching nobles at the Seth Shapurji Sorabji Kappawala, Tardeo, Bombay, India, 1941. Photo: author.

A protruding porch, supported on eight double-bull-headed columns, articulated the temple’s imposing two-story exterior. Similarly, projecting entrance porches were later used in the Seth Jamshedji Dadabhai Sodawaterwalla Adaran (fire 1884, temple 1925) in Dhobi Talao and the Bai Sunabai Hirji Jivanji Readymoney Adaran (fire 1842, temple 1925) in Gowalia Tank, Bombay. Designed like a billboard to display the pinnacle of Parsi power at the turn of the century, the dominant element of the Anjoman Atash Bahram’s street elevation is the pediment, the tympanum of which carries an oversized faravahar. Behind, a balustrade runs along the roofline and carries four fire-holders. The otherwise unornamented pediment sits on the four columns of the porch below. The ( 122 )  the persian revival

Fig. 40  Main elevation of the Bhagarseth Anjoman Atash Bahram fire temple, Navsari, India, 1925. Photo: author. Courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California, and MyDesign Group.

Masonic influence on the pedimented facade can be discerned in a comparison with Edward Holmes’s Masonic Grand Lodge (1866) on Molesworth Street in Dublin.218 The three classical orders have been replaced here with the Persepolitan bull-headed capitals, while a short flight of stairs leads to the entrance through a protruding porch. In the center of the tympanum, the Masonic All-Seeing Eye, Square, and Compass have been replaced with the faravahar. Perhaps in a similar attempt to reconstruct the ideal temple—the Temple of Solomon—these grand facades mattered much in brandishing Parsi prestige and prosperity. The Persian Revival temples in India and residences in Iran were useful tools of persuasion and pedagogy. These animated facades, furnished with bulls’ heads, bird wings, crowned kings, flowers, and fires, were not aimed only at the British overlords. They were also deployed by a highly educated minority to transmit a civilizational lesson to a predominantly illiterate majority. In 1882, at the zenith of the Persian Revival in Bombay, 18 percent of the Hindu majority were considered literate, many fewer than the 60 percent of Parsis.219 The 1901 census revealed an 11.6 percent literacy rate for men and 0.9 percent for women in the general population of Bombay, while at the same time the rates were a staggering 87.38 percent for men and 63 percent for women in the Parsi community.220 In the symbol-crazed empire, the rich iconographic elevations of Parsi temples acted as open books. Like the Wadia Atash Bahram, the Anjoman Atash Bahram was a Shahanshahi architectural masterwork; however, unlike Wadia’s floor plan, its layout was designed the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 123 )

Fig. 41 (above) Main elevation and (left) the “open” floor plan of the Zarthoshti Anjoman Atash Bahram fire temple, Dhobi Talao, Bombay, India, 1897. Photo: author.

to accommodate the long and narrow property on the east-west axis. This worked well with the reformist agenda to secularize Zoroastrianism through the stratification of sacred space. Archeological reconstructions of the floor plans of Achaemenid and Sassanian palaces—for instance, the Dieulafoys’ and Flandin/Coste’s Sarvestan—were surely considered (see figs. 10, 15). Still, it might not be far-fetched to suggest that, in its advances, the Parsi open plan had ties to Masonic design ideas prevalent at the time. In the transformation of sacred space, the Zoroastrian priests were, like their counterparts in Christianity and Islam, mostly left out, for, as Monica Ringer argues, they were “never in a position to dominate the discussion [on traditions], let alone dictate its parameters or claim ultimate religious authority”; “the laity dominated public space.”221 The open plan was a way to negotiate historical “access to ritual spaces,” which, Choksy notes, “had never been equally available to all the faithful, irrespective of gender and class, especially because of considerations relating to purity and pollution.”222 Objects and people were choreographed to facilitate the flow of specific movements, sights, and performances. Lodges, like Parsi temples, required that elaborate rituals be considered in their floor plans, which were oriented east-west on the longitudinal axis and elevated above the street level.223 Both morphologies, temple and lodge, enabled “a mythic alternative reality that transcended time and locality.”224 “The recognition of historicity,” remarks Ringer, “prompted the reconsideration not only of various specific traditions but of tradition itself. . . . Community leaders, as well as various Zoroastrian religious figures, moved to ‘purify’ the tradition from historical accretions that had occurred both as a result of the passage of time and as a result of contact with other . . . traditions.”225 Like Masonic temples, Parsi temples proffered “hidden knowledge not available to the outsider” by reviving “what had been lost, the attempt to find again what was perfect.”226 For K. R. Cama, the (con)fusion of the Parsi and Masonic temples was evident during his 1876 lecture “A Discourse on Zoroastrians and Freemasonry”: There must have been Dar-i-Mehers (Masonic temples) all over . . . the then known world, from India in the east to Mesopotamia in the west and from the ends of the earth (the Persian Gulf ) in the south to the river Araxes in the north. A Masonic Lodge is likewise represented in the form of ten oblong squares in length from east to west. . . . The reason assigned is that the sun . . . rises in the east and sets in the west, darting within his rays of health, joy, and liveliness. . . . The eyes of praying mortals are directed always to the eye of Ahura Mazda, the great creator. This explains why our Masonic Lodges are situated due east and west.227 The longitudinal property of the Anjoman Atash Bahram occasioned purification not just in decorative programming but also through spatial reorganization; a the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 125 )

processional spatial stratification was to minimize and individualize religious rituals. Like Masonic temples, Parsi fire temples displayed Parsi wealth, status, religiosity, civility, and racial longevity and purity. They too barred access to everyone but adherents. These fire temples helped demarcate the limits of an imagined community: a tiny prosperous minority, present and active but strictly separate. Both Parsiism and Freemasonry asserted the universality and the historicity of their faiths, while their well-funded and painstakingly designed sanctuaries partook in strict exclusion. When Ratan Tata married Suzanne Brière in Paris and returned with his French bride to Bombay, the community objected to her admission into Parsi temples despite having been initiated into the religion. The case of Petit v. Jejeebhoy went to the Bombay High Court, which decided in 1908 that she could not enter the fire temples, because she was not a descendent of the ancient race of the Persians, that despite Zoroastrianism’s universal message, she could never become a Parsi.228 The moral discussion on race and religion, in this case, hinged on her access to the temple. For the rest of the community, the traffic inside the temple shifted their relationship to the sacred fire. Based on the open plan, a set of stairs leads up to the veranda of the Anjoman Atash Bahram, on the sides of which the kusti ritual is performed. From the two ends of the first anteroom, the assembly hall is reached, which contains a second anteroom leading to the prayer hall (ghahanbar khaneh). This large hall houses the domed atash-gah, which is elevated on a container behind windows open on all interior-facing sides (see fig. 41, compare to fig. 10). The now-perfected open plan allows for the sacred fire to be visible to the faithful. Spatial progression has compensated for this visual access to the fire by laypersons by providing spatial and temporal layering as the faithful move closer to the atash-gah, at the point in the temple farthest from the profane street. In the open plan, the atash-gah is viewed from all interior-facing sides and is itself designed to resemble one of the doorways of the Palace of One Hundred Columns, with the lotus-flower motif running along the door and window frames. Regimented spaces for the performance of intricately choreographed rituals in Freemasonry matched the basic concept of a Parsi open plan, where the believer needed to see the fire. Reformists like K. R. Cama were, in effect, usurping the priestly class’s monopoly over the flame—which historically had guarded its privilege to care for the fire. Through a new architecture, the fire belonged to every Zoroastrian: priestly or lay, man or woman, wealthy or poor. If inside Masonic lodges the colonized and the colonizer could sit in the same space as equals, so could all Zoroastrians in these new Parsi temples. In the decades to come, Parsis continued to build public and private structures with distinct Persian Revival elevations and open plans, in an attempt to signal not only an unbroken lineage to the glory of ancient Persia but also a certain sense of belonging to the modern world. Besides the pedimented temples of the Seth, Patel, and Rao Adarans mentioned above, it is worth pointing to the Mewavala Adaran. Located ( 126 )  the persian revival

in the crowded district of Bhendi Bazaar, it was vandalized during the 1851 riots targeting Parsis. When relocated to Byculla, its new design followed the lead of the Anjoman Atash Bahram with a prominent pediment, as did the Khan Bahador Edulji Sorabji Chenai Anjoman Adaran (fire and temple 1920) in Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, and the Kankaria Adaran (fire and temple 1925) in Ahmedabad.229 The Persian Revival, an architectural style, one branch of which was invented by the Parsi elite in the nineteenth century, championed and embellished by Western scholars and artists, and sidelined by art historians since then, reached its zenith and was ready to be exported as the world steeped in the first global conflict. In Tehran, the first explicitly Parsi import of the Persian Revival style appeared on the Anjoman Adaran, or the Bhika Bahram atash-kadeh (fire and temple December 5, 1916, fig. 42).230 Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11, along with efforts of the Amelioration Society, had resulted in the relocation of many Zoroastrian families of central Iran to the modernizing capital city. Here, they found not only social mobility but also relative security. Their numbers grew rapidly from fifty to five hundred. Permitted to erect a fire temple in Tehran, Iran’s Zoroastrians looked neither to Achaemenid and Sassanian archeological sites nearby nor to the centuries-old, concealed, home-like fire temples of Yazd and Kerman. They instead looked to Bombay. Half a century of Parsi advocacy in Iranian politics and the successful Parsi adoption of colonial systems had reversed the hierarchy of the copy and the original, of the authentic and the reproduced, and the home and the exile. Unlike its Indian models with imposing street elevations, Tehran’s Anjoman Adaran was sheltered in a courtyard behind a tall brick wall on Mirza Kuchek Khan Avenue. Financed by two Parsi sisters from Bombay, Zarbai and Sunabai Dubash, the temple was built on property owned by Ardeshir Kiamanesh; its foundation stone was laid on August 13, 1913, by the future prime minister and diplomat Mehdi Qoli Khan Hedayat (office 1927–33) and the grandson of famed historian, literary figure, and diplomat Reza Qoli Khan Hedayat, one of the first Iranian Freemasons in the House of Oblivion, the faramush-kaneh. Four years later, the temple was consecrated by cultural minister Ebrahim Hakimi—a graduate of the reformist Dar al-Fonun, a Freemason, and a future three-term prime minister. The first Zoroastrian representative in the Iranian Parliament, Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh (1874–1941), however, had the most prominent role in the project, which explains the Parsi connection.231 As a young Kermani of sixteen, Shahrokh had been sent to the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Parsi Benevolent Institute in Bombay, some note by Manekji Hataria himself, the foremost champion of the Persian Revival.232 While in Bombay, Shahrokh had been impressed by “Parsis’ own progress” and desire to return to ancient roots.233 His return and lifelong commitment to Iran’s modernization through the promotion of Zoroastrian/Mazdaic artistic heritage coincided with a high point in Iranian culture in the the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 127 )

Fig. 42 (above)  East elevation of the Anjoman Adaran fire temple, Tehran, Iran, 1913–16. Photo: author. Fig. 43  South elevation of Anushirvan Dadgar High School, Tehran, Iran, 1934–36. Photo: public domain by P.M.

crucial years of the late 1920s and the 1930s, during which served as one of Reza Shah’s (r. 1925–41) supporters. Shahrokh’s commitment to the Parsi mission of reform-asrevival—launched by Hataria half a century earlier—included the change from the Muslim lunar calendar to the Muslim solar calendar and the initiation of the burial system for Zoroastrians. Like Hataria, Shahrokh was instrumental in the erection of several Persian Revival structures with the faithful bull-headed capitals and the hovering faravahar, including the Peshotanji Dossabhai Marker Orphanage and School (1934) in Yazd, the Firuz Bahram High School for boys (1932) in Tehran, the Anushirvan Dadgar High School for girls (1934–36, fig. 43) in Tehran, and the mausoleum of Ferdowsi (1934) in Tus.234 All four projects involved high-ranking Iranian members of Reza Shah’s secularist cabinet, who, like reformist Parsis, believed the best path of modern progress would follow a return to Iran’s antiquity. Financed with 70,000 rupees from Bahram Bhikaji of Bombay, the Firuz Bahram School shielded the Anjoman fire temple on the Zoroastrian community-owned land immediately to the south. At the same time, the impressive building of the Anushirvan Dadgar School on Shah Reza Avenue displayed a perfected version of the Apadana variety with its six tall bull-headed columns holding up a prominent frieze of the faravahar and Persepolitan crenellations. The school was probably designed by Russian architect Nicolai Markov in cooperation with Me’mar Jafar Khan Kashani; the keystone was laid by Iran’s prime minister Mohammad Ali Forughi on August 25, 1934. The twenty-threebay structure was constructed on land purchased by the Tehran Zoroastrian Anjoman with 100,000 rupees donated by Anushirvan Ratanbai Bamji Tata, the sister of Jamsetji Tata. On the south elevation, the central pillared hall (the Iranian talar) was expanded by two six-bay wings, at the ends of which two additional three-bay hypostyle halls showcased four bull-headed capitals with full sets of crenellations on the rooflines. The friezes between the ground and second floors were decorated with six elongated tile panels depicting architectural fragments from Persepolis. Intriguingly, the craftsmen seem not to have been interested in the nearby originals at Persepolis, instead favoring a copy of a French utopian reimagining of ancient Persia. The middle panel of each three-bay side hall reproduces Charles Chipiez’s reconstruction of the “Palace of Xerxes” from Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité (1890), plate iv (fig. 44; compare to fig. 18). Chipiez copied his reconstruction of the hypostyle hall from Texier’s plate 103, under the caption “Restitution de la sale hypostyle,” in which a pair of columns was drawn as freestanding on each end. From Texier’s reconstruction, Chipiez elaborated on the furniture and flora. By the time this copy of the copy of the copy reached the facade of Anushirvan, it had gone through layers of restitution and reimagining.235 The inventiveness of the coloring outdid the precision of the copy. The copy was now influencing the original.

the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 129 )

Fig. 44  Tile panel on the south elevation of Anushirvan Dadgar High School, Tehran, Iran, 1934–36. The panel reproduces Charles Chipiez’s reconstruction of the Apadana at Persepolis in Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, plate iv (fig. 18). Photo: public domain by P.M.

Protected on all sides by Zoroastrian-owned buildings and set in a courtyard on an east-west axis, the Anjoman Adaran has a veranda of six columns fronting an entrance that leads into a compact prayer hall (36 × 20 feet). The chahar-taq atash-gah is visible through glass openings due west, where the fire burns in a metal vessel, itself an import from India. Iran’s Zoroastrians had believed that the Parsi practice of burning the flame in a big vase had been a Sassanian tradition lost during the “years of [Muslim] oppression,” when the luxurious silver vases had been looted and replaced with stone-pillar altars, as in the Yazdi and Kermani practice. In designing their modern temples, Iran’s Zoroastrians had therefore imported Parsi vessels.236 Archeological excavations, however, have revealed that Sassanians used pillar altars and continuous migration of the Iranshah after the fifteenth century led to the use of vessels.237 The temple’s elevation similarly follows the Parsi design. The entablature consists of a balustrade flanking the motifs of the king, the faravahar, the fire-holder, and the sun, copied not from the original relief of Artaxerxes’s tomb at Persepolis but instead from its copy in Forsat’s Asar-e ajam. Unlike its Parsi and Achaemenid prototypes, the object in the hand of the faravahar is not circular but semicircular, and the king does not point at but salutes the faravahar, as per Forsat’s reconstruction. On each of the six column capitals, bull’s heads protrude from all four corners, yielding four heads per capital. Iran’s Zoroastrians had given a Baroque twist to the highly stylized Parsi capitals, as if to appropriate the imagined, the reinvented past far closer to them in space and thus to reclaim their pre-Islamic authenticity as the truest and the purest of Iranians. Alternatively, perhaps, they invoked another history closer to them in time and space: the hypostyle wooden hall that flanks the main building, called the talar, of Chehel Sotun Palace (1647) in Shah Abbas I’s Isfahan, with four lions ( 130 )  the persian revival

protecting the corners of four column bases. Maybe this is also why the Adaran was not conceived as an architecture of the facade, as were those in Bombay, but was instead conceived with a facade reformulated through a rich mix of Safavid, Zand, and Qajar garden architecture. While borrowing from Parsi architecture, Iran’s Zoroastrians were also showing allegiance to a local, Perso-Shi’a tradition of revival (as elaborated in chapter 3). While the selected architectural elements from Persepolis, such as bull-headed capitals, the faravahar, and the articulation of a grand veranda, seem to have been Parsi inspired, the talar arrangement recalls Safavid, Zand, and Qajar palatial architecture. In the Anjoman Adaran—a modern shrine to an ancient religion without much of medieval architectural history—Iran’s Zoroastrians had managed to summon antique Persian, Iranian Islamic, and modern Parsi traditions into a single edifice. In the 1920s, as the Iranian nationalist movement rose to become the Pahlavi state, the Parsi and the Iranian brands of revival merged into one aesthetic language: the fully matured neo-Achaemenid architecture adopted by the Pahlavi state. Parsi philanthropists and scholars were devoted participants in this official Iranian project of reform-as-return. After helping establish the Iranian Zoroastrian Anjoman of Bombay (1918) and the Iran League of Bombay (1922), Parsi scholar Dinshaw Jejeebhoy Irani joined his Iranian Shi’a mentee and colleague Ebrahim Pur-Davud in producing and teaching decades of scholarship on ancient Iran.238 In the 1930s Western scholars such as Ernst Herzfeld, Thomas Arnold, and Edward Browne continued to benefit from substantial subventions from Parsi patrons, including Sir Dorabji Tata and J. J. Modi, on Iran-related scholarship, while contributing articles to Modi’s Papers on Indo-Iranian and Other Subjects (1930).239 Rabindranath Tagore’s tour of Iran in 1932 was hailed as a manifest revival of the ancient Aryan ties between the two nations and included the laying of the keystone for the Firuz Bahram School.240 Relying on art-historical arguments made by Fergusson and Modi, Firoze Cowasji Davar declared from Ahmadabad, “In fact as Dr. Strzygowski neatly sums up: ‘What Hellas was to the art of antiquity, that Iran was to the art of the new Christian world and to that of Islam.’”241 In his introduction to Parsi scholar Behramgore Tehmurasp Anklesaria’s Zarathustra, Founder of Monotheism (1930), Iran’s minister of foreign affairs and an accomplished scholar of ancient Iran, Mohammad Ali Forughi, argued that “the revelation of Zarathustra” is the “best argument for proving the rational wisdom, the straight path, the pure taste, superior magnanimity and lofty traits of character of the Iranian nation.”242 The centrality of the Persian Revival style was conspicuous when Parsi industrialists, Iranian reformists, and pro-Nazi German firms in December 1936 joined in the publication of the special issue of Iran Bastan on the occasion of Ferdowsi’s millenary celebrations.243 Page after page of high-quality photographs displayed the progress that revivalist ideologies from India, Iran, and Germany had pursued since the mid-nineteenth century. Strzygowski’s Aryan artistic axis materialized in the evidence the persepolitan st yle in british india  ( 131 )

Fig. 45  Frontispiece of the December 1936 special issue of Iran Bastan, showing a portrait of Reza Shah Pahlavi and a portrait of Adolf Hitler under the Iran Bastan logo of the faravahar with a swastika inserted, published through Parsi, Iranian, and German cooperation on the occasion of Ferdowsi’s millenary celebrations. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

of such edifices as the Ferdowsi Mausoleum (1934) in Tus, the Posts and Telegraphs Ministry (1934), the National Bank (1935), the police headquarters (1933 and 1935), and the new Parliament building (1935) in Reza Shah’s Tehran, the pristinely white elevations of which were decorated with bull-headed capitals and hovering faravahars (see figs. 69–73). Parsi progress was similarly signaled by the two architectural styles that had made Bombay modern: on the one hand, Tata’s neoclassical house, the Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay University and Library, the Elphinstone College, and on the other, the Persepolitan Atash Bahrams in Navsari, Udvada, and Bombay. The healthy modern bodies of young Iranians were foregrounded upon revivalistic facades, while the healthy minds of the wise and elderly were evidenced in the group photographs of Iranian and Parsi scholars and savants during conferences, meetings, and lectures. The large pages of Iran Bastan also juxtaposed photographs of Achaemenid and Sassanian archeological sites, such as Persepolis, Taq-e Bostan, Bisotun, and Naqsh-e Rostam, with advertisements of heavy industrial machines and tools by German firms, such as Siemens, AEG, Unionmatex, HASAG, Wiessner, and Exakta. The entire history of the Persian Revival, from its beginnings in Bombay and Surat to its culmination in Tehran, was documented and taxonomized in this special issue. Frontispiece portraits of Reza Shah and Adolf Hitler were shadowed by the faravahar, whose tail had grown a swastika (fig. 45). By then, Minister of Public Instruction Ali Asghar Hekmat had offered the king’s 1932 open-arms invitation to the Parsis: “The sons of Iran though separated from her, should look upon this country of to-day as their own, and differentiate it from its immediate past, and strive to benefit from her developments.”244 The first to contribute to Reza Shah’s development of modern tourism were young Parsi boys from wealthy families in search of the Urheimat as Hataria had envisioned. In the architectural and iconographic choices of the Persian Revival edifices, from Parsi Bombay to Qajar Tehran, we witness a general preference for a typically nineteenth-century brand of eclecticism, freely borrowed from a range of artistic repertoires. On almost all of these facades, a pediment enthrones and dominates the main elevation, which usually flanks a significant urban space. Ceremonial or decorative balconies further adorn these public fronts as if to fulfill a function of declaration, of advertising, of a missive of grandeur as reform. The deliberate range of artistic traditions and canons, including European eclecticism, form a hybrid architecture that challenged emergent European norms. Here entered the agency of the native to provide meaning to the function of these buildings in the broader context of old empires, new colonies, and modern nations. We witness a parallel but different kind of Persian artistic revival effected in India by Parsi philanthropists and in Iran by the Shi’a aristocracy (as elaborated in the chapter that follows).

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Qajar kings and aristocrats copied and affixed Achaemenid and Sassanian reliefs onto Muslim architectural forms. Parsis injected revived architectural attributes, often taken from inaccurate Western sources, into radically modified Sassanian palatial floor plans and classical Western morphologies. In Qajar Iran, that architecture confirmed and reinforced the image of a ruling aristocracy and the prosperity of the empire under its command. On the Indian subcontinent, the style enabled a tiny congregation of Parsis among a sea of religions and sects to see itself as a noble race, heir to a civilization foundational to the development of modern Europe. While drawing on the allure of Persian kingship, the practice of revival aimed to establish an ethnonational lineage between the Parsis of the British Raj and the kingdoms of ancient Persia. Thus was an ethnohistorical legitimacy bestowed on the self-perception of progressive Parsis, who were given a special place in the networks of British imperialism. In the Parsi context, revivalistic architecture served a different function, premised on constructs of race and taste. In both cases, these varied revivals of the invented underpinned the same strategy: to come to terms with the cultural hegemony of the West.

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•3 The Persian Revival as Iranian Modernity The final illustration in James Fergusson’s Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored (1851) is a midsize line drawing. It depicts a long-bearded figure on a horse, spearing a long-tailed lion (fig. 46). Eugène Flandin’s 1840 lithograph must have been the original to Fergusson’s copy, while Antoin Sevruguin’s photograph of the relief speaks to its lasting significance in the 1890s.1 Above Fergusson’s illustration, the author of the earliest history of Achaemenid architecture ends his book with a revivalistic evocation. “Throughout the whole range” of West Asian history, none “even approached” the “perfection” of Achaemenid architecture, he asserted, except for “a specimen of art . . . a bas-relief on the rock, cut by order of Futteh Ali Shah, late king of Persia.”2 Carved over a Parthian relief depicted by William Ouseley in 1812, it was executed by stonemason Ostad Aqa Mohammad Qasem based on a composition by the head of the royal workshop, Abdollah Khan.3 Apropos this superb 1831 relief at Sorsor-e, Fergusson elaborates as follows: “the action [is] identical with what we find in the earliest sculpture of Nimroud; the grade of art [is] the same, neither much worse nor much better; the form is changed, but the object is the same; for though four thousand years have elapsed between the two, the kings of this country seem to have had no higher aspirations than to be represented as slayers of the king of beasts.”4 Clearly, Fergusson had no art-historical interest in the piece. Instead, forecasting the sentiment expressed by the editors of the French tabloid Paris Match in October 1971—that “they [the Iranians] have not changed in 2,500 years”—his final sentence divulges an enduring epistemic fallacy: “But not only in this, but in every art, in every form of civilisation and of government, of race or religion, though ever changing to the superficial eye, [Persians] remain the most unchangeable of all the inhabitants of this sublunar world. As Nimroud saw them when he first rebelled, so we see them now.”5

Fig. 46  James Fergusson, reproduction of Eugène Flandin’s 1840 lithograph of the 1831 relief of Fath Ali Shah fighting a lion, Sorsor-e, Iran. From James Fergusson, The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored: An Essay on Ancient Assyrian and Persian Architecture (London: J. Murray, 1851), 368, fig. 42. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

The extravagant second Qajar monarch, Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), masterfully played these European fantasies of Persian “slayers of the king of beasts” to the advantage of his dynasty and empire. “Exploit[ing] royal portraiture as a means of imperial statecraft,” as Julian Raby notes, his portraits were dispatched to royal courts globally—off to Calcutta, Sind, Istanbul, Saint Petersburg, Paris, and London.6 Over the three decisive decades of his reign, stylized “life-size” and “single-figure” portraits depicted Fath Ali Shah in the same iconography of kingly perfection.7 His “black as jet” beard and “dark, brilliant, piercing” eyes; his gorgeous raiment “covered with jewels of extraordinary size” of which European rulers could only dream; and his expressly commissioned Kayanid crown set ablaze centuries-old fantasies about the Persian monarchy.8 Groundbreaking artistic leaps were made by his court painters and stonemasons to cast the image of the ideal, hence “unchangeable,” Achaemenid-like king of kings. Credited primarily to him, the launching of the Persian Revival was the most vivid expression of this revolutionary unchangeability, which has its brand in Iranian art history, allied to but distinct from the Parsi revivals traced in chapter 2. This nineteenth- and early twentieth-century stylistic development was unique in that, although it deployed the seemingly same set of Zoroastrian/Mazdaic iconographies as those by the Parsis of British India, its purpose in Iran was to hail the longevity and splendor of the institution of the Persian monarchy by Qajar and, later, Pahlavi kings. Reformists’ appropriation of the style, furthermore, underpinned antidespotic and countercolonial intentions. Distinct from Parsis’ exilic angst and colonial ambitions, the Qajar and Pahlavi adoption of the Persian revivals constituted one of the strategies of statecraft in reaction to specific art-historical and sociopolitical realities of a given reign, including Western colonial schemes in Iran.

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Until the 1820s the Safavid artistic legacy was sufficient for claiming political legitimacy for post-Safavid aspirers to the Persian throne. The revival of typologies and iconographies from Iran’s antiquities was a way to attain and embellish that throne. Fath Ali Shah ordered reliefs in the style of the Sassanians to counter the Qajars’ dwindling grip on a shrinking empire, while aristocrats commissioned eclectic villas to reinforce the Qajars’ claim to prosperity. After the Perso-Russian Wars (1805–28), however, a modern ethnic consciousness began to develop. Its historiographical methods were shaped primarily by a fusion of late eighteenth-century architectural revivals in Zand Shiraz, Islamic literary traditions, and Europe’s new ways of narrating and reviving (art) history. The deepening of this consciousness reflected the reformist literati’s adoption and transformation of ancient Iranian artifacts and Western histories of ancient Iran. The protonationalist discourse of the 1870s to the turn of the century completely shifted the art-historical meaning and political function of the Persian Revival architecture. Unlike the acclaimed Gothic, Classical, and Saracenic Revivals, the Persian Revival was a movement whose art history has never been written as such. In its Iranian context, revivalistic Qajar and Pahlavi architecture was a by-product of complex processes of modernization that, as it developed, pulled in and pushed out diverse and at times irreconcilable ideological, technological, historicist, morphological, decorative, and stylistic parts to form a holistic entity that we could discern in hindsight as the Persian Revival. It consisted of a big jigsaw puzzle with countless pieces that each artisan of the style picked, copied, and assembled at will, adding yet another edifice to the panorama of Iran’s modern cityscapes. One robust narrative was told by Europeans about ancient Iran, as traced in chapter 1; the other was erected by Parsis in British India, as examined in chapter 2. Iranian patrons of the Persian Revival harvested artistic components from both of these narratives, as we will see in this chapter; yet as they carried out their revivals, they cultivated the living traditions of Iranian art history itself. The typology of the talar—the Iranian term for the pillared hall that flanks the main building and serves as the grand entrance to the Persian throne hall—proved pivotal to Persian Revival architecture. Unlike in Parsi India, the Persian Revival in Iran was a prolonged and initially a fluid and artistic practice that entailed the appropriation of the Safavid talar, itself Shah Abbas I’s reinvention of the Achaemenid hypostyle hall, the main elevation of which was gradually elaborated by Qajar patrons with the synthesis of Afshar appropriation of the Mughal stone reliefs and Zand public display of Shahnameh narratives in tile and human figures in stone. By 1925, when the Pahlavi reformists came to power, Persian Revival architecture was ready to be formally perfected based on new archeological evidence. Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1925–41), wrongly credited with conceiving Persian Revival architecture in the 1930s, espoused the style as the official language of his reign and thus fashioned the last—not

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the first—chapter of a long story. Hegel’s 1837 assertion that art history began at Persepolis came full circle in the broad avenues of Tehran.

Post-Safavid Legacy of Revival, 1747–1848 The fall of the Safavid Empire had a lingering yet devastating effect on all fronts, particularly on the arts. From the reign of Abbas II (r. 1642–66), which marks the decline of Safavid rule, to that of the last official (shadow) monarch of the dynasty, Mohammad II (r. 1786), passed more than a century of struggle for the Iranian throne.9 While the Naderi wars following the Afghan invasion of Isfahan (1722) restored and expanded Iran’s borders to their limits during the Safavid reign, they nevertheless caused significant damage to the built environment. A mark of the age, Nader Shah Afshar’s (r. 1736–47) practice of destruction was exceeded by that of Aqa Mohammad Khan Qajar (r. 1794–97) at the end of this epoch. Contestations between the many claimants to the Safavid throne underscore “the survival of Safavid concepts of the Iranian state” and the deep desire for the return of central stability.10 Modern Iranian art can be read in light of such desire. The three major rulers of the eighteenth century—Nader Shah, Karim Khan Zand (r. 1751–1779), and Aqa Mohammad Khan—had each experienced the grandeur of architecture and urbanism in Safavid Isfahan. For each, the zenith of the Safavid dynasty, especially the reign of Shah Abbas I, the Great (r. 1587–1629), loomed large, John Perry argues, as “a byword for Iranian kingship” and “a touchstone by which subsequent regimes were measured.”11 While looking inward to the immediate past, they became increasingly responsive to the political potentials of a revival of ancient Iran. This was not a novel strategy for Iranian statecraft. Rulers all over the vast Muslim territories had sought Zoroastrian/Mazdaic monuments as aspirational models. The Mamluk ruler Sultan Hasan reportedly dispatched an envoy to measure the vault of Taq-e Kasra (540) in order to surpass its length in the qibla iwan of his funerary complex in Cairo (1361). In 1544 the Mughal emperor Humayun visited the Sassanian ruins at the site of Takht-e Solayman in Azerbaijan— assuming it to be Persepolis—during his exile at the Safavid court. During his reign, Shah Abbas carved, with “his own hand,” a graffito on the relief of Ardeshir I (r. 224–42) at Naqsh-e Rostam.12 Despite its physical proximity, the ancient Iranian past was known to the Safavid, Afshar, Zand, and early Qajar literati not through its archeology but through Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (977–1010), through the writings of Ibn al-Balkhi, Hamza al-Isfahani, Masudi, Tabari, Belami, and Movses Khorenatsi, as well as Biruni, who provided the “most elaborate genealogy of the Achaemenids.”13 In the hands of late Sassanian historiographers and the state propaganda machine, the Achaemenids and the Arsacids/Parthians, argues Touraj Daryaee, were “gradually replaced” by the ( 138 )  the persian revival

legendary Avestan dynasties of the Pishdadians and the Kayanids. In this narrative, Keyumars (the Avestan Gayomard) was the first human being and ruler of the world. “Iranian national history written during Sasanid times,” writes Daryaee, “was the history of Iran according to Zoroastrianism,” through which the historical Achaemenids were “mixed and interchanged” with the Kayanids.14 By 651, when the Sassanian Empire collapsed, the ruins in Fars were universally believed to have been erected by the mythical Kayanids. This explains the transmutation of the name Persepolis to Sad Sotun (One Hundred Columns) as per Sassanian inscriptions. Zoroastrian salvational historiography had guaranteed to the Sassanians a dynastic lineage, one traced not to the Achaemenids—however great— but instead to the even greater Avestan kings such as Jamshid (Avestan Yima), the fourth king of the Pishdadian dynasty. Today Iranians know Persepolis as Takht-e Jamshid—the throne of Jamshid—or Sad Sotun (with the variation of Hezar Sotun, meaning “a thousand columns,” or Chehel Sotun, meaning “forty columns”), as did the Sassanians and, following them, Ferdowsi.15 Similarly, one of the three most venerated hilltop fires of the Sassanian era, the Adur Goshnasp (fire of warriors), has been known by the name of Takht-e Solayman (the throne of Solomon), while the Achaemenid necropolis of Naqsh-e Rostam was renamed after the Shahnameh hero as the “picture of Rostam.”16 Like the Sassanians, Muslim rulers left many graffiti over the centuries as evidence of a continuous link to the histories and legends of ancient Persia. Safavid, Zand, and early Qajar kings and nobles brought back architectural fragments to be incorporated into palaces in Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tehran. The porticos of Chehel Sotun (1647) and Ali Qapu (1597) in Isfahan, as noted by Sussan Babaie and Jennifer Scarce, trace their typological lineage to the Apadana at Persepolis.17 So while early modern engagement with ancient ruins was direct and intimate, historical and archeological knowledge of these ruins was a mid-nineteenth-century phenomenon, to which Iranians responded wholeheartedly. This resulted in the coexistence of “different historical traditions about the same ruin,” as traced by Lindsey Allen.18 The Safavids, Zands, and early Qajars each had a textual knowledge of ancient Persian art history that ran parallel to the others, and then they merged and morphed into the secular narratives of Europe about the same universal (art) history. As an architectural movement, the Persian Revival was thus a by-product of two sets of historiographical filters: Parsi knowledge on ancient Iran was filtered through Europe’s curiosity about and discovery of the Achaemenid past, while the Zand and Qajar elite tapped into Islamic sources that foregrounded the Sassanian histories and historiographical lens. Through direct contact with the Parsis, as well as the arrival of European archeology and racial theories to Iran, the Achaemenids were, in a sense, discovered, and consequently took an increasingly central role in the transformative processes of Iran’s modernity. the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 139 )

After subjugating the great Mughal emperor Nasir ud-Din Muhammad Shah on May 16, 1739, Nader Shah marched out of Delhi as the triumphant king of Iran. In both his destructive and constructive deeds, he was following in the footsteps of the fourteenth-century conqueror Timur. Behind Nader Shah, an enormous army of men, horses, camels, and mules carried back to Iran, by today’s calculations, $120 billion worth of Mughal wealth, including the famed Peacock Throne.19 Like Timur in 1398, Nader paraded out of Delhi with three hundred masons and builders, two hundred steelworkers, and one hundred stone carvers, who were to build his royal complex at Kalat, located some hundred miles north of Mashhad in Khorasan.20 His two-month stay in Delhi had exposed him to the finest examples of Mughal art. He had marched through the Shalimar Gardens to the Red Fort, where he had been wined and dined for days on end. He had been lavished with gifts in Shah Jahan’s exquisite Hall of Private Audience (Divan-e Khas, 1635). And outside the fort, in the Chandni Chowk district, he had stood on the rooftop of Roshan ud-Dowleh Mosque (1721) facing Fatepuhri Mosque (1650) and had ordered a qatl-e aam (public massacre).21 Incited by Mughal imperial taste and skilled Indian artisans, Nader Shah was determined to turn Kalat—a formidable fortress whose legend had been narrated in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and that had been seized by none other than Timur—into his royal stronghold. As analyzed by Babaie, a “concoction of ” two “hybridized and adopted” architectural imports implemented at Kalat-e Naderi represent the missing link between the artistic canon under the Safavids and the architectural novelties that followed into the Zand and the Qajar eras.22 Despite their small scale, the minor artistic leaps at Kalat—much like Nader himself, at once daring, ambitious, calculated, yet short-lived—had a pivotal role in the development of the Iranian brand of the Persian Revival. Nader introduced into Iran some “positively modern . . . imperial iconography,” exemplified by his adoption of a “crown-hat” instead of the Safavid turban, a seated “pictorial convention” in royal portraiture, and the crowning of a king by a king instead of a cleric. “It is impossible,” Babaie observes, “to imagine the emergence of crowns and imperial regalia of the Zand and especially Qajar periods without Nader’s adoption of things Indian.”23 Mughal influences entered construction techniques as well. With an impenetrable infrastructure, Kalat gave Nader the infrastructural upper hand in the vicious struggle for the Safavid throne. By 1740 he had ordered the erection of a palace, a treasury, mosques, bathhouses, and perhaps a mausoleum inside its fortifications.24 In architectural schemes, Kalat showcased two novelties: the facade of the octagonal pavilion called the Qasr-e Khorshid (the Sun Palace) incorporated stone sheathing with delicate floral and vegetal motifs in Mughal style, and an inscription carved onto the side of a cliff, consisting of four columns of poetry and acting as a propaganda billboard, publicly praised Nader Shah. Although left unfinished, this inscription on stone recalls the 1684–85 waqf inscription by Safavid grand vizier Sheikh Ali Khan Zanganeh at Bisotun. Decades later George ( 140 )  the persian revival

Rawlinson described the latter as “a worthless Arabic inscription” in “an arched niche” “barbarously inserted into the middle of [a] relief,” while eminent scholar of Zoroastrianism A. V. Williams Jackson and Ker Porter depicted it as “vandalism”—“mutilated” and “obliterated.”25 Carved at the center of a Parthian relief of Mithridates II (123–87 bce) and Gotarzes II (50 bce), the Zanganeh relief must have been the model that Nader Shah had seen, for after defeating the Ottomans at the battles of Malayer and Hamadan, he had headed to Kermanshah in July 1730, marching right by the Bisotun bas-reliefs. In their setting on a high cliff, format of four rectangular columns, and frame composition of a pointed arch, the Kalat and Zanganeh inscriptions are remarkably similar. Reviving the artistic formula of Sassanian imperial propaganda on stone, albeit eschewing figural imagery, these two must have served as prototypes for Qajar-era Persian Revival bas-reliefs. “The remarkable carved stonework of Kalat,” as Babaie points out, “introduces a novel idea for the early 18th century. . . . [W]hile the themes of much Qajar relief carving aspired to [Sassanian] royal subjects . . . Kalat’s precedent and its skilled labor seem to be of greater significance than any other source.”26 Through Indian mediation and Naderi innovation, Kalat represents the lost seam between the Safavid artistic canon, which, except for the Zanganeh inscription, includes no examples of outdoor stone reliefs reciting Shahnameh narratives, and this Achaemenid and Sassanian theme and technique, which proliferated under the Qajars—indeed marked the official beginning of the Persian Revival in Iran. Figural imagery depicted in murals that were meant to be seen by the public are well known from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries, such as the outdoor murals on the entrance to the Qaysariyya and on the first periphery wall of Maydan-e Shah in Isfahan.27 The Safavid repertoire also includes, at Chehel Sotun, stone sculptures of four lions forming the base of each column as well as indoor murals of literary subjects with life-size figures. Certainly the novel grouping of outdoor, public, stone, and Shahnameh-themed artistic expressions was a Zand idea, which was quickly developed by the Qajars into a canonical art form. It is to the ability of Qajar court artists who adapted the stone technique at Kalat-e Nader to the Shahnameh imagery on public facades and the figural representations on dadoes in Karim Khan’s Shiraz that the blooming of the Iranian brand of the Persian Revival is indebted. Born in Malayer, into a Zand pastoral tribe of the Lak branch of the Lors, Karim Khan’s familial geography was populated with Sassanian legends and ruins. Unlike most Muslim occupants of the Persian throne before him, he traced his ancestry to Persian and Kurdish, rather than Turkic, tribes and languages. Hanging on to its pivotal spot in Sassanian geo-history, Malayer boasts, to this day, of having sheltered Yazdgerd III (r. 632–51) while chased by Muslim armies after his escape from Ctesiphon. Indeed, it served as Karim Khan’s temporary capital before his 1765 tactical move to Shiraz. the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 141 )

Emerging out of anarchy, the reign of Karim Khan is considered a period of calm that produced a cluster of notable landmarks in Shiraz. Instead of adopting the title of shah (emperor), he maintained the appellation of vakil al-khalq (deputy of the people) and ruled over most of the Iranian Plateau except for Khorasan in the second half of the eighteenth century. His political priority was to unite the Iranian territories under one cultural center, as the Safavids had done before him. Yet his adoption of the title of vakil connoted a loyalty to a Persian ethnic and cultural legacy against the Safavid remnants of the Turkic Qizilbash. Territorial unity and Persianate cultural revival were domestic concerns, a part of which entailed the imprisonment of Aqa Mohammad Khan in 1762 (in which he remained until his escape in 1779 at the Zand court). It is during this period that Aqa Mohammad Khan learned the Safavid modes of royal representation and the Zand bids on Persian revival that he would transmit to the next century. During their bitter struggle for the throne, neither Karim Khan nor Aqa Mohammad Khan chose Isfahan, Shah Abbas I’s lofty capital, as his seat of power. Forced by loyalty to their ancestral territory and a desire for dynastic new beginnings, the former based his court in Shiraz (1765), and the latter, Tehran (1785). The power of proximity to ancient sites must no doubt have played a role in Karim Khan’s selection of Shiraz. A military man with concerns for practicality, yet aware of a sense of public good, he had a flair for construction that turned Shiraz into the envy of neighboring, and once unmatched, Isfahan.28 While stationed in Tehran during his campaign to subdue the Afghans of Mazandaran and the Qajars of Astarabad in 1758–59, Karim Khan commissioned Ostad Qolam Reza Tabrizi to fortify Tehran’s city walls, first erected by Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524–76). He also built an audience chamber (divan-khaneh, 1759) with spiraling marble columns adjacent to the Khalvat-e Karim Khani (1759), in addition to other administrative buildings and private quarters north of the Safavid complex established by Shah Sulayman (r. 1669–94). During the following two centuries, Qajar and Pahlavi Tehran grew to perpetuate the Iranian tradition of kingship as well as to develop the Persian Revival architecture around Karim Khan’s divan-khaneh in the typology of the talar. Most of his architectural efforts, however, were invested in his seat of power, in Shiraz, located in the ancient heartland of the empire within a three-hour horse ride from Persepolis. Adopting Safavid urban design principles, Karim Khan oversaw the erection of the vakili structures around Maydan-e Shah, the central square of Shiraz, which in turn, acted as models for Aqa Mohammad Khan’s Tehran. As in Isfahan, the royal district served a triple function as the center of economic, political, and religio-cultural life. About twelve thousand well-compensated hands were put to work to build the famed citadel (Arg) of Karim Khan in 1766–67. Functioning as royal residence and seat of empire, this medieval fortress enclosed an area of one acre. The four living and administrative quarters that ran along its forty-foot walls and connected its four towers ( 142 )  the persian revival

surrounded a large courtyard that was divided in two by a long shallow pool. Appropriating the Safavid formation of the talar, Karim Khan erected three talar iwans (hypostyle vaulted halls) on the northern, western, and southern courtyard facades. The corner towers, raised on stone foundations and solid lower walls, were austerely decorated with monochrome brick patterns, echoing regional Lor and Lak tribal ornamentation, while a large glazed-tile panel was placed above the only entrance, on the eastern wall. Technically crude in comparison, yet stylistically aligned with Safavid painting traditions, the panel, described by William Ouseley as “done in very lively colours,” depicted the hero Rostam and the White Demon in the battle from the Shahnameh.29 In his Zand military attire and sporting a large handlebar mustache, Rostam is depicted seconds before his fatal stab of the pale and bleeding demon. Ouseley had paid particular attention to the fact that both “figures are at full length, but ill proportioned,” surrounded by smaller figures and edifices narrating other scenes from the Shahnameh.30 When searching for representations of Shapur I in April 1811, Ouseley had commented on the convention of depicting kings oversize: “It was a custom of remote antiquity in the East, (and is still practised by Indian and Persian painters), to represent the king or chief hero as larger, beyond all natural proportion, than any other person in the same piece.”31 The Zand panel, displaying a larger-than-life figurative image exalting Iran’s Zoroastrian/Mazdaic legend, was the first such image since the fall of the Sassanians. Although using Safavid tile technique instead of stone carving, this panel could be considered the earliest extant outdoor Persian Revival expression, deliberately intended for public consumption. Aqa Mohammad Khan’s capture of Shiraz in 1792 put an end to the city’s prosperity. On March 20, 1785, the new king declared Tehran the imperial seat of his dynasty and the seat of the caliphate (dar al-kelafeh). Following the models of Shah Abbas and Karim Khan, he initiated the creation of a new site of kingship around Golestan Palace. Having been held hostage in the Zand court for two decades, Aqa Mohammad Khan had firsthand experience of how to assemble the infrastructure of royal legitimacy as the heir to the Persian throne. He dismantled Karim Khan’s “two fine pillars,” transported them from the Arg’s talar, and reinstalled them in Golestan, thus ensuring the evolution of a type with a pair of “twisted columns” elevated on a takht (elevated platform) above a stone dado, in turn upholding a pish-taq (a pediment or a portal projecting from the facade).32 Through his enjoyment of the stories of the Shahnameh, he developed a flair for ancient Iran, which in turn led him to commission a Kayanid crown meant to refer to ancient models.33 The expansion of Golestan was instrumental in expressing royal power; it also provided fertile ground for architectural experimentations with the talar prototype that produced novel stylistic forms. Like his uncle, the heir apparent Baba Khan (later Fath Ali Shah) was familiar with Shiraz, for he too, as a child, had been a prisoner in Karim Khan’s court in the the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 143 )

late 1770s. Two decades later, Baba Khan returned to Shiraz to serve as the governor of Fars, Kerman, and Yazd, in which post he remained from 1794 until his ascension to the throne. In March 1798 he crowned himself king in Karim Khan’s divan-khaneh and, like him, embarked on major reconstruction of Golestan. Eight years after his coronation, Fath Ali Shah completed additions to the divan-khaneh, now renamed Emarat-e Takht-e Marmar (Marble Throne Building), in the north of the compound, erected on an elevated porch and framed between two columns. Parallel to his building projects in Tehran, he lost no time in launching an elaborate court culture, a part of which was the bazgasht (return) literary movement, which revived the refined classical poetry of Hafez and Sa’di. In 1830—the year of the first Parsi Persian Revival temple— Fath Ali Khan Saba produced the Shahanshahnameh (Book of king of kings), modeled on the Shahnameh and illustrated with Ker Porter’s portraits of the king and his heir apparent.34 He also erected the Emarat-e Badgir (Wind-Catcher Building, 1813) in the southern section of the complex, adjacent to the Talar-e Almas (Diamond Hall, 1801). His 1807 “spectacular” Qasr-e Qajar summer palace, four miles northeast of Golestan, demonstrated the versatility of the talar and the takht in the hands of Qajar architects. It deployed a Sassanian prototype, as noted by Scarce, from Ardeshir I’s Qala-ye Dokhtar Palace in southern Shiraz.35 At Qasr-e Qajar, Flandin reported having seen apartments decorated with “several representations of favorite heroes of the Persians, such as Rostam, Afrasiba, Timur, and Changiz Khan”—a decorative theme that evolved into a stark feature of revivalism.36 By 1813 both diplomatic and artistic strategies had paid off; Fath Ali Shah had firmly secured his family’s tenure of the Persian crown.37 Aqa Mohammad Khan and Fath Ali Shah seized and reunified the mighty Safavid Empire, with its unprecedented artistic, architectural, and urban-planning traditions, which were no longer possible to match or outdo. The frustration of this inability to surpass the Safavid heritage was aggravated by the fact that the Qajar reign coincided with the zenith of European imperial expansion in West Asia. Qajar kings aimed to safeguard the Guarded Domains of Iran—a renewed version of the Sassanian conception of Iranshahr, itself forging a mythical link to the Achaemenids—by rising to the challenges of Western imperialism and of domestic bids for royal power.38 Unstable frontiers fueled a culture of formal facades, characteristic of Qajar architecture. After the Perso-Russian Wars, artistic allusion to Achaemenid and Sassanian antiquity—initially filtered through the Shahnameh but increasingly mediated by Parsi and European interpretations—was pivotal to the Qajar strategy of political survival. The events of 1813, conversely, stirred the Iranian world; they were, as Abbas Amanat puts it, a “rude shock to the shah” that challenged his authority as the ideal king of kings, with immediate repercussions for the arts.39 Historians have widely explained the significance of the Perso-Russian Wars to Iran’s modernity. Their impact on its art history was equally essential. As Michael Lewis argues with respect to the English Gothic Revival: ( 144 )  the persian revival

“It was one thing to draw and research mediaeval monasteries, it was quite another to build copies of them. For this to happen required mental adjustments of a traumatic nature.”40 The devastating defeat at the hands of Russia was this traumatic event for the Qajar aristocracy and literati, a heavy blow that was inflicted in the aftermath of the first Perso-Russian War (1805–13) and the signing of the Treaty of Golestan (1813). The humiliation of the latter was exacerbated by defeat in the second Perso-Russian War (1826–28) and the terms of the 1828 Treaty of Torkmanchai. It drew a new border between Russia and Iran at the Aras River, forcing Fath Ali Shah to surrender all his Caucasian territories along with those in the Persian Gulf. The empire was shrinking. Together with further concessions and treaties, including Erzurum (1823 and 1847) and Paris (1857), these losses reduced Iran, a mighty world power under the Safavids, to a colonial instrument by the mid-nineteenth century. The image of Iran was debased, so that it came to be seen as a “weak and vulnerable buffer state.”41 The echoes of the 1699 Treaty of Carlowitz were felt in the hallways of Golestan. If until the Perso-Russian Wars, as Amanat points out, “the display of the [Kayanid] crown and other regalia had proven effective against domestic contestations,” after that, such references to the Safavid legacy were an “embarrassingly hollow gesture,” given the cultural intensity of European imperialism.42 While Europe was before then relatively marginal to Iranian self-perception, now it served as “a model of change,” as in other Muslim territories, whether colonized or not.43 It was at this moment, in the 1820s and 1830s, that a deliberately politicized revivalistic movement—one that searched for inspiration in Achaemenid and Sassanian iconography—was invented, took on explicit form, and occupied a special place in the politics of patronage and taste. To represent the empire as magnificently antique was to cling to its modern sovereignty. Invested in the merit Europe ascribed to antiquarian and racial taxonomies, Iranians began to cast their empire in revivalistic terms to defer Europe’s portrayal of its decadence and backwardness. In hindsight, it is hard to presume Karim Khan’s rationale for selecting colorful tile for his Rostam and White Demon panel at the Arg, given that his Shiraz was rich with carved stone reliefs. Might the main reason have been structural: the difficulty in securing a large block of stone on a brick wall? Or technological: the lack of skilled masons to carve a large and intricate scene on a thin block of stone? Or, more unlikely, aesthetic: the vakil preferred bright colors over monochromy, although Zand reliefs were painted in different colors? The few extant examples of Zand stonework of human figures look impressive, and Karim Khan seems to have been fond of stone. Jackson notes that the Arg was “the best-constructed” edifice in Shiraz, with “a fine courtyard of stone.”44 Lord Curzon reports that Karim Khan “rebuilt the walls of stone.”45 As the guest of the son of and successor to Fars’s governor Farhad Mirza Mo’tamed al-Dowleh (1818–1888) in the Arg, he was not impressed by the “courtyard and pavilions of the the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 145 )

governor’s residence” until he “passed through two large garden-courts, one of which contained a marble dado of warriors sculpted in relief and painted, a relic of the palace of [Karim] Khan.”46 A year earlier, British Orientalist Edward Browne took notice of the same: “On the outer wall of the principal block of buildings is a series of bas-reliefs representing the exploits of the old heroes of ancient Persia. These have been gaudily coloured by order of the young Prince Jalalu ’d-Dawla,” son of Zell ol-Soltan and grandson of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848–96).47 For the development of the Persian Revival, the dadoes of the takht and talar in the Shiraz garden pavilions, starting from the Arg and Karim Khan’s Baq-e Vakil (Regent’s Garden, 1766), are of prime importance. In these pavilions—described in such well-known works as Ouseley’s Travels in Various Countries of the East (1821), Browne’s Year Amongst the Persians (1893), Curzon’s Persia and the Persian Question (1892), Jackson’s Persia Past and Present (1906), and Ella Sykes’s Persia and Its People (1910)—the Safavid royal talar, the Afshar stone carving, and the Zand use of figural imagery from the Shahnameh were synthesized into a tectonic unit, a type: an open-center pavilion with two columns, looking over a pool and a garden and having one room in a solid block on each side. Predictably, the talar—the locus where Persian kings enthroned themselves—fascinated European writers. In his discussion of Persepolis in Palaces of Nineveh, Fergusson explains the typology of “the open porch” in “Eastern palaces” based on their contemporary Qajar and Mughal use as a space of royal rituals. He notes that the porch was both elevated and open in order for the throne to be visible in “the ceremonial of an Eastern court.”48 Ouseley similarly describes the talar of Karim Khan, where he had had his audience with Prince-Governor Hosayn Ali Mirza Farmanfarma in April 1811, as “the open-fronted hall,” the main function of which was to “best enable” the king and his governors “to display in full sun-shine, the brilliancy of their jewels; a custom which we might trace to very early ages.”49 An incidental photograph in Ernst Herzfeld’s rich archive shows the lower side portion of a talar facade of a residence in Shiraz. Herzfeld labeled this photograph “Shiraz (Iran): Close View of Dado Sculpted with Human Figures,” which was probably taken of that building Donald Wilber elusively called a “vanished garden palace at Shiraz” (fig. 47).50 In the summer of 2007, when I visited Shiraz’s Pars Museum (est. 1936, housed in Karim Khan’s Kolah Farangi building), I stumbled on nine impressive seven-foot-tall reliefs in the courtyard, which at the time captured my attention only because they were Zand-looking (fig. 48). Careful examination revealed later that the four panels visible in Herzfeld’s photograph correspond faithfully to the nine panels in the museum’s courtyard, seven of which were propped upright on a scaffolding and two laid on the ground awaiting curatorial attention. These figures of the dado and the museum are, in turn, identical in their artistic attributes to Karim Khan’s Rostam at the Arg: Zand military uniform of long coat and pants, large eyes and handlebar ( 146 )  the persian revival

Fig. 47  Ernst Herzfeld, photograph of a portion of the talar facade of a residence in Shiraz, which he labeled “Shiraz (Iran): Close View of Dado Sculpted with Human Figures.” Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946, FSA A.6 04.GN.1975.

mustache, Safavid-style metal helmet topped by red feathers, oversized chest buttons, and eighteenth-century weaponry. Except for the seated one with one leg over the other, the figures stand upright in different poses, each holding a mace or a javelin over one shoulder. In approximate size, material, and technique, these are clear imitations of Achaemenid soldiers on the Apadana at Persepolis—at least, close to those which Zand patrons and craftsmen were able to see in their pre-excavation state and had been able, technically, to reproduce (fig. 49). Indeed, photographs before the 1930s excavation of the Apadana show the relief figures standing on ground, exactly as we see them on Zand and Qajar dadoes. This copying, confirming explicit revivalistic intentions as early as the Zand period, is extraordinary in and of itself because for the first time since the fall of the Sassanians large figural reliefs on stone have been reintroduced in Iranian artistic practices. the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 147 )

Fig. 48 Stone bas-reliefs of Zand soldiers, removed from the dado of a Shirazi residential pavilion and later relocated to the Pars Museum, Shiraz, ca. 1780. Photo: author.

Fig. 49 Stone bas-reliefs of Achaemenid soldiers on the main facade of the Apadana at Persepolis, 550–330 bce. Photo: author.

However, what is even more extraordinary than this copying is the fact that these Zand figures stand as representatives of Shahnameh’s Iranian heroes, each labeled and named through an inscription.51 Above one shoulder of each figure is an identifying cartouche: from left to right, (1) Bijan, the grandson of Rostam and a heroic knight in the Shahnameh; (2) Saam, mythical hero, champion, and ruler of Zabolestan (Sistan) in the Shahnameh; (3) Ghaaran, another Shahnameh character; (4) illegible; (5) Bahram, the name of six Sassanian kings and an Iranian hero in the Shahnameh; (6) Anushirvan, better known as the Sassanian king Khosrow I (r. 531–79); and (7) Rostam, the mightiest of the Iranian warriors in the Shahnameh. Of the two panels laid on the ground, that with the seated figure matches Herzfeld’s left panel on the dado and depicts Faramarz, the son of Rostam and a Shahnameh hero, while the second portrays Key Bahman, one of the Kayanid kings. What these rare and orphaned panels disclose is critical for the embryonic beginnings of the Persian Revival in Iran, until now credited to Fath Ali Shah Qajar. Here, the stylized life-size and single-figure vertical panels revived the stone technique of Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian art on the dado of Zand residential talar pavilions. The artistic intention is explicit: the heroes of the Shahnameh—the pre-nineteenthcentury medium through which Iranians knew of their ancient past—were handpicked, the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 149 )

carefully sculpted, and named with inscriptions not in the tradition of Islamic calligraphy but rather Sassanian inscriptional minimalism. They were then conspicuously mounted on the most visible sections of the grand facades of royal and aristocratic residences. It is here, in Karim Khan’s Shiraz, some twenty years before Fath Ali Shah’s reign, that the Iranian brand of the Persian Revival was born in architecture. The drawings of Flandin and Coste reveal definite elements of a Persian revival by 1840, when the two visited Shiraz. Flandin’s lithograph of the Baq-e No (the New Garden, 1810) depicts the elaborate use of stone dado on the takht and below the talar, on the exterior of a residential building, an architectural technique that became common to Shirazi pavilions in the following decades (fig. 50).52 Although difficult to tell in his romanticized rendering, the central relief of the dado seems to portray a hunting scene, common in later such Shirazi pavilions. Commissioned by Hosayn Ali Mirza (1789–1835), the fifth son of Fath Ali Shah and the governor of Fars for thirty-five years, Baq-e No stands as early evidence of the transition of revivalistic components from earlier dynastic periods into the Qajar era. Here, the exterior stone reliefs showcase the fully matured formula of revivalistic dado. Conspicuous in its spirit of revival too is the painter’s invention of the figure at the foreground of the picture plane: a bearded man in contemporary attire leans on a giant column capital while casting a nostalgic gaze over the shallow pool to the elevation of Baq-e No. The same figure reoccurs in the foreground of Flandin’s ruins of Persepolis, this time standing on a giant column capital, again casting a nostalgic gaze, here upon the Palace of One Hundred Columns through the freestanding columns of the Apadana.53 While there is little doubt of Flandin’s accurate portrayal of Baq-e No, including the Sassanian-like hunting scene on the dado, the oversized column capital and the bearded figure, in both Shiraz and Persepolis, were Flandin’s add-ons, intended to make the same connection between ancient Iranian architecture and contemporary debates and styles that Fergusson had made in his architectural analysis of Achaemenid to Qajar palaces. A similar trace of early revival, which later became a standard feature in such buildings, is the Persepolitan motif of a lion fighting a bull. In his drawing of the interior of Divan Khaneh in Tehran, Flandin depicts a single figural ornamentation on the left of the lithograph. No such revivalistic motif can be found in either Flandin’s or Coste’s drawings of homes and palaces in Tabriz, Isfahan, Abhar, and Qazvin. The Persian Revival in Iran was an artistic phenomenon that seems to have begun in Shiraz and migrated later to Tehran—and remained dominant in those two urban centers. The physical proximity to ruins enabled the claim of antique grandeur, both in terms of historical lineage and cultural heritage. Throughout, Shiraz remained pivotal. It was here too that in 1765 Karim Khan authorized the East India Company to establish a trading post at Bushehr, opening up the channels between Iranian merchants of Shiraz—many of whom were Armenians and Zoroastrians—and Bombay Parsis.54 Within three short ( 150 )  the persian revival

Fig. 50  Eugène Flandin, rendering of the talar (pillared hall) of Baq-e No (the New Garden), Shiraz, Iran. From Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, Voyage en Perse de MM. Eugène Flandin, peintre, et Pascal Coste, architecte, vol. 8, Perse moderne (Paris: Gide & Baudry, 1854), plate lxxxv. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

years, Qadimi Parsis commissioned Molla Kaus and his son, Molla Firuz, to travel to Yazd and Kerman in search of knowledge on the Zoroastrian calendar. Having compiled the questionnaire known as the Rivayats, the Molla Kaus team—the main players in the Parsi Persian Revival (as noted in chapter 2)—then arrived in Shiraz to serve in Karim Khan’s court. Their return to Bombay in 1780 established a key nexus between Karim Khan’s revivalistic initiatives in Shiraz and the inkling of Persian Revival architecture in West India. It was none other than Molla Kaus who, in 1783, directed the erection of the first Qadimi Atash Bahram in Bombay. The controversy over the calendar evolved throughout the nineteenth century to be expressed in the Parsi brand of the Persian Revival. Hosayn Ali Mirza’s Baq-e No was an expression of a broader artistic current that began to engage with Achaemenid and Sassanian art history as a nascent discourse on dynasty and empire. It was certainly a curiosity adopted by other members of the vast Qajar aristocracy. A witness to Karim Khan’s revivalism, Fath Ali Shah skillfully synthesized Perso-Shi’a and Zoroastrian/Mazdaic traditions into an effective tool of governance and an original aesthetic. Described by Amanat as “one of the most procreant men on record,” he established a system of court patronage that canonized the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 151 )

a revolutionary means to maintain traditional power through the sheer force of paternal influence—in the true, Latin meaning of pater.55 From Golestan, his many sons—in particular Hosayn Ali Mirza, Mohammad Ali Mirza Dowlatshah (1789–1821, governor of Kermanshah), and Abbas Mirza (1789–1833, governor of Azerbaijan)—fashioned small-scale versions of the royal domain in the provinces. Having at their disposal the financial and institutional means as well as an affinity with Sassanian art through their association with Fars, they executed some thirty rock-cut reliefs that replicated the Sassanian medium, scale, and iconography. Consistent with the wider history of the Persian Revival, twenty-five of these have survived, most in Fars. Hosayn Ali Mirza, who, according to Haji Mirza Hasan Fasaie’s Farsnameh-ye naseri (1895), had ordered the excavation of royal graves at Persepolis as early as 1811, commissioned two lesser-known bas-reliefs above the Quran Gate in north Shiraz.56 While exact dates are missing, their location and subject matter—first, a throne scene with Fath Ali Shah, Hosayn Ali Mirza, and one of his sons, and second, a horse and a rider—suggest that both were commissioned by Hosayn Ali Mirza, Shiraz’s long-term governor and among the king’s heirs, the most vocal advocate of ancient revival. Another son with revivalistic leaning was Mohammad Ali Mirza, the eldest but not the heir apparent, who followed suit, in 1822, with his relief inside the grotto of Taq-e Bostan. As the prince-governor of Kermanshah, he had picked the most authentic of sites for his unfulfilled aspiration for the Persian throne. At Taq-e Bostan, ancient rulers from Ardeshir II (r. 379–83) and Shapur the Great (r. 309–79) to Khosrow II (r. 590–628) had flaunted the unmatched supremacy of the Sassanian Empire. On the western wall of the large grotto and above an elaborate wild-boar-hunting scene, Mohammad Ali sits on a high chair—in fact, on his father’s special chair. Unlike either the Peacock or the Marble Throne, with a raised platform for the ruler to kneel, the Marvelous Throne (takht-e naderi) was yet another of Fath Ali Shah’s modern innovations, where the king sat upright on a twelve-piece assembly that traveled with him during hunting and inspection ventures. In 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte was gifted a painting, Mihr Ali’s Fath Ali Shah Seated on a Chair Throne (1800–1806), which portrayed the king on the Marvelous Throne. Mohammad Ali himself, in turn, posed on the same throne for his 1820 portrait by Mirza Jafar, who appears as the “architect” in the Taq-e Bostan inscription.57 The grotto relief, in which the seated ruler is surrounded by his two sons and his grand vizier, Aqa Ghani, was enclosed by a pointed arch filled with waqf inscriptions. Again, the relief is an artistic synthesis of Darius’s Apadana audience scene, the Sassanian carving medium, Safavid and Afshar arched inscriptions at Kalat and Bisotun, and Fath Ali Shah’s courtly iconography. His father might have sidestepped him, but here, tucked inside the ancient grotto, Mohammad Ali was in good royal company. In 1829–30, under the order of Hosayn Ali Mirza’s son

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Taymur Mirza, yet another bas-relief of the prince on a throne with his pet lion was carved at the Pol-e Abgineh, near Kazerun.58 In the art-historical evolution of revivalism, these reliefs can be examined not necessarily as Paul Luft’s “anachronistic group of monuments in Iranian art” but instead as sequels to Afshar and Zand experimentations with stone. Analyzed by Judith Lerner and Luft, the earliest well-known relief was ordered by Fath Ali Shah himself in 1817– 18—that is, four years after the signing of the Treaty of Golestan.59 Located in the Vashi gorge in Firuzkuh, some ninety-two miles east of Tehran, it was executed by Abdollah Khan and Ostad Aqa Mohammad Qasem—the same painter and stonemason whose names appear on the 1831 Sorsor-e relief. They took their iconographic cues from the Sassanian deer-hunting scene on the eastern wall of the large grotto at Taq-e Bostan (see figs. 26, 52). Fath Ali Shah is depicted with his Kayanid crown and on his galloping horse. Surrounded by his twenty-one sons and successors, he stabs a horned deer with his lance. The formal and compositional template for both the Firuzkuh and the Sorsor-e reliefs is the only surviving large-scale painting of Fath Ali Shah hunting. Painted by Mihr Ali, Fath Ali Shah at the Hunt (ca. 1810) was a royal gift, possibly presented to Delhi’s prince regent by British ambassador Gore Ouseley in 1814. Here, as Layla Diba notes, the king is represented at “the center of the universe,” matched with the Sassanian “ruler Khosrow II described as the lion killer.”60 The corresponding reliefs at Firuzkuh and Sorsor-e, executed by court architect Abdallah, use the Qajar technique of collage. The Taq-e Bostan hunting scene, the Safavid-Afshar inscription on stone, and Mihr Ali’s painting were synthesized and then transformed through a process of artistic addition, deletion, and substitution: a freewill switch between lion and deer, insertion of successors in miniature versions, stylization of figures and forms, incorporation of names and titles as if the relief were an Islamic illustrated manuscript, and revolutionization of the spatial composition of the picture plane. Far from having “little, if any, historical value,” as Jackson puts it, Fath Ali Shah’s reliefs embody a remarkably innovative attitude toward the artistic processes of revival.61 The most publicly accessible relief is dated to 1831–33 and is located above the spring of Ali—thus named Cheshmay-e Ali in Ray, six miles south of Tehran. Described by Luft as a “family album,” it depicts in the central panel Fath Ali Shah seated on the Peacock Throne, surrounded by his sixteen sons.62 This central section is separated by two columns—a talar, denoting monarchical space and time—from the rest of the relief. The side panel on the right shows Fath Ali with a falcon and attended by an escort with a parasol—a likeness of Darius and Xerxes on the door jambs of the Palaces of Darius and Xerxes, the Apadana, the Throne Hall, and the Council Hall at Persepolis. The location of this relief in Ray, which had been the ancient city of Raga mentioned in the Avesta and ravaged by the thirteenth-century Mongol sacks, shares in its significance.

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Modern travelers visited and wrote about Ray’s edifices: a Parthian city wall, a Seljuk tomb tower (1139), the Shrine of Shah Abdol Azim (1330–1880), and a Zoroastrian burial dakhma (1865) erected by Manekji Hataria. Relying on “the extraordinary work the Dabistan,” William Ouseley noted that Ray’s fame derived from its “claiming the honor of Zoroaster’s birth.”63 After sketching the king during a royal audience, Ker Porter headed to Ray and reported that “Persians ascribe its origin to Hushang,” the second master of the world according to the Avesta and the Shahnameh.64 Malcolm, Morier, Curzon, Jackson, and Perrot too devoted significant narrative space to Ray’s antiquities, praising Fath Ali Shah for his revival of the Sassanian rock-cut medium, at the same time accusing him of vandalism. Claiming that the nearby Sorsor-e relief was carved over “une sculpture de l’époque sassanide,” Flandin scolded the king, despite his “taste and love for the arts,” for “not respecting the antiquities” and not securing “another place worthy to carry his effigy.”65 While he understood the merit of Cheshmay-e Ali and described it as “a new index of the natural taste of the Persians,” Flandin ascribed “vanity” to Mohammad Ali Mirza’s relief at Taq-e Bostan and, saying “elle ne présente d’ailleurs aucun intérêt,” dismissed it.66 Similarly, Jackson noted that the Qajar relief had “obliterated” a “historical one” from the Sassanian era, and he insisted that “we . . . deplore the destructive zeal of Fath Ali Shah, which has robbed us of a monument of antiquity.”67 Browne saw these bas-reliefs under a different light, that of a “time-honored means for perpetuating” Qajar “fame.”68 Rather than exalt the Zoroastrian/Mazdaic history that portrayed the birth of Islam as a point of rupture, early Qajar nobles saw these reliefs as celebrations of the institution of Persian kingship.69 While the medium of rock cutting on in situ stone was abandoned and did not contribute to the development of the Persian Revival, its content emboldened the later literary and artistic revival. Displayed in rural and provincial settings, it found no formal following in the bustling cities of the rapidly modernizing Qajar Empire. True, Sassanian iconography was revived as a whole, and in some cases remarkably well; yet duplication of the rock-cut images in the context of urban modernity was unworkable. As such, these reliefs remained bound to the high culture of the Qajar court, later seen as an anomaly—we might even say a royal caprice—in Iran’s modern art history. By the time Naser al-Din Shah ordered the last of these bas-reliefs, in 1878, the literati had moved on. Yet in terms of iconography, the reliefs transformed and flourished into what we recognize today as the Persian Revival. These images of eternal kingship fluidly traversed the various mediums available to Qajar artists: from historic painting to dadoes, from lithographs to photographs, and from interior tiles to penholders. That Irano-Armenian photographer Antoin Sevruguin (1851–1933) was as adamant about photographing these Qajar reliefs as he was ancient ones speaks to the weight of their content by the fin de siècle.70 By then, the public consumed neo-Achaemenid and neo-Sassanian imagery as a normative facet of Qajar life. ( 154 )  the persian revival

Imperial Revival of Persian Style, 1848–1896 The Naseri era ushered in a period of rapid and diverse urban productivity, both architectural and artistic. The relative stability due to the long reign of Naser al-Din Shah transformed major urban centers into laboratories of wide-ranging stylistic and morphological innovations: from classical to Safavid reinterpretations and from ancient Persian revivals to diverse forms of regional experiments and local vernaculars. The king’s first erratic reform measures, which later shifted to a conservative approach to absolute rule, amplified the experimental and somewhat whimsical—or, as Amanat suggests, “bipolar”—nature of Naseri diplomacy and, I would add, artistic modi operandi.71 Billboards to royal power that was not so mighty or to reforms that were not so firm, elaborate architectural facades represented an otherwise volatile state. The 1896 assassination of Naser al-Din amplified the political role of formal facades. The second half of the nineteenth century thus proved to be a remarkable period of aesthetic inquiries, hybrid innovations, and fearless syntheses of prototypes, subjects, media, and motifs in response to modernist aspirations and epistemic anxieties. While central to the architectural history of the period between 1848 and 1925, the eclectic edifices explored elsewhere under the rubric of the hybrid style (sabk-e talfiqi) are only tangentially, or rather fragmentally, relevant to the course of the Persian Revival.72 Neoclassical forms and the Safavid talar, crowned with either a pediment or a pish-taq, were built at Golestan. The pedimented talar was a novel form in Iranian architecture, introduced no doubt through an edict of Naser al-Din Shah’s. These formulas were quickly adopted, altered, and transformed by the Qajar elite into diverse Persian Revival expressions. In 1848 the king insisted on a coronation in the Emarat-e Takht-e Marmar in order to confirm his dynastic lineage as well as to reestablish the role of Golestan in domestic politics. It was precisely from this talar that he launched the construction boom of his reign. His father, Mohammad Shah (r. 1834–1848)—to whom Henry Rawlinson had presented the first Persian-language translation of Darius’s cuneiform script at Bisotun—generally forwent patronage of the arts, whereas the son embarked on a massive architectural reconstruction of the capital in five phases between 1853 and 1895. In 1865 Naser al-Din Shah hired Haji Abd ol-Hasan Me’mar Nava’i and Ostad Mohammad Ali Kashi for major reconstruction at Golestan, where stylistic fusion was the artistic norm. During the structural and decorative upgrading of Fath Ali Shah’s Emarat-e Badgir, the two wooden pillars and the sidewalls of the main talar were replaced with four marble columns, producing a protruding and elevated talar porch. In an 1863 photograph, Emarat-e Badgir also revealed the first hint of pedimented roofing.73 Three years later, the erection of what Lord Curzon described as “this remarkable structure” and Browne called “the very modern-looking” Shams al-Emareh (Sun the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 155 )

Building, 1866–68) on the eastern edge of Golestan and the Kakh-e Abyaz (White Palace, 1889–92) signaled deliberate stylistic leaps that incorporated a fully developed Greek-style pedimented facade on each elevation overlooking the gardens.74 While the front elevation of Kakh-e Abyaz—rumored to have been designed by the king—on the western edge of the palace complex, has been compared to Claude Perrault’s eastern facade of the Louvre Museum, the courtyard facade of Shams al-Emareh consisted of a twelve-step rise to a talar portico that showcased a well-proportioned pediment.75 The tympanum was decorated with floral motives in multicolor tile, while a prominent frieze, decorated with an elaborate stucco floral motif, ran along the entire length of the pediment. The stairs and pediment were later replaced with what is there today. With a mechanical clock overlooking the bustling Naser Khosrow Avenue and the first use of cast iron for columns and balustrades in Tehran, Shams al-Emareh symbolized modern progress so essential to the early reign of Naser al-Din Shah. The mature classicism of Kakh-e Abyaz’s decorative program, in the meantime, signaled the king’s willingness to appropriate European taste as his own, or rather on his own terms. Naser al-Din Shah’s three tours of Europe in 1873, 1878, and 1889—which included visits to London’s Crystal Palace and Paris’s Royal Opera—and the subsequent publication of his diaries had a significant impact on both this eclectic architectural trend in Iran and the manner of transmitting stylistic and decorative knowledge from Europe to Iran.76 Certainly, after his return, architectural projects, especially their grand facades, took on a new public function within Qajar politics. After 1873, as Afshin Marashi points out, the public was physically included in official state ceremonies conducted in a built environment choreographed to legitimize Qajar absolutism.77 If Fath Ali Shah’s construction projects reproduced classical Perso-Shi’a plans and elevations, architectural experimentation under Naser al-Din Shah sought a modern language to match the technological and sociopolitical transformations characteristic of the Naseri era. Europe was a persistent presence, at times revered, at other times reviled, and sometimes even appropriated beyond recognition—copying as a system of total originality, copying as a menace. The king’s commission of the Emarat-e Khabgah (Sleeping Quarters) in 1886–87, probably inspired by Ottoman-Armenian court architect Garabet Balyan’s Dolmabahçe Palace (1856), was an expression of this cultural dynamic of the copy.78 With their brick construction, stepped front entrances, rich Baroque decorative programs, formal facades on the talar composition, and classical morphology of solid squares punctuated with symmetrical openings, the edifices of the late dynastic period expressed Qajar eclecticism. They included Emarat-e Sepahsalar (1876–79), Emarat-e Baq-e Amin al-Dowleh (ca. 1895), Ahmad Shah Pavilion (ca. 1915) in Niavaran, Martiros Davidkhanian Mansion on Sepah Street (ca. 1900), Qavam al-Saltaneh House (1910–15), Jafar Qoli Khan Sardar Asad House (architect Mohammad Me’mar Bashi, 1913), Moshir ( 156 )  the persian revival

al-Dowleh Pirnia House (ca. 1915), and Hasanabad Square (ca. 1910) in Tehran.79 Other major additions by Naser al-Din Shah to the Golestan Palace included the Talar-e Aaj (Ivory Hall, 1863), the Talar-e Salam (Reception Hall, 1874), the Muze-ye Makhsus (Special Museum, 1874–77), the Talar-e Ayineh (Hall of Mirrors, 1874), and the Emarat-e Brelian (Hall of Brilliant Diamonds, 1874). Occasionally, Naser al-Din Shah’s architects played with large-scale figures on Zand models in an outdoor setting. At Golestan, tile panels were introduced with animal and human figures, including Rostam and the White Demon, a lion and the sun, a military musical band, and soldiers guarding doorways. The tall walls of the now-demolished Narenjestan (Orangery) were covered, top to bottom, from around 1891–93, with narrative tile panels.80 At least six bays depicted stories from royal life framed in triple arches and staircases with classical balustrades. Running above the bays, a tile frieze displayed no less than twenty royal portraits based on the illustrations in Jalal al-Din Mirza’s Nameh-ye Khosravan (1869–71), a seminal revivalist tome. Outside Golestan, on the four-story facade of the Borj-e Kolah Farangi at the Palace of Saltanatabad (1857–78), the royal convention of life-size figures in portrait paintings—as in Saf-e Salam (saluting line), lavishly displayed at Negarestan by Fath Ali Shah—was transferred to architectural elevations, displaying contemporary soldiers.81 A similar use of life-size tile figures was common on gates, including Tehran’s Maydan-e Tupkhaneh and Khorasan’s Emarat-e Saham al-Dowleh (1893) in Bojnurd. As in Karim Khan’s Shiraz, the pish-taq of the city gate of Semnan was decorated with a large scene of Rostam and the White Demon, framed in typically Qajar tile bands. In the hands of reformists, these tile works would soon be converted into stone as the Qajar figures mutated into their Achaemenid counterparts. Unlike his great-grandfather and granduncles, Naser al-Din Shah left little evidence of his interest in ancient Persian art. Europeans, rather than the Achaemenids, impressed the young king, albeit with a few minor exceptions. In 1850 he ordered his first court photographer, Jules Richard, to document the ruins of Persepolis and Pasargadae, which Richards refused, based on lack of funding and the daguerreotype’s unsuitability.82 When in April 1858 Italian officer Luigi Pesce gifted the king an album of photographs from Persepolis, Pasargadae, and Naqsh-e Rostam, Naser al-Din Shah was far more excited by the fact that the Achaemenid and Sassanian ruins were being captured with this new technology than by the artifacts that the album documented. In 1873 the king catered to European fantasies and played the part of the “descendant of Cyrus” during his lavish receptions in London, Paris, and Vienna.83 He left an inscription on the outer wall of Taq-e Bostan, recording his visit to the Sassanian grottos.84 In 1877 Governor Farhad Mirza Mo’tamed al-Dowleh, the king’s uncle, “kept six hundred men at work” on the terrace of Persepolis.85 A year later, Naser al-Din Shah commissioned Ali Akbar to design the last rock relief on the Hazar Road in Mazandaran. Five the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 157 )

years later, he named his new purchase from Germany—a six-hundred-ton warship— Persepolis.86 Having been groomed in the intellectual court of Abbas Mirza in Tabriz, he had been persuaded by Westernization discourses, rather than ancient revival. Still, the Naseri experimentations with the talar, pediment, and occasional life-size figures provided the tools for the Qajar literati to usher the Persian Revival to its next stage of artistic development. In the Qajar context, the talar type, instead of the chahar-taq, was promoted as the architectural evidence for the racial merit of Persians from the Achaemenids to the Qajars—an ethno-tectonic sign of what Perrot and Chipiez had called “the genius of the Persian people with its special characteristics.”87 A European history of a typological evolution was to demonstrate that the talar and the takht had been the expression of Persian monarchy from Darius the Great to Naser al-Din Shah—from the Apadana to Golestan. Like Josef Strzygowski and his followers, who insisted on the ties between race and form, the art-historical discourse of the talar/takht evidenced Persians as a noble Aryan race, unchanged by “the action of time . . . in face of political and religious revolutions.”88 From the earliest travelers to Iran to the most eminent art historians of Iran, all were fascinated with the longue durée of the talar/takht. William Ouseley equated the takht of Takht-e Jamshid—which he sketched from the same “spot” as had Kaempfer and de Bruijn—with Zand and Qajar takhts, albeit in smaller scale.89 After his account of Pasargadae, he elaborated on it as foundational to Persian form making: The Takht or Throne . . . , I conceive to have been the foundation of a palace, because it resembles the substructure of many Persian edifices some of which were probably the abodes of kings in former ages, as others at present are the royal mansions. Thus the Takht-i-Jemshíd . . . at Persepolis, is founded on a terrace of huge cut stones . . . and thus the modern palace called Takht-iKajár near Shiráz, is raised on a similar basis. This national style also, may be discovered in the Saadetabád and Chehil Sutún at Ispahán, in the Takht or Kasr-i-Kajár near Tehrán. . . . The terrace may have supported . . . a pavilion capable of containing the king sitting in state upon his royal throne, which . . . was in times most remote, as now, one of the richest attributes of Eastern sovereignty. From such a situation the Monarch would be conspicuous to multitudes.90 The talar/takht type was selected as the architectural manifesto of ethnic sovereignty and national longevity. It, henceforward, stood as surgically isolated architectural symbol of the ancient Persian kingship, which gained a racial overtone as the nineteenth century segued into the twentieth. ( 158 )  the persian revival

In 1890 Perrot and Chipiez devoted an entire chapter to the talar/takht as a key to the history of ancient Iran. “The arrangement of the palace” of the current kings, Perrot writes, “will enable us to grasp that of the palaces of Darius and Xerxes”: “exactly as Darius and Shapur had done before him,” Fath Ali Shah ordered bas-reliefs of “victories” despite the “prescriptive laws of Islam” against figures, which, according to Perrot, had been “obeyed everywhere save in heretic Persia.” Perrot’s observation on figural representation leads to his consideration of “decorative forms,” which, he insists, “have maintained themselves against all comers with marvellous fidelity.” He concludes that “the style of the stage [takht], along with the supports [talar], which serves as throne to the Shah” in Tehran, “differs in no way from . . . [that of ] the funereal bas-reliefs at Persepolis.”91 An art-historical teleology is deduced: “If the premise be granted that climate, race, and political system have hardly changed . . . in Persia, the conclusion will irresistibly follow that royal architecture always preserved, and still preserves, many of the features with which it started when it made itself the handmaiden of royalty.”92 Reproducing Flandin and Coste’s drawings of Baq-e No and Ayineh Khaneh Palace (the Mirror Pavilion) in Isfahan, Perrot examines the “talar” and concludes that travelers such as Charles Texier and the Dieulafoys, “who have studied Iran with intelligent curiosity, whether in the present or the past, have one and all juxtaposed modern palaces . . . with ancient ones.”93 He contends that, “like the power of the sovereigns, the dimensions and style of ornament of these edifices have shrunk and faded, but their essential and characteristic dispositions have remained unaltered—a fact that must be kept well in view by the architect when he essays to restore the royal houses of the Achaemenids.”94 The talar/takht type served as an effective tool to bind the rituals of kingship to the uninterrupted art history from the Achaemenids to the Qajars. The pedimented talar, often elevated on a takht, remained popular throughout the Naseri era, particularly in Tabriz, the cultural gateway to Russia and the capital city of Abbas Mirza.95 Ker Porter equated Abbas Mirza’s Westernization reforms with the aspiration for a return to Achaemenid might. “The character of the present heir apparent,” he wrote in 1821, “has so much of the ancient principles of truth, simplicity, and general interest for his country, in its composition, that we may be allowed some hope for the once-revered empire of Cyrus.”96 Although, like his father, Abbas Mirza loved the Shahnameh—Morier reported it to be “his favourite”—unlike his father, he was not a builder.97 Financially, Azerbaijan was hit the worst during the Perso-Russian Wars, deterring large-scale construction. Stylistically, Tabriz adopted Greek Revivalism in such buildings as Emarat-e Dowlati, Hasan Ali Khan Garruzi’s Amir Nezam House, the houses of Abdol Molk, Behnam, Ghadaki, Garjeizadeh, Sorkin, Ghanjei Zadeh, and Baq-e Juqh (Maku), without many references to ancient Iran. Tabriz, the former capital city of the Safavid Empire between 1501 to 1555, was outside the geo-cultural domain of the ancient Fars. the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 159 )

In Tehran, the earliest and clearest expression of the pedimented talar was Emarat-e Baq-e Ferdows (Palace of the Paradise Garden, 1856) in Shemiran.98 Commissioned by Dust Ali Khan II Mo’ayyer (1819–1873) for a 2.6-acre site, the palace contained two residential mansions; only one has been preserved. Characteristic of a man of his class and position in Qajar high society, Dust Ali was a benefactor of the arts, and Baq-e Ferdows was his prized possession.99 Related to the Qajar royal family through marriage, he created one of the earliest examples of eclecticism, synthesizing a range of palace design traditions from ancient Achaemenid and Greek to British and French neoclassical to Safavid, Zand, and Qajar. As Naser al-Din Shah’s supervisor of royal buildings, Dust Ali was responsible for the erection of the royal amphitheater Takyeh Dowlat (1867–73), where Shi’a passion plays (ta’ziyeh) were performed, and Shams al-Emareh. Designed by Ostad Hosayn, the extant mansion’s main elevation is fronted by a pedimented talar accessed by a horseshoe staircase. Much like Safavid, Zand, and Qajar palaces, the centrality of the talar as a stage of (power) display has been maintained. The traditional pair of columns, however, seen at Arg-e Karim Khan and Emarat-e Takht-e Marmar, has been transformed into four elaborate composite columns in the front and four pilasters in the back, on a tall stage (takht) accessed by staircases previously unknown in Safavid architecture. The twisted columns supporting the pediment, with their spiral floral motifs, must refer to the Solomonic Temple and its Freemasonic associations, since, while unknown to Iran, they recall the Rosslyn Chapel’s Apprentice pillars in Midlothian, Scotland, a building also implicated with Freemasonry.100 The striking—and innovatively out-of-context—horseshoe staircase, complete with classical balustrades, enhances the architecture of grand elevation and impressed the facade-conscious Qajar elite. The Naseri era also incited a dynamic nationalist literary movement, with a definite revivalistic leaning, which transformed sporadic iconographic commissions— such as the royal rock reliefs—into a distinct architectural practice, characterized by Achaemenid and Sassanian iconographic and typological replicas. Just as Gothic Revival architecture began with literature, so did the Persian Revival in architecture find its roots in this new literature. “It is a leap,” as Michael Lewis remarks, “to go from writing poems about ruins to making ruins to represent poems,” but as in “early eighteenth-century England,” in Naseri Iran that is what happened.101 With fifty thousand verses, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, one of the longest poems in the history of literature, is “justly regarded by Persians as their national epic par excellence.”102 The introduction of lithographic printing enabled wide dissemination of illustrated copies of the Shahnameh during the second half of the century. Printed in Bombay in 1846, its first lithographic edition was commissioned by Mohammad Mehdi Arbab, a merchant-scholar from Isfahan who had learned the technique of opium and sugarcane production from Parsis, only to return to Iran in 1857 to join reformists, including ( 160 )  the persian revival

Mohammad Hasan Khan E‘temad al-Saltaneh, in their effort to spread revivalistic ideas through literature.103 Collaging iconographic conventions borrowed from Islamic book manuscripts, European travelogues, and archeological remains—for instance, the appearance of Prophet Zoroaster as per Parsi adoption from the relief of the investiture of Ardeshir at Taq-e Bostan—Arbab’s Shahnameh supplied the format for successive lithographs of the same, including the Shahnameh-ye kajuri (1848–50), with fifty-seven illustrations, and the Shahnameh-ye bahadori (1901–4).104 Adopted first by the Parsis through Azari literature as not only a part of their cultural heritage but also the leading source for Zoroastrian history, the Shahnameh was translated into Gujarati between 1914 and 1918 and published in ten volumes in Bombay.105 It remained, for both Muslims and Zoroastrians, the primary source of Iran’s ancient history “even though its stories and ethos do not always correspond with the Avesta.”106 Its mythical and historical sagas, along with a century’s worth of European archeological and artistic knowledge about the Achaemenids, Parthians, and Sassanians, were synthesized to produce a local literary and visual culture of revival. This, in turn, led to the first, fully mature stage of architectural revivalism, from the 1870s to the dawn of the Constitutional Revolution in 1905. Manekji Hataria’s 1854 arrival in Iran and his launching of manifold revivalistic efforts, funded by the Bombay-backed Society for the Amelioration of the Conditions of the Zoroastrians in Persia, was pivotal to the transformation of the existing revivalistic sentiments into a solid historiographical and artistic discourse. Perhaps the first and most vocal advocate of the (con)fusion of Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian (art) histories with a Zoroastrian worldview, he was responsible for the dissemination among the Qajar elite of “Azari ideas” on the central role of Aryan Iran in universal history.107 Hataria’s half a century of unyielding patronage and networking produced a body of art-historical knowledge that coupled racial merit with artistic creation; by the fin de siècle, one could speak of the style of the Persian Revival. Aside from his extensive building activities (outlined in chapter 2), he was a “most zealous” producer, collector, and sponsor of revivalistic literature.108 As early as the year of his landing in Bushehr, he wrote the preface to a new edition of the Sharestan (1854), “a narrative text produced in seventeenth-century India, which combined Zoroastrian cosmology with Sufism and Hindu philosophy.”109 This was followed by an annotated edition of A’in-e Hushang (The custom of Hushang, 1830s, reprint 1879), an Azari text that claimed to have been written in Middle Persian during the reign of the Sassanian king Khosrow Parviz and translated into New Persian by the followers of Azar Keyvan. Hataria thus positioned himself, both in architecture and in literature, as a bridge between Persepolis and Tehran, a feat achieved with Parsi financial backing. His vast collection of manuscripts, books, coins, photographs, and paintings was donated to Bombay’s Zoroastrian Anjoman despite offers by Western the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 161 )

Orientalists and institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum. In his will, he had appointed the founder and third president of the Amelioration Society, Mervanji Framji Panday, for its safekeeping. As a Zoroastrian subject of the British Empire, Hataria also occupied a unique position in Qajar society and thus cultivated with influential Westerners relationships beneficial to his cause. With Rawlinson’s intervention as Britain’s ambassador, Hataria obtained his first audience before Naser al-Din Shah and persuaded him to abolish the poll tax on Zoroastrians. He provided statistical data to Comte de Gobineau, then the French ambassador to Iran, for his study on Zoroastrians in Trois ans en Asie, while Browne included Hataria in his 1893 account of Babism and its connections to Zoroastrianism.110 Gobineau describes Hataria as a “savant parsy de Bombay” who had come to Iran to research, console, and ameliorate the lives of the Zoroastrians; he had, according to Gobineau, achieved these “acts of charity with zeal and intelligence that honors him along with his race.”111 At the core of Gobineau’s vision was a civilizational “genealogy of decay,” which helped shape Hataria’s conception of antiquity to fit his modern vision.112 According to Browne, Hataria showed a “marked predilection” toward the Babi movement, and at his “instigation” Bab’s manifesto, Tarikh-e jadid (New history), was published. Throughout his book, Browne calls the work “Manakji’s New History.” Per Browne, this new history and Babi religion were “entirely Persian in origin,” and Islam was “an unmodified Semitic religion” that “could never be really acceptable to Aryans.”113 Similarly, “the whole history of Persia, from the legendary wars between Kiyanian kings and Afrasiyab down to the present day, is the story of a struggle between the Turkish races whose primitive home is in . . . Khurasan . . . and the southern Persians, of almost pure Aryan race.”114 The American ambassador in Iran from 1882 to 1885, Samuel Benjamin, praised Hataria for his intelligence and “efficient service” and described him as an outstanding example of “the genuine Persians or Iranees . . . a handsome, witty, vivacious, and intelligent race of Aryan stock.”115 Hataria’s legacy remained intact after his 1890 passing. In 1903 Jackson, whose many books on Zoroastrianism had been published in Bombay, sought out Hataria’s successor as representative of the Amelioration Society, Ardeshir Edulji Reporter, for accurate data on Zoroastrians.116 Along with these Westerners, Hataria formed close relationships with the most influential Iranian nationalists of the Naseri era. His publication funds and access to Parsi press were precious assets. In 1858 he commissioned Qajar historian and diplomat Reza Qoli Khan Hedayat to produce a history of royal dynasties with ancient Persian origins, which was published under the conspicuous title Nejad-nameh-ye padeshahan-e iran-nejad (Racial history of kings of Iranian origin, 1858). A decade later, when Hedayat, a dean at the progressive Dar al-Fonun (meaning “Abode of the sciences,” Tehran Polytechnic, est. 1851) and a Freemason, published his Persian-language ( 162 )  the persian revival

dictionary, Farhang-e anjomanara-ye naseri (The lodestar dictionary of Naseri, 1871), Hataria was invited to write the introduction, wherein he linked the work to Zoroastrian history by calling it Anjomanara-ye Hushang (The lodestar of Hushang) in reference to the second ruler of the world according to the Shahnameh. Hormozdan Hormozd Parsi’s Foruq-e Hushang (The luster of Hushang, Bombay, 1866) and Ismail Khan Zand Tusarkhani’s Farzestan (Bombay, 1894) count among his other commissions.117 Hataria also maintained correspondence with reformists, including Fath Ali Shah’s fifty-fifth son, Jalal al-Din Mirza, as well as Bahaullah, Mirza Abol Fadl, and Fath Ali Akhundzadeh. From his base in Tbilisi, Akhundzadeh, emboldened by Ernest Renan’s theories, reached out to Hataria in a lament for the fall of Ctesiphon, cast Ferdowsi as a secret Zoroastrian, and called upon “liberal” Iranians to rediscover the lost history of the Achaemenids.118 Hataria’s knowledge production was grafted onto an existing revivalistic momentum, where Zoroastrian/Mazdaic archeological remains were made to attest to contemporary racial and cultural merits. Mohammad Hosayn Forughi Zoka ol-Molk, who had entered the Bureau of Publications and the Royal Office of Translation after giving up on trading with India, published under the auspices of the bureau, which was under the direction of E‘temad al-Saltaneh, who served as a “hub of the intellectuals of the time” for like-minded officials with direct control of the press houses.119 These two men published, at times jointly, numerous works, many of which underscored the significance of ancient Iran. E‘temad al-Saltaneh’s three-volume Durrar al-tijan fi tarikh-e bani ashkan (Guide to the history of the Parthian/Arsacid house, 1891–93) was not only the first native history of the Parthian period but also an argument for the Parthian roots of the Qajar dynasty.120 In cooperation with E‘temad al-Saltaneh, Forughi enlisted his son, Mohammad Ali Forughi, to help in the translation of George Rawlinson’s Seventh Great Monarchy under the title Ketab-e tarikh-e salatin-e sasani (History of Sassanian kings, 1895– 98), followed by a longue durée history of Iran entitled Tarikh-e iran az qabl az milad ta Qajariyeh (History of Iran from the beginning to the Qajars, 1900).121 In this new historiography, ancient Iran was situated at the center of human civilization. Abd al-Bab Abbas’s Hidden Secrets of the Causes of Civilization (1875) likewise placed the Achaemenid and the Sassanian Empires “at the heart of the world.”122 Grandson of a Zoroastrian, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani borrowed Indo-European theories from Friedrich Schlegel and Max Müller in his writings, including Nameh-ye bastan (The book of ancients, 1898) and Ayine-ye sekandari (Alexandrian mirror: The history of Iran, completed 1892, published 1906). By 1914 these publications formed a part of Dar al-Fonun’s library, shaping the next generation of Iranian reformers.123 The literature of nineteenth-century Iranian nationalism is robust; for the purposes of this art-historical study, I focus on two publications that had a direct bearing on the the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 163 )

Persian Revival architecture of the late Qajar era. Lavishly illustrated, Nameh-ye khosravan (The book of kings, 1869–71), by Jalal ad-Din Mirza Qajar (1827–1872), and Asar-e ajam (1896), by Mirza Mohammad Naser Hosayn Shirazi (pen name Forsat al-Dowleh, 1854–1920), essentially, and inadvertently, served as blueprints for the decorative program of the Iranian brand of revivalism. Hataria—whose Tarikeh-e parsian (History of the Zoroastrians) Jalal al-Din included as an appendix to his own book— was behind the conception of Nameh-ye khosravan and the commission of Asar-e ajam. “One day I wondered why Iranians had forgotten their ancestral language, as Parsis [Persians] had been famous for their literature, yet we have no books written in Parsi [Persian],” writes Jalal al-Din, while borrowing a line or two from Hataria’s view of history. “I mourned the loss of our language,” he goes on, “and decided to write a book in Parsi. . . . I could not have found a better topic than the king of Parsis.”124 Subtitled The Story of Kings of Pars in Parsi Language Useful for People, Especially Children, the four volumes are divided according to Jalal al-Din’s notion of rupture in the integrity of Iran’s ethnonational history: volume 1, published in Tehran in 1869, recounts the reign of the mythical Abadian dynasty through the defeat of the Sassanians by Arabs; volume 2, published in 1870, describes the period of the early Muslim dynasties to the Mongol invasions; volume 3 traces the rule of the Timurids to the invasion of the Afghans; and volume 4, if completed, would have brought the story to his own times and to the start of his own narrative, with his own portrait, perhaps the king that could have been. Like his older brothers—Hosayn Ali Mirza and Mohammad Ali Mirza— with similar revivalistic sentiments, Jalal al-Din must have felt that his own reign would have been superior to his father’s actual tenure of the Peacock Throne. Described as “Iran’s first nationalist historian,” Jalal al-Din, a Dar al-Fonun graduate, “the head” of the first unofficial Masonic lodge in Tehran (faramush-kaneh, the House of Oblivion), and a prominent aristocratic member of the reformists and Masonic intelligentsia, staunchly articulated revivalistic beliefs from a universalistic viewpoint: Iranians were “the inhabitants of ‘the land of the pure’” and “the original creators of humanity, civilization, culture, urbanity, and good government.”125 Nameh-ye khosravan encapsulates previous revivalistic formulas into one giant text: it fuses legend and history to form a narratological model, as Ferdowsi had done in the Shahnameh; it employs “pure” Persian language expunged of all Arabic and Turkish words; and it deploys Azari historiography, including Molla Firuz’s Dasatir (1818), which highlights “the superiority of Persian-Zoroastrian legacy over Arab-Islamic elements.” As such, Nameh-ye khosravan was not merely a literary novelty, as many scholars have demonstrated.126 Rather, its appearance as a four-volume lithographic edition—easily reproducible and transportable—revolutionized the very process of reading. It was one of the first to propose a modern way of viewing and understanding Iran’s uninterrupted race-based royal history, from its beginnings to the present. ( 164 )  the persian revival

Nameh-ye khosravan did not merely aim to document the lost history of ancient Iran as Jalal al-Din’s contemporaries had done. It imposed a new modality of seeing the modern by reengineering the past. A comparison with the design choices of, for instance, Forughi’s Ketab-e tarikh-e salatin-e sasani, with twenty-five lines of crowded prose on a single page, reveals that Nameh-ye khosravan, like the architecture that it inspired, was intended, first and foremost, as a pedagogical instrument to inform a predominately illiterate, but modern, public. Gaining Hataria’s praises for its simple language and European narratology, the book is typeset with generous margins, wide spaces between words and sentences, seven clean lines of prose on each page. The text is further divided every three or four pages by portraits of fifty-five rulers of Iran, either in full or half figure, displayed in fifty-two illustrations. Jalal al-Din’s portrait, seated at a small table, wearing a long unadorned coat and a fez, kicks off the first volume. With its iconographic borrowing from diverse sources and liberal synthesis of visual originals to produce the royal portraits, Nameh-ye khosravan is as remarkable as the eclecticism of Naseri architecture. According to Jalal al-Din, the “faces of kings” were “taken from farangian (foreigners)”—meaning Western travelogues (those discussed in chapter 1)—and were copied by artist Mirza Abd ol-Mottalleb Esfahani.127 Mottalleb was among the forty-two students in 1858 who had been sent to France by the state to study art. Upon his return, he collaborated with Jalal al-Din on the production of Nameh-ye khosravan while serving as the minister of post. Unlike the images in Islamic illustrated manuscripts, Mottalleb’s drawings fill entire pages, free of textual content, itself composed by calligrapher Mirza Hosayn Khodadad Tabrizi.128 Word and image function separately, or rather images are deployed to revolutionize the narrative experience. Close examination of his portraits reveals an artistic method of collage. They are by-products of the collaboration between Jalal al-Din and Mottalleb; each drew from those visual sources available to him in generating the most dignified, almost romantic, yet scientifically viable features of rulers. “Selective borrowing from the West and the adoption and transmutation of these borrowings [transpired] in such a way that change,” as argues Ann Lambton, “was seen largely as a reaffirmation of the traditional basis of society.”129 This process of copying to create an original work that substantiated historical “unchangeability” was characteristically Qajar. Nameh-ye khosravan and Asar-e ajam—along with the buildings decorated based upon their illustrations—were manifestations of broader societal phenomena: rapid change, eclectic borrowing, and original creation through copying. In both Nameh-ye khosravan and Asar-e ajam, Islamic conventions of bookmaking were combined with available European travelogue narratology as well as with archeological and numismatic visual evidence to produce a local art history. The travelogues of Ouseley, Ker Porter, and the Dieulafoys were far more central to Jalal al-Din’s history than he admitted in passing. At the library of Dar al-Fonun, Iranian reformists the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 165 )

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Fig. 51  Mirza Abd ol-Mottalleb Esfahani, four portraits of Iranian historical and legendary figures: (a) Keyumars, (b) Jamshid, (c) Shapur, and (d) Purandokht. From Jalal al-Din Qajar, Nameh-ye khosravan: Dastan-e padeshahan-e Pars be zaban-e parsi ke sudmand-e mardoman be vijeh kudakan ast, 3 vols. (Tehran: Sazman-e shahanshah-ye khadamat-e ejtemai, 1869–71). Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

like him had perused some of the same European literature as their Parsi counterparts at Bombay’s Elphinstone College. Mirza Hayrat’s translation of Malcolm’s History of Persia (1815) and Rawlinson’s series on the great Oriental monarchies (1862–76) were among these collections.130 Nameh-ye khosravan’s drawings include inventions such as the portrait of Keyumars, the first Avestan human being, and copies such as the portrait of Jamshid, the equally legendary Shahnameh king, copied from Ker Porter’s drawing of the enthroned Darius at Persepolis (fig. 51; see figs. 6, 26).131 The full-figure portrait of Goshtasb is also a direct transplant from Ker Porter’s Bisotun relief, identified by him as Mithra or Zoroaster, while the heads of the seated figures of Ardeshir I and Shapur I are based on the Sassanian coin drawings by the same.132 Where available, numismatic evidence was used to produce accurate historical portraits of faces, although these were deployed with great liberty, since the rest of the body was often re-created in the manner of a photographic studio backdrop. Additional graphic strategies shape Nameh-ye khosravan’s narratology. While integrating Alexander the Great with a full portrait of an Iranian king in the standard timeline of Iranian monarchy, Jalal al-Din forces a historiographical leap through a visual maneuver that demotes the Parthian dynasty (247 bce–224 ce) to a separate, non-Iranian anomaly, a historical glitch. Consigning them to mere numismatic representation, he illustrates twenty-eight coins in both obverse and reverse at the end of volume one as (if ) a footnote, a narratological afterthought. Through this visual trickery, Jalal al-Din relegates the Parthians, the longest-reigning dynasty in Iran’s royal record, to the margins of history. From 1871 on, the Achaemenids and the Sassanians were foregrounded as sole proprietors of the Persian throne, while the Parthians were reconstituted as a lingering Seleucid aftereffect. Within a decade, Nameh-ye khosravan had been so well received by the reformist intelligentsia on both sides of the Arabian Sea that the Parsi author of the seminal Ancient Persian Sculptures (1889), Kavasji Dinshaw Kiash, reprinted the third edition of Nameh-ye khosravan with his funds. He then advertised it in his own book, informing readers that “it is written in pure and easy Persian from the Shah Nameh with illustrations” and that it could be purchased in “all Booksellers in Bombay” for 1.8 rupees.133 Jalal al-Din was a familiar name to Bombay readers, since two years earlier another Bombay Parsi, Ardeshir Doshabhai Monshi, had translated into Guajarati and published his History of the Ancient Parsis (1887).134 The historiographical patterns of rise and decline, rupture and rebirth, in addition to the novel use of images that Jalal al-Din introduced in his book, were to have a profound pedagogical and architectural impact. Like Ancient Persian Sculptures and Nameh-ye khosravan, Asar-e ajam deploys innovative visual strategies to foster a new, modern mode of reading and seeing the antiquities. Described as the “first archaeological survey of Iran” and a “local history and the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 167 )

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Fig. 52  Sketches of (a) a bird’s-eye-view of the plateau of Persepolis, (b) the Sassanian relief of the triumph of Shapur I over Valerian at Naqsh-e Rostam, (c) the Sassanian relief of Ardeshir I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rostam, (d) a relief of Cyrus at Gate H at Pasargadae, (e) the Sassanian relief of Shapur II’s suppression of a revolt at Tang-e Chogan, and (f ) the Sassanian relief of a deer-hunting scene on the eastern wall of the large grotto at Taq-e Bostan. From Mohammad Naser Hosayn Shirazi Forsat, Asar-e ajam (Bombay: Matba-e Naderi, 1894–96), plates 17, 32, 40, 36, 41, and 46. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California.

geography,” it was, in effect, the first comprehensive Iranian art history of ancient Iran.135 Compiling 603 large lithographic pages, it was a groundbreaking study of major Achaemenid and Sassanian sites, whose narratological taxonomy was dictated by the order of the surveyor’s site visits (fig. 52). To some extent mimicking the conventions of Western travel writings, with detailed but at times idiosyncratic historical, linguistic, geographical, and anthropological commentaries, Asar-e ajam focuses chiefly on the cultural heritage of Fars and Shiraz. Its proper analysis merits an entire tome. Here, benefiting from the anthropological study by Setrag Manoukian, I focus on its art-historical significance.136 Printed by a Parsi press in Bombay where Forsat published most of his work, it was the Iranian answer to Kiash’s Ancient Persian Sculptures, maybe also modeled after a Mughal architectural history of Delhi, Asar al-sanadid, by Seyyed Ahmad Khan.137 Forsat traced his ancestry to the court of Karim Khan. After apprenticing in painting, typography, calligraphy, geography, and theosophy, he studied cuneiform with Dutch merchant Henryk Dunlop and linguistics with German linguist Oscar Mann. Having supported his family with his talent in copying European travelogues and pen-and-ink portraiture as a young man, Forsat was well prepared to do justice to the visual material incorporated into the text of Asar-e ajam. An impressive seven-page conflation of a table of contents and an index is followed by an introduction in which Forsat explains that “a while ago” he received “written instructions” from an “English officer” through the intermediary of a certain “Parsi named Manekji” to “survey the heritage [asar] of Fars” and to send off the “measurements.”138 In his biography, he later confessed that it was, in fact, Hataria who had commissioned the work. He goes on to clarify that after sending the “drawings and manuscript” to Tehran, he received word that Hataria had died and his belongings had been confiscated by the state. “I was sorry that all my efforts had been in vain,” he writes; for “before being published,” his multivolume manuscript, according to his introduction, had been “destroyed.” He further reports that he prepared a second manuscript “from the original documents,” “rewrote their descriptions,” and published it “for the use of the people” (3). He had taken “daily notes,” and since the “core of this book” and specifically the observations on the drawings had been made in situ, in “villages and deserts,” without the benefit of reference books, he apologizes for not “wanting to edit,” in order to maintain the “spontaneity” of the narrative (4–5). As Forsat was penning these words, half a world away, European art historians such as Alois Riegl and Josef Strzygowski were quarreling over the true nature of an art historian, premised on in situ examination of artifacts. When he embarked on his first expedition, in October 1889, Forsat was secured with Parsi money. The following year, however, Hataria died, and so did his vast Iran-India network. Just as he later volunteered as Shiraz’s education minister, Forsat probably carried out his travels without financial support until 1892, when he obtained the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 169 )

“permission from the Iranian authorities” (3). After this change in circumstance, Forsat named the governor of Fars, Hosayn Qoli Khan Mafi Nezam ol-Saltaneh, as his firm supporter, on whom he had called and who applauded the “craft and paintings” (4).139 His encouragement was predictable. A large landowner, Qoli Khan Mafi had been the chief administrator of none other than Mohammad Ali Mirza, the revivalist crown prince and patron of the 1822 bas-relief at Taq-e Bostan. After seven years of labor, in July 1896 Asar-e ajam was ready for the press. The fifty numbered full-page drawings incorporated a total of one hundred separate panoramas, perspectives, elevations, and details of Achaemenid and Sassanian edifices, many of which were bas-reliefs. To these were added four small-scale drawings of details, including a floor plan, in the marginal footnotes (97, 121, 239, 293) (see fig. 52). The simple language of Asar-e ajam is “intentional”; its separation of text and image, its framing of charts and tables, its “numbered footnotes,” its bold words as “reading entry points,” its figure markers in both the text and the images, and its elaborate indexed table of contents contribute, as Manoukian notes, to the “composition of a powerful and multilayered ensemble.”140 Twelve plates are devoted to Persepolis alone, including a floor plan of the terrace that closely follows Fergusson’s rendering of the same in Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis and a birds-eye view from the same spot as Ouseley’s plate xl in Travels in Various Countries, while Naqsh-e Rostam, Pasargadae, and Bisotun are depicted in fourteen separate drawings.141 During his first encounter with Achaemenid reliefs at “Barm-e Delek,” Forsat writes that his “attention was attracted” by how much “Persian kings” resemble “European kings and their coins” (14). Sassanian edifices, too—including the Palace of Sarvestan, with its impressive domed chahar-taq; Ctesiphon, with its massive barrel vault; and the grottos of Taq-e Bostan, with their elaborate reliefs—receive his close attention (82, 384, 388, 390–92). In the footsteps of Hataria, who had, in 1854, stood in front of the Taq-e Kasra, Forsat must have marveled at its catenary arch during his pilgrimage to Iraq in 1885, after which he immediately and earnestly began to work on Asar-e ajam’s manuscript. Forsat, like Jalal al-Din, wrote and drew “for everyone,” conceiving the project as a pedagogical and critical tool in the service of the greater good, a priority realized in the architecture that the book later inspired.142 He had been in contact with the same influential Iranian, Parsi, and European actors. Forsat noted that the scholarship of Friedrich Spiegel had been his primary reference—in particular, Spiegel’s Érân, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris (1863)—and that Rawlinson had served as a significant source of inspiration.143 Forsat and Spiegel had both benefited from Parsi publication subvention. In collaboration with Hataria, Spiegel’s German version of Zend-Avesta (1854) was translated into English, subsidized by funds of Mancherji Hormasji Cama, while Hataria had financed the fieldwork for Asar-e ajam.144 In 1900, from his exile in Bombay, the Iranian reformist merchant turned editor Mu’ayyed ol-Eslam Jalal al-Din ( 170 )  the persian revival

al-Hosayn described Asar-e ajam in his Calcutta-based Persian-language newspaper, Habl al-matin, as “fifty pages of illustrations of ancient ruins belonging to the reign of Kiyan and Parthians, and Sassanian kings,” and applauded it for being “refreshing to the hearts of Iranians.”145 Much in demand, Asar-e ajam was reprinted in another lithograph edition in Bombay in 1935. A liberal artist, a constitutionalist who joined the revolution in 1905, a staunch educational reformer as the first director of Shiraz’s Department of Education, Forsat, like Hataria, belonged to what Manoukian has called the “lithographic axis between Bombay and Shiraz”—the neo-Zoroastrian/Mazdaic literary corridor that by the 1870s began to be expressed in the language of stone. Bombay was at one end of the axis, while Shiraz became the epicenter of the Persian Revival in Iranian architecture at its other end. From Bombay, Parsi historian Muncherji Murzban lauded “the intellectual qualities of the Iranees” revealed in the “most brilliant artists” of Shiraz, itself portrayed as an “Aryan city.”146 Here in Shiraz—the city of knowledge, poetry, and wine—this architectural idea germinated as early as Karim Khan’s reign. It was in the aristocratic gardens of Shiraz that the talar elevated on a takht, capped with a pish-taq, and adorned with full-figure reliefs on stone dadoes was developed into a holistic stylistic type that could be replicated and perfected elsewhere. That wealthy Parsi merchants and eager Parsi priests were regular visitors to Fars, Kerman, and Yazd made these centers the artistic heartland of the Persian Revival. While not widespread in all regions of Iran, the style had a tangible presence in the network of urban centers that trafficked in modern commerce, reformist ideas, and Zoroastrian revivalism: Shiraz, Yazd, Kerman, and Tehran. It then comes as no surprise that Forsat was a proud Shirazi and devoted the second section of Asar-e ajam, entitled “Shiraznameh” (The book of Shiraz), to the city’s contemporary architecture, including a discussion of thirty-six residential gardens.147 Between 1860 and 1880, Achaemenid and Sassanian revivalism was earnestly practiced by a range of patrons with diverse social backgrounds and ideological priorities in Fars.148 Direct but interpretive copies of scenes of royal investiture (e.g., the Sassanian rulers Ardeshir I and Shapur I from Naqsh-e Rostam) and heroic combat (e.g., the king slaying a lion), royal or state portraits (e.g., an enthroned monarch, a standing soldier), and various well-known Zoroastrian/Mazdaic images and icons (e.g., the faravahar, the king slaying a unicorn) were reproduced in mansions. Each in some form or other incorporated the structural formula of the open-center talar (pillared hall) raised on a takht (elevated platform), topped by a pish-taq (curved pediment). The pish-taq overlooking an inner courtyard was perfected in Kashan in such mansions as the Amerita (1850s), Burujerdi (by Ostad Ali Maryam, 1857), and Tabatabai (by Ostad Ali Maryam, 1880s) in heavy stuccowork and without much trace of revivalistic decorative programs.149 From these local innovations onto the stage of the world, Qajar the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 171 )

Iran was represented at the Exposition universelle in Paris between May and November 1878 with a two-story talar of slender columns upholding a perfectly semicircular pish-taq.150 Throughout “Shiraznameh,” Forsat makes temporal leaps from the Achaemenid talar and the Sassanian chahar-taq to his own time by eulogizing the most powerful family in Shiraz, the Qavam ol-Molk, whose patronage he enjoyed. The most prominent Persian Revival buildings—the earliest holistic expression of the style in Iran—were thus included in this first native art-historical account as part and parcel of an architectural tradition of the longue durée. The inclusion of the art history of these Shirazi structures on the last one hundred pages of Asar-e ajam suggests that Forsat considered them an outcome of the evolution of Iranian architecture from Persepolis to, say, the mansion of Narenjestan-e Qavam (Qavam’s Orangery, 1879–85). Nineteenth-century authors discussed an art-historical teleology—continuity with the ancients based on architectural typologies—the existence of which is presently hard to refute: Forsat did see Achaemenid and Sassanian palaces as parent forms of Qajar mansions, and his Qajar patrons of contemporary architecture, heirs to these ancient empires. Committed to repairing a decline model of historiography—of the historical falls at Nahavand (641), about which he wrote in Asar-e ajam, at Neshapur and Isfahan (1221 and 1722), and at Golestan and Torkmanchai (1813 and 1828)—Forsat saw himself, as did his co-ideologues, as a chronicler of not just Achaemenid and Sassanian art but a witness to a Qajar renaissance.151 He speaks of both patron and edifice in tender admiration. “On the western side of the city,” he writes, “there is a garden [bostan], unlike [bi-shabih] any other,” in the middle of which “an unparalleled [bi-nazir] and pleasant [del-pazir] building [emarat] has been erected” (519). Erected between 1863 and 1867, Afifabad (Palace of Chastity) was known during Forsat’s time as Baq-e Golshan (Garden of Roses). Without providing dates, he records that this and “other buildings” on the site were erected by “Qavam ol-Molk, Mirza Ali Mohammad Khan Esken olah-Aljenan” (1829–1883), then the owner of the estate (519).152 Conceived as chahar-baq (four gardens) on a quadrilateral layout with a history going back to Achaemenid, Safavid, and Mughal royal gardens, Baq-e Afifabad was divided into four smaller sections with walkways and waterways marked by pools and pavilions at the seams.153 The rectangular building of Afifabad, flanked on its western and eastern sides by staircases, was erected at the northwest of the estate (fig. 53). The structure was raised on a takht with a composite-column talar. Overlooking a large shallow pool, the main elevation consists of the rich canvas for Qavam’s revivalistic aspiration. A three-bay central talar, carrying a large catenary pish-taq, separates wide six-bay porticos on either side. Each wing of the building is, in turn, split into a central talar with four bays held up by three full and two engaged composite columns, and four side bays, the outermost of which are each decorated with a frieze. On the interior ( 172 )  the persian revival

Fig. 53  Main elevation of Afifabad, also known as Baq-e Golshan, Shiraz, Iran, 1863–67. Photo: author.

wall of the portico, all along the elevation between the ceiling line and the French doors, another frieze carries some twenty-five reliefs depicting scenes, both faithful and concocted, from Achaemenid and Sassanian sites. In the side bays, imagery from Persepolis have been re-created: the faravahar hovers high, Darius in audience with a fan-bearer, dignitaries and soldiers march, a king struggles with a unicorn, a lion fights a bull, and subject nations bear gifts to the king. In the central talar, supported on two full and two engaged double-bull-headed columns, Sassanian bas-reliefs from Naqsh-e Rostam, Naqsh-e Rajab, and Bishapur are refigured: Shapur I is cheered by his cavalry and infantry while his horse tramples on the body of Roman emperor Gordian III (r. 238–44) and his successor, Philip the Arab (r. 244–49), begs for his life; Ardeshir I and Shapur I are invested; and Roman emperor Valerian (r. 253–60) kneels at the foot of Shapur (see figs. 3, 7, 26, 52). In the making of these compositions, the artists took a great degree of artistic liberty in shifting and repositioning figures and objects in order to complete a scene. The sixth-century bce fan-bearer from the doorway of Xerxes Palace at Persepolis, for instance, reappears the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 173 )

Fig. 54  Lotf Ali Khan, drawing of the Sassanian relief of Ardeshir I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rostam, Fars, Iran. Paper, pencil, ink, 12.76 × 15.75 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1998.6.3, DP-452-001.

behind the royal horse during the investiture of Ardeshir I in 224. Inside the central pish-taq, Ardeshir’s third-century investiture flanks the fourteenth-century Hafez, immersed in a book. On the ground floor, a similar attempt at a temporal collapse is achieved with six panels of life-size reliefs decorating each bay, reminiscent of the life-size reliefs of Zand figures photographed by Herzfeld on the dado of a now-disappeared Shirazi mansion (see figs. 47, 48): the two central ones, which face each other, are Sassanian royal figures with characteristically elaborate crowns, while the next four, moving outward, depict Achaemenid soldiers from Persepolis. Skipping three floral panels, the bay before the last portrays a modern soldier with European uniform. In adopting European military uniform for the Iranian army in 1839, Mohammad Shah (r. 1834–48) had declared that this was not mimicry of Western taste but a revival of the Achaemenid uniform, copied from Persepolis.154 But how exactly were these images from remote rural or mountainous locations transmitted onto the walls of urban mansions like Afifabad and Narenjestan? In 1863 neither Nameh-ye khosravan nor Asar-e ajam had been published. Of course, a visit to Persepolis or Naqsh-e Rostam was within a thirteen-hour walk from Shiraz. By then, Iranian artists, alongside their Western counterparts, had begun to act as links between archeological sites and practicing patrons and craftsmen. For example, four exquisite ( 174 )  the persian revival

Fig. 55  Baq-e Eram, designed by architect Mohammad Hasan Me’mar, Shiraz, Iran, 1875–97. Museum of Baq-e Eram photo collection. Photo: author.

pencil drawings by Lotf Ali Khan (1797–1869) dated to 1860 and depicting the Sassanians reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam and Naqsh-e Rajab must have circulated among architects and craftsmen during the construction of the earliest of these revivalistic edifices.155 A 1970 report on Narenjestan by Terence O’Donnell of the Asia Institute, housed in that very building, indicates that a certain Luft Ali Suratgar, “a famous miniaturist of the period,” was in charge of the painting and plasterwork of the ceilings.156 The two Lotf Alis would not have been the same if the former died in 1869 and the latter supervised the work at Narenjestan only after 1879. It is also possible that the construction of the building occurred earlier and that the two Lotf Alis were, indeed, the same. This possibility is tempting, given the distinct stylistic resemblances between Lotf Ali’s drawing of the Sassanian relief of Ardeshir I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rostam and a similar image, executed in multicolor tile, on the main pish-taq at Afifabad, including the hanging garments of each mounted figure (fig. 54; see figs. 26, 52). Another close look reveals that this copy, too, was a result of artistic interventions that amalgamated two separate originals and their subsequent reproductions: the better-known Naqsh-e Rostam relief of Ardeshir I and the same at Naqsh-e Rajab, with flying capes. The copies played games with the originals on their own terms and for their own purposes beyond artistic imitation. Forsat describes the large, three-story residential building in Baq-e Eram (Garden of Paradise), founded north of Afifabad in 1824, as “kingly [shahaneh],” a structure “that includes a talar with two strong columns [sotun-eh qavih]” (512).157 He further reports that Mohammad Qoli Khan Ilkhani founded the “first building,” then sold it to Haji Naser ol-Molk Abd ol-Qasem Khan, who in turn hired Haji Mohammad Hasan Me’mar, “an unparalleled [bi-nazir]” expert in “construction techniques [fan-e bana’i]” (513), to erect the existing structure between 1875 and 1897 (fig. 55). In a footnote, Forsat remarks that he was commissioned by Naser ol-Molk, then the owner of the estate, to write “his biography [talikash].” Architecturally, Eram follows the same the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 175 )

type of a central talar elevated on a takht and capped with a pish-taq. Initially incorporating windows, doors, and staircases on the first two floors, which supported a four-column balcony on the third, the central talar was restructured to resemble that of the main, south elevation of Afifabad: a three-bay talar two stories high, borne by two stone columns and bracketed by five bays on each side. On the limestone dadoes, two Achaemenid soldiers faced each other, while the main, trilobed pish-taq displayed in colored tile Darius on his throne. This was later replaced with a replica of Victor Darjou’s oil painting Portrait of Naser al-Din Shah (1858), commissioned by the then ambassador to France, Amin ol-Molk. By the 1880s other Shirazi homes, such as the little-known Sa’adat (Prosperity) and Atrvash Houses, reproduced, on a smaller scale, the talar-and-pish-taq type adorned with neo-Achaemenid and neo-Sassanian decorations.158 Forsat lauds the well-known Baq-e Qavam, the Qavam family’s city residence in old Shiraz, as a “kingly talar” of nine bays and three pish-taqs that leads into “two hallways” with “two orosis [sash windows] opening onto the garden” (508). Completed in 1885 for Mirza Ali Mohammad Khan Qavam ol-Molk, it comprises two one-story structural groupings around two walled gardens: the public (biruni) reception halls and guestrooms of Narenjestan and the private (andaruni) living quarters of Zeynat ol-Molk. On the talar elevation of Narenjestan, the Persepolitan motif of the king slaying a unicorn/lion is featured on the stone dadoes (fig. 56). Reproductions of the original in the Palace of One Hundred Columns, the reliefs seem to be results of both copying from Western travelogues and oral transmission, together with an abundance of artistic license. In this earliest appearance of the motif, the king, on one of the panels (not pictured), cuddles, instead of kills, the lion. In Texier’s Description de l’Arménie, la Perse et la Mésopotamie (1852), plate 98 (with the king hugging the lion), plate 99 (from the Apadana, showing dignitaries offering gifts to the king), and plates 101–2 (with the king slaying a lion and a unicorn) come very close to the iconography of the Narenjestan reliefs on the dado.159 Reprinting Flandin’s drawing of the same, five years after the erection of Narenjestan, Perrot and Chipiez argued that the Persepolitan “lion, griffin, and unicorn” are “of pure Aryan creation.”160 The rich tilework, stuccowork, miniature painting, alabaster fireplaces, stained-glass windows, and wooden frames rendered Narenjestan, like Afifabad and Eram, outstanding expressions of Qajar eclectic revivalism, certainly deserving Forsat’s high praises and Sevruguin’s photographic documentation. Like their eighteenth-century Gothic Revival counterparts, these Shirazi edifices “mixed” their “sources indiscriminately,” each serving as an “instrument for communicating” new “associations.”161 Carefully orchestrated, these talar facades realized, literally, Hataria’s ascription of feelings to monuments; architecture was deployed to claim an organic but dormant national unconscious. Increasingly the Persian Revival, as a style, was associated with patriotic, secularist, and ( 176 )  the persian revival

Fig. 56  View of a dado with copies of Achaemenid reliefs, including a king slaying a unicorn, and a standing soldier, Narenjestan-e Qavam, Shiraz, Iran, 1879–85. Photo: author.

even constitutionalist ideas. Aesthetic judgment hinted at the germination of a moral stance. The 1890s thus ushered in the widespread use of Zoroastrian/Mazdaic iconography in various artistic mediums and scales: from entire walls of mass-produced tiles on expansive architectural complexes to bowls, vases, wall decorations, pen boxes, intricate carpets, and bronze trays.162 The Persian Revival had arrived, and it has remained to this day, an integral part of the daily lives of Iranians. By then, too, the academic discourse on the history of Iranian art had split into two irreconcilable categories—that is, pre-Islamic and Islamic—a split that was reinforced in architectural practices and the politics of display. The 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris was a marked indication of this violent rupture as “Persia” was represented with two separate pavilions: one, a mosque, mixed together Baroque and Safavid elements; the other, next to the German and India pavilions—representing what were deemed kindred Aryan races—was a cross between a Sassanian chahar-taq and an Achaemenid palace with Persepolitan crenellations, designed—or rather concocted—by French architect Jacques Drevet (1832–1900) within Charles Garnier’s L’histoire de l’habitation humaine exhibition (fig. 57).163 Drevet had no doubt perused L’art antique de la Perse (1885) and had made a few adjustments to the Dieulafoys’ plate viii (fig. 15 here)—removing one dome and enlarging the other, extending the iwan entrance, elaborating on facade ornamentation, and adding high windows—their restoration the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 177 )

Fig. 57  View of the Persian pavilion, resembling a Zoroastrian fire temple, designed by French architect Jacques Drevet, at the Exposition universelle, Paris, France, 1889. The Library of Congress, Persian house in the History of Habitation exhibit, Paris Exposition, LOT 6634, no. 191, photograph, https://‌www‌.loc‌.gov‌ /item‌/92521041.

of the Sassanian Palace of Sarvestan. As the pavilion’s tectonic configuration is alien to Iranian architectural history, the original from which it was copied was the Dieulafoys’ fantastic paper revival. Despite numerous attempts in both architectural practice and its textual reiterations, the historiography of Iranian art has stubbornly clung to this invented yet defining schizophrenic personality: the pre-Islamic and the Islamic, the original and the copy, the influence and the mimic.

Aryanization of the Persian Revival, 1906–1939 Nurtured on the literature produced by the mid-nineteenth-century roshanfekr (enlightened thinkers), who conceived of Iranian history neither as “the revelation of God’s will . . . nor the cyclic rise and fall of dynasties” but rather as “the continual march of human progress” from Cyrus the Great to a bright future, a new generation of reformists propelled the project of Persian Revival into the twentieth century.164 The unrest sparked by the tobacco crisis (1891–92) and the monarch’s assassination (1896) culminated in the Constitutional Revolution (1905–6), trailed by a civil war (1908–9) and a “period of disintegration” (1900–1921).165 Defined by revivalistic nationalism and constitutionalism, the reformist intelligentsia of this period quickly formed a series of associations and produced prolific writings on the crucial role of ancient Persian art in the formation of a new, healthy nation-state. Constitutionalism and secularism were the prevailing ideologies. Smaller groupings under Mozaffar al-Din Shah (r. 1896–1906), such as the Treasure of Knowledge and the Society of Learning, ushered in robust political activism. In November 1906 prominent reformists—many of whom were also eminent scholars of ancient Iran—founded in Tehran the Réveil de l’Iran (Awakening of Iran, Bidari-ye Iran): the first official Masonic lodge constituted under the Grand Orient of France.166 When Mohammad Ali Shah (r. 1907–9) and later Reza Shah outlawed all secret organizations, these same men gathered first around the Revival Party (Hezb-e Tajaddod), in 1921, and a year later around the Society of National Heritage (Anjoman-e Asar-e Melli).167 In December 1925 the Qajars were deposed by a bill introduced to the Parliament by the Revival Party, offering the Peacock Throne to Reza Shah. The founders of the Réveil de l’Iran comprised the generation of reformer-revivalists who charted the cultural parameters of the Pahlavi dynasty (r. 1925–79). Among them, Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh, with deep ties to Bombay’s Parsis, was the Zoroastrian representative to Iran’s Parliament. One of the first graduates of Dar al-Fonun, Ebrahim Hakimi served as Iran’s prime minister for three terms. The most prominent among them was Mohammad Ali Forughi, the prime minister between 1925 and 1927, then again from 1932 until 1935, who was a member of the 1905 Revolutionary Committee, the ranking member of the Iranian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 179 )

ambassador to the United States and Turkey, the founder of the Academy of Iranian Culture, and a law lecturer at Dar al-Fonun. Predictably, Forughi and his father were also two of the leading scholars of Sassanian Iran, as was Hasan Pirnia Moshir al-Dowleh, the Qajar prime minister and renowned historian, who published the three-volume Iran-bastan (Ancient Iran, 1931–33) and Tarikh-e mokhtasar-e iran-e qadim (Condensed history of ancient Iran, 1928). These were later joined by other influential revivalists: Abd al-Hosayn Teymurtash, Reza Shah’s all-powerful court minister; Firuz Mirza Firuz, a Qajar aristocrat and Pahlavi finance minister; Hosayn Ala, the anti-British Pahlavi prime and court minister; Isa Sadiq, the Pahlavi minister of culture and professor at Tehran University; Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, a prominent editor and politician; Hasan Mostawfi, a Qajar prime minister; Saïd Nafisi, a professor of Persian language and literature; and Ali Asghar Hekmat and Hasan Esfandiari, Pahlavi ministers of education, endowment, and fine arts.168 Among these men, Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh (1878–1970) was the most vocal and committed ideologue in pursuit of revival-as-reform. As the radical editor of the Berlin-based nationalist journal Kaveh, he was seminal in shaping the discourse on a return to Iran’s ancient past. Unlike its first series, published between 1916 and 1919, the second set of Kaveh’s articles, published between 1920 and 1921, were entirely devoted to issues addressing Iran’s history, literature, and culture and focused mostly on the Achaemenid and the Sassanian dynasties. In many editorials in this period, Taqizadeh insisted that Iran’s political salvation was to be found in revalorizing its Aryan culture and history, revealing its superior qualities not only to the Iranian Volk but also to the civilized world. Many articles reiterated Gobineau’s Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines while endorsing pan-Iranian ideology and laying out a program for Iran’s ethnocultural homogenization. The seventh-century Muslim Arab invasion, according to the journal, was the pivotal moment when Iran deviated from its course of progress. In light of my argument linking Iranian reformers to Strzygowski, it is worth noting that in 1915, the same year that Taqizadeh arrived in Berlin and formed “the Berlin Circle” of “agitators and intellectuals to cooperate with the Germans in charting a new nationalist course for Iran,” Strzygowski launched his chain of publications on the pivotal role of Iran in the history of art, including “The Sassanian Church and Its Domestic Interiors” (1915), The Art of the East (1916), and Altai-Iran and the Migrations (1917).169 Oleg Grabar’s claim that Strzygowski’s “views are difficult to relate directly to Iranian ideologies of the [1930s]” seems suspect.170 During these same years, other journals, including Hosayn Kazemzadeh’s Iranshahr (Country of Iran, 1922–27), Moshfeq Kazemi’s Farangestan (Europe, 1924–26), and Mahmud Afshar’s Ayandeh (The future, 1925), advocated an integrated secular nation-state, a homogeneous urban civilization, linguistic and cultural modernization, secular education for both sexes, proliferation of industrial technology, implementation ( 180 )  the persian revival

of Western political philosophy, and above all a return to Iran’s Zoroastrian/Mazdaic artistic traditions. In a 1924 article, Iranshahr claimed that the “savage” Arab invasions of the seventh century had ruined the “civilized” Zoroastrian empires, after which Muslim Arab “imperialism had retarded the creative abilities of Iran’s talented Aryan population.”171 By 1925 the German architect and archeologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879–1947), the French architect and Iran’s head of archeological services André Godard (1881–1965), and the American art historian and art dealer Arthur Upham Pope (1881–1969) had boosted the nationalists’ agenda with their research and revivalist declarations on the arts of ancient Iran.172 The digging right at Persepolis was a particular point of contention. By then, too, many of the staunchest reformists occupied the most critical posts in Reza Shah’s first cabinet. The Persian Revival finally became the official style of the Urheimat. Proposed first by Herzfeld, redesigned by the German-trained Iranian architect and reformer Karim Taherzadeh Behzad, and completed by Godard, Ferdowsi’s modern mausoleum in Tus, lavished with faravahars and bull-headed columns, was the Pahlavi state’s first public project. It signaled a state-sponsored renewed zeal for the Persian Revival. Elsewhere, I have examined at length the history of the late Qajar and Pahlavi elite’s political engagement with cultural heritage in the service of nation-building.173 This study omits lengthy accounts in order to focus on the two clusters of edifices that were outcomes of such engagements. First, erected between the 1896 assassination of Naser al-Din Shah and the founding of the Pahlavi dynasty, the hardly-ever-studied transitory—or what I have called hybrid—buildings, while they might seem like pastiche and even schizophrenic today, were, in effect, the (teleo)logical by-products of two centuries of a Perso-European fetish for Iran’s antiquity. Second, erected primarily in Reza Shah’s capital city, Tehran, during the short but prolific period between 1928 and 1939, the perfected and sanitized ministries and official buildings were not only the aesthetic expression of a staunchly ethnonationalist state but also the final chapter in the long (art) history of the Persian Revival. While the former signaled a fluid struggle for constitutional rule, the latter stood for the total appropriation of architecture in the service of race-based state ideology. At the turn of the century, Nameh-ye khosravan and Asar-e ajam epitomized reproducible and transportable handbooks for a fully mature revivalistic architecture. Used as textbooks at Dar al-Fonun and serving as rare visual references in Persian, both books were pivotal to the shaping of a peculiar look of the Persian Revival style.174 Characteristically late Qajar in indiscriminate method and medium of copying, the earliest examples of the hybrid Persian Revival buildings include the houses of Mirza Aqa Khan Nuri (known as Emam Jomeh, 1863–83) and Moqadam (1895–1906) in Tehran, as well as the Tekyeh Moaven ol-Molk (1903–17) in Kermanshah. All three deploy heavy multicolor titles, drawing from a rich mix of narrative, figurative, and iconographic sources, the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 181 )

and are products of the artistic whims of a wealthy patron.175 Located in the Odlajan neighborhood off of Naser Khosrow Avenue, Emam Jomeh House was erected by Naser al-Din Shah’s prime minister, Aqa Khan Nuri E‘temad al-Dowleh (in office 1851–57), and was later bought by Haj Seyyed Abd ol-Qasem. Moqadam House was commissioned by the mayor of Tehran under Naser al-Din Shah, Ehtesab ol-Molk. Located on Sepah Avenue, east of Pahlavi Avenue, it consists of a pedimented five-bay talar with balustraded staircases. Almost entirely covered with narrative tile panels and stone dadoes, it showcases an ornate fireplace similar to Narenjestan’s. In a similar heterogeneous style, the Tekyeh Moaven al-Molk, in Kermanshah, a space for the performance of Shi’a Moharram mourning ceremonies, was initially erected by the wealthy merchant Hosayn Khan Mo’ini al-Ra’aya and was expanded by Hasan Khan Mo’ini Moaven ol-Molk in 1909–12. In the hybrid tradition, the inner courtyard is decorated with large panels of cuerda seca tiles. The visitor sees a vibrant collage of biblical, Islamic, Shi’a ta’zieh-related, Achaemenid, Sassanian, Safavid, Zand, and Qajar imagery. As at Moqadam and Emam Jomeh, Forsat’s soldiers and dignitaries line up next to each other, while Jalal al-Din’s monarchs appear on individual tiles below the historical panel of al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi, who avenged the death of Hosayn at the Battle of Karbala. Tekyeh’s tiles, according to Jennifer Scarce,176 borrow their iconography from Ketabeh tarikh-e mo’jam (1900) as well. Its author, Mirza Ali Asgar Khan Amin ol-Soltan, had long been involved in revivalist circles as a Freemason, a close friend of Mehdi Qoli Khan Hedayat (Iran’s prime minster 1927–33), and a generous patron of architecture. The tilework lavishly displayed at Tekyeh depicts themes as diverse as Darius pointing to his prisoners (from Bisotun), Ardeshir receiving the eternal ring (at Taq-e Bostan), dignitaries bearing gifts (at the Apadana), Noah descending from the Ark, and Joseph entering Canaan.177 These eclectic edifices, with their rich craftsmanship and decorative programs, while deemed kitschy for a long time, express the intertextuality of architecture, stonework, tilework, photography, lithography, and mirror-work—copies of copies masterfully assembled as one tectonic whole. If the Persian Revival began with literature, Fazel-e Araqi House (ca. 1900–1920, fig. 58) took the process full circle. Architecture became the illustrated textbook; it might have mystified Victor Hugo, who had avowed in 1831 that “le livre tuera l’édifice.”178 While the history of the building is obscure, as is that of most of these edifices, the house embodies the best characteristics of the hybrid revival. Located southwest of Ferdowsi Square, on the intersection of Pars and Mehrani streets, the elongated rectangular structure occupies the northern section of a once lush garden with a big oval reflecting pool. The property was bought in the 1910s by Ma’sum Fazel-e Araqi (1881–1956), a reformist judge in the postrevolutionary Justice Ministry.179 At the time of the purchase, the house was rented to a certain “Mr. Amanpour,” an uncle of the British-Iranian journalist Christiane Amanpour, but the history of its ownership stops ( 182 )  the persian revival

Fig. 58  South elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920. Photo: author.

there. I postulate that either Fazel or, more likely, the previous owner expanded the existing building westward while executing the unique decorative program seen today. Disinheriting his daughter over a dispute about true love, Fazel bequeathed it to the Justice Ministry upon his death, to be used as a hospital for women. Organized on an east-west corridor accessed from Pars Street, a total of sixteen rooms are divided into two floors. The south elevation is separated into a protruding three-bay section flanked by two four-bay wings; on the west, another six bays were added simultaneously with the facade decorations. Thirty-six tile medallions depicting Achaemenid and Sassanian reliefs, framed in bands of glazed tiles, are strategically positioned above openings or on corners: Apadana gift bearers, marching Achaemenid soldiers, a king slaying a unicorn, Darius in audience, the winged faravahar, a Sassanian hunting scene, the investitures of Ardeshir and Shapur, and, sure enough, Valerian kneeling at the foot of Shapur (figs. 59, 60). All but four rectangular medallions, on the central section, and one oval medallion, on a wall return, are enclosed in quatrefoil frames, while four other elongated vertical panels decorate the corners between the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 183 )

this section and its wings. Fazel-e Araqi is the manifestation of a sophisticated, highly self-conscious mind; its craftsmen had not needed to move from Tehran to find inspirations for the elaborate decorative program. Instead of roaming around Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam, they had perused the pages of Nameh-ye khosravan for the interior decorations and Asar-e ajam for the exterior medallions, handpicking what they liked as if from an architect’s handbook. Inside, on the dadoes at ground level, two-by-three-foot tile portraits of monarchs were re-created, copying directly from Nameh-ye khosravan (fig. 61; compare to fig. 51). Jalal al-Din’s Anushirvan, Siamak, Iradj, Shah Abbas, Karim Khan, Shapur, and Purandokht gazed at guests as they sipped on cups of hot tea, served on Abd ol-Mottalleb’s tray, itself lined with thirty medallions of his drawings from Nameh-ye khosravan.180 The appearance of one of the two Sassanian queens, Ferdowsi’s Purandokht, the historical daughter and successor of Khosrow II, known familiarly as Queen Buran (r. 630–32), hinted at the patron’s reformist inclination, which included education for girls. Jalal al-Din had praised her as “very kind to everyone,” a ruler who, through her “justice and generosity,” gained the approval of the “elders.”181 Although her murder accelerated the downfall of the Sassanian Empire, her appearance on these walls, shoulder to shoulder with legendary rulers, spoke to a desire for a historiographical do-over. Outside, a comparison between Forsat’s lithographs and Fazel-e Araqi’s reliefs reveals not just a direct copy of parts but also an innovative process of fragmentation and redistribution in order to fit the desired architectural and decorative program of ( 184 )  the persian revival

Fig. 59 (opposite)  Medallions on the central pavilion of the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House reproducing Sassanian reliefs, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920. Left to right: Ardeshir I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the inscription “South side of Persepolis known as Naqsh-e Rajab . . . the image of Ahura Mazda–worshipper Ardeshir Shah and king of Aryans and non-Aryans, governor appointed by god, son of god-worshipper Babak Shah”; Shapur II’s suppression of a revolt at Tang-e Chogan, with the inscription “The face of Shapur first, who is in Tang-e Chogan of the city of Shapur in Kazerun . . . the audience of Roman ministers with Shapur for the forgiveness and freedom of Valerian”; and Shapur I’s investiture at Naqsh-e Rajab. Photo: author. Fig. 60  Medallions on the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House reproducing Sassanian reliefs, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920. Left to right: Shapur I at Tang-e Chogan, with the inscription “This is the image of the executioner presenting two severed heads to Shapur . . . this is Shapur’s passage over the plains of Chogan”; Shapur I holding the hand of Valerian at Bishapur while Philip the Arab kneels in front of him; and a fragment of the deer-hunting scene from Taq-e Bostan, with the inscription “This relief is in Kermanshah . . . the hunting ground is on the right-hand side of the Taq-e Bostan of Kermanshah.” Photo: author.

Fig. 61  Tile portraits of three Iranian rulers, Shapur I, Purandokht, and Karim Khan Zand, on the interior dadoes of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920. Photo: Greg Grigorian.

this building. Forsat’s drawing of the relief of Shapur II’s suppression of a revolt at Tang-e Chogan, for instance, has at Fazel-e Araqi been split into two separate narrative medallions, one inscribed “This is Shapur I, who is in Tang-e Chogan; audience of ministers of Rome with Shapur for the forgiveness and freedom of Valerian”; the other, “This is the likeness of the executioner presenting two severed heads to Shapur” (see figs. 52, 59, 60). Similarly, parts from the Sassanian hunting panel inside the large grotto of Taq-e Bostan form multiple medallions, which bear inscriptions transcribed verbatim from Forsat’s analysis. Fazel-e Araqi is, in effect, an architectural manifesto of the literary tradition in the Persian Revival, transforming lithographs into stone. Like Gothic Revival buildings, it and its kindred structures were more like pedagogical objects: “except for the fact,” as Lewis puts it, “that they were made of brick and stood on the ground, they were closer to book illustration than architecture.”182 Like Asar-e ajam and Nameh-ye khosravan, it too was meant to be taught. Like the books’ methodological conception, the edifice underpinned a public-instruction intent, where each inscription spelled out that “this is the likeness of ” so and so, providing the exact location of the ancient reliefs. Here, too, the very language of the inscriptions is identical to Forsat’s textual descriptions. The relief inscription above the king-fighting-a-unicorn medallion, “The battle of Darius with Abolhol,” corresponds to the description in Asar-e ajam’s textual narrative on the illuminations, including “In the eastern gate of the Palace of One Hundred Columns” (fig. 62; compare to figs. 6, 39, 56). On Pars Street, furthermore, ( 186 )  the persian revival

Fig. 62 (left) Lithograph of a relief showing a king slaying a unicorn, Persepolis. From Mohammad Naser Hosayn Shirazi Forsat, Asar-e ajam (Bombay: Matba-e Naderi, 1894–96), plate 22. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California. The lithograph served as the blueprint for (right) a medallion on the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House with the inscription “The battle of Darius with Abolhol,” Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920. Photo: author.

the entrance is announced with a lonely medallion: the so-called Genius at Gate H in Pasargadae, who wears an Elamite dress. The inscription that Ker Porter documented in 1818 and that later disappeared stated, “I am Cyrus the king, an Achaemenid.” At Fazel-e Araqi, Forsat’s already-truncated version of the Egyptian crown has disappeared in order to fit the figure inside the frame of the oval medallion, while the figure itself, otherwise identical to Forsat’s Cyrus, wears a rather Qajar-looking hat and coat (fig. 63; compare to figs. 5, 52). In Shiraz, this same figure of Cyrus has swelled enormously to occupy the large curvilinear pish-taq that crowns the southeast elevation of Shapuri House (ca. 1920– 30, fig. 64). Commissioned by Abd al-Saheb Shapuri and designed by Abd ol-Qasem Mohandesi, it flaunts the full eclecticism of the era with its two-story colonnaded facade, classical window treatment, composite capitals, and the typically Qajar use of brick, paint, and wood. However, the process of this copying was not mimetic in the making of any of these features: an independent practice of collage and framing governed the decorative programs. Craftsman and patron had freely and self-consciously picked from the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 187 )

Fig. 63 Medallion of Cyrus on the east elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920, with the inscription “This is the godlike image on the eastern side of the Temple of Solomon’s Mother,” after the relief on Gate H at Pasargadae. Photo: author.

illustrated pages and had placed select images in a new visual order that reinforced the aesthetic and narrative quality of the architecture. Forsat’s taxonomy of archeological fragments was, in turn, taxonomized into a working architectural framework: vertical bands to cover the curved corners (fig. 65; compare to figs. 2, 25, 39, 52, 56). That the theme of Roman emperors begging for “forgiveness and freedom” at the feet of Sassanian kings was depicted half a dozen times at Fazel-e Araqi alone, as it had been inside Afifabad’s talar, speaks to the postcolonial significance of the Persian Revival. That these were placed at the most publicly visible corners hints at its political tenacity (fig. 66; compare to figs. 7, 26, 52). As late as the sixteenth century, Valerian’s humiliating defeat at Edessa was vivid in the European imagination, as exemplified in Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1521 painting of it. So, if the eclectic pastiche of these edifices lends to a reading of artistic or technical amateurism, its kitsch aesthetic quality does not evoke a naïve political representation. Often verbally transmitted or reproduced from postcards, lithographs, and photographs, the eclectic features of these buildings were chosen by native patrons and craftsmen who were fully aware of the implications of their aesthetic choices in terms of modern imperial politics. On the eve of the 1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement, which, if signed, would have made Iran a British protectorate, Valerian at the foot of Shapur was not a casual reproduction of an old image or a nostalgic jaunt into ancient history. It was meant to restore, symbolically at least, Iran’s pre-1699, pre-1722, or pre-1813 superpower status and thus to offer a counternarrative to Europe’s cultural expansion. In the 1920s the image of Shapur-Valerian was widely circulated as a marker of civilizational status: Sevruguin and Firuz Mirza Firuz photographed the reliefs; Sarre received the photos, although he never credited Sevruguin; Herzfeld sketched the details of Valerian’s cape; and finally, in 1926, with ( 188 )  the persian revival

Fig. 64  Southeast elevation of Shapuri House, designed by Abd ol-Qasem Mohandesi, Shiraz, Iran, 1935, displaying an image of Cyrus after the relief on Gate H at Pasargadae. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Hossein Amini / Persian Dutch Network).

Fig. 65 (above) Illustration depicting nobles from Apadana bearing gifts to the king of kings at Persepolis. From Mohammad Naser Hosayn Shirazi Forsat, Asar-e ajam (Bombay: Matba-e Naderi, 1894– 96), plate 25. Photo courtesy of Visual Resources Facility, University of California. This illustration inspired (left) the vertical medallions on the corners of the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920. Photo: author.

Fig. 66  Two medallions on the south elevation of Fazel-e Araqi House, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1900–1920, reproducing ancient reliefs. Left: two Achaemenid guards facing each other, from Persepolis, with the inscription “These two individuals are [damaged area], and they are carved on the Chehel Sotun building.” Right: Shapur I’s triumph over Valerian at Naqsh-e Rostam with the inscription “This is the image of Shapur I, who appointed Siridos a governor and dispatched him to Rome . . . this carving of Shapur and Valerian is in the mountain of Naqsh-e Rostam.” Photo: author.

the funding of the Pahlavi government and the intervention of Arthur Pope, Iran was represented at the Philadelphia Exposition by San Francisco artist Robert Boardman Howard’s plaster replica of the Shapur-Valerian relief at Naqsh-e Rostam.183 Saray-e Roshan (Bright Abode, also called Seyr ol-Eslam, the Path of Islam, ca. 1910–20) was erected in Tehran’s busy bazaar district on Naser Khosrow Avenue in the vicinity of Dar al-Fonun and Shams ol-Emareh (fig. 67). The 1932/1311 dates on the western elevation indicate either the date of a delayed completion or a change in the building’s function from a residence to a caravanserai.184 What remains of the original structure of circa 1910–20 is its astonishing front elevation, which blends early Italian Renaissance sculptures and classical columns with Achaemenid iconography and Safavid and Qajar ornaments. Originally a two-story building of five central bays flanked the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 191 )

Fig. 67  West elevation of Saray-e Roshan, also called Seyr ol-Eslam, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1910–20. Photo: author.

by two one-bay wings, Saray-e Roshan today has lost the right-hand wing. The roofline supports a parapet of brick balustrades. At the upper center of the central bay (fig. 68), a large faravahar is a copy from the Palace of One Hundred Columns. The pediment, which prominently reappears here, is buttressed with two Corinthian columns, while two tondi of unidentifiable figures crown the capitals. One could argue that here the pediment and the talar types found a happy union. In the tympanum, furthermore, two figures, Shem and Japheth, cover a third, reclining figure, their drunken father, Noah (fig. 68). It is a peculiar sculpture that required long deliberation to retrieve original artifacts from which copies could be made that compositionally would fit well into the gable. Once the work is placed in the broader context of the Persian Revival discourse, it begins to make sense. The Book of Genesis recounts that Japheth, who had a son Madai of the Median dynasty (ca. 678–549 bce), was the forefather of the northern, white peoples of Europe. After a century of rule over greater Persia, Madai conceded power to Cyrus II, who went on to rule over the Achaemenid Empire. Both for Sir William Jones and Arthur Gobineau, the Book of Genesis constituted the key historical source upon which they based their taxonomies of human languages and races. In mapping the dispersal of Noah’s sons, both writers placed Iran in the postdiluvian center from which, as per Jones, the “whole race of man proceeded.”185 “According to all Muhammedan writers,” William Vaux insisted in 1851, ( 192 )  the persian revival

Fig. 68  Detail of the pediment of Saray-e Roshan, displaying the drunken Noah with his sons, the faravahar, and two Corinthian columns with pinnacles, Tehran, Iran, ca. 1910–20. Photo: author.

“the first monarch of Persia was Kaiomurs, the grandson of Noah, and the founder of the Peisdadian dynasty.”186 For Gobineau, Japheth’s sons and future Aryans, who held “the monopoly of beauty, intelligence, and strength,” stood out for possessing “two main elements of all civilization: a religion and a history.”187 Biblical visual narratives in affluent Qajar homes were not a novelty. When in 1893 Browne was taken by his Bombay-educated “Armenian friend to the house of his aristocratic acquaintances” in Shiraz, he noticed walls that were “adorned with . . . paintings illustrative of scripture history,” including “Moses and the Burning Bush; . . . Joseph taking leave of Jacob; and Christ with the Virgin Mary.”188 While seemingly arbitrary, it is clear that Iranian patrons knew their Bible and the biblical stories through the Quran. This already-striking elevation is further adorned with four large niches. In the southern one, a seminude female sits at the foot of a young man. It is a reinterpretation of Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes (1457), commissioned for the Palazzo the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 193 )

Medici-Riccardi’s garden. Originally placed next to Donatello’s David (1432), both sculptures depicted tyrant slayers and were perceived by the Medici as signifying defeat of despotic rule. The pedestal inscription reads, “Kingdoms fall through luxury; cities rise through virtues. Behold the neck of pride severed by the hand of humility.” Amid a constitutional struggle in which Iranian reformists were intent on curbing the absolute power of Qajar kings, this message might have had a particular resonance even though the formal appropriation of the Italian composition was inverted in flipping the gender roles: in the Iranian case, the man hovers over the woman. Had not E‘temad al-Saltaneh insisted that the Parthian dynasty “was constitutional and not despotic”?189 The niche immediately north of this sculpture houses the figure of Saint Christopher, the Christian patron saint of pilgrims and travelers, who carries Christ on his shoulder, while the two northern niches depict a liberal interpretation of Bernini’s Tomb of Pope Urban VIII in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. Had not Strzygowski in 1911 declared “Persia” the “real originator” of Christianity and the “nursery of Christian architecture”?190 Here, Bernini’s composition of the figures of Charity and Justice was altered to fit not only the actual narrow niches of the facade but also the symbolic meaning of the sculpture. The attempt to copy the details of the drapery and the design of the hats is balanced by the defiance of the covered nudity of the original female figures. The free agency of the patron is operational here. These and the entire facade are organized within horizontal and vertical bands of polychrome ceramic tiles, multicolored glazed tiles, floral stuccos, and decorative brickwork typical of contemporary Qajar architecture. Rich certainly, but that is not all. Whoever erected Saray-e Roshan was a Freemason and had traveled far and wide, maybe to Bombay, or to Rome and London. He might have gone all the way to San Francisco and entered the impressive Masonic temple on the corner of Post and Montgomery Streets, where the figure of Charity similarly bends to greet her children while holding a baby in her arms.191 Or he might have traveled to some other place where he could have seen the grand facade of a Masonic temple with two large columns—symbolic of the two pillars of Solomon’s Temple—holding up a pediment. In his building, he had ordered the masons to construct these two large columns and cap them with two oversized pinnacles, placing on each four mini models of Solomon’s Temple and a Masonic shell. Maybe he had read J. J. Modi’s Masonic Papers (1907), where the author quotes Albert Mackey’s History of Freemasonry (1898) and he insists that “Noah, ‘who built the Ark by the principle of Geometry and the rules of Masonry’ . . . was the founder of Masonry in the post-diluvian world” and that “[ James] Anderson called a Mason a ‘true Noachida’ or Noachite.”192 Just a mile northeast of Saray-e Roshan, the public facade of Emarat-e Zell ol-Soltan (also called the Masudieh, 1878) likewise carries hidden Masonic symbolism: the shell, the double columns, the cherubs, and the sun.193 Reflecting his extravagance and thirst ( 194 )  the persian revival

for power, this five-hectare estate belonged to Prince Masud Mirza Zell ol-Soltan (1850–1918), the eldest son but not the heir of Naser al-Din Shah and the powerful governor of Isfahan and Fars from 1874 to 1907. The prince had been tutored by Mirza Yaqub Khan, an India-educated Armenian convert to Shi’ism who, with his son, Mirza Malkom Khan, had founded Iran’s first unofficial Masonic lodge (faramush-kaneh), which recruited many of its members from Dar al-Fonun.194 Although a despot at heart and in action, Zell ol-Soltan was also a Freemason, whose residence later served as the main gathering place for constitutionalists.195 Saray-e Roshan, like Masudieh, conflated Zoroastrian iconography, Masonic symbolism, classicism, and Qajar craftsmanship into a frenzied metaphor that stood for Aryanism, Masonic universalism, constitutional aspiration, and Persian antiquarianism with not many qualms about historical accuracy. As William Doyle contends, “So indelibly, indeed, did freemasonry now come to be associated in certain continental countries with republicanism and anti-clericalism, that to join a lodge became a gesture of radial political conviction— which it had never been before the [French] Revolution.”196 A contention that applies as aptly to Iran. The heterogeneous facades of these edifices conjure up a compelling evocation of a postcolonial condition. The end of the Qajar era and the establishment of the next royal dynasty witnessed the holistic appropriation of the Persian Revival into the state apparatus. The reigns of the two Pahlavi kings, Reza Shah (r. 1925–41) and Mohammad Reza Shah (r. 1941–79), were characterized by a resolute commitment to industrial, economic, and infrastructural expansion, invariably pushing architecture to the forefront of the nation-building project. Technological and infrastructural development in administration, judiciary, economy, education, transportation, and communication was seen as concrete means to modernize the Iranian society. However, Reza Shah’s commitment to rapid industrialization was paralleled by an equally steadfast constraint on political growth and liberalization. After 1941 his son sustained a similar policy on absolute control of political discourses. The final episode of the Persian Revival consisted of the Pahlavi dynasty’s adoption of the style, itself shaped by two significant developments: the modern coupling of archeological knowledge to architectural design as a marker of racial essence and the espousal of an architectural style by an autocratic state as a tool of national propaganda. Not so gradually the political meaning of the Persian Revival transformed into an official discourse as the state monopolized its patronage. Iranian collective identity—subject to other systems of purification and homogenization (education, language, dress code, conscription)— was now unimaginable without these tectonic tropes. When in 1922 Reza Khan, then the minister of war under the last Qajar monarch, Ahmad Shah (r. 1909–25), commissioned his first building, the Green Palace (1928), on the grounds of the Saddabad royal estate, the hybrid revival was the style of choice.197 That autumn he also the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 195 )

paid his first visit to Persepolis and continued to return occasionally until 1937. This carried weight. The proximity of the king to the ancient ruins set the stage for the normalcy of this new grafting of archeology onto architecture. Quickly and systematically, books and newspapers published photographs of Reza Shah at both ancient and modern sites, actively inspecting or inaugurating.198 No longer were travelogues, lithographs, photographs, and postcards (passively) to mediate between the two. In the royal person—always tall, robust, and in military attire—national time and space collapsed to heal the wounds of the motherland. An essential aspect of the grafting of archeology onto buildings was the complete disappearance of the Qajar pish-taq and, for that matter, any curvilinear forms in state-sponsored projects. A demand for exactitude in the proportions of the columns, capitals, crenellations, friezes, and elevations to match the archeological originals was implemented, as was the complete removal of extra ornaments, decorations, and colors. The entire exteriors of these edifices deployed gray stone without any trace of Qajar eclecticism using tile, mosaic, brick, wood, stained glass, or mirror. Characterized by a modern, almost fascist aesthetics of homogeneity, these austere landmarks represented and provoked broader Pahlavi agendas aimed at national homogenization. During the crucial years between 1927 and 1935, Reza Shah’s cabinet accelerated the process of revival-as-reform by renegotiating treaties that set Iranians on the same footing as their Western counterparts in the implementation of cooperative projects. The 1927 Archeological Agreement is a case in point.199 Parallel to Parsi commissions of schools and temples in Tehran (as traced in chapter 2), the state employed Western and local architects as well as Iranian master builders (me’mar) for its ministries, banks, post offices, and police stations. Godard, the director of both the archeological services and the Faculty of Fine Arts, was on the state’s payroll. Arriving in Tehran in January 1929 as Frances’s representative in Iran, his training in architecture and archeology impacted the revival discourse during the next three decades. As a board member of the Society of National Heritage, he also worked closely with such influential politicians as the almighty court minister Abd ol-Hosayn Teymurtash and Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Forughi, whose son, Mohsen Forughi (1907–1983), returned from the École des Beaux-Arts in 1937 to serve as one of the prolific architects of the Pahlavi era. During the same period, Herzfeld was supported by finance minister Firuz Mirza Firuz, whose family members had long been governors of Fars. Through these connections and other political dealings, Herzfeld won the excavation rights to Persepolis, after having had proposed design schemes for the insignia of the Society of National Heritage and the revivalistic tomb of Ferdowsi (1934) in the form of an Achaemenid palace. Official excavation began in March 1931, amid the construction boom in the heart of Tehran. Pope, in turn, came to Tehran in 1925 by the invitation of his “good ( 196 )  the persian revival

friend” Hosayn Ala, ambassador to Washington, DC, to deliver to the king and his cabinet a lecture in which he blamed Iran’s decline on the Qajars and advocated a return to the ancient past. When he returned nine years later, he picked up where he had left off, condemning the Qajars, who, according to him, “knew nothing and cared nothing for Persia’s great tradition in the arts” and left behind mere “copies” of “bad Russian architecture” that “violat[ed] the fundamental principles of architecture.”200 While French architect Maxime Siroux (1907–1975) remained aloof from Iranian politics, his close relationship with Godard won him several important commissions, including the National Library (1936) and Hafez’s tomb and garden in Shiraz (1938). Tbilisi-born Russian architect Nikolai Markov (1882–1957)—like German-trained Iranian architect Karim Taherzadeh Behzad (1888–1963)—experimented with Achaemenid, Safavid, and modernist syntheses in such commissions as the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs (1928–34) on Sepah Street in Tehran. Among the prolific architects, Gabriel Guévrékian was the genuine modernist, the right hand of none other than Le Corbusier in the cofounding of Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM); his minimalist-leaning Ministry of Justice (1936) on Khayyam Street hesitantly displayed, on its talar elevation, two Sassanian-inspired panels in stone.201 As a staunch modernist, Guévrékian disagreed with this decorative addition, but it was 1938, and Reza Shah had the final say. Despite defiance, an archeological culture dominated architectural design. In 1935 Pahlavi Iran was represented at the Brussels International Exposition by a stepped talar with two grand bull-headed columns holding up a hovering faravahar. The dadoes on two wings displayed life-size stone reliefs of Persepolitan soldiers. The July 29 issue of Ettelaat published the pavilion’s photograph and assured its readers, “It is built based on the historical heritage of Takht-e Jamshid” (fig. 69).202 Three days later, Le journal de Téhéran followed suit with a similar photograph.203 Reza Shah and the new Pahlavi elite thus secured the Persian Revival with the state affiliation it had lacked since its invention in 1830s Bombay. “No more would it be the garden sport of dilettantes.”204 The mushrooming of Persepolitan facades at every other corner in old Tehran distanced Iran-e novin (the new Iran) from Muslim Arab (art) history and securely tied it to Indo-European cultures stretching from India to the Germanic lands. The new architecture evidenced these oldest of ancestral Aryan bonds. In September 1937 Le journal de Téhéran published an article drawing a comparison between German and Iranian architecture. “German architecture—why German?” it asked, then asserted, “Art is of national character, and architecture, above all”; and then it went on to speak of the common racial origin and architecture of the two nations.205 Strzygowski’s theories were tucked in between the lines. The December 24, 1935, issue of Le journal de Téhéran hailed the “growth of the capital” demonstrable in the appearance of the first National Bank (1933–35), publishing the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 197 )

Fig. 69  Two illustrations from articles published in the newspaper Ettelaat about the Iranian Pavilion at the Brussels International Exposition, Brussels, Belgium, April 27 to November 6, 1935. From Ettelaat, nos. 2546 (6 Mordad 1314 / July 29, 1935) and 2557 (20 Mordad 1314 / August 12, 1935).

a photograph of its east elevation (fig. 70).206 Like the pavilion in Brussels, the bank features a protruding talar, raised on ten steps, and a large upheld faravahar. Two wings flank this central section. On a single story, the former had two bull-headed capitals, while the two-story bank has four of the same without the volutes. On the side bays of the talar, two ten-foot reliefs of Achaemenid soldiers face the entrance. Lined with Persepolitan crenellations along the roofline, the two wings of the bank, initially only containing four bays, were later expanded into L-shaped annexes. The impressive appearance of the edifice had to live up to a historical intention. One of the first charters ratified by the infant Parliament in 1907 was the establishment of a sovereign national bank. Like many modernizing projects, its realization awaited the arrival of Reza Shah’s iron fist. The Banque Nationale de Perse (Bank-e Melli-e Iran after 1942) was inaugurated on August 19, 1928. Successful within the first three years of its operation in “attracting half of [all] deposits” placed in banks in Iran, it provided monetary support for the king’s ambitious infrastructural megaprojects.207 Five years later to the day—August 19, 1933—at ten in the morning, amid Tehran’s summer heat, Godard and Markov met to carry out their “étude sur le plan de nouveau ( 198 )  the persian revival

Fig. 70  East elevation of the National Bank, designed by German architect A. Hemmrich, Tehran, Iran, 1933–35. Photo: Ali Khadem Collection, courtesy of Farrokh Khadem and Cyrus Samii.

bâtiment.”208 That same evening, they dispatched a three-page report to Hosayn Qoli Khan Navab, who, at age seventy, was charged with supervising the erection of a new building for the bank. His past had prepared him well. Infamous for nepotism, Prime Minister Aqa Khan Nuri had in 1886 appointed his twenty-two-year-old son as the consul general of Bombay, where he must have witnessed the splendor of the Parsi revivalist edifices. From there, Navab’s career had taken off, with his becoming a part of Iran’s delegation to London and Washington, DC, the foreign minister, and the ambassador to Germany at the zenith of the Berlin-based Iranian nationalist movement in the 1910s. Godard and Markov reported to Navab that “a new plan had to be composed without the constraints of the present edifice.” Focused on practicalities—that is, light and air for employees, a big public hall, and protective spaces for the safe—they recommended a structure with a corridor around a treasury hall. In a week, they followed up with another report and informed “His Excellency” that their étude of the “new project executed by Mr. Hemmrich” had yielded the conclusion that the entrance hall should be enlarged and that one of two larger staircases, leading to the second floor, should be reserved for the treasury room.209 When on the following Saturday, September 2, Hemmrich presented the new drawings at “1/100 scale,” Godard wrote to Navab that “the undersigned architects declare that these plans, architecturally, perfectly respond to the program set by the Directorate of the Bank.”210 On the grounds, master builder (me’marbashi) Haj Hosayn Beheshti worked alongside Hemmrich to meet Reza Shah’s demanding timeline.211 The inauguration in 1935 inspired the construction of the bank’s other branches and the printing of new banknotes, adorned with views of Persepolis and motifs of marching soldiers and the king slaying a unicorn. These, in turn, helped disseminate Iran’s new modern look as the heir to the Achaemenid Empire. Printed in April 1938, one banknote included a perspectival drawing of the bank itself, whereas a 1976 banknote carried the bank’s elevation drawing. The edifice and its replicas worked in tandem to compress national time and space in order to enable imagined leaps into the past and the future of the nation.212 The working relationship between Beheshti and Iranian-Armenian architect Ghalitch Baqlian must have been productive, for they were commissioned in the same years to erect a new police headquarters (kalantari, 1933). The building occupied an elongated north-south plot off of Sepah Street, three blocks southwest of the National Bank (fig. 71). Erected immediately north of Markov’s Posts and Telegraphs Ministry, the E-shaped edifice (now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building) showcases its impressive elevation on the 330-yard western facade. In front of the raised central talar, five standing Persepolitan soldiers face five others on the stone dado, while Persepolitan crenellation runs along the parapet. A double staircase, with a resemblance to that in Charles Chipiez’s 1890 reconstruction of the Palace of Darius (see fig. 17), leads ( 200 )  the persian revival

Fig. 71  West elevation of Tehran’s police headquarters, designed by Iranian-Armenian architect Ghalitch Baqlian and Haj Hosayn Beheshti, Tehran, Iran, 1933. Photo: Ali Khadem Collection, courtesy of Farrokh Khadem and Cyrus Samii.

up to the entrance on the second floor. A lotus motif decorates the frieze below the Persepolitan crenellation. The elongated wings of a faravahar adorn what remains of a now-disappeared Qajar pish-taq, right above the talar. The four double-bull-headed columns were perfected to match the archeological proportions at Persepolis, complete with elaborate volutes and fluted shafts. Supporting the architrave, the capitals of the outer columns were turned to have the bulls face the street; this was a modernist compositional innovation. The elevation behind the columns is organized in three bays of Persepolitan doorframes on the second floor and tall windows on the third. Additional long and narrow vertical windows, spanning the top two floors to the roofline, punctuate the two wings of the building extending out from the talar. The police station of Darband (ca. 1935), northern Tehran, follows a similar but more compact morphology, again a variation on a Chipiez reconstruction, that of Xerxes’s Palace (fig. 72; see fig. 18). The central staircase of Tehran’s police headquarters has been split into two parts and moved to the sides of the much shorter three-bay building, each part carrying the motif from the Apadana of the lion fighting a bull. The talar of four bull-headed columns is raised on the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 201 )

Fig. 72  West elevation of the police prefecture in Darband, northern Tehran, Iran, ca. 1935. Photo: Ali Khadem Collection, courtesy of Farrokh Khadem and Cyrus Samii.

a tall dado of eight soldiers, similarly facing each other in fours (see fig. 49). The space between the columns and the back of the talar forms a large portico onto which doors and windows open. A faravahar adorns the rectangular entablature, while two sets of three lions from the decorative glazed-brick frieze of Darius I’s Palace at Susa—itself an Assyrian iconographic tradition stylized by the Achaemenids with “detailed knowledge of anatomy”—decorate the frieze on the side bays.213 Darband’s station might also be the design of Hemmrich or Baqlian. The rare Western-trained Iranian architect practicing alongside European architects between 1926 and 1934 was Taherzadeh Behzad.214 After witnessing the Russian bombing of the Iranian Parliament building in 1907, he joined the constitutionalist fighters in Tabriz. But soon after their defeat, he escaped first to Istanbul and then to Berlin. During these formative years, Taherzadeh Behzad was one of the young but active members of the Berlin circle of Iranian nationalists and often contributed to Kaveh and Iranshahr, while conducting research for Friedrich Sarre at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. He must have met Strzygowski during this time. In 1923 Taherzadeh Behzad also authored Saramadan-e honar (Pioneers of the arts), illustrated and published by Iranshahr Publications in Berlin, in which entire chapters were devoted to ancient Iranian art and the teachings of Prophet Mani, the founder of the late antique gnostic religion of Manichaeism.215 After his return to Iran in December 1926, Taherzadeh Behzad synthesized his Berlin and Istanbul architectural education with Persian Revival ideology and aesthetics. In his numerous projects, such as Shah Reza High School (1931) in Tehran, the Ferdowsi Mausoleum (1934) in Tus, the Sun and Lion Theater (1934) in Mashhad, and the Parliament (1935) in Tehran, he incorporated architectural elements from Persepolis, neoclassicism, and Safavid repertoires into modern morphologies. Acting as a direct link between the Berlin-based nationalist journals and Reza Shah’s grand facades, Taherzadeh Behzad deployed the Persian Revival style to translate the words of his housemate of seven years and the vocal editor of Iranshahr, Hosayn Kazemzadeh—who had insisted “the ancient civilization of Iran is the best means of awakening the nationalist feelings in the heart of the Iranian people”—into stone.216 The eight-hundred-foot elevation of Reza Shah Hospital (1928–34) in Mashhad, punctuated with seventy Persepolitan bull-headed capitals, was only the beginning of Taherzadeh Behzad’s revivalistic work.217 The building of the Iranian Parliament would remain his legacy. In 1879 a large mansion (biruni) was erected by Prime Minister Mirza Hosayn Khan Sepahsalar in an eastern area of old Tehran, only to be confiscated by Naser al-Din Shah, who dubbed it Baharestan (lit. Land of Spring). Designed by Ostad Hasan Me’mar and a certain French architect “Falius Boitan,” Sepahsalar Palace (1876– 79) and Emarat-e Zell ol-Soltan seem to have shared the same architect, scale, and reformist aspirations.218 Designated as the building of the national assembly by the first the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 203 )

Fig. 73  North elevation of the Iranian Parliament building known as the Baharestan, designed by Iranian architect Karim Taherzadeh Behzad, Tehran, Iran, 1935. From Sohrab Soroushiani, Viktor Daniel, and Bijan Shafei, Taherzadeh Behzad Architecture: Architecture of Changing Times in Iran (Tehran: Did, 2005), 109. Photo courtesy of Architecture of Changing Times search group, Tehran, Iran.

constitutional prime minister, Mirza Nasrollah Khan—whose son, Hasan Pirnia, was a historian of ancient Iran, a founding member of the Society of National Heritage, and four-time prime minister of Iran—Sepahsalar Palace was shelled and looted on July 4, 1908, by Russian-backed royalist troops. After a fire incident in 1931, Taherzadeh Behzad was appointed to renovate the building, now the seat of the Parliament, where he paid particular attention to the long elevations on the east-west axis (1935, fig. 73).219 While the southern facade took on a classical Corinthian portico with a singular tile faravahar on the frieze, the northern elevation showcased Taherzadeh Behzad’s revivalistic skills. An austere portico of proportionally exacted double-bullheaded columns covers a multipartite facade divided into five sections. A central talar of four columns protrudes and is flanked by seven such columns westward and eleven eastward. The uniform and perfected white columns, recalling the hypostyle halls at Persepolis, rehabilitated the existing structures as a homogenous elevation, reflecting the nation Persian Revival architecture intended to reawaken and modernize. Like the nation, a Qajar edifice had been transformed into a Pahlavi discourse of aesthetic veneers. The erection of the signifier of the nation’s governance (the Parliament building) was followed by the erection of the signifier of its long history, the national museum. Faithful to Iran’s historiography, the pre-Islamic (archeological/Zoroastrian) was split from the Islamic (fine arts/Islamic) through the art-museum architecture that produced two separate buildings. Godard was given the commission to design the National Museum of Antiquities (muze-ye iran bastan, 1935–37, fig. 74; compare to fig. 27), of which he remained the director until 1960.220 Overwhelmed with his multiple responsibilities, including as the head of archeological services, the head architect for the design team of the Tehran University campus, and the director of the nascent Faculty of Fine Arts, Godard asked the Ministry of Public Instructions to hire Maxime Siroux as his collaborator for the design of the museum and its adjoining public library.221 Master builders Abbas Ali Me’mar and Morad Tabrizi were assigned as contractors to the project. Appropriately so in terms of historicist revival, the museum reproduced, in miniature scale, the grand vault of the last Sassanian seat of power, the Palace of Khosrow (540) at Ctesiphon. At the intersection of Sepah and Qavam Saltaneh streets and extending westward from Baqlian’s police headquarters, Iran Bastan is exceptional on two accounts: material and prototype. Forgoing the Achaemenid stone hypostyle portico and the talar/ takht type widely used for Pahlavi official buildings, the museum adopted the red brick of late medieval Sassanian palaces, with the barrel-vault iwan and arched openings. The central bay of the southern elevation is identical in shape to Khosrow’s single-span vault, while the two protruding wings each carry eight engaged columns, using the positions of individual bricks to create the ornamental pattern characteristic of late Sassanian the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 205 )

Fig. 74  South elevation of the Museum of Iranian Antiquities, known as muze-ye iran bastan, designed by French architect André Godard, Tehran, Iran, 1935–37. Photo: Ali Khadem Collection, courtesy of Farrokh Khadem and Cyrus Samii.

architecture. In the details of the arches, windows, and engaged columns, Godard and Siroux had surely consulted the Dieulafoys’ reconstruction of Taq-e Kasra.222 “Since there was very little funding . . . two million tomans,” the construction went “very slowly,” yet on April 11, 1938, Le journal de Téhéran published the first photograph of the southern elevation.223 Lecturing to the Royal Society of Arts in London, Taqizadeh had assured his audience in May 1934 that Pahlavi “order” had set Iran on the path of “revival of ancient arts and the evolution of new ones,” clearly speaking to Iran’s “dawn of a renaissance of that Golden Age” where the “signs of this movement are readily visible.” The Persian Revival edifices, especially the art museum, were markers of Iranians’ “feeling that the realisation of their aspirations [was] beginning,” which left them “animated with a national spirit.”224 To the delight of nationalists and satisfying their plea to “rebuild the centralized state of the Sassanids,” Ctesiphon-as-copy was finally restored.225 The Persian Revival, even at its zenith in the late 1930s, was never so hegemonic as to enlist everyone’s endorsement. Despite its widespread use by the state, it remained a style that generated ambivalent professional and public sentiments. Dubbed “Pope Architecture” by Arthur Pope’s disciples, it had little to do with him, since he never built anything in Iran. Despite his passionate cries of “Turn back! Turn back! Look to the ancients. Old Persia can save us,” not everyone felt that this “national style (sabk-e melli)” was expressive of Iran’s modernity in toto.226 Vardan Hovanessian, a pioneer of Iran’s Modern Movement, criticized it vehemently and insisted that bulls and lions were better kept at the zoo.227 The popularity of the style dissipated—or rather fused and transformed into other stylistic contentions regarding modernism—as Iranian architects began to favor the International Style in the 1950s and 1960s. Godard’s re-creation of Khosrow Palace, however, inspired his students and their students in their monumental proposals; a case in point is Hosayn Amanat’s 1971 Shahyad Aryamehr Tower, which duplicates the outline of the Ctesiphon vault in western Tehran.228 As if facing Khosrow’s vault—as did Hataria in 1854, Kiash in 1880, Forsat in 1890, Herzfeld in 1905, and Godard in 1910—Reza Shah stood in front of Iran Bastan in 1939. The pragmatic king was cognizant that Iran Bastan, like all utopian project(ion)s, was no Taq-e Kasra. To Belgian baroness Marie-Thérèse Ullens de Schooten’s question whether “Reza Shah inaugurated it himself,” Yedda Godard had replied: “Oh, no! He walked around it to see what it could possibly represent, but never entered it”; he “had a strange sentiment . . . [fear] of being ridiculed.”229 It was perhaps not the fear of being ridiculed but the certainty of the fallacy of “unchangeability” that dissuaded the iron fist from stepping into the museum. Like Fath Ali Shah a century earlier, Reza Shah knew that the might of an “unchangeable” monarchy rested not on sameness and copies but rather on groundbreaking artistic leaps even as one copies—or, rather, especially when copied. “As Nimroud saw them when he first rebelled,” the king must have chuckled, “so we see them now.”230 the persian revival as iranian modernit y  ( 207 )

• Epilogue Copy’s Imperialism

In his magnum opus, Persia and the Persian Question (1892), the viceroy of India and founder of the Indian Archeological Service, Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, described Persepolis as “Persian architecture at its most original and its best.”1 As a correspondent for The Times during his tour of Iran between 1889 and 1890, he visited several mansions in Tehran and Shiraz, including the Palace of Golestan, and later described, in detail, the “extravagant and often farcical contrast of the Oriental and European” taste: Illustrations, snipped from the English illustrated newspapers appear side by side upon the walls with photographs of the Shah and his little boy favourite . . . with inferior copies of Italian oil-paintings. Here is a picture of the Paris Exhibition and the Eiffel Tower; there a deplorable oleograph of an Alpine village, both hung in a room adorned with Persian plaster-work and spread with Persian carpets. I noticed here, what I observed in the other palaces that I visited, that the Oriental intellect seems to derive a peculiar gratification from the display of duplicates. . . . [I]n the royal abode, I noticed in one place two large copies of a semi-nude Venus or Magdalen of the later Italian school, absolutely identical, hanging on either side of a doorway; and the same phenomenon was constantly repeated. The impression left upon me by an inspection of many modern Persian residences of size and magnificence, was this: that whereas the Persian taste, if restricted to its native art or to the employment of native styles, seldom errs, the moment it is turned adrift into a new world, all sense of perspective, proportion, or beauty, all aesthetic perception, in fact, appears to vanish; and in proportion as its choice will have been correct and refined amid native materials, so does it become vulgar and degraded abroad.2

Because Curzon was one of the most influential colonial players of nineteenth-century Iran, his sharp words—“inferior,” “degraded,” “duplicates,” “copies,” “repeated,” “deplorable,” “vulgar”—to describe and thus define Qajar art cast a long shadow on its later art-historical merit. The Persian Revival edifices bore the brunt of this highbrow aesthetic judgment. Nikolaus Pevsner claimed that James Fergusson had urged “architects” to “forget their archaeology and ‘act as thinking and reasoning men,’” adding that Fergusson’s “great enemy” was “copyism”—“the lowest and most unreasoning source of beauty.”3 In assessing the merit of the Persian Revival under Fergusson’s rubric of the “Copying or Imitative Styles of Architectural Art” and the “True Styles,” we must disagree with him and indeed “dare to draw conclusions from . . . [Persian Revival edifices’] style and form as to the age in which they were built.”4 These buildings speak so clearly not just to postcolonial tenets of architectural innovations, norms, and methods but to an entire worldview in Jacques Derrida’s différance. Indeed, each edifice of the Persian Revival expresses the elusive and displaced instance of his trace. In thinking through the meaning of these mostly neglected but fascinating buildings vis-à-vis the often-posed question, “What do you do with the fact that it is bad architecture?,” I propose that perhaps what these objects do in terms of the politics of representation in the context of postcolonial agency is far more important than how they look, where they originated, where they amass their “influence,” or how they are executed. In rethinking our historiographical method, we might begin with the premise that there are no known uncontaminated, pure origins for artistic innovations but instead multiple tactics of resistance to and transformation of the appropriated artifact. Historiographical denial of the interplay of these networks impoverishes the potency of resistance and their historical significance in the dialectics of power. As Dipesh Chakrabarty has pointed out, “this equating of a certain version of Europe with ‘modernity’ is not the work of Europeans alone.”5 That there are no pure originals but bad copies is an obvious but necessary point to reiterate. What is not obvious or necessary is the realization of the banality of art-historical constructs of the beautiful, of the authentic, and of the original when plugged into the colonial modality of causative power. Rather than ask, “What is art?,” we might want to ask, “What does art do?” When the beautiful and the original are seen as art-historical instruments to coerce or defy aesthetic judgment as a moral stance, then the question of origins and originality defers its teleological potency to that of sociopolitical intention. The Persian Revival edifices, no matter how “ugly,” are best read through Luce Irigaray’s mechanism of transference, which “convert[s] a form of subordination into an affirmation.”6 Once we move away from the strict boundaries of art-historical conceptions and widen the technologies for reading art, the original, good taste, the artist, the patron, and the scholar, then we arrive at a plateau where the paradigm of aesthetic judgment ( 210 )  the persian revival

and power politics shifts and questions can be addressed within their hybridity, fluidity, and inclusiveness.7 Like the Orient-or-Rome debate, the aesthetic judgment of the Persian Revival must hover in the domain of the discursive. As representations of their own, the Persian Revival edifices themselves stand judged as contested art-historical artifacts, for which historical accuracy was not only irrelevant but also blatantly and intentionally fallacious. These buildings deliberately tricked their audience, who were more than eager to trick and be tricked. For them, the revival of antiquity, as Alexander Nagel argues, rested in the interest of “pristine atemporality” far more than mere “interest in ancient culture for its own sake.”8 The “now-time of the prototype”—the chahar-taq and the talar-takht that were appropriated and invented anew for a set of very specific and intentional purposes—guaranteed a successful collapsing of time and disappearance of différance, at least for a bit.9 In this technology of the copy’s trickery rests its mighty power. The Persian Revival did exactly what Homi Bhabha—himself a Bombay-born Parsi and a graduate of the Elphinstone College—ascribes to his mimic men: they reproduced the image of “the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite”—that is, a great copy.10 As extensions and expressions of the mimic man, these buildings—we could call them mimic artifacts— never entered the canon of art history, either in Rome or the Orient. They could never bear the weight of their own ambivalence; they seem constantly to collapse in the slippage of their own (imperial) ambitions and ambivalence. The question is settled by the Western art historian in the conclusion that “we just don’t do ugly buildings; even bad copies of a magnificent original.” Let us then turn to what is meritorious about these buildings: their unreasonable evocation of “at once resemblance and menace” and their “double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority.”11 Reza Shah’s death in 1944 did not alter the place of the Persian Revival style in Iranian mapping of the self. Seven year later, when the king’s body was returned to Ray—the Avestan city of Raga—it was buried in a pristinely white and modernist chahar-taq (1948–50) designed by Mohsen Forughi, Keyqobad Zafar, and Ali Sadeq, a monument demolished by the Revolutionary Guards in 1980. As easily as the style had been transported from Bombay to Tehran in the first two decades of the twentieth century, it was transported again, this time in a suitcase, halfway across the world. When the self-described “lifelong entrepreneur” Darioush Khaledi hired Ardeshir and Roshan Nozari, Iranian architects from Santa Monica, to design a winery for his twenty-two-thousand-square-foot estate in Napa Valley, they opined, “We might as well build the Persepolis here!,” to which Khaledi replied, “If we are doing that, then we have to bring the stone from Iran in order to be original.”12 Completed in 2004, the project features sixteen freestanding bull-headed columns that rise to meet the epilogue  ( 211 )

blue sky and announce the talar elevation of the winery’s grand entrance (fig. 75). The roofless hypostyle portico, the bull-headed capitals, the Achaemenid soldiers guarding the fireplace, and the Persepolitan decorative program of the complex “allow us,” insists Khaledi, to “shape how the world views Persians.”13 Intended to mend the pain of displacement through a recovery of an illustrious past, the mechanics of this fantasy is, nevertheless, squarely based on economic calculations, just as it was in the 1880s Bombay and 1930s Tehran. The Persian Revival is branded as marketable in the wine industry. Yet the winery is neither a copy of the ruined Persepolis, with lonely columns facing the scorching sun, nor a copy of Persepolis’s fantastic restoration drawings by Eugène Flandin or Charles Chipiez. Nor, in fact, is the winery a copy of the many hundreds of the Persian Revival buildings out of which it evolved. Like Las Vegas and Disneyland, Darioush Winery embodies Jean Baudrillard’s “simulacra that bear no relationship to any truth out there.”14 It is simply a copy of an original that never existed. Should we ask, as Hillel Schwartz has asked: “Dare we espouse . . . the supremacy of copy over original?” Schwartz answers: “Copying, inherently flawed, always begs for ratification even as we look to copies themselves for assurance of continuity, value, and authenticity.”15 By returning to the question of what a copy does, we revalorize the Persian Revival, itself always in a state of interpretive flux. As a copy it transformed elite-owned private lithographs into public architecture and thus rendered “the transient into the timely, then into the timeless,” as it provided to the natives a “fixity in a world in flux.”16 The real objection to this architecture, and by extension to Strzygowski’s global take on art history, is not premised on an assessment of its “uniqueness or plagiarism” but on Western art history’s “insecurity.” Even as kitschy or ugly, were these buildings not critical responses to a colonial or aesthetic hegemony? And would that not be enough? “Must [they] be,” artist Anthony Cokes poses, “aesthetically clear, logical, and beautiful too?”17 Here, Michael Baxandall’s casting of “influence” as “a curse of art criticism” is useful because “of its wrong-headed grammatical prejudice about who is the agent and who the patient.”18 Influence, according to him, flips “the active/passive relation which the historical actor experiences and the inferential beholder will wish to take into account” (19). So, let us flip things here: through their selectivity, it is nineteenth-century craftsmen and patrons who “influenced” conceptions of ancient Iranian art history. Surely, Parsi and Iranian patrons as well as European art historians were drawn to Persepolis and other ancient sites “as an actual resource,” wherein they “could find means to an end, varied tools for solving” their postcolonial “problem” (63). This also explains the little interest in Achaemenid and Sassanian sites before the arrival of the West. Then again, their “intentional selection from an array of resources” in Iran’s rich art history was

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Fig. 75  View of Darioush Winery, Napa, California, designed by the Santa Monica–based Ardeshir and Roshan Nozari Architectural Firm, 1998–2004, showing the double-bull-headed columns. Photo: author.

also arbitrary, or rather highly selective (19). From then on, or after 1818, Achaemenid and Sassanian art has been—and it will always be—cast in “a specifically discriminating view of the past.” “Arts are positional games,” Baxandall astutely observes; “each time an artist is influenced he rewrites his art’s history a little” (62). In each instance that “the amateur” patrons of the Persian Revival asked their “unskilled” craftsmen to make “inferior copies” of a Sassanian relief, they rewrote the history of art a little. After Karim Khan Zand and Fath Ali Shah, we will never see the ancients in the same light. If we are to trust Edward Said’s role of “the amateur,” then the builders of these edifices were the real art critics of their time.19 To write a global art history, as Strzygowski and others have insisted, might not mean to write about “other” arts (i.e., Persian art, Islamic art, or Hindu art) as tokenistic tropes that embellish Eurocentric methods and core subject matters (i.e., Renaissance art or Modern art). Nor does it mean to applaud, in a fetishizing manner, the other as an entity outside history, outside time, or outside the globe. This kind of celebration of others’ arts robs their histories of agency and relegates them to the categories of the unique, the exotic, and the special. This dialectic of “uniqueness or plagiarism”—this fallacious illusion of choice—forbids these art histories from becoming normative, canonical, or just another history in (art) history. To write global art history could suggest relentlessly revealing the normalcy of that marginalized history, of that time, of that place, of that agency, of that particular exchange and production, and of that art history as art history. It is, above all, to expose existing agency, to bear witness to long-existing exchanges and hybridities, to persistently challenge—through close examination of historical archives, networks, and artifacts as well as urban legends and oral stories, among others—the Orientalist notion that the local, the Other, the foreigner has always been passive. One of the pitfalls of Western art historiography is the assumption of this passivity, which in turn promotes the art historian to the pedestal of the active hero of history. To write a global art history is perhaps to flip the “wrong-headed prejudice” of “influence” in order to reveal the always already active agency of one’s subjects as an exertion equivalent to the practice of resistance (to despotism, to bigotry). Native agency, then, is related to relations of power, which instead of being sidestepped ought to be drawn to the center of art-historical investigations and art history itself treated as a discursive undertaking—to make each locality a center and the craft of art history itself always a contested technology of power. The search for the other already normatively present renders art-historical undertakings, regardless of localities, global. This is the ripened critical turn that art history is being challenged to take. In other words, to write a global art history is to show that global exchanges, global productions, global agencies, and global art have existed long before the hegemony of Kantian judgment of

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aesthetics, of art history itself. A global art history and a global art historian’s primary role is, perhaps, to uncover, to bring to light, the illusive modalities of the fallacy that art history has solidified into a science: the myth of homogeneity, the myth of purity, and the myth of the original. Or, alternatively, we could continue business as usual; as Le Monde put it in October 1971: “Pourquoi Persepolis? Parce qu’elle est le berceau de la race aryenne.”20 In which case, all we need is a wall.

epilogue  ( 215 )

Notes Prologue 1. Poliakov 1974, 258–59. 2. See Briggs 1933; Pope 1933a, 1933b; Gunter and Hauser 2005.

3. Garsoïan 2011, 152. I am deeply grateful to Houri Berberian for her generous help with many aspects of this narrative. 4. Personal communication.

Chapter 1 1. Herzfeld 1935, 9. 2. Ward-Perkins 1947, 163. 3. Wharton 1995, 5. 4. See Mousavi 2012. 5. Matthee 2012, 243; S. Bakhash, “Administration in Iran vi: Safavid, Zand, and Qajar Periods,” last updated July 22, 2011, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​ /administration​-vi​-safavid. See also Babaie 2008, 267–72. 6. Kia and Marashi 2016, 379. 7. Marchand 2009, 23–24. See Rose 2000; Firby 1988; Schwab 1984; Wiesehofer 2001, 223–31. 8. See Sancisi-Weerdenburg and Drijvers 1991; Olearius 1647, 1654, 1655; Niebuhr 1774–1837, 1780, 1792. 9. Niebuhr 1780, 1:460–62. 10. Quoted in Curtis 2005, 254. 11. Anquetil-Duperron 1771. 12. Jones 1771, 25, 46. 13. Marchand 2009, 17–18. 14. See Anquetil-Duperron 1768. 15. See Ballantyne 2002; Bryant and Patton 2005; Ghose 1937; Iyengar 1914; Poliakov 1974; Trautmann 1997, 2005. 16. Jones 1807. 17. I am grateful to Margaret Root for generously explaining the existence of Achaemenid inscriptions on “pillars” at Persepolis in the 1700s, which Jones might have seen. Correspondence with Margaret Root, July 5, 2017. 18. See Lewis 2002, 13. 19. Friedrich Schlegel to Ludwig Tieck, December 15, 1803, quoted in Poliakov 1974, 191. 20. As early as 1812, Malcolm discusses the Dasatir and the Zend-Avesta controversy: Malcolm 1815,

1:482–90. On Dasatir, see Sheffield 2014; Boyce 2001, 194; Tavakoli-Targhi 1996; 2001, 86–95; 2003; Zia-Ebrahimi 2016. 21. See H. Corbin, “Āzar Kayvān,” last updated ¯ August 18, 2011, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​ www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/azar​-kayvan​-priest. 22. Melvin-Koushki 2017, 290. I am grateful to Mana Kia and Afshin Marashi for discussion of the early modern Persian revival. 23. Tavakoli-Targhi 2001, 87. 24. Sheffield 2014, 169. 25. Ibid., 162–63. As Sheffield notes, the whole of Azar Kayvan’s Dabistan-e Mazahib was available by 1843 in David Shea and Anthony Troyer’s English translation The Dabistan, or School of Manners. 26. See Kleuker 1776–77; Hegel 1988, 4:48. 27. See Hegel 2007, 173; Gasché 1983; Mirsepassi 2000, 24–35; Marchand 2009. Hegel’s next work, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik (1835–38), discusses Classical Persian poetry as a superior fine art. 28. Wicks 1993, 348. 29. See Hegel 2007, 174. 30. Oliver Crawford, “Hegel and the Orient,” 4, https://​www​.academia​.edu​/4985405​/Hegel​_and​ _the​_Orient. See also M. Azadpour, “Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich,” last updated March 22, 2012, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​ /articles​/hegel​-georg​-wilhelm​-friedrich. 31. See Hegel 1985, 154–56. When examining the “unveiling” of “truth” in and behind “symbols,” Hegel brings up the example of Freemasonry several times, and he also mentions the building of Solomon’s temple in connection with Freemasons (38, 90, 156–57). 32. See Hegel 2007, 221. 33. See Amini 1999.

34. Groot 2000, 230. 35. See Jaubert, Trézel, and Lapie 1821. Another French Orientalist, Joseph Rousseau, also traveled to western Iran and documented Taq-e Bostan; see Rousseau 1813. 36. Savory 1972, 33. 37. See Kaye 1856, 1:116. See also Allen 2013. 38. Lambton 1995, 101. 39. Malcolm 1815, 1:6, 8–9, 11. 40. See ibid., 1:475–555. 41. Ibid., 539–41. 42. Lambton 1995, 101. 43. Morier 1818, 64–65, 67, 75–77, 87, 106, 114, 129, 134, 137, 141. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 44. See Allen 2013, 220. 45. See Peter Avery, “Ouseley, William,” last updated July 20, 2004, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/ouseley​-sir​ -william. See Allen 2013. 46. Ouseley 1819–23, 1:365. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 47. See generally ibid., 98–99. 48. See ibid., 137–46. 49. See ibid., 281–82, plates xvii, xviii. Passing through Sarvestan, he neither depicted nor described the palace. It is possible that due to the prominent domes, he mistook it for an early Umayyad edifice and ignored it. See ibid., 2:71–75. 50. See generally ibid., 1:283–300. 51. See generally ibid. 52. See Barnett 1972, 19. 53. Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:viii. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 54. Scarce 1981, 43. 55. Barnett 1972, 21. 56. Ker Porter’s discussion of the tomb of Cyrus continues in the following ten pages (1:499–509). 57. See Ker Porter’s watercolor comparisons in Barnett 1972, 22. 58. On Anquetil and de Sacey, see Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:592. 59. See ibid., 2:154–201. 60. Loukonine and Ivanov 1996, 72. 61. Barnett 1972, 21. 62. Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:641. 63. See Westergaard 1835, 1845. 64. Texier was an honorary member of the Royal Academy of British Architects and is known for his Description de l’Asie Mineure (1839–49) in three volumes. 65. See Texier 1842–52, 2: plates 82–116. See ibid., 148–58, on Pasargadae; 152–54, on Cyrus’s tomb; 159–95, on Persepolis; and 195–200, on Naqsh-e Rostam. For five of Persepolitan floor plans, see ibid., plates 82–83, 85, 94–96, 100; panoramic

( 218 )  Notes to Pages 16–40

bird’s-eye views, plate 81; perspectives of Apadana, plates 91–92; elevations and a section of facades, plate 103; elevations and sections of decorative and structural details, plates 104–7; illustrations of a king slaying a lion, plates 101, 110; Darius with attendants, plates 111–13; a lion slaying a bull, plate 116; and lamassus at the Gate of All Lands, plates 108–9. 66. See ibid., plate 119. See his six Sassanian reliefs at Naqsh‑e Rostam, ibid., plates 129–34; Achaemenid tombs at Naqsh-e Rostam, plate 135; and Ardeshir with his courtiers, plate 139. 67. Barnett 1957, 55. See Vaux 1851; Fergusson (1851) 1981; Flandin and Coste 1851–54, including eight volumes: vols. 1–2, Relation du Voyage, by Flandin; vol. 3, Perse ancienne: Texte, by Flandin; vols. 4–7, Perse ancienne: Planches, by Flandin and Coste; and vol. 8, Perse moderne: Planches, by Flandin. See also Coste 1867. 68. See Jean Calmard, “Flandin and Coste,” last updated January 31, 2012, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/flandin​-and​ -coste-. 69. See Potts 2012, 65. 70. Flandin and Coste 1851–54, 2:148. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. All translations are by the author unless otherwise stated. 71. Vaux 1851, 315. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 72. Vaux refers to the Dabistan on 89, 93, 111, and the Dessatir on 111. 73. Watkin 1980, 82. 74. Fergusson (1862) 1902, 1:xxviii; (1851) 1981, vi. Further references to this second source are cited parenthetically in the text. 75. Fergusson (1862) 1902, 1:xxvii. Fergusson uses different names, including Palace of Xerxes, to identify the Apadana building. 76. Pevsner 1972, 238. 77. See Fergusson 1865–93, 1:194–213 and 389–409. 78. See Elwall 1991, 395. 79. Fergusson, Burgess, and Spiers 1910, 1:4. 80. Elwall 1991, 400. 81. He added, “The Ionic architrave in three facets is wholly Persian; so is the . . . frieze” (Fergusson [1851] 1981, 343). 82. Strzygowski 1918–19, 1: introduction. 83. Fergusson 1855, 1:188, quoted in Rawlinson 1862–67, 4:237. 84. Rawlinson 1862–67, 4:259. Kiash’s drawing of the same is identical to that by Flandin. 85. Ibid., 234. 86. Dieulafoy 1884–85, 4:63, plates xvi, xii, xviii. 87. Ibid., 2:21, figs. 16, 17. 88. Ibid., 39, fig. 25.

89. Ibid., 4:25–29 and plates vii, x, viii. 90. Ibid., 4: plates xiii, xiv. 91. Ibid., 5:145–76. 92. Myers 1875, 339. 93. Perrot and Chipiez 1890, 435–36n1; 1892, 35–36n1. The 1892 English book is a faithful translation of the Iran-related chapters of the 1890 French original. Further references to these sources are cited parenthetically in the text, with the French source preceding the English, separated by a slash. If only one source is cited, it is the English translation. 94. However, in footnote 3 Perrot admits that Chipiez “has been guilty of a slight infidelity” by transferring the northeast facade to the northwest facade in the drawing. 95. See Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 294, 298, 300, 314, 319, 326, 328, 336, 342, 420, 421. The last two reconstructions are from Susa, not Persepolis. All the illustrations were reproduced from the 1890 French original, Perrot and Chipiez 1890. 96. On Fergusson’s influence on Fletcher, see Elwall 1991, 404; Watkin 1980, 85. 97. Fletcher 1905, 604. 98. In praise of Achaemenid architecture, see Fergusson (1851) 1981 and Fletcher 1905, xiii, 37. 99. See Babaie and Grigor 2015. 100. Fletcher does not mention the Sassanians in the “Historical Styles” section; they first make an appearance in the “Saracenic Architecture” chapters, where Islamic architecture is discussed under different geo-ethnic headings, including “Persian Saracenic.” Fletcher 1905, 655–56, 667, 671. Choisy, however, includes both Achaemenid and Sassanian architecture in one chapter, wherein he states, in the final paragraph, that “Islamic art is a mere continuation and development of the vaulted architecture of Firuzabad and Sarvestan, which offer us the first types and are the true architecture of Persia.” Choisy 1899, 1:152. See also Dieulafoy 1884–85, 4:30–45. 101. Choisy 1899, 2:80. See Mandoul 2008. 102. Choisy 1899, 2:81. 103. Ibid. 104. Jones 1807, 186, 196–97. 105. F. Schlegel, Essay on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians (1880), quoted in Poliakov 1974, 190. See Biddiss 1966, 574. 106. See Poliakov 1974, 206; Thapar 1996, 6. 107. Whyte 2006, 161, on Winckelmann and Hegel. On Viollet-le-Duc and Choisy, see Girón Sierra 2003, 1011. 108. See Boissel 1973, 81–113. 109. Poliakov 1974, 255. 110. Biddiss 1966, 574. 111. Gobineau 1999, 191. 112. Michelet 1864, 6.

113. Louis Jacolliot quoted in Marchand 2009, 279. See Jackson 1888, 1892, 1893, 1899a, 1899b, 1903, 1928. 114. Marchand 1994, 108. 115. Poliakov 1974, 206. 116. Irwin 2016, 328. 117. Ibid, 331. 118. J. Calmard, “Gobineau, Joseph Arthur de,” last updated February 9, 2012, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/gobineau. 119. Irwin 2016, 328. 120. Gobineau 1884, 2:55. 121. Gobineau 1999, 33. 122. Gobineau 1884, 1:222. 123. Ibid., 223. 124. Ibid. 125. Gobineau 1859, 282. 126. See, e.g., “Persepolis: La fête d’un empereur et de son people,” Paris Match 1172 (October 23, 1971): 37. 127. Gobineau 1884, 1:222. 128. See Fletcher 1905, “The Tree of Architecture” frontispiece. 129. Fergusson (1851) 1981, 10–11, 13–27, 350. 130. Fergusson 1865–93, 1:53. 131. See ibid., contents, 1:xxv; Whyte 2006, 163. 132. Fergusson, 1865–93, 1:213. 133. See Fergusson, Burgess, and Spiers 1910, 1:34, 91. On Fergusson’s race theories, see Metcalf 2002, 30–33. 134. Fletcher 1905, 113, 608, 610. 135. In History of Art in Persia Perrot and Chipiez refer to Gobineau’s Histoire des Perses on 13, 154, 242–43, 404, 418; his Trois ans en Asie on 17, 154; his Les religions et philosophies dans l’Asie centrale on 154; and his “Catalogue d’une collection d’intailles asiatiques” (Revue archéologique, 1874) on 457. 136. Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 154n1, 17n1. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 137. Perrot cites Darmesteter 1883 and 1885 for race-art ties. 138. Choisy, 1899, 1:119. It is hard to tell if Choisy relied on Gobineau directly, because his Histoire includes neither footnotes nor a bibliography; instead, he lists a few authors in the table of contents; see ibid., 119–78. For references to Dieulafoy and Fergusson, see 618–21. On Choisy and racism, see Girón Sierra 2003, 1014; Whyte 2006, 163. 139. Havell 1915, vii. 140. Ibid., xxvii. 141. Ibid., 3. 142. Strzygowski 1911a, 149. 143. See Maranci 2001, 1998a, 2000, 1998b; Marchand 1994, 2009; Elsner 2002.

Notes to Pages 40–55  ( 219 )

1 44. Strzygowski 1923, 7. 145. See Olin 1994; Rampley 2013. 146. Herzfeld, Koehler, and Morey 1942, 461. See Strzygowski 1891, 1901b. 147. Crum 1910, 232. 148. Strzygowski 1901a, 1902b, 1903, 1904. 149. Riegl 1988, 180. 150. Strzygowski 1929–30, 26–27. See Marchand 1994, 124–25. 151. Marquand 1910, 365; Brown 1911, 360. 152. See Wharton 1995, 1–14. 153. See Rivoira 1910, 1:33–35, 57. See Rivoira 1901– 7, 1925. 154. Rivoira 1910, 1:24. See Dieulafoy 1884–85, 4:22–23. 155. Rivoira 1914, 1918. 156. Herzfeld, Koehler, and Morey 1942, 461. 157. Strzygowski 1928a, 165. 158. Hillenbrand 1991, 27. 159. It is possible that only Diez went to Khorasan, since Strzygowski remains vague on this trip in his later writings. 160. Strzygowski 1917, 221. See Strzygowski 1923, 61. 161. Strzygowski 1925, 26–27. 162. Strzygowski 1923, 7. 163. Cumont 1902, 1903, 1906, 1911. On Strzygowski and Cumont, see Maranci 2001, 131–33, 154. Cumont, like Strzygowski, was ostracized by the academic establishment and never managed to secure a permanent position at Ghent University. 164. Strzygowski 1923, 19. 165. Strzygowski 1925, 28, 26. 166. Strzygowski 1911a, 149. 167. Strzygowski 1923, 6–7, 52. 168. Ibid., 52. 169. Strzygowski 1928a, 1. See Strzygowski 1909, 1911b, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1918–19, 1923. 170. Strzygowski 1923, 24. See Ball 2016, 140. 171. Strzygowski 1923, 6, 8. 172. Maranci 2001, 117. 173. See Herzfeld 1946, 210; Sarre 1922–23; Sarre and Herzfeld 1910. Sarre’s Monuments of Persian Architecture is focused on Islamic architecture in Iran; see Sarre, Schulz, and Krecker 1901–10. 174. Strzygowski 1923, 116. 175. Strzygowski 1928a, 166, 109; 1923, 116. 176. Strzygowski 1932a, 10. 177. On Aryan representational and non-Aryan nonrepresentational art, see Strzygowski 1923, chaps. 5–7. 178. Ibid., 191. 179. Marquand 1910, 362. 180. See Kite 2003, 522, 525. 181. Strzygowski 1923, 55. 182. In the fourth book of Die Baukunst, Strzygowski addresses the diffusion of Armenian

( 220 )  Notes to Pages 55–64

medieval architecture to the West. See Strzygowski 1918–19. 183. Strzygowski 1923, 141. 184. Ibid., 59. 185. Ibid., 127. 186. See Strzygowski 1928a, 61–63, 74, 98–99; 1936b, 144–45; 1939, vi. 187. Strzygowski 1923, 64. The same idea repeats in Strzygowski 1927, 3. 188. Strzygowski 1923, 64. 189. Strzygowski 1928a, 46; 1923, 60; 1928b, 76. 190. Strzygowski 1923, 64. 191. See Strzygowski 1936b, 50–51, figs. 32–34. Located 220 kilometers west of Mashhad, Sabzevar is a town that Strzygowski or his student Ernst Diez would have visited in 1913, particularly since the remains from the foundation of a Zoroastrian fire temple lie there. 192. Strzygowski 1923, 57. 193. See ibid., 117. 194. See Strzygowski 1936b, 33, 36, 40, 160; 1923, 19. 195. See Strzygowski 1927, 8–9; Maranci 1998a, 94; Gullini 1964. 196. Strzygowski 1923, 19; 1932a, 22. 197. See Benjamin Binstock, “Aloïs Riegl, Monumental Ruin,” in Riegl 2004, 14–15. 198. Hegel 1985, 20–21. 199. See Biddiss 1966, 575. 200. Maranci 1998b, 117, notes that Strzygowski’s Die Baukunst was intended “as a manifesto of Aryan art”; the full title of the work before its publication was “The Early Christian Domed Buildings of Armenia: Four Books of Aryan Architecture.” See Strzygowski 1918–19. 201. See Boyce 1982, 216–31. The thesis that Zoroastrians did not have a temple cult of fire before the fourth century bce was first advanced by Stig Wikander, Feuerpriester in Kleinasien und Iran (Lund, 1946) and Boyce 1975. 202. See Strzygowski 1927, 10. 203. Ibid., 15. 204. Ibid., 10. 205. Ibid., 12, 15. 206. Strzygowski 1918–19, 1 (foreword), quoted in Maranci 1998b, 155. 207. See Grigor 2007. 208. Josef Strzygowski to Henri Focillon, Vienne, May 1932, in Société des Nations 1935, 79. 209. Henri Focillon to Josef Strzygowski, probably Paris, July 1934, in ibid., 135. 210. Strzygowski 1936b, 301, 435. See Strzygowski 1928b, 1935, 1937. 211. Getty Research Institute archive, transcript of the lecture entitled “The Crisis of the Humanities as Exemplified in the History of Art,” delivered by Strzygowski at the Metropolitan Institute, New

York, February 21–23, 1922. See also in the Getty archive four letters between Strzygowski and New York–based art dealer Joseph Duveen, February 1922, Cambridge, MA, and New York. 212. Strzygowski 1932b, 20. 213. Josef Strzygowski to Henri Focillon, Vienne, May 1932, in Société des Nations 1935, 103. 214. See Semper 1989, 79; 2004, 922–46. 215. Semper 1878, 1:358; 2004, 760. 216. Semper 1989, 273. 217. Ibid., 273–75; Semper 2004, 759. 218. Semper 1989, 119; 2004, 759. 219. See Marchand 2009, 405–9; Rampley 2013, 27. 220. See Hillenbrand 1991. 221. Riegl 1988, 188. On Riegl-Strzygowski-Herzfeld connections, see Margaret Root, “Prismatic Prehistory: Ernst Herzfeld on Early Iran,” and Thomas Leisten, “Mshatta, Samarra, and Al-Hira,” in Gunter and Hauser 2005, 215–60, 371–84. 222. Riegl 1988, 188–90. 223. Ibid., 190. 224. Strzygowski 1923, 25, 52, etc. 225. Julius von Schlosser barely mentions Strzygowski in his history of the Vienna School, even though Strzygowski had produced more graduate students than Riegl and Wickhoff combined; see Wood 2003, 29 and 62; Rampley 2013, 177. 226. Strzygowski 1911b, 505, quoted in Marchand 2009, 407. 227. Strzygowski 1923, 30.

228. See Maranci 2001, chap. 2. 229. T. Toramanian to A. Tamanian, November 9, 1920, Yerevan, Armenia, Alexander Tamanian Archives and Museum, file 678910; and T. Toramanian to A. Tamanian, September 28, 1925, Ejmiatsin, Armenia, National Archives of Armenia, file 1068.1.18 (132). 230. N. Toramanian 1968, 300. 231. T. Toramanian 1948, 190, quoted in Maranci 2001, 77. 232. Correspondence with Armen Gurekian, May 29, 2018. Gurekian 2010. 233. See Kaufmann 2004, 86. 234. Ward-Perkins 1947, 166. 235. Krautheimer 1986, 326. 236. Strzygowski 1923, 30. 237. On February 24, 1942. Herzfeld, Koehler, and Morey 1942, 460. 238. Marquand 1910, 365. 239. Rice 1949, 142. 240. Moxey 2004, 211. See Moxey 2001. 241. See Baltrušaitis 1936; Coomaraswamy 1927; Dalton 1921; Diez 1923, 1925, 1928, 1944; Monneret de Villard 1921; Pope 1933a, 1933b; and Popovitch 1930. On recent works, see Azatyan 2012; Elsner 2002; Kite 2003; Kleinbauer 1972; Grigor 2007; Maranci 2001; Olin 1994; Pancarogˇ lu 2007; Rampley 2013; Redford 2007; and Rhi 2010. 242. Kaiwar and Mazumdar 2003, 265.

Chapter 2 1. Baucom 1999, 80; Chopra 2011. 2. Barringer, Fordham, and Quilley 2007, 9. 3. Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:77. 4. Ringer 2011, 73, 154. 5. Hataria 1865, 4, quoted in Stausberg 2003, 440; Sheffield 2013, 33. 6. See Bruno, Gullini, and Cavallero 1966; Madhloom 1978; Reuther 1964–67. 7. E. J. Keall, “Ayvān-e Kesrā,” last updated August 18, 2011, Encyclopaedia Iranica iii.2, 155–59, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/ayvan​-e​ -kesra​-palace​-of​-kosrow​-at​-ctesiphon. 8. Stausberg 2003, 439; Sheffield 2013, 33. 9. See Shahmardan 1984, 623; Stausberg 2003, 440. 10. See Hataria 1865, 25. 11. See ibid., 80–86, cited in Stausberg 2003, 441. 12. Hataria 1865, 87. 13. See Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:75–78; Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:132; Jackson 1906, 374, 397; Palsetia 2001, 169. 14. See Palsetia 2001, 169–70.

15. See Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:89. 16. See Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 3:242–45. 17. Ibid., 1:132; Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:76. 18. See Sheffield 2013, 31. 19. Hinnells 2000, 232. 20. McLeod 2007, 137; Menant 1898, 218–19. 21. The dates given for the present temple vary from 1932, 1934, 1940, to 1944. Ouseley 1819–23, 1:355. Browne (1893, 373) notes the prohibition on temple repairs. 22. Hataria 1865, 24. See Murzban (1917) 1994– 96, 1:111–12; Godard 1938; Siroux 1938; Choksy 2015, 404; Palsetia 2001, 44; Giara 1998, 172. 23. See Boyce 1969a, 23. 24. See Menant 1898, 206–28; Boyce 1969a, 23; Choksy 2015, 405; Naoroji 1862a, 63; 1862b; Masani 1938, 1939. 25. Browne 1893, 472. 26. Hataria 1865, 25. On the Malabar Hill dakhma, see Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:74; Godrej and Mistree 2002, 428. 27. See Boyce 1969a, 29; Jackson 1906, 439–40.

Notes to Pages 64–75  ( 221 )

28. Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:87; Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:136–37. 29. See Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:11 and 136. 30. See Jackson 1906, 374. 31. See Rose 2011, 180. 32. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who sought Zoroastrians in both Iran and India, underscores that those in Kerman had their fire temple but gives no further physical description; see Tavernier 1676–77, 1:431. 33. Gobineau 1859, 356. 34. Jackson 1906, 354–55. 35. Curzon 1892, 2:241. 36. Framjee 1858, 41. 37. Jackson 1906, 366–67. 38. Boyce 1977, 75–76. 39. See Adkins 2003; Meyer and Brysac 1999; Rawlinson (1898) 2005. 40. Others present at the meeting included Ardashir Cursetji Wadia, Shapurji Saklatvala, and Rastamji Kavasji Bahadur; see Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:71–82; Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:132–34. 41. Boyce 1969a, 19; Dobbin 1972, 28. 42. Deschamps 2012, 64. 43. See Curl 2011, 75. 44. Nazir, Nazir, and Scott 1866, 55. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 45. Fozdar 2011, 498. See Bernard S. Cohn, “Representing Authority in Victorian India,” in Hobsbawm 1992, 165–209. 46. Chatterjee 1993, 37. 47. Baucom 1999, 81. 48. D. F. Wadia 1912, 17. 49. Ibid., 25, 72, 129, 138. 50. Ibid., 17. 51. See Harland-Jacobs 2007, 4–5, 220–32, 297. 52. See Russell 1995; Freeman 1954. 53. Harland-Jacobs 2007, 296. 54. Fozdar 2011, 508; see Trautmann 1997, 15–16. 55. Sanjana 1930, 113. 56. Palsetia 2001, 150, 173. 57. D. F. Wadia 1912, 167. 58. Harland-Jacobs 2007, 11, 20. 59. See D. F. Wadia 1912, 178. 60. Jane Samson, as quoted in Harland-Jacobs 2007, 20. 61. See D. F. Wadia 1912, xxiii–xxiv, 129. 62. See Darmesteter 1883, 1885, 1887. 63. See Cama 1968–70. 64. Cama 1970a; Cama 1876a; Cama 1876b; Cama 1877. 65. Sanjana 1930, 108. 66. D. F. Wadia 1912, 193. 67. Cama 1874, 2.

( 222 )  Notes to Pages 75–86

68. Ibid., 4; D. F. Wadia 1912, 193. See also R. P. Karakaria, “The Parsi and the French Revolutionary Calendars,” in Modi 1900, 146–53. 69. Cama 1877, 1. 70. See D. F. Wadia 1912, 173. 71. It is unclear what Kanga and JamaspAsa mean by “Dadisett Agiary (fire temple) in Bombay.” Either they mean the Dadisett Atash Bahram in Bombay, the fire of which was consecrated in 1783 and the extant temple building erected in 1873, or the Dadiseth Adaran in Fort. See M. F. Kanga and Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa, “Cama Oriental Institute,” last updated December 15, 1990, in Encyclopaedia Iranica 4/7: 722–24, http://​www​ .iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/cama​-oriental​-institute​-k. 72. See Grigor 2019, 165, fig. 7.3. 73. Shroff 1969. 74. Friend of India (August 1855), quoted in Dobbin 1972, 12; Green 2004, 207. 75. See Dobbin 1972, 12–13. 76. Stamp 1977, 22, quoted in Metcalf 2002, 92. 77. Chattopadhyay 2005, 15. 78. Fergusson (1862) 1902, 2:298. 79. Chattopadhyay 2005, 160. 80. See Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 2:330A and 329–30. In his report Hataria included Jehangir Readymoney as an Amelioration Society benefactor; see Ringer 2011, 239. 81. See Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 2:332A. The interiors of these residences, counting the furniture and the decors, were indistinguishable from those in Buckingham Palace and the like; see Godrej and Mistree 2002, 690–91. 82. Khojeste Mistree, “Parsi Arrival and Early Settlements in India,” in Godrej and Mistree 2002, 411–33, at 430. 83. Ibid., 430. 84. See Dossal 1991, 181. 85. Lewis 2002, 106. 86. Metcalf 2002, 92, 130. 87. Tillotson 1989, 48. 88. See Davies 1985, 160; Chopra 2011, xi–xiv, 65–70. 89. The date 1879 is inscribed on the building. See Karaka (1884) 1999, 2:89–90; Mitter 1994; Albuquerque 1985, 143; Chopra 2011, 14–17. 90. See Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 2:332D; Karaka (1884) 1999, 2:17. 91. See Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 2:332B. 92. Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839–1904), booklet Tata Central Archives, http://​www​.tatacentralar chives​.com​/documents​/e_book​/jnt​/mobile​/index​ .html. 93. On Murzban’s careers, see Murzban 1915; Chopra 2011, 73–115. 94. See Murzban 1915, 18, 26; Green 2004, 209–10.

95. See Murzban 1915, 17–28. 96. See Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:101–9. 97. Murzban 1915, 57. 98. For a list of his buildings, see Murzban 1915, 82–85. 99. Indian Textile and Electrical News (December 1903). Murzban was initiated into the Rising Star in 1863 and elected its Master in 1868; see Murzban 1915, 43; D. F. Wadia 1912, vii, viii, xviii, 160, 169, 183–85. He became a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1896. 100. M. C. Murzban is listed as a trustee for the Patel Dar-e Mehr; Giara 1998, 14. 101. Palsetia 2001, 277; see Baucom 1999; Chopra 2011. 102. Luhrmann 1996, 21. 103. See Kulke 1974, 9; Chatterjee 1993, 37. 104. Kulke 1974, 10. 105. See Bhabha 1984. 106. Cited in Boyce 2001, 200. 107. Karaka (1884) 1999, 2:230. 108. Bengali (Bengallee) was initiated into the Lodge Rising Star in 1883; see D. F. Wadia 1912, 242. 109. See Menant 1898, 438; Dobbin 1972, 59–60. 110. Menant 1898, 440. 111. Bengallee 1893, 9. 112. Sheffield 2013, 31. 113. See Nazir, Nazir, and Scott 1866, 87. 114. Bengallee 1893, 9. 115. Pillai 2018, 252. 116. See Hinnells 2000, 180–82. 117. See Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:173. 118. See Kiash 1879; Blumhardt 1892, 111; Makati 1949. I would like to thank Daniel Sheffield for Kiash’s dates. 119. Kiash and Jijibhoy 1882, v. 120. See ibid., 32, 40, 41, 77, 78, 96, 106, 108, 112, 116, 119, 124, 138, 146, 217, 224, 232, 234, 236, 274, and 286–87. 121. See ibid., 286–87. 122. Schuyler 1908, 144. 123. Kiash 1889, preface. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 124. Dobbin 1972, 28, 35, 51; see Ramanna 1989, 205. 125. Framjee 1858, 190. See Dobbin 1972, 37; Hinnells 2000, 155. 126. For the Shahnameh at Elphinstone, see Masani 1939, 8. 127. See Kiash 1889, 4 pgs. after index. 128. See Fortescue 1897, 673 and 769; Bulletin Showing Titles of Books Added to the Boston Public Library xi.1.88 (April 1892), 7. 129. See Jackson 1899a, 169; 1899b, 291–93; 1938, 237; Vasmer 1928, 279, 286–87, 290; Drouin 1898, 182.

130. Michael Stausberg and Ramiyar P. Karanjia, “Modi, Jivanji Jamshedji,” last updated June 14, 2013, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​ .org​/articles​/modi​-jivanji​-jamshedji. 131. See Modi 1904, 1932, 1905a, 1895. 132. See Modi 1900, 1905b. 133. In a footnote, he adds that, for Anderson, “Masonry and Architecture” are “synonymous terms.” Modi 1907, 219. See also Modi 1913; 1905b. 134. See Modi 1908, 1954. 135. Modi 1954, 18, 95. 136. Strzygowski 1928b, 76. 137. See Rhi 2010, 162. 138. Modi 1954, 94–96. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 139. See Modi 1917, 226. 140. Ibid., 238. 141. See Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:38–40. 142. Modi 1917, 231. See the annual reports of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1912–13 and 1913–14; Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:36–37. 143. Nehru 1946, 62–63 and 139. Nehru devotes this section, entitled “India and Iran,” 137–41, to ancient Indo-Iranian relations and racial, religious, linguistic, and cultural commonalities. He stresses the Iranian influence on India since pre-Achaemenid times. Nehru quotes Jackson and Darmesteter without citation. 144. See Strzygowski 1927, 15. 145. Choksy 2015, 394. The literature on Zoroastrian fire is extensive; I focus on the chahar-taq. On the thesis that Zoroastrians did not have a temple cult of fire before the fourth century bce, see Boyce 1982, 216–31; 1975; 1977, chap. 4. On freestanding fires, see Dieulafoy 1884–85, 1:49, 2:21. 146. Choksy 2015, 394. 147. See Godard 1938, 12; Boyce 1968, 52–53. 148. See Rose 2011, 107, 119–21; Gnoli 1989; Babaie 2015. 149. Boyce 2001, 106. 150. Dhalla (1938) 1963, 221. On the fire, see Gropp 1969, 1971; Choksy 2006; Drower 1944; JamaspAsa 2000; Jamzadeh 2001; Shokoohy 1985. On the chahar-taq type between Iran and India, see Razavi 2002, 133. 151. See Boyce 1982, 227. 152. Quoted in Firby 1988, 125. 153. Niebuhr 1780, 2:462. 154. Vaux 1851, 112. 155. Boyce 1975, 464; Godard 1938. 156. Choksy 2015, 397. 157. Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 244–50, quote on 250. 158. See ibid., 248. 159. See Williams 2009; Boyce 1968.

Notes to Pages 87–101  ( 223 )

160. There is little trace of the early sites of Parsi worship because two great fires burned down all such evidence in Surat. See Kotwal 1974, 664, 667; Hodivala 1920, 67–73; Boyce 2001, 166–67. 161. See Kotwal 1974, 666; Firby 1988, 126; Hinnells 2000, 215; Boyce 2001, 188. 162. Hinnells 2000, 177. 163. See Hinnells’s list of patrons who financed temples, which seems very comprehensive yet leaves many out; Hinnells 1985; Hinnells 2000, 209–40. 164. Boyce 2001, 142. 165. See Parsi Pukar 9/4 (April–June 2004). For floor plans and sections of these temples, see S. Wadia 1990; A. Wadia 1993. 166. See Giara 1998; Choksy 2015, 401. 167. Hinnells 2000, 209–10. 168. See Hinnells 1996, 24; Stausberg 2008, 82–84. 169. Hinnells 1996, 25. 170. Boyce 1968, 57. 171. Sheffield 2013, 37. 172. Giara 1999, 19; 1998, 8. See Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:103, 2:76–77. 173. Hinnells 2007, 104–5; Giara 1998, 7. 174. Turel 1974, xxii and 47. 175. See Turel 1981; Boyd and Kotwal 1983; R. Irani 1992, 268–71; Bombay Courier (November 20, 1830). 176. Correspondence with Jenny Rose, Getty Research Institute, November 7, 2008. 177. See Flandin and Coste 1843, plate xciii; Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 91. 178. See Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:627–28. 179. See Giara 2001; Stausberg 2004, 680–83. 180. See King 1984, 18, 27. 181. See Giara 2001, 29. 182. Karaka (1884) 1999, 1: dedication. 183. Marchand 2009, 296; Trautmann 1997, 2005. 184. See Ballantyne 2002, 45. 185. For quotation of Renan, see Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:101. Spiegel, Müller, Browne, and Naoroji are known to have corresponded among themselves and often cross-referenced each other on ancient Iran and Zoroastrians; see Naoroji 1866, 8, 11, 18, 19, 29; Müller 1891, 163–69. 186. Framjee 1858, 48, 50. 187. Quoted in Ballantyne 2002, 48. 188. Naoroji 1866, 29–30. 189. Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:26. 190. See A. Wadia 1993, 45–48; Giara 1998, 60. 191. See Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:657–59. For discussion of this Parsi use of the Taq-e Bostan figure as Zoroaster, see Flandin and Coste 1851–54, 1:442– 43; Jackson 1906, 217; Malcolm 1815, 1:545. 192. See Giara 1998, 137. 193. See Curl 2011, 316; Grigor 2010, 2013, 2016. 194. D. F. Wadia 1912, 421–22.

( 224 )  Notes to Pages 101–121

195. See Curl 2011, 98; Boyce 2001; Faroukh Dastur and Firoza Punthakey Mistree, “Fire Temples and Other Sacred Precincts in Iran and India,” in Godrej and Mistree 2002, 301–23. 196. See Hinnells 1996, 25. 197. Lewis 2002, 17. 198. Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:590–93, plates 32–33. 199. In Texier’s plates 108 and 109, Mistri found detail drawings of the body of the lamassu: plate 108, “Figure allegorique, pylone de l’Occident,” and plate 109, “Figure allegorique au pilone de l’Orient.” The latter resembles Mistri’s lamassu, with broad wings, in Surat and Bombay; Texier 1842–52, 2: plates 102, 108, 109. 200. See Allen 2007 and 2013. 201. See the Illustrated London News (April 24, 1847). See also I. Jenkins 1992; Caygill and Date 1999. 202. See Assyrian Hall, Louvre Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection (S030601017 image 2341), https://​www​.brooklyn museum​.org​/opencollection​/archives​/image​/52100, and Nagel 2019. 203. Turel 1974, 48. 204. Ibid. 205. See Godrej and Mistree 2002, 306. 206. See D. F. Wadia 1912, 189–90. 207. See Curl 2011, 318. 208. See Kiash 1889, 194–95 and plate lvi; Ker Porter 1821–22, 2: plate 62; Dieulafoy 1884–85, 4:62, fig. 50; 5:96, fig. 70; Flandin and Coste 1843, plate iii, reproduced in Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 135. 209. The dates of the first consecration of the fire vary between 721 and 941. See Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:48; Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:63–65, 2:330B and 332A; Boyce 1968, 56; Choksy 2006, 333; 2015, 399–401; Giara 1998, 1–2; M. Irani 1999; Rose 2011, 191. 210. Karaka (1884) 1999, 1:48. 211. The pair of lamassus on the staircase were added during the renovations as a part of the Gujarat government’s development plan initiated in 2009. During this time, two sets of side staircases and a handicap ramp were also added on this east elevation. In a 1916 photograph by Feredun M. M. Murzban, the lamassus are missing, as they were in July 2007, when I visited the site; see Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 2:392A. 212. Times of India, November 2, 1894. 213. See Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:594. 214. See Nagarsheth and Chilleriga 2009, 77, 322–23; Medora 2013. 215. See Godrej and Mistree 2002, 415. 216. See Nagarsheth and Chilleriga 2009, 72; Hinnells 1985, 290. 217. Times of India, October 18, 1897.

218. See Curl 2011, 139–40. On Masonic architecture and ancient civilizations, see Curl 2005; Moore 2006. 219. See Hinnells 1978, 55. 220. See Hinnells 2000, 178. 221. Ringer 2011, 89. 222. Choksy 2003, 30. 223. See Moore 2006, 20; Curl 2011, 98. 224. Moore 2006, 39. 225. Ringer 2011, 72. 226. Curl 2011, 19. 227. Cama 1876b, 18. 228. See Judgments: Petit vs. Jeejeebhoy 2005. 229. See Medora 2013, 67–69. 230. The inscription on the facade of the temple has “1286 bastani.” See Godard 1938, 16–17. 231. The original inscription in the corridor is signed by Shahrokh. 232. See Boyce 1969a. In his memoir, published posthumously, Shahrokh states that he “never met [Hataria]” and that Dinshaw Petit and Mervanji Panday paid for his expenses. See Shahrokh 1994, 17, 3. 233. Boyce 2001, 219.

234. On Anjoman Adaran and Parsi school patronage, see Hinnells 1985, 316; 2000, 232–34. On the history of the buildings listed in the text, see Grigor 2009, 46–81; Kiani 2004. 235. See Texier 1842–52, 2: plate 103; Perrot and Chipiez 1890, plate 5:iv. 236. See Boyce 1977, 78–79; 2001, 218–19. 237. After Sharifabad, several Iranian temples, such as those in the villages of Cham, Narseabad, Allahabad, Khairabad, and Qasimabad, were rebuilt on the Parsi plan; see Boyce 1977, 79; Green 2000, 117; Godard 1938, 18. 238. See D. Irani 1930; 1933. On Pur-Davud, see Marashi 2013. 239. See Freer Gallery of Art 2000, 8; Gunter and Hauser 2005, 64, 459, 464; Modi 1930, 182–205. 240. See Marashi 2008, 114–24. 241. Davar 1962, 197; see Davar 1953. 242. Forughi 1930, 2. 243. I am grateful to Werner Joseph Pich and Sussan Babaie for access to this special issue of Iran Bastan; Munich, Germany, October 5, 2010. See Iran Bastan 1936; Grigor 2009, 46–81. 244. Hekmat 1956, opening page.

Chapter 3 1. See Bohrer 1999; Roxburgh and McWilliams 2017; Chi 2015. 2. Fergusson (1851) 1981, 367, 378, fig. 42. 3. See Ouseley 1819–23, 3:183, plate lxv. Jackson maintained it was carved over a Sassanian, not Parthian, relief; see Jackson 1906, 438; Floor 1999. 4. Fergusson (1851) 1981, 367–68. 5. “Persepolis: La fête d’un empereur et de son peuple,” Paris Match 1172 (October 23, 1971): 37; Fergusson (1851) 1981, 368. 6. Raby 1999, 9, 41. 7. Diba 2001a, 14; Raby 1999, 9. 8. See Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:327–28 and 356. 9. See Matthee 2012, 197–241. 10. Perry 1971, 59. 11. Perry 2006, 11. 12. Robert Hillenbrand, “The One That Got Away,” in Gunter and Hauser 2005, 415. 13. Daryaee 1995, 133. See Daryaee 2009a, 105; 2009b. 14. Daryaee 1995, 140. See Curtis 2005, 252. 15. See Wiesehofer 2001, 223–26. 16. See Soucek 1976, 1993. 17. See Babaie 2015, 182–83; 2008, 157–60; Scarce 2006, 236; Koch 1994, 2013. 18. Allen 2007, 314. 19. See Axworthy 2006, 10. 20. See Babaie 2018.

21. See Axworthy 2006; Lockhart 1938. 22. Babaie 2018, 221. See Tucker 2006, 69–72. 23. Babaie 2018, 223–25. 24. The function of the buildings erected by Nader Shah at Kalat is debated. See Axworthy 2006, 58 and 228; Babaie 2018. 25. Rawlinson 1862–67, 3:220; Jackson 1906, 209 and 210; Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:151. 26. Babaie 2018, 230. 27. I am grateful to Sussan Babaie for this information; in correspondence on July 7, 2017. 28. On Shiraz, see Perry 2006, 95; Niebuhr 1780, 2:151–61; Texier 1842–52, 2:200–205. 29. Ouseley 1819–23, 2:17. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 1:290. 32. Ibid., 3:118; Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:327. 33. See Curtis 2005, 254–55. 34. See Fath Ali Khan Saba (1830) 1867, 4, 9; Diba, 2006a. 35. See Scarce 2006, 236; 1991, 919–20. 36. Flandin and Coste 1851–54, 1:236. See https://​ digitalcollections​.nypl​.org​/items​/510d47e2​-9063​ -a3d9​-e040​-e00a18064a99. 37. Ibid., 244. 38. On Iranshahr, see Blois 2016; Daryaee 2010; Kashani-Sabet 1999.

Notes to Pages 123–144  ( 225 )

39. Abbas Amanat, “Fath.-ʿAlī Shah Qājār,” last updated January 24, 2012, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/fath​-ali​ -shah​-qajar​-2. 40. See Lewis 2002, 14. 41. Amanat 1997, 17. 42. Amanat 2001, 30. 43. Ringer 2001, 53. See Ringer 2009, 2012. 44. Jackson 1906, 326. 45. Curzon 1892, 2:97. Repeated by Jackson 1906, 325. 46. Curzon 1892, 2:98. 47. Browne 1893, 290. 48. Fergusson (1851) 1981, 185. 49. Ouseley 1819–23, 2:15. 50. Wilber 1979, 204 and 210. 51. I am grateful to my father, Greg Grigorian, for helping decipher the cartouches and to Yves Porter for noticing them first. 52. See Forsat 1894–96, 515–17. 53. The bearded figure with the typical pointed Qajar hat reoccurs in most of Flandin’s panoramic drawings, including that of Cyrus’s tomb at Pasargadae; see Flandin and Coste 1851–54. 54. See Browne 1893, 287–89. 55. Amanat, “Fath.-ʿAlī,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica. 56. See Helwing and Rahemipour 2011, 19; Luft 2001, 34–35; Lerner 1976. 57. Fath Ali Shah was also depicted seated on the Marvelous Throne in several illustrated manuscripts; see Diba and Ekhtiar 1998, 181–82, 173, 191–92; Luft 2001, 46. 58. See Luft 2001, 35. 59. See ibid., 31; Lerner 1991, 1998. 60. See Diba 2007, 71. 61. Jackson 1906, 438. 62. Luft 2001, 47. 63. See Ouseley 1819–23, 3:174–99, at 198. 64. Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:357. 65. Flandin and Coste 1851–54, 1:242. 66. Ibid., 241, 441. 67. Jackson 1906, 438–39. 68. Browne 1893, 248. 69. See Babaie and Grigor 2015. 70. See Myron Bement Smith Collection: Antoin Sevruguin Photographs, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Katherine Dennis Smith, 1973–85. 71. Amanat 1997, 17. 72. See Grigor 2007, 2017a, 2019. 73. See the photograph in Semsar 2003, 247; Qobadiyan 2004. 74. Curzon 1892, 1:326; Browne 1893, 94. 75. See Qobadiyan 2004, 139. 76. See Nas.ir al-Din Shah 1874, 1879.

( 226 )  Notes to Pages 144–162

77. See Marashi 2008, 22–31, 36–39. 78. See Qobadiyan 2004, 137, 154. 79. See Grigor 2007; Marefat 1988, 185–88; Browne 1893, 96–97; Minassian ca. 1970. 80. See the photograph in Semsar 2003, 440; Scarce 2006, 245, fig. 8; Scarce 1991, 901. 81. See Browne 1893, 96; the photograph in Semsar 2003, 287–88; Bakhtiar 2004. 82. See Corien Vuurman and Theo Martens, “Early Photography in Iran and the Career of Antoin Sevruguin,” in Bohrer 1999, 20. 83. Browne 1893, 99. 84. See Jackson 1906, 222. 85. Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 287. See Mousavi 2012. 86. See Amanat 1997, 418. 87. Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 18–19. 88. Ibid., 19. 89. Ouseley 1819–23, 2:233, plate xl. 90. Ibid., 434–35. 91. Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 18. 92. Ibid., 258. 93. Ibid., 262, figs. 259, 263, 103. See Dieulafoy 1884–85, 3:6; Jackson 1906, 270. 94. Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 262. See Diba 2001a, 13; Scarce 2001, 110. 95. On Tabriz, see Texier 1842–52, 2:43–58; Morier 1818, 45–46, 151–57. 96. Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:244; on Tabriz, see 1:221–29. 97. See Morier 1818, 216 and 279; Ker Porter 1821– 22, 1:227. 98. See Grigor 2017a, 1093–95; Benjamin 1887, 117, 279. 99. Diba 2002, 36. 100. See Curl 2011, 68–69, 91, 320. 101. See Lewis 2002, 13. 102. François de Blois, “Epics,” last updated December 15, 2011, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​ .iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/epics. 103. See S. Okazaki, “Arbāb, Moh.ammad-Mahdī,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​ /articles​/arbab​-aqa​-mohammad​-mahdi​-b. 104. See Farshid Emami, “The Lithographic Image and Its Audiences,” in Roxburgh and McWilliams 2017, 55–79 and 146–47. 105. See Kutar and Kutar 1914–18; Kreyenbroek 2000. 106. Rose 2011, 172. 107. Sheffield 2014, 162. 108. See Hosayn [Hoseyn] and Browne 1893, 38. 109. Rose 2011, 182. 110. See Gobineau 1859, 373–74; Browne 1893, 190–94.

111. Gobineau 1859, 374. Gobineau goes on to describe the terrible conditions of Zoroastrians and Hataria’s “miracle” in “saving” them. 112. Biddiss 1966, 574. 113. Browne 1893, 395. 114. Ibid., 99. 115. Benjamin 1887, 357, 130. 116. See Jackson 1906, 336, 354, 374–76, 425–27. 117. See Sheffield 2014, 162. 118. Cole 1996, 42. See Stausberg 2003, 444–45; Marashi 2008, 68–69; Aidun 1980, 52; Buzurg Alavi, “Critical Writings on the Renewal of Iran,” in Bosworth and Hillenbrand 1983; Hajianpour and Aidi 2017; Kia 1995, 1996; Parsinejad 2003; Zia-Ebrahimi 2016, 37, 43–53, 81–83; 2010. 119. Manouchehr Kasheff, “Forūgī, Moh.ammad-H.osayn Khan Dokāʾ-al-Molk,” last updated January 31, 2012, in ¯Encyclopaedia Iranica, https://​iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/forugi​ -mohammad​-hosayn. E‘temad al-Saltaneh was one of the first students of Dal al-Fonun, accompanied Naser al-Din Shah on all three of his European trips, headed the press and publication section of the Urban Beautification Department of the Iranian government, and was a member of both the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and the Société asiatique of Paris. 120. See E‘temad al-Saltaneh 1890–94; Daryaee 2016, 41–42; Amanat 1997, 545. 121. Forughi and Forughi 1895–98. 122. Quoted in Cole 1996, 43. 123. See Browne 1914, 157–66. 124. Jalal al-Din Qajar 1869–71, 1:4–5. 125. Tavakoli-Targhi 1996, 174; Amanat 1997, 362. 126. Abbas Amanat and Farzin Vejdani, “Jalāl-alDin Mirzā,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​ .iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/jalal​-al​-din​-mirza; Kia 1995, 427; Tavakoli-Targhi 2001, 98–101; Rose 2011, 186; Marashi 2008, 56–65. 127. Jalal al-Din Qajar 1869–71, 1:6. 128. Ibid., 1. 129. Lambton 1988, xvii. 130. See Browne 1914, 160. 131. Jalal al-Din Qajar 1869–71, 1:8 and 60; Ker Porter 1821–22, 1: plates 49, 50. 132. For Goshtasb, compare Jalal al-Din Qajar 1869–71, 1:143 with Ker Porter 1821–22, 2:191–92 and plate 66; for Ardeshir and Shapur, compare Jalal 1869–71, 1:210 and 232 with Ker Porter 1821–22, 1:707 and plate 58. 133. See Kiash 1889, end matter. 134. Jalal al-Din Qajar 1887. 135. Sheffield 2014, 162; Scarce 2006, 243. 136. See Manoukian 2013. 137. See Lelyveld 2011.

138. Forsat 1894–96, 2–3. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 139. See Nezam al-Saltaneh Mafi 1981; Ettehadieh 2000. 140. Ibid., 8; Manoukian 2013, 215–16. 141. Compare Fergusson (1851) 1981, 94, with Forsat 1894–96, 134, plate 16; Ouseley 1819–23, 2:233, plate xl, with Forsat 1894–96, 136, plate 17. 142. Manoukian 2013, 227. 143. See Spiegel 1863, 1886; Forsat 1894–96, 143. 144. See Bleeck 1864, preface. 145. Habl al-matin 5 (Calcutta, 11 Rajab 1318 / November 5, 1900): 15; see Green 2004, 210; Kashani-Sabet 1999, 44. 146. Murzban (1917) 1994–96, 1:120. 147. See Forsat 1894–96, 424–603; Manoukian 2013, 225–26. 148. See Curtis 2005, 255; Grigor 2007, 567–69; Lerner 2016, 163–65; Scarce 2006, 243–45; Wilber 1979, 192–212. 149. See Ritter 2005, 230, 418–21, 433, 450, and fig. 165d; Ghazbanpour 2001, 74–78. 150. See Glücq 1879. 151. On the Battle of Nahavand, see Forsat 1894– 96, 73. 152. On Qavams, see Royce 1981. 153. See Wilber 1979, 201–5; Porter forthcoming. 154. See Tavakoli-Targhi 2001, 103, 107. 155. I am grateful to Layla Diba for the information on Lotf Ali Khan. The drawings are now held at the Metropolitan Museum. See Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 128 ( July 1, 1997–June 30, 1998): 8; Karimzadeh Tabrizi 1985– 91; 1990, 2:561–68. 156. O’Donnell 1970, 15. 157. See Wilber 1979, 198–205. 158. See Ghazbanpour 2001, 32–35. 159. See Texier 1842–52, 2: plates 98–102. 160. See Flandin and Coste 1843, plate cxxv; Perrot and Chipiez 1892, 417, 148. 161. Lewis 2002, 32. 162. See Loukonine and Ivanov 1996, 259–63, 268–69; Scarce 1991, 939–58; Scarce 2005, 445–46. 163. See Glücq 1889, 36, 39; Hellé 1912. 164. Abrahamian 1982, 61. 165. See ibid., 80–118. 166. See Hairi 2001, 290; Algar 1970; Deschamps 2012. 167. See Grigor 2009, 16–81. 168. Ibid. 169. Matin-Asgari 2018, 43–74; Marashi 2008, 52. On the Strzygowski-Iran connection, see Grigor 2007. 170. Oleg Grabar email to Talinn Grigor, September 23, 2007. 171. Kazemzadeh 1924, 41–42.

Notes to Pages 162–181  ( 227 )

172. See Grigor 2009; Kadoi 2016; Mahdizadeh and Shojaei 2018. 173. See Grigor 2009, 2017a, 2007, 2016. 174. See Browne 1914, 162–63. 175. See “Takiyya-i Mu’avin al-Mulk,” ArchNet, https://​archnet​.org​/sites​/3919; Scarce 2006, 235–52; 2005, 444–46; 1991, 901; Peterson 1979; Marefat 1988, 175–77; Shirazi 2015. 176. For similar tilework, see Wall Tile with Figure of Gayumars and Architectural Tile with Sasanian Investiture Scene, 1870–1920, Iran, F2009.17.1 and F2009.34, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. 177. Scarce 2005, 445. 178. Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris (1831), bk. 5, chap. 2. 179. Interview with Farah Fazel-e Araqi and Sholeh Zahedi, daughter and granddaughter of Fazel-e Araqi, January 29, 2009, Tehran. 180. See Loukonine and Ivanov 1996, 262–63. 181. Jalal al-Din Qajar 1869–71, 1:393. 182. Lewis 2002, 16. 183. See the Azita Bina and Elmar Seibel Collection, in Chi 2015, 103–5; Herzfeld Archives, Smithsonian Institute, notebook FSA A.0602.02.10; Bohrer 1999, 24–26; Judith A. Lerner, “Arthur Upham Pope and Sasanians,” in Kadoi 2016, 169–76; Robert Boardman Howard, collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Robert Boardman Howard Papers, from 1916 to 1975, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 184. On this dating, see Grigor 2007. 185. Jones 1807, 187. 186. Vaux 1851, 89. 187. Gobineau, Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (1959), 208, as quoted in Poliakov 1974, 234. 188. Browne 1893, 272–74. 189. E‘temad al-Saltaneh 1890–94, 1:106. 190. Strzygowski 1923, 6–7, 52. 191. California State Library, Masonic Temple, San Francisco, ca. 1893, identifier VVV-0542. See Newell, Swanson, and Stelling 2013, 39. 192. Modi 1913. 193. See Grigor 2019. 194. See Algar 1973, 5, 21; Amanat 1997, 361, 403; Lambton 1988, 305–8. 195. Zell ol-Soltan is noted for destroying many Safavid edifices in Isfahan; see Walcher 2000; Babaie 2006, 35–36. 196. Doyle 2001, 89. 197. See Grigor 2007. 198. See Ettelaat 2352 (8 Azar 1313 / November 29, 1934). 199. See Grigor 2009 and 2018. 200. Gluck and Siver 1996, 283.

( 228 )  Notes to Pages 181–207

201. See Daniel, Shafei, and Soroushiani 2004; Grigor 2017b. 202. “Ayineh goshayesh-e qarfee Iran,” Ettelaat 2546 ( July 29, 1935). 203. “Le pavilion de l’Iran à Bruxelles,” Le journal de Téhéran 61 (August 2, 1935): 1. 204. Lewis 2002, 81. Lewis makes his remark regarding the Gothic Revival after Pugin’s House of Parliament, but it is equally applicable here. 205. “Points de contact entre les architectures allemande et iranienne,” Le journal de Téhéran 664–65 (September 22–23, 1937). 206. “L’augmentation du capital de la Banque Mellie Iran,” Le journal de Téhéran 142 (December 24, 1935): 1. 207. P. Basseer, P. Clawson, and W. Floor, “Banking,” last updated December 15, 1988, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​.org​ /articles​/banking​-in​-iran. 208. Report to Hussein Kuli Khan Nawab from André Godard on August 19, 1933, National Archives of Iran, Tehran. 209. Ibid., on August 26, 1933. 210. Ibid., on September 2, 1933. 211. See Kiani 2004, 218–19; Sultanzadeh 1994, 30–32; Grigor 2017b. 212. Frise des lions, Epoque achéménide Règne de Darius Ier, Louvre Museum, https://​www​.louvre​.fr​ /en​/oeuvre​-notices​/frieze​-lions. 213. See Anderson 1983. 214. See Soroushiani, Daniel, and Shafei 2005; Grigor 2009, 154–57. 215. See Taherzadeh Behzad 1923; Soroushiani, Daniel, and Shafei 2005, 12–15. 216. See Kazemzadeh 1956, 13; 1930. 217. See Soroushiani, Daniel, and Shafei 2005, 68–83. 218. See Qobadiyan 2004, 153; ʿA.-A. Saʿīdī Sīrjānī, “Bahārestān (2),” last updated August 23, 2011, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://​www​.iranicaonline​ .org​/articles​/baharestan​-central​-tehran​#article​-tags​ -overlay. 219. See Soroushiani, Daniel, and Shafei 2005, 108–15. 220. See Piram 2017. 221. André Godard to the minister of public instructions, January 9, 1935, National Archives of Iran, Tehran. 222. See Dieulafoy 1884–85, 5:65, fig. 52. 223. Ullens Archive Audio Collection, CD #27 UlAuCD In GoA, Y/Of, interview with Yedda Godard, continued, track 2, minutes 35:00; “La vie de la cité,” Le journal de Téhéran 822 (April 11, 1938). Yedda was Andre Godard’s spouse, who had accompanied him to Tehran during their three-decade posting in Iran.

2 24. Taqizadeh 1934, 974. 225. “Dr. Taqi Arani,” Mahnameh-e Mardom 5 ( June 1960): 1, cited in Abrahamian 1982, 156. 226. Gluck and Siver 1996, 557. 227. See Samii 2001.

228. See Grigor 2003. 229. Godard interview, track 2. 230. “Persepolis: La fête d’un empereur et de son peuple,” Paris Match 1172 (October 23, 1971): 37; Fergusson (1851) 1981, 368.

Epilogue 1. Quoted in Barnett 1957, 58. 2. Curzon 1892, 1:322–23, my emphasis. 3. Pevsner 1972, 223 (citing Fergusson), 240; Fergusson 1850, 183. 4. Fergusson (1862) 1902, 1:2, 4. 5. Chakrabarty 2000, 43. 6. Irigaray 1985, 76. 7. See the work of feminist art historians who have theorized this question of aesthetic quality vis-à-vis the noncanonical and an engaged art history. Pollock and Parker 1981. 8. Nagel 2004, 51. 9. Ibid., 35. 10. Bhabha 1984, 126. 11. Ibid., 127, 129. 12. “James Cluer in Napa, California: Part i— Darioush,” published on YouTube November

9, 2012, http://​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=​ pEY1q6TD0TA. 13. PARSA Community Foundation, “Darioush Khaledi’s Persepolis-Inspired Winery,” http://​www​ .payvand​.com​/news​/07​/jun​/1219​.html. 14. Quoted in Bhabha 2003, 73. 15. Schwartz 1996, 212. 16. Ibid., 214–15. 17. In correspondence with Anthony G. Cokes, Getty Research Institute, April 22, 2009. 18. Baxandall 1985, 18–19. Further references to this source are cited parenthetically in the text. 19. Said 1993, 61. 20. Le Monde, October 12, 1971, 4.

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Index Italicized page references indicate illustrations. Endnotes are referenced with “n” followed by the endnote number. Abbas, Abdal-Bab, Hidden Secrets of the Causes of Civilization, 163 Abbas I, Shah, 138 Abbas Mirza, 152, 159 Abd al-Hosayn Teymurtash, 180, 196 Abd ol-Qasem, Haj Seyyed, 182 Abol Fadl, Mirza, 163 Achaemenid architecture Choisy on, 49, 219n100 Fergusson on, 36–38, 38, 135 Fletcher on, 48 Hegel on, 14, 15 Ker Porter on, 22–25, 23, 24, 26–27 and modernity in Iran, 139 in racial discourses, 52, 53, 54 Rawlinson on, 38–39 and Sassanian national history, 138–39 Strzygowski on, 59–60 Texier on, 29, 29–30, 30 See also specific sites Adur Farrobay Atash Bahram, 74, 75, 76, 221n21 Adur Goshnasp (Takht-e Solayman), 138, 139 Afifabad (Baq-e Golshan), 172–74, 173 Afshar, Mahmud, 180 Ahmad Khan, Seyyed, Asar al-sanadid, 169 Ahmad Shah Pavilion, 156 A’in-e Hushang, 161–62 Akbar, Mughal Emperor, 13 Akhundzadeh, Fath Ali, 163 Ala, Hosayn, 7, 180, 197 Alexander the Great, 12, 167 Alexandra Native Girls’ English Institute, 87 Ali Akbar, 157 Ali Asgar Khan Amin ol-Soltan, Mirza, Ketabeh tarikh-e mo’jam, 182 Ali Maryam, Ostad, 171 Ali Qapu, 139 Allen, Lindsey, 139 Amanat, Abbas, 144, 145, 155 Amanat, Hosayn, 207 Amanpour, Christiane, 182 Amelioration Society establishment and mission, 73–74 Masonic connection, 77, 78

relocation of Zoroastrian families to Tehran, 127 support of ancient Iranian scholarship, 90, 96 See also Hataria, Manekji Limji Amerita mansion, 171 ancient Iranian architecture consolidation as art-historical subfield, 31–39 French archeological missions, 39–40 Iranian scholarship on, 163–72 Parsi scholarship on, 71–73, 90–99, 131 reconstructive drawings, 30, 30, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43–45, 44, 46, 47 shifting perceptions of, overview, 9–10 typological studies, 48–49, 58–63 See also Achaemenid architecture; Orient-orRome debate; Sassanian architecture; travelogues; universal histories Anderson, Benedict, 13 Anderson, James, 97, 194, 223n133 Anjoman Adaran (Bhika Bahram atash-kadeh), 127, 128, 130–31 Anjomanara-ye Hushang, 163 Anklesaria, Behramgore Tehmurasp, Zarathustra, Founder of Monotheism, 131 Anquetil-Duperron, Abraham, 12–13, 19, 26 Zend-Avesta translation, 12, 14 Anthropological Society of Bombay, 97 Anushirvan Dadgar High School, 128, 129, 130 Apadana Chipiez on, 45 Fergusson on, 37, 38, 45 Iranian Persian Revival adoptions, 129, 130, 139, 147, 152, 153, 182, 183, 190, 201 Ker Porter on, 27 Kiash on, 91, 92 Parsi Persian Revival adoptions, 116–21, 118, 120, 123, 129 stone bas-reliefs, 147, 149 Aqa Khan Nuri E‘temad al-Dowleh, 182, 200 Aqa Mohammad Khan, 138, 142, 143, 144 Arbab, Mohammad Mehdi, 160–61 Archeological Agreement (1927), 196 Ardeshir I palaces, 62, 144 reliefs, 92, 94, 138, 167, 168, 171, 173–74, 174, 175, 183, 185 Zoroastrianism as state religion, 100 Ardeshir II, 62, 182 Arg, the (citadel of Karim Khan), 142, 145–46, 160

Armenian architecture, 55, 57, 58–61, 63, 66 Arnold, Matthew, Sohrab and Rustum: An Episode, 96 Arnold, Thomas, 131 art history discipline consolidation of ancient Iran subfield, 31–39 copying concept, 210–15 Hegel’s impact, 14–15 methodology, 4, 57–58, 63–65 Strzygowski’s impact, 55, 66–68, 221n225 See also ancient Iranian architecture; Orient-orRome debate; travelogues; universal histories Aryans ethno-tectonic migration, 58–63, 64 in European racial discourses, 12, 50–55, 158, 193 in Iranian racial discourses, 180, 197 in Parsi racial discourses, 98–99, 107–8 as term, 7 See also racial discourses Arzu, Siraj al-Din Khan, 14 Ashoka, 98–99 Assyrian architecture, 111, 112 atash-gah (fire sanctuary), 99–100, 109, 121, 126, 130 See also fire temples Atash Kadeh, 112 Athornan Anjoman Atash Bahram (Iranshah), 102, 116–19, 118 Atrvash House, 176 Avesta creation account, 15 Khordeh Avesta, 86 and Persian architecture, 36 and Shahnameh, 82 translations and editions, 12, 14, 51, 90, 170 Ayandeh (journal), 180–81 Ayineh Khaneh Palace (Mirror Pavilion), 159 Azari literary movement, 13–14, 22, 161 Azar Kayvan, Dabistan-e Mazahib, 13, 14, 22, 36, 217n25 Babaie, Sussan, 139, 140, 141, 225n27, 225n243 Babi movement, 162 Bahadur, Rastamji Kavasji, 222n40 Bahaullah, 163 Bahram, Kalantar Dinyar, 76 Bai Dhunbai and Cawasji Dadabhai Dadgah, 116 Bai Pirojbai Dadabhoy Maneckji Vatcha Adaran, 86, 87, 110–11, 114, 224n211 Bai Sunabai Hirji Jivanji Readymoney Adaran, 122 Balyan, Garabet, 156 Banaji family, 83 Banu, Golestan, 73 Baq-e Eram (Garden of Paradise), 175, 175–76 Baq-e Golshan (Afifabad), 172–74, 173 Baq-e No (New Garden), 150, 151, 151, 159 Baq-e Qavam, 176

( 250 )  Index

Baq-e Vakil (Regent’s Garden), 146 Baqlian, Ghalitch, 200, 201, 203, 205 Baroque architecture, 114, 116, 121, 130, 156, 177 Barringer, Tim, 70 Bashi, Mohammad Me’mar, 156 Baucom, Ian, 70, 79 Baudrillard, Jean, 212 Baxandal, Michael, 212–14 Beheshti, Haj Hosayn, 200, 201 Belami, 138 Bengali, Sorabji Shapurji, 89–90, 96, 97, 223n108 Benjamin, Samuel, 162 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 194 Bhabha, Homi, 89, 211 Bhagarseth Anjoman Atash Bahram, 121, 123 Bhika Bahram atash-kadeh (Anjoman Adaran), 127, 128, 130–31 Bhownagree, Muncherji Mervanji, 74, 78, 96 Bhownagree, Nasarvanji Bamanji, 109 biblical visual narratives, 192–94, 193 Bilia, Seth Framji Jamsetji, 121 Biruni, 138 Bishapur, 17, 19, 28, 91, 94, 100, 173, 185 Bisotun cuneiform inscription, 39, 77, 155 Forsat on, 170 Iranian Persian Revival adoptions, 182 in Jagat Premi, 90 Ker Porter on, 27, 167 Kiash on, 91 Niebuhr on, 10 Vaux on, 35 Zanganeh relief, 140–41 Bleeck, Arthur Henry, 90 Boitan, Falius, 203 Bomanji Edalji Allbless Obstetric Hospital, 87 Bombay Panchayat, 97 Bombay Samachar Press, 86 Botta, Emile, 35, 64, 112 Boyce, Mary, 63, 76–77, 100, 102, 103 Boyce Dhana Patel Adaran, 112 Brière, Suzanne, 126 British Museum, 111 Browne, Edward Granville, 75, 131, 154, 155, 162, 193, 224n185 Year Amongst the Persians, 146 Bruijn, Cornelis de, 10, 17, 18, 20, 22, 35, 36, 158 Brussels International Exposition (1935), 197, 198 Buckingham Palace, 222n81 Builder, The (periodical), 111 Buran, Queen (Purandokht), 166, 184, 186 Burnes, James, 78–79, 80 Burujerdi mansion, 171 Bustan (Sa’di), 86

Cama, Kharshedji Rustomji, 80–81, 82, 89, 90, 96, 97, 125 Discourse on Freemasonry Among the Natives of Bombay, A, 81 Discourse on the Mithraic Worship and the Rites, A, 81 Discourse on Zoroastrians and Freemasonry, A, 81 Cama, Khurshedji Nasarvanji, 8, 74, 78, 89, 90 Cama, Mancherji Hormasji, 90 chahar-taq (four-arch) structures, 62–63, 99–101, 109, 121, 130, 177, 211 See also fire temples Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 210 Chardin, Jean scholarship influenced by, 17, 18, 20, 22, 35, 43, 52 Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies, 10, 96 Chatterjee, Partha, 88 Chattopadhyay, Swati, 83 Chehel Sotun Palace, 130–31, 139, 141 Cheshmay-e Ali, 153–54 Chipiez, Charles and Fergusson, 118 Gobineau’s influence on, 53–54 Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité (with Perrot), 43–45, 44, 46, 47, 100–101, 219n94 History of Art in Persia (with Perrot), 54, 219n135 on Persepolitan motifs, 176 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 48, 106, 109, 111, 116, 129, 200, 201 on talar/takht type, 158, 159 Choisy, Auguste, 50, 219n138 Histoire de l’architecture, 48–49, 49, 54, 219n100 Choksy, Jamsheed, 100, 125 Chopra, Preeti, 70 Christianity architecture, 55, 57, 58–61, 63, 66, 194 biblical visual narratives, 193–94 lotus/lily symbolism, 27 missionaries, 89 Classical Revival, 83–85, 88, 103, 160 Cokes, Anthony, 212 Constitutional Revolution, Iran (1905–11), 127 Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 97, 98 copying, as concept, 210–15 Coste, Pascal-Xavier and Fergusson, 36, 135 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 39, 43, 48, 64, 106, 125 Voyage en Perse (with Flandin), 31–34, 32, 33, 34, 43, 44, 48, 150, 151, 226n53 Crystal Palace, 156 Ctesiphon, 34, 48, 49, 56, 59, 62, 72, 92, 95, 170, 205–7 Cumont, Franz, 97, 220n163 mystères de Mithra, Les, 58

religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, Les, 58 Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, 51 Cursetji, Maneckji, 78 Curzon, Lord George Nathaniel, 76, 97, 145–46, 154, 155, 209–10 Persia and the Persian Question, 146 Cyrus II legacy, 36, 64–65 Masonic connection, 77 reliefs, 22–23, 23, 90, 168, 187, 188 tomb, 17, 25, 35, 62, 90, 226n53 Dabistan-e Mazahib (Azar Kayvan), 13, 14, 22, 36, 217n25 Dadiseth fire temple, 82, 222n71 dadoes in hybrid Persian Revival architecture, 184, 186 in Pahlavi architecture, 200 in Qajar architecture, 143, 176, 177 in Zand architecture, 146–50, 147, 148 Dadyseth family, 104 Daftar Ashkara Press, 86 dakhma (funerary towers), 75, 154 Darab bin Suhrab, Dastur, 13 Darabgird, 19, 20, 91 Daraji Mirza, Nasarvanji, 86 Dar al-Fonun, 163, 165–67, 195 Darioush Winery, 211–12, 213 Darius I cuneiform script, 77, 155 European relief illustrations, 24, 27, 35 Iranian relief illustrations and adoptions, 152, 153, 167, 173, 176, 182, 183, 186, 187 palace, 24, 27, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 46, 91, 118, 120, 153, 200, 203 Parsi relief illustrations, 90, 91, 92, 93 Persepolis founded by, 8, 35 Darjou, Victor, Portrait of Naser al-Din Shah, 176 Darmesteter, James, 81, 97, 98, 223n143 Daryaee, Touraj, 138–39 Dasatir texts, 13–14, 22, 52, 86, 164 Davar, Firoze Cowasji, 131 De Bode, Clement A., 28 Della Valle, Pietro, 20 Derrida, Jacques, 15, 210 Desai, M. K., 121 Deschamps, Simon, 77 Diba, Layla, 153, 227n155 Dieulafoy, Jane and Marcel art antique de la Perse: Achéménides, Parthes, Sassanides, L’, 39–40, 41, 42 Perrot on, 159 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 43, 44, 48, 54, 56, 62, 106, 111, 125, 165, 177, 207

Index  ( 251 )

Diez, Ernst, 58, 220n159 Divan Khaneh, 150 Dobbin, Christine, 77 Dolmabahçe Palace, 156 Donatello, Judith and Holofernes, 193–94 Dorn, Boris A., 28 Doyle, William, 195 Drevet, Jacques, 177–79, 178 Dubash, Zarbai and Sunabai, 127 Dunlop, Henryk, 169 Dust Ali Khan II Mo’ayyer, 160 East India Company, 16, 77, 79, 83, 150 Eastwick, Edward Backhouse, Journal of a Diplomat’s Three Years’ Residence in Persia, 96 Ebn al-Faqih, 72 Ecbatana, 99 Edalji, Bhikhaji, 117 Ellenborough, Lord, 78 Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 84 Elphinstone College, 87, 88, 96, 167 Elsner, Jaś, 55 Emam Jomeh House, 181–82 Emarat-e Badgir (Wind-Catcher Building), 144 Emarat-e Baq-e Aminal-Dowleh, 156 Emarat-e Baq-e Ferdows (Palace of the Paradise Garden), 160 Emarat-e Brelian (Hall of Brilliant Diamonds), 157 Emarat-e Khabgah (Sleeping Quarters), 156 Emarat-e Sepahsalar, 156 Emarat-e Takht-e Marmar, 160 Emarat-e Zell ol-Soltan (Masudieh), 194–95, 203 Eruchji, C., 121 Ervad Sorabji Hormusji Ranji Adaran, 119, 120 Ervad Tehmulji Mahiyarji Mirza Dar-e Mehr, 119 Esfandiari, Hasan, 180 E‘temad al-Saltaneh, Mohammad Hasan Khan, 161, 194, 227n119 Durrar al-tijan fitarikh-e bani ashkan, 163 Ettelaat (newspaper), 197, 198 European architecture Baroque, 114, 116, 121, 130, 156, 177 Classical Revival, 83–85, 88, 103, 160 German, 197 Gothic Revival, 13, 70, 83, 85–88, 103 Greek Revival, 159, 160 Romanesque, 66, 87, 88, 114, 116 Exposition universelle (1889), 177–79, 178 Farangestan (journal), 180–81 faravahar (Zoroastrian winged good spirit) in ancient Iranian architecture, 25, 27 in Iran Bastan, 132, 133 Iranian Persian Revival adoptions, 130, 173, 181, 192, 197, 198, 201, 203, 205

( 252 )  Index

Parsi Persian Revival adoptions, 82, 93, 103, 109, 110, 119–21 Farhad Mirza Mo’tamed al-Dowleh, 157 Farhang-e anjomanara-ye naseri, 163 Fath Ali Shah decorative program, 30–31, 72, 144, 159 European diplomacy with, 16 iconography, 136, 136, 137, 152, 153–54, 226n57 patronage system, 151–52 political challenges, 144–45 Shahanshahnameh, 144 Shiraz influence on, 143–44 Favyn, André, théâtre d’honneur et de chevalerie, Le, 27 Fazel-e Araqi, Ma’sum, 182 Fazel-e Araqi House, 182–87, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191 Ferdowsi. See Shahnameh Ferdowsi Mausoleum, 129, 133, 181, 203 Fergusson, James on copying, 210 History of Architecture in all Countries from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, A, 36, 53 History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, 53 Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored, 31, 36–38, 38, 39, 45, 53, 96, 135, 136, 146, 218n81 on Parsi architecture, 83 on Qajar architecture, 150 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 50, 54, 57–58, 98, 109, 111, 118, 131, 170 fire temples ancient, 19, 54, 60, 62–63, 99–101, 220n201 chahar-taq structure, 62–63, 99–101, 109, 121, 130 concealment of, 76–77, 101 grades, 101 and Masonic symbolism, 82 Parsi lamassu variety, 110, 111, 112–16, 113 Parsi open floor plan, 110, 123–26, 124 Parsi patronage and construction of Iranian, 74–75, 75 Parsi pedimented variety, 84, 114, 116, 121–23, 123, 124, 127 Parsi Qajar-style, 108–9, 109 Parsi Taq-e Bostan variety, 114, 116 Shahanshahi-Qadimi architectural distinctions, 103–7, 105, 107 Firuz, Molla, 14, 86, 104, 151, 164 Wisdom of the Religion, 74 Firuzabad, 48, 54, 56, 62, 100, 101, 219n100 Firuz Bahram High School, 129, 131 Firuzkuh, 153 Firuz Mirza Firuz, 180, 188, 196 FitzGerald, Edward, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 96 Flandin, Eugène and Botta, 112 and Fergusson, 36, 135

on Qajar reliefs, 154 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 39, 43, 48, 64, 106, 125 Voyage en Perse (with Coste), 31–34, 32, 33, 34, 43, 44, 48, 150, 151, 226n53 Fletcher, Banister, 97 History of Architecture on the Comparative Method, 48, 53, 219n100 Focillon, Henri, 63, 64 Forsat, Mohammad Naser Hosayn Shirazi Asar-e ajam, 74, 130, 164, 165, 167–72, 168, 175, 176, 181, 187, 190 constructions influenced by, 181, 184–87 Forughi, Mohammad Ali, 7, 129, 131, 179–80, 196 Ketab-e tarikh-e salatin-e sasani, 163, 165 Tarikh-e iran az qabl az milad ta Qajariyeh, 163 Forughi, Mohsen, 196, 211 Forughi Zoka ol-Molk, Mohammad Hosayn, 163, 180 Fozdar, Vahid, 79 Framjee, Dosabhoy, 76 Parsees: Their History, Manners, Customs, and Religion, The, 108 Framji, Dhanjibhai, 90 Fraser, James Baillie, Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia, 96 Freemasonry ancient Iranian connection, 81–82 and Azari literary movement, 13–14 Hegel on, 217n31 iconography, 27, 82, 116 and Iranian Persian Revival, 194–95 lodge establishment in India, 78 lodge establishment in Iran, 179, 195 Modi on, 97 and Parsi Persian Revival floor plan, 110, 125–26 Parsis compatibility with and co-option of, 77–80 and Persian Revival pedimented variety, 84, 116, 121, 123, 160 funerary towers (dakhma), 75, 154 Furdunji, Nowrozji, 73, 77, 89 Gardane, Claude Mathieu de, 16 Garnier, Charles, histoire de l’habitation humaine, L’, 177 Garsoïan, Nina, 4 Gate of All Lands, 24, 26, 43–45, 44, 111, 112, 114, 116 Gazdar, Jamshedji Nanabhai, 117 Geldner, Karl, 51 Genesis, Book of, 192–93 German architecture, 197 Gladwin, Francis, 14 Gobineau, Joseph Arthur Comte de on Genesis, 192, 193 on Hataria, 162, 227n111

racial theories, 50–52, 58, 62 scholarship influenced by, 52, 53–54, 97, 98, 108, 180, 219n138 on Zoroastrianism, 76 “Catalogue d’une collection d’intailles asiatiques”, 219n135 Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, 50–51, 52, 180 Histoire des Perses, 51, 52, 219n135 Lecture des textes cunéiformes, 52 Nouvelles asiatiques, 51 religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, Les, 51, 219n135 Traité des écritures cunéiformes, 51 Trois ans en Asie, 51, 52, 54, 162, 219n135 Godard, André, 7, 100, 181, 196, 198–200, 205–7, 206 Godard, Yedda, 207, 228n223 Golestan (Parsi mansion, Bombay), 86, 87 Golestan (Sa’di), 10, 87, 91 Golestan Palace (Tehran), 143, 155–56, 157 Gordian III, 19, 173 Gordon, Robert, 20 Gothic Revival, 13, 70, 83, 85–88, 103 Goti Adaran, 109–10 Grabar, Oleg, 180 Grand Lodge, Dublin, 123 Greek Revival, 159, 160 Green Palace, 195 Guarded Domains of Iran, 144 Guévrékian, Gabriel, 197 Gurekian, Léon, 66 Hagia Sophia, 56 Hakimi, Ebrahim, 127, 179 Hamza al-Isfahani, 138 Hancarville, Pierre-François Hugues d’, 20 Hasanabad Square, 157 Hasan Fasaie, Haji Mirza, Farsnameh-ye naseri, 152 Hasan Khan, Mirza, 79 Hasan Mostawfi, 180 Hasan Pirnia Moshir al-Dowleh, 205 Iran-bastan, 180 Tarikh-e mokhtasar-e iran-e qadim, 180 Hataria, Manekji Limji Amelioration Society assignment, 69 diplomatic efforts, 77, 162 Gobineau on, 162, 227n111 Masonic involvement, 79 restoration and construction of Iranian Zoroastrian buildings, 74–76, 75, 154 and Shahrokh, 127, 129 support of ancient Iranian scholarship, 161–63, 164, 169, 170 survey of ancient sites, 71–73 Tarikeh-e parsian, 164 Travels in Iran: A Parsi Mission to Iran, 73

Index  ( 253 )

Havell, Ernest Binfield, 97, 98 Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation, 54–55 Hayrat, Mirza, 17, 167 Hedayat, Mehdi Qoli Khan, 127, 182 Hedayat, Reza Qoli Khan, 127, 162–63 Hegel, G. W. F., 14–15, 50, 138, 217n31 Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 15, 62 Philosophy of History, The, 14 Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, 217n27 Hekmat, Ali Asghar, 133, 180 Hemmrich, A., 199, 200, 203 Herodotus, Histories, 14 Herzfeld, Ernst Art of Ancient Persia, The (with Sarre), 59 Iranian revivalism involvement, 181, 196 on Iran name, 7 mentioned, 28, 62, 97, 131 and Modi, 97, 98 and Shapur-Valerian relief, 188 and Strzygowski, 62, 63, 65, 67 on Zand dadoes, 146, 147 Hillenbrand, Robert, 58 Hinnells, John, 101, 102 Hitler, Adolf, 63, 66, 132, 133 Hobsbawm, Eric, 13 Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 188 Holmes, Edward, 123 Hormozd Parsi, Hormozdan, Foruq-e Hushang, 163 Hosayn, Ostad, 160 Hosayn Ali Mirza, 150, 152 Hovanessian, Vardan, 207 Howard, Robert Boardman, 191 Hugo, Victor, 182 Ibn al-Balkhi, 138 Illuminative School, 13–14, 22, 161 Indian architecture. See Parsi Persian Revival Indian Rebellion (1857), 85, 108 Indo-Saracenic Revival, 70, 85 Iran Bastan, 131–33, 132 Irani, Dinshaw Jejeebhoy, 131 Iranian Parliament, 203–5, 204 Iranian Persian Revival Afshar architecture, 140–41 hybrid style, earliest examples, 181–82 hybrid style, Fazel-e Araqi House, 182–87, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191 hybrid style, Saray-e Roshan, 191–94, 192, 193, 195 hybrid style, Shapuri House, 187–88, 189 and merger of historical traditions, 138–39 nationalist literary movement, 160–72 Pahlavi architects, 196–97, 203 Pahlavi architecture, Iranian Parliament, 203–5, 204

( 254 )  Index

Pahlavi architecture, National Bank, 197–200, 198 Pahlavi architecture, National Museum of Antiquities, 205–7, 206 Pahlavi architecture, police headquarters, 200–203, 201, 202 Parsi imports, 127–31 Qajar pediments, 155–56, 159–60 Qajar reliefs, 152–54, 157, 173–74, 176, 177 Qajar talar/takht type, 150, 151, 155–56, 158–60, 171–76, 173 Zand architecture, 141, 142–43, 145–50, 147, 148 Iranshah (Athornan Anjoman Atash Bahram), 102, 116–19, 118 Iranshahr, 144 Iranshahr (journal), 180–81, 203 Irigaray, Luce, 210 Isa Sadiq, 180 Isfahan, 33, 73, 130, 142 Jackson, A. V. Williams, 51, 76, 81, 141, 153, 154, 162, 223n143 Persia Past and Present, 146 Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran, 97 Jacolliot, Louis, Bible dans l’Inde, La, 51 Jafar, Mirza, 152 Jafar Qoli Khan Sardar Asad House, 156 Jagat Premi (newspaper), 90 Jalal al-Din Mirza, 163, 181, 184 Nameh-ye Khosravan, 157, 164–67, 166 JamaspAsa, Dastur Jamaspji Minochehrji, 121 JamaspAsa, Kaikhusroo M., 222n71 Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Rustomjee, 78–79, 84–85, 86, 90, 96, 106, 109 Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Hospital, 78 Jamsetjee Nasarvanji Petit Institute and Library, 86 Jamshid, 35, 139, 166, 167 Jaubert, Pierre-Amédée, Voyage en Arménie et en Perse, 16 Jejeebhoy family, 103 Jomard, Edme-François, Description de l’Égypte, 15, 16, 31, 34 Jones, Harford, 17 Jones, William, 12, 14, 19, 50, 108, 192 Jongh, Wollebrand Geleynssen de, 100 journal de Téhéran, Le (newspaper), 197–98, 207 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 96 Kaempfer, Engelbert, 20, 158 Kakh-e Abyaz (White Palace), 156 Kalat-e Nader, 140–41 Kanga, M. F., 222n71 Kangavar, 33 Kankaria Adaran, 127 Karaka, Dosabhai Framji, 78, 89, 96, 97, 108 Karim Khan Zand, 141–43, 145–50, 186

Kashani, Me’mar Jafar Khan, 129 Kashi, Ostad Mohammad Ali, 155 Kaus, Molla, 86, 104, 151 Kaveh (journal), 180, 203 Kavus bin Faraydun, Dastur, 13 Kayanids, 139, 145, 149 Kazemi, Moshfeq, 180 Kazemzadeh, Hosayn, 180, 203 Kekobad Rao Dadgah, 84 Kermani, Mirza Aqa Khan Ayine-ye sekandari, 163 Nameh-ye bastan, 163 Ker Porter, Robert on Abbas Mirza, 159 on Ray, 154 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 32, 35, 43, 82, 92, 96, 106, 109, 111, 112, 121, 144, 165, 167 Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, 20–28, 23, 24, 26, 31, 96 on Zanganeh inscription, 141 Keyumars, 139, 166, 167 Khaledi, Darioush, 211–12 Khan, Abdollah, 135, 153 Khan, Mirza Malkom, 195 Khan, Mirza Yaqub, 195 Khan Bahador Edulji Sorabji Chenai Anjoman Adaran, 127 Khan Zand Tusarkhani, Ismail, Farzestan, 163 Khodadad Tabrizi, Mirza Hosayn, 165 Khordeh Avesta, 86 Kia, Mana, 217n22 Kiamanesh, Ardeshir, 127 Kiash, Kavasji Dinshaw Ancient Persian Sculptures, 90–97, 93, 94, 95, 114, 116, 120, 218n84 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 112, 116, 119–21, 169 support of ancient Iranian scholarship, 167 Travels in Persia, 91 kingship Golestan Palace as site of, 143 iconography, 140, 152–54 Safavids as model of, 138 and talar/takht type, 158–59 Kleuker, Johann Friedrich, 14 Kohut, Alexander, 81 Koyaji, Seth Nasarvanji, 74–75 Krautheimer, Richard, 66 K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, 82, 97 Kuh-e Khajeh, 63, 99, 100 Kuttler, Edmund, 58 Laing, Samuel, 108 lamassus (animals)

in ancient Iranian architecture, 24, 26, 40, 44, 114 Parsi Persian Revival adoptions, 110, 111, 112–16, 113, 224n199, 224n211 Lambton, Ann, 165 Layard, Henry, 35, 48, 64 Lerner, Judith, 153 Lewis, Michael, 144–45, 160, 186, 228n204 life-size figures in Qajar architecture, 157, 174, 176, 177 in Zand architecture, 146–50, 147, 148 linguistic-racial discourses. See racial discourses Lissitzian, Leon, 58 literacy, 123 literary movements, 12–14, 160–72 Lodge Rising Star, Bombay, 78, 110, 116 Lotf Ali Khan, 174, 175 lotus/lily symbolism, 27, 106–7 Louvre Museum, 112, 156 Luft, Paul, 153 Luft Ali Suratgar, 175 Luhrmann, Tanya, 88 Mackey, Albert, History of Freemasonry, 194 Malcolm, John, 93, 97, 154, 217n20 History of Persia from the Most Early Period to the Present Time, The, 16–17, 35, 96, 167 Sketches of Persia, 96 Mann, Oscar, 169 Manoukian, Setrag, 169, 170, 171 Maranci, Christina, 55, 59, 220n200 Marashi, Afshin, 156, 217n22 Marchand, Suzanne, 10, 12, 51, 55, 107–8 Markov, Nikolai, 129, 197, 198–200 Marquand, Allan, 67 Martiros Davidkhanian Mansion, 156 Masonry. See Freemasonry Masudi, 138 Masudieh (Emarat-e Zell ol-Soltan), 194–95, 203 Mauryan architecture, 98–99 Mazdaism. See Zoroastrianism Melvin-Koushki, Matthew, 13 Me’mar, Abbas Ali, 205 Me’mar, Ostad Hasan, 203 Menant, Delphine, 87, 90 Mervanji Maneckji Seth Charitable Funds, 116 Metcalf, Thomas, 85 Mewavala Adaran, 126–27 Michelet, Jules, Bible de l’humanité, 51 Mihr Ali Fath Ali Shah at the Hunt, 153 Fath Ali Shah Seated on a Chair Throne, 152 Minto, Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of, 16 Mistri, Dinshaw Dorabji, 110–12, 117–19, 224n199 Mithraism. See Zoroastrianism

Index  ( 255 )

Modi, Bai Jaijee, 104, 105 Modi, Davar Tehmuras Kavasji, 112 Modi, Jivanji Jamshedji, 90, 96, 97–98, 131, 223n133 Masonic Papers, 97, 194 Papers on Indo-Iranian and Other Subjects, 131 Modi Atash Bahram, 102, 105–6, 112 Modi family, 104, 105–6 Mohammad Ali Mirza Dowlatshah, 152, 154, 170 Mohammad Hasan Me’mar, Haji, 175 Mohammad Qoli Khan Ilkhani, 175 Mohammad Reza Shah, 52, 195 Mohammad Shah, 77, 155, 174 Mohandesi, Abd ol-Qasem, 187 Mohl, Julius von, 81 Mo’ini al-Ra’aya, Hosayn Khan, 182 Mo’ini Moaven ol-Molk, Hasan Khan, 182 ol-Molk, Amin, 176 ol-Molk, Ehtesab, 182 ol-Molk, Mirza Ali Mohammad Khan Qavam, 176 Molla Firuz, Dastur, 19 Monde, Le (newspaper), 215 Monshi, Ardeshir Doshabhai, History of the Ancient Parsis, 167 Montesquieu, Baron de, Lettres persanes, 50 Moqadam House, 181–82 Mordtmann, Andreas David, 81 Morgan, Jacques de, 40 Morier, James, 22, 35, 52, 96, 154, 159 Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor to Constantinople, A, 17, 96 Second Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, A, 17–18 Moshir al-Dowleh Pirnia House, 156–57 ol-Mottalleb Esfahani, Mirza Abd, 165, 166 Movses Khorenatsi, 138 Moxey, Keith, 67 Mu’ayyed ol-Eslam Jalal al-Din al-Hosayn, 170–71 Mughal art and architecture, 140 Müller, Friedrich Max, 50, 53, 97, 98, 108, 224n185 Murzban, Muncherji Cowasji, 84, 85, 86–87, 171, 223nn99–100 Murzbanji, Fardunji, 86–87 Muze-ye Makhsus (Special Museum), 157 Myers, Philip van Ness, Remains of Lost Empires, 40–43 Nader Shah Afshar, 138, 140–41 Nafisi, Saïd, 180 Nagel, Alexander, 211 Naoroji, Dadabhai, 8, 73, 77, 89, 96, 108, 224n185 Napoleon Bonaparte, 16, 152 Naqsh-e Rajab, 17, 19, 25, 28, 94, 173, 175, 185 Naqsh-e Rostam Fergusson on, 53 Forsat on, 168, 170, 171 and Iranian historical tradition, 138, 139

( 256 )  Index

Iranian Persian Revival adoptions, 173, 175, 185, 191 Ker Porter on, 24, 25, 26 Kiash on, 91, 92, 94 Masonic adoptions, 82 Morier on, 17 Ouseley on, 18 Parsi Persian Revival adoptions, 109 Perrot on, 54, 100 Qajar photographs, 157 relief images, 26, 94, 168, 174, 175 Strzygowski on, 60, 62 Texier on, 28 Vaux on, 35 Narenjestan-e Qavam (Qavam’s Orangery), 172, 175, 176, 182 Nasarvanji Hirji Karani Adaran, 112 Nasarvanji Maneckji Petit Adaran, 112 Naser al-Din Shah decorative program, 155–57 (see also Qajar architecture) European interests, 156, 157–58 mentioned, 203 and Parsi diplomacy, 77, 93 stone bas-relief commissions, 154, 157 Zoroastrian restrictions lifted by, 76, 162 Naser ol-Molk Abd ol-Qasem Khan, Haji, 175 Nasir Hasan, Sultan, 138 Nasir ud-Din Muhammad Shah, 140 Nasrollah Khan, Mirza, 205 National Bank, Tehran, 197–200, 198 National Museum of Antiquities (Iran Bastan), 205–7, 206 Navab, Hosayn Qoli Khan, 200 Nava’i, Haji Abd ol-Hasan Me’mar, 155 Navsari Atash Bahram, 119–21 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 99, 223n143 Nejad-nameh-ye padeshahan-e iran-nejad, 162 neoclassical architecture, 83–85, 88, 103, 160 Niebuhr, Carsten on fire temples, 100 scholarship influenced by, 18, 20, 22, 35, 36, 43, 48 travelogue, 10, 19 Noah (biblical figure), 192–93, 193, 194 Nozari, Ardeshir and Roshan, 211 numismatics, 167 occultism, 13–14, 51 O’Donnell, Terence, 175 Olearius, Adam, 10 Olenin, Alexey Nikolayevich, 20–22 open floor plans, 110, 123–26, 124 Ophthalmic Hospital, 85 Oppert, Julius, 52, 81 Orient-or-Rome debate overview, 7–8, 55–57

architectural typologies, 48–49, 58–63 Choisy’s contribution, 48–49 Dieulafoys’ contribution, 40 Fergusson’s contribution, 38 Fletcher’s contribution, 48 historical impact, 66–67 racial discourses in European universal histories, 12, 50–55 Ouseley, Gore, 17, 19, 74, 153 Ouseley, William education, 22 mentioned, 135 Oriental Collections, 96 on Persepolis takht, 158 on Ray, 154 scholarship influenced by, 32, 36, 96, 165, 170 on Shiraz citadel paintings, 143 Travels in Various Countries of the East, More Particularly Persia, 19–20, 21, 32, 96, 146, 218n49 Pahlavi architecture architects, 196–97, 203 at Brussels International Exposition, 197, 198 Iranian Parliament, 203–5, 204 National Bank, 197–200, 198 National Museum of Antiquities, 205–7, 206 police headquarters, 200–203, 201, 202 Palace of Ardeshir I, 62 Palace of Ashoka, 98–99 Palace of Darius, 24, 27, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 46, 91, 118, 120, 153, 200, 203 Palace of Firuzabad, 56 Palace of Khosrow (Taq-e Kasra), 56, 62, 72, 95, 98, 138, 205–7 Palace of One Hundred Columns, 12, 40, 41, 64, 99, 109, 121, 126, 150, 176, 192 Palace of Pataliputra, 98–99 Palace of Saltanatabad, 157 Palace of Sarvestan, 40, 42, 61, 62, 63, 170, 218n49 Palace of Xerxes, 40, 45, 47, 106, 129, 173–74, 201 Panday, Mervanji Framji, 73, 74, 75, 162, 225n232 Paris Match (tabloid), 135 Parsi Lying-in Hospital, 88 Parsi Persian Revival first elaborate appearance of, 86, 87, 110–11, 114 vs. Gothic and Classical secular architectural commissions, 70, 83–89, 103 and historical inaccuracies, 111–12 imports to Iran, 127–31 lamassu variety, 110, 111, 112–16, 113 open floor plan, 110, 123–26, 124 and Parsi scholarship on ancient Iran, 71–73, 90–99, 131 patronage and construction of Zoroastrian edifices in Iran, 74–76, 75

pedimented variety, 84, 114, 116, 121–23, 123, 124, 127 Qajar-style fire temples, 108–9, 109 Shahanshahi-Qadimi fire temple architectural distinctions, 103–7, 105, 107 Shiraz connection, 150–51 Taq-e Bostan variety, 114, 116 Parsis charity ideal, 74, 77, 78–79, 101–2, 103 civilizing missions, 83 compatibility with and co-option of Masonic philosophy, 77–80 European connection of ancient Iran to, 10, 17, 19 liberties under British rule, 76 purity ideal, 72, 89, 102, 108, 110–11 Parthian dynasty, 167, 194 Pasargadae fire altars in, 99, 100 Flandin and Coste on, 33 Forsat on, 168, 170 Iranian Persian Revival adoptions, 188, 189 in Jagat Premi, 90 Ker Porter on, 22, 23 Kiash on, 91 Ouseley on, 158 Perrot on, 54, 100 Qajar photographs, 157 Strzygowski on, 60, 62 Texier on, 28 Vaux on, 35 Patel, Framji Nasarvanji, 74, 96 patronage and Parsi charity ideal, 74, 77, 78–79, 101–2, 103 Parsi co-opting of protectorate system, 77 Parsi support of ancient Iranian scholarship, 90, 96, 161–63, 164, 169, 170 Qajar imperial system of, 151–52 pediments in Iranian Persian Revival architecture, 155–56, 159–60, 192 in Parsi Persian Revival architecture, 84, 114, 116, 121–23, 123, 124, 127 See also pish-taq Perrault, Claude, 156 Perrot, Georges and Fergusson, 118 Gobineau’s influence on, 53–54 Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité (with Chipiez), 43–45, 44, 46, 47, 100–101, 219n94 History of Art in Persia (with Perrot), 54, 219n135 on Persepolitan motifs, 176 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 48, 106 on talar/takht type, 158, 159 Perry, John, 138

Index  ( 257 )

Persepolis ancient importance, 8–9 Curzon on, 209 excavations in, 147, 152, 181, 196 Fergusson on, 36–37, 39, 146 Flandin and Coste on, 33, 33, 34 Fletcher on, 48 Forsat on, 168, 170 Iranian Persian Revival adoptions, 131, 153, 172, 173–74, 176, 185, 187, 190, 191, 197–98, 200–201, 205 Ker Porter on, 25–27 Kiash on, 92 Malcolm on, 17 modern adoptions, 211–12, 213 Modi on, 99 Morier on, 17–18 Myers on, 40–43 name, 139 Niebuhr on, 10 Ouseley on, 20, 21, 158 Parsi Persian Revival adoptions, 106–7, 112 Qajar photographs, 157 Rawlinson on, 39 reconstructive drawings, 30, 30, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43–45, 44, 46, 47 Reza Shah’s interest in, 28, 196 Semper on, 65 Strzygowski on, 60 Texier on, 28–30, 29, 29–30 Vaux on, 35 in Zoroastrian salvational historiography, 139 See also Apadana Persian Revival architecture. See Iranian Persian Revival; Parsi Persian Revival Perso-Russian Wars (1805–13, 1826–28), 144–45, 159 Pesce, Luigi, 157 Peshotanji Dossabhai Marker Orphanage and School, 129 Pestanji Hormasji Cama Hospital for Women and Children, 87 Petit, Bai Dinbai Nasarvanji, 86 Petit, Bai Sakarbai, 74 Petit, Bomanji Dinshaw, 84 Petit, Dinshaw Maneckji, 74, 78, 86, 96, 117, 225n232 Petit, Manekji Nasarvanji, 8, 74, 78, 86, 96 Petit family, 103 Petit v. Jejeebhoy, 126 Petty-Fitzmaurice, Henry Charles Keith, 92 Pevsner, Nikolaus, 37, 210 Philadelphia Exposition (1926), 191 Philip the Arab, 20, 173, 185 Pich, Werner Joseph, 225n243 Piotrovski, Boris Borisovich, 27 Pishdadians, 139 pish-taq (curved pediment)

( 258 )  Index

in Iranian Persian Revival architecture, 143, 157, 171–72, 174, 176, 187, 196 in Parsi Persian Revival architecture, 109, 119, 121 See also pediments Pol-e Abgineh, 153 Poliakov, Leon, 3, 50 police headquarters, Iranian, 200–203, 201, 202 Pope, Arthur Upham, 7, 181, 191, 196–97, 207 Porter, Yves, 226n51 Purandokht (Queen Buran), 166, 184, 186 Pur-Davud, Ebrahim, 131 Qadimi-Shahanshahi schism, 103–7, 151 Qajar architecture and art historical traditions, 139 Curzon on, 209–10 Pahlavi criticism of, 197 in Parsi fire temples, 108–9, 109 pediments, 155–56, 159–60 stone bas-reliefs, 152–54, 157, 173–74, 176, 177 talar/takht type, 150, 151, 155–56, 158–60, 171–76, 173 Qajar Iran political challenges, 144–45, 179 prohibitions against Zoroastrians, 76–77, 162 Qala-ye Dokhtar Palace, 144 Qasem, Ostad Aqa Mohammad, 135, 153 Qasr al-Mshatta palace, 56, 65 Qasr-e Khorshid (Sun Palace), 140 Qasr-e Qajar (Summer palace), 144 Qavam al-Saltaneh House, 156 Qavam ol-Molk family, 172 Qolam Reza Tabrizi, Ostad, 142 Qoli Khan Mafi Nezam ol-Saltaneh, Hosayn, 170 Quran, 193 Raby, Julian, 136 racial discourses and access to fire temples, 126 Aryan ethno-tectonic migration, 58–63, 64 in Azari literary movement, 14 and biblical narratives, 192–93 in European universal histories, 12, 50–55 Iranian, 180–81, 197 Parsi, 98–99, 107–8 Ramsay, Chevalier, voyages de Cyrus, Les, 50, 77 Rapp, Adolf, 81 Rast Goftar (newspaper), 86, 89–90 Rawlinson, George, 43, 52, 64, 97, 118, 140–41, 170 Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, 38–39, 96, 108, 167 Seventh Great Monarchy, 163 Rawlinson, Henry, 35, 36, 43, 52, 77, 97, 162 Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, The, 39, 96, 155 Ray, 153–54, 211

Readymoney, Cowasji Jehangir, 84, 85, 222n80 Religious Reform Association, 89 Renan, Ernest, 50, 97, 108, 163 Vie de Jésus, 51 Reporter, Ardeshir Edulji, 162 Reza Shah Hospital, 203 Reza Shah Pahlavi decorative program, 196, 207 (see also Pahlavi architecture) interest in Persepolis, 28, 196 in Iran Bastan special issue, 132, 133 and Iran name, 7 national reform agenda, 195, 196 Persian Revival attributed to, 1, 137 Shahrokh’s support for, 129 Rhode, Johann-Gottlieb, 81 Rice, David Talbot, 67 Richard, Jules, 157 Riegl, Alois, 7, 50, 62, 65, 221n225 Late Roman Art Industry, 56 “Late Roman or Oriental?,” 56 Ringer, Monica, 72, 125 Rivoira, Giovanni Teresio, 7, 56–57, 65, 98 Muslim Architecture, 57 origini dell’architettura lombarda, Le, 7, 56, 66 Romanesque architecture, 66, 87, 88, 114, 116 Root, Margaret, 217n17 Rosslyn Chapel, 160 Rousseau, Joseph, 218n35 Royal Asiatic Society, 77, 97 Royal Opera, 156 Ruskin, John, 50 Stones of Venice, The, 62 Rustamji Nasarvanji Rustomfaramna Adaran, 112 Sa’adat House (Prosperity), 176 Sadeq, Ali, 211 Sadeq, Mohammad, 79 Sa’di Bustan, 86 Golestan, 10, 87, 91 Safavid architecture and art historical traditions, 139 Flandin and Coste on, 33 Zand architecture influenced by, 142–43 Safavid Empire, decline and fall, 9, 138 Saf-e Salam (saluting line), 157 Said, Edward, 214 Saklatvala, Shapurji, 222n40 Sanskrit, 50 Saray-e Roshan, 191–94, 192, 193, 195 Sarre, Friedrich, 62, 188 Art of Ancient Persia, The (with Herzfeld), 59 Iranian Rock Reliefs, 59 Monuments of Persian Architecture, 220n173

Sarvestan, 40, 42, 48, 49, 61, 62, 63, 125, 170, 218n49, 219n100 Sassanian architecture Choisy on, 49, 219n100 Fletcher on, 48, 219n100 Ker Porter on, 25, 26 Modi on, 98 Morier on, 17 Ouseley on, 19–20 and state propaganda, 138–39, 141 Strzygowski on, 59–60, 61 and Zoroastrian practices, 100, 101, 103, 130 See also specific sites Sassoon, Davis, 85 Scarce, Jennifer, 22, 139, 182 Schlegel, Friedrich, 12, 50 Schlosser, Julius von, 221n225 Schwartz, Hillel, 212 Scott, George Gilbert, 85 Semper, Gottfried Four Elements of Architecture, The, 64 Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics, 64–65 Sepahsalar, Mirza Hosayn Khan, 203 Sepahsalar Palace, 203–5 Sercey, Édouard Comte de, 31 Seth, Jalbhai Ardeshir, 86, 114 Seth, Mervanji Maneckji, 78 Seth Adaran, 84 Seth Bomanji Mervanji Mevawala Adaran, 84, 84 Seth Cowasji Behramji Banaji Atash Bahram, 86, 102, 107 Seth Dadabhai Noshervanji Dadyseth Atash Bahram, 104–5, 105, 113 Seth Hirjibhoy Jamsetji Behrana Adaran, 119 Seth Hormusji Bomanji Wadia Atash Bahram, 102, 106–7, 107, 109, 123 Seth Jamshedji Dadabhai Sodawaterwalla Adaran, 122 Seth Jejeebhoy Dadabhai Adaran, 97 Seth Manekji Navroji Seth Adaran, 114–16, 115, 117 Sethna, Edulji Nasarvanji, 96 Seth Pestonji Kalabhai Vakil Atash Bahram, 105, 105 Seth Pirojshah Ardeshir Patel Adaran, 84, 88 Seth Rustamji Nasarvanji Rustamframna Adaran, 116 Seth Shapurji Sorabji Kappawala Adaran, 119, 121, 122 Seth Sorabji Khurshedji Thuthina Adaran, 108–9, 109 Sevruguin, Antoin, 135, 154, 176, 188 Shahanshahi-Qadimi schism, 103–7, 151 Shahnameh (Ferdowsi) and Abbas Mirza, 159 and Dasatir texts, 13 imagery from, 141, 143, 149–50 Kalat in, 140 as national literature, 160–61 scholarly interest in, 19, 51, 86, 96, 138 and Zoroastrianism, 81–82, 161, 163

Index  ( 259 )

Shahnameh-ye bahadori, 161 Shahnameh-ye kajuri, 161 Shah Reza High School, 203 Shahrokh, Arbab Keikhosrow, 8, 127–29, 179, 225n232 Shahyad Aryamehr Tower, 207 Shams al-Emareh (Sun Building), 155–56, 160 Shapur I European relief illustrations, 17, 19–20, 21, 25, 26, 35, 40 Iranian relief illustrations and adoptions, 166, 167, 168, 171, 173, 183, 184, 185, 186, 186, 188–91, 191 Parsi relief illustrations and adoptions, 91, 92, 94 Shapur II, 168, 185 Shapuri, Abd al-Saheb, 187 Shapuri House, 187–88, 189 Sharestan, 161 Shea, David, Dabistan, or School of Manners, The (with Troyer), 217n25 Sheffield, Daniel, 14, 72, 90, 103–4, 217n25, 223n118 Sheil, Lady, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia, 96 Shirazi, Haji Mehdi, 79 Shunkerseth, Daivadnya Brahmin Jaganath, 85 Silvestre de Sacy, Antoine, 26, 35 Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney Building (Elphinstone College), 88 Sir Dinshaw Manekji Petit Hospital for Women and Children, 88 Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Parsi Benevolent Institute, 84, 106 Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy School of Art, 85 Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Translation Fund, 90, 96 Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Zarthoshti Madrasa, 90 Siroux, Maxime, 197, 205 Smirke, Robert and Sydney, 111 Society for Research into the Zoroastrian Religion, 90 Soltan Hosayn, Shah, 9 Sorsor-e, 153, 154 Spiegel, Friedrich, 81, 90, 97, 108, 224n185 Érân, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris, 170 Spooner, David Brainard, 98–99 Stamp, Gavin, 83 Stausberg, Michael, 72, 73 Stein, Aurel, 97 Strzygowski, Josef on art history methodology, 4, 57–58, 63–65 Aryan ethno-tectonic migration thesis, 58–63, 64, 99, 158 on Christian architecture, 55, 57, 58–61, 63, 66, 194 legacy, 55, 66–68, 221n225 Orient-or-Rome position, overview, 7, 38, 55–57

( 260 )  Index

scholarship influenced by, 98, 131 Altai-Iran and the Migrations, 59, 98, 180 Architecture of the Armenians and Europe, The, 59, 66, 98 Armenian Evangeliary, 55 Art of the East, The, 59, 180 Asia Minor: A New Country for the History of Art, 56 Baukunst, Die, 220n200 Coptic Art, 56 Etschmiadzin-Evangeliar, Das, 56 Hellas in the Embrace of the East, 56 Hellenistic and Coptic Art in Alexandria, 56 Influences of Indian Art, 98 “Iran, Asia’s Hellas”, 63 Mschatta, 56 Newly Found Orpheus Mosaic in Jerusalem, The, 56 Orient oder Rom, 7, 55–56, 65, 98 Origin of Christian Church Art, The, 59, 98 “Persian Hellenism in Christian Ornamental Art”, 59 “Persian Trumpet Dome, The”, 59 “Problem of Persian Art, The”, 59 “Sassanian Church and Its Domestic Interiors, The”, 59, 180 “Spiritual Content of Iranian Art: Fire Temple and Avesta, The”, 63 Traces of Indo-Germanic Faith in the Fine Arts, 61–62 Study of Zoroastrianism (journal), 81 Sulayman, Shah, 142 Sun and Lion Theater, 203 Sykes, Ella, Persia and Its People, 146 Tabari, 138 Tabatabai mansion, 171 Tabriz, 159 Tabrizi, Morad, 205 Tagore, Rabindranath, 131 Taherzadeh Behzad, Karim, 181, 197, 203, 204, 205 Saramadan-e honar, 203 Tahmasp I, Shah, 142 Taj Mahal Hotel, 86 takht. See talar/takht Takht-e Jamshid. See Persepolis Takht-e Solayman (Adur Goshnasp), 138, 139 Takyeh Dowlat, 160 Talar-e Aaj (Ivory Hall), 157 Talar-e Almas (Diamond Hall), 144 Talar-e Ayineh (Hall of Mirrors), 157 Talar-e Salam (Reception Hall), 157 talar/takht (elevated pillared hall) ancient structures, 158 as distinct to Iranian Persian Revival, 130–31, 137 in hybrid Persian Revival architecture, 182, 192 in Pahlavi architecture, 197, 198, 200–203, 205

in Qajar architecture, 150, 151, 155–56, 158–60, 171–76, 173 in Zand architecture, 143, 146–47, 147, 149 Talwalkar, V. R., 119 Tamanian, Alexander, 66 Tang-e Chogan, 168, 185 Tape Nush-e Jan, 99 Taq-e Bostan Flandin and Coste on, 33, 34 Forsat on, 168, 170 Iranian Persian Revival adoptions, 153, 182, 185, 186 Ker Porter on, 27 Kiash on, 91, 92, 94 Malcolm on, 17 Parsi Persian Revival adoptions, 109, 114, 116, 117, 161 Qajar reliefs and inscriptions in, 152, 154, 157 Strzygowski on, 62 Taq-e Kasra (Palace of Khosrow), 56, 62, 72, 95, 98, 138, 205–7 Taqizadeh, Seyyed Hasan, 7, 180, 207 Tarikh-e jadid (Bab), 162 Tata, Anushirvan Ratanbai Bamji, 129 Tata, Dorabji, 131 Tata, Jamsetji Nusservanji, 86, 96, 97 Tata, Ratan, 98, 126 Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad, 14 Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, 222n32 six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Les, 96 Taymur Mirza, 153 Tekyeh Moaven ol-Molk, 181–82 Temple of Anahita, 33 Temple of Solomon, 123, 160, 194 temples (Zoroastrian). See fire temples Temulji, C., 121 Texier, Charles Felix Marie Description de l’Arménie, la Perse et la Mésopotamie, 28–30, 29, 30, 32, 218n64 and Fergusson, 36 Perrot on, 159 scholarship and constructions influenced by, 32, 33–34, 43, 45, 48, 64, 111, 129, 176, 224n199 Thévenot, Jean de, 17 Thomas, Edward, Early Sassanian Inscriptions, Seals, and Coins, 96 Thuthina, Bai Cuverbai, 108 Thuthina, Mobed Sorabji Khurshedji, 108 tilework, 157, 182 Times of India (newspaper), 119 Timur, 140 Toramanian, Toros, 58, 66 Toynbee, Arnold, 88 Trautmann, Thomas, 107–8 travelogues Iranian copying of, 165, 169, 176

Ker Porter’s, 20–28, 23, 24, 26 Malcolm’s, 16–17 Morier’s, 17–18 Niebuhr’s, 10 Ouseley’s, 19–20, 21 Texier’s, 28–30, 29, 30 visual discourse of, 15–16 Treaties of Erzurum (1823 and 1847), 145 Treaty of Carlowitz (1699), 9, 145 Treaty of Golestan (1813), 145 Treaty of Paris (1857), 145 Treaty of Torkmanchai (1828), 145 Troyer, Anthony, Dabistan, or School of Manners, The (with Shea), 217n25 Ullens de Schooten, Marie-Thérèse, 207 universal histories in Azari literary movement, 13–14, 22 European (see art history discipline; Orient-orRome debate; travelogues) Iranian, 163–72 Parsi, 90–99, 108, 131, 223n143 racial discourses in, 12, 50–55, 98–99, 108 University of Bombay, 85 Vaidya, Sitaram Khanderao, 86 Vakil, Pestonji Kalabhai, 104 Vakil Atash Bahram, 102 Valerian European relief illustrations, 17, 20, 21, 25, 26, 35 Iranian relief illustrations and adoptions, 168, 173, 183, 185, 186, 188–91, 191 Parsi relief illustrations and adoptions, 91, 92, 94 Vatcha, Bai Pirojbai, 110 Vatcha, Modi Hirji, 75 Vatcha, Pirojbai Dadabhai Maneckji, 110 Vaux, William Sandys Wright, 100 Nineveh and Persepolis: An Historical Sketch of Ancient Assyria and Persia, 31, 35–36, 96 Victoria, Queen of England, 77, 78 Victoria and Albert Museum, 85 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène, 50 Wadia, Ardeshir Cursetji, 78, 222n40 Wadia, Dadabhai, 117 Wadia, D. F., History of Lodge Rising Star, 80 Wadia, Hormusji Bomanji, 104, 106 Wadia, Mancherji Pestanji, 117 Wadia, Motlibai Maneckji, 117 Wadia, N. M., 121 Wadia, Pestanji Bamanji, 117 Wadia, Rustom N., 74 Wadia family, 83, 103, 104, 106 Ward-Perkins, John, 66 Watkin, David, 36 Westergaard, Niels Ludvig, 28, 35

Index  ( 261 )

Wickhoff, Franz, 7, 65, 221n225 Vienna Genesis, 55–56 Wikander, Stig, 220n201 Wilber, Donald, 146 Wilson, John, 89 Winckelmann, Johann, 50 Xerxes, Palace of, 40, 45, 47, 106, 129, 173–74, 201 Yazdgerd III, 72, 141 Zafar, Keyqobad, 211 Zand architecture and art historical traditions, 139 influence on Qajar architecture, 157 stone bas-reliefs, 141, 146–50, 147, 148 Zanganeh, Sheikh Ali Khan, 140–41 Zarthoshti Anjoman Atash Bahram, 84, 102, 121–26, 124, 127

( 262 )  Index

Zell ol-Soltan, Masud Mirza, 195, 228n195 Zend-Avesta. See Avesta Zoroastrianism calendar, 103, 151 charity ideal, 77, 101–2 Dasatir texts, 13–14, 22, 52, 86, 164 distinct Parsi practices, 102–3 Hegel on, 14–15 Modi on, 98–99 Persepolis in salvational historiography, 139 purity ideal, 72, 89, 102, 108, 110–11 under Qajar rule, 76–77, 162 and religious authority, 102, 103–4, 125, 126 and revivalistic literature, 13–14, 161, 163 as state religion, 8, 100, 101 Strzygowski on, 58–59, 62–63 See also Avesta; faravahar; fire temples