Archive for category: Travel Blog

Fin Garden, also known as Bagh-e-Fin, in Kashan, is one of nine fascinating Persian gardens on the UNESCO world heritage list. Fin Garden is a historical garden and one of the most visited tourist attractions in Isfahan province. It attracts many tourists and travelers from around the world. This garden dates back to the 16th century when the Safavid dynasty ruled. Then it underwent some reconstruction in the late 19th century. It was highly recognized and expanded during the reign of Fat′h Ali Shah Qajar in the 19th century. The garden may date back to before the Safavid period; however, no valid document is available. During the reign of King Abbas I of Persia, the Persian garden was reconstructed into its current form. Travel to Iran and visit Fin Garden in Kashan to experience how it feels to step into heaven.

Fin Garden History

The plan of the Fin Garden is a kind of elaborated Chahar Bagh with a pavilion at the intersection. As a traditional Chahar Bagh with a large area of thousands of square meters, it is surrounded by trees, shrubs, water flows, and a high curtain wall with circular towers separating this oasis from the surrounding desert. Fin Garden is also famous for its historical tragedy. Amir Kabir was the chief minister to Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. He was one of the most innovative men in the Qajar period and was murdered in Fin Garden in 1852. Once registered as national property, Fin Garden became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some believe that Ghiyāth al-Dīn Jamshīd Kāshānī, a Persian astronomer and mathematician, was the designer of the garden. On the other hand, some say it was the great art of Sheikh Bahaei, a Shia Islamic scholar, architect, mathematician, and poet who lived in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

 A Heaven in Hiding

Fin Garden, a splendid sample of Persian gardens, exhibits a good combination of nature, culture, history, and architecture. All architectural elements are elaborately applied to make a masterpiece that absorbs eyes for a long time. Persian gardens mainly lie in the heart of deserts. Seeing such magnificent green places in hot and arid areas would keep travelers in awe.
The construction of the pavilion in the middle of the garden, along with two dynamic elements of trees and water, brings about the identity of this cultural and historical attraction. Water plays a vital role in the design of Fin Garden. The sound of the flowing water can truly ease one’s soul. To have a perfect day in Fin Garden, do not forget to visit Fin Garden tea-house near the source of the spring. There are many trees shading the water full of fish. Travel to Iran and enjoy exploring one of the most beautiful examples of Persian architecture. Stroll around and listen to the peaceful sound of running water and the whistling sound of leaves.

Traditional Persian Fountain

Though the garden appears lush, it is surrounded by a desert landscape where water is scarce. However, the water runs through pools and canals with abundant beauty in the garden. The water is supplied from a spring that heads toward a pool behind the Persian garden. The height difference between the pool behind the Fin garden and the canals running through it make fountains throw the water upright by gravity. The water supply system is very sophisticated. There are clay pipes one meter beneath all the pools, and they connect to the main pools on one side and are blocked on the other.

Since the ends of the clay pipes are closed, the water flows out of the fountains. Since the ground is sloping and in order to divide the pressure, the pipes’ diameters have been built differently from each other. The pipe head is thicker than its end; therefore, water throws out of them with an equal amount. Twelve springs emerge from the main pool called Howz Joosh. Then it runs through canals ornamented with turquoise tiles. The eye-catching color of the tiles is in contrast with the color of the desert surrounding the garden.

Persian Howz Architecture

There is a fascinating pool in Fin Garden called Howz Joosh. It was once covered by tiles inspired by the design of Kashan carpets. Louvre Museum displays some looted tiles from the early Pahlavi period. Once the Britains attempted to restore the pool, but they failed to do so. Professor Pirnia- an Iranian architecture professor- also wanted to restore the Howz Joosh, but as he demolished one corner, he noticed clay pipes beneath each of the holes. Based on the calculations and pipe sizes, he decided he could not restore them and stopped manipulating them. Water flow not only cools the environment in hot seasons but also provides tranquility for humans through its soft sound.

Greenery of Fin Garden

As one of the most beautiful Persian gardens, the Fin Garden of Kashan contains many trees and shrubs. Several tall trees line its pathways. Compared to the hot desert surrounding the garden, the tall trees and abundance of water are a welcome contrast. There are hundreds of cypresses plus several plane trees in Fin Garden. Regarding the old age of trees, it seems that the evergreen trees of Fin Garden are mostly cypress trees while planting a few plane trees was considered to enhance the visual quality. Aside from that, the cypress is often represented as a symbol of beauty in the Persian language. The trees are approximately 100 to 470 years old. It embraces other flowers such as lilies, eglantine, jasmine, violets, and tulips. In constructing the garden, symmetry played an important role, but slowly sidewalks and buildings in the complex disrupted the harmony.

 

A Tragedy within Garden’s Beauty

Besides the small bathroom constructed in the Safavid period, Qajar architects built a large bathroom (Hamam). It was in the small bathroom that Amir Kabir was murdered in 1852. Amir Kabir served as the prime minister of Nasar al-din Shah, a ruler of the Qajar Dynasty from 1848 to 1851. He made significant changes, especially in the fields of education and administration. As a result of these actions, the prime minister became popular, but he provoked the anger of the royal family. Finally, Amir Kabir was dismissed by the king of Persia. His murder occurred later in the Fin Garden after he was imprisoned there. A tragic connection to the murder led to the garden’s disrepair until 1935 when they restored it as a national monument.

Similar to Narenjestan Garden and Eram Garden in Shiraz, Dowlatabad Garden in Yazd, and Shazdeh Garden in Kerman, Fin Garden is a masterpiece combining natural and artificial elements. The architectural structures represent both Safavid and Qajar styles. In the center of the garden stands the Safavid pavilion (Kushk), and at the end stands the Qajar pavilion (Kushk) with beautiful paintings on its walls. The small bathroom and Emarat-e-Sardar (an entrance building) belong to the Safavid period. There was also the Karim Khani Nook (Kalvat-e-Karimkhani), along with the national museum and the royal bathroom during the Qajar period. Kashan National Museum is worth a quick visit as well. It showcases some ceramics and calligraphy. However, the most exquisite highlight is the shah’s delightful shotor gelou, a two-story pool house in the middle of the complex.

Are you planning to travel to Iran? Please read Things to do in Kashan and Check out our Iran tours.

 

Saadi Shirazi- Abu-Mohammad Muslih al-Din Shirazi- the great Persian poet of all time, was born in Shiraz in the 13th century. He is one of the most influential Persian poets of the medieval period, admired for his artistry in expressing the deepest moral and social thoughts in the simplest words for all ages. He is well-known as the “Master of speech” among Persian scholars and one of the best poets of classical Persian literature. His two outstanding literary masterpieces are Golestan and Bostan.
The exact date of his birth is not known. According to his qasida poems, he left home to explore the world in 1225, contemporary to the invasion of Mongols to Fars. In Golestan, composed in 1258, he addresses himself as a person who has lived 50 years, but he is still naïve and does not know much about life.

Saadi Shirazi Lifestory

After leaving Shiraz, he went to the Nezamiyeh University in Baghdad and studied Islamic sciences, theology, law, history, and Arabic literature. During his thirty-year journey, he had the opportunity to travel across Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. He also visited Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina. He wrote about his travels and adventurous life in both Bustan and Golestan. Master of Speech fought alongside Sufis against Crusaders in Halab, but they captured him at Acre and held him captive there for seven years. But like many of his other stories, such as traveling to India and Central Asia, it cannot be confirmed and is considered highly suspect. Without a doubt, he lived much of his life as a wandering dervish.

Who is Saadi?

Saadi was a man of learning and traveling. He met all kinds of people, from intellectuals, merchants, preachers, farmers, ordinary people, and survivors of the Mongol invasions to Sufi dervishes and even thieves living in remote areas far from the invaded regions. Saadi was able to study society and advise and preach to people to follow wisdom and morality. He finally came back to Shiraz before 1257 CE in his late forties, and it was the time that he finished the composition of his masterpiece called Bustan. His birthplace Shiraz was where he spent the remainder of his life and was greatly respected by the residents and ruler of the city. He passed away between 1291 and 1294 in Shiraz. He has been titled a Sheikh because of his depth of knowledge.

 

Saadi Shirazi Bustan

His best-known work Bustan (or Bostan), was completed in 1257. Bustan is entirely in verse. It includes 183 stories in ten chapters about the virtues such as justice, kindness, love, modesty, liberality, generosity, satisfaction, and happiness, and the ecstatic practices of dervishes addressing all people to have a better and happier life. Bustan was called Saadi Nameh in older versions. It contains about 4000 verses.

Golestan

His masterpiece Golestan was completed in 1258, a year after composing Bustan. It is mainly composed in prose. It includes 8 chapters, mainly about the kings’ morality, the dervishes’ behavior, the benefits of contentment, silence and talking in proper time, love and youthfulness, weakness in old age, and education. Interspersed among the stories are short poems. It is one of the most influential books in prose in Persian literature. Saadi attempts to advise people to live freely and improve their quality of life in Golestan. It contains different anecdotes, pieces of advice, and quotations. It can show the cultural and social conditions of the society at the time of Saadi very well. Some characters and stories are real, and some are fictional. It is one of the first Persian books made by a print machine in 1824 in Tabriz.

Persian Language and Literature

Other works of Saadi include Ghazals (love poems or Lyrics; sonnets), Qasidas (longer mono-rhyme poems or Odes), Quatrains, and short pieces in prose in both Persian and Arabic. He is known as one of the greatest ghazal-writers of Persian poetry besides Hafez. Many scholars believe the best ghazals are from Saadi and Hafiz. Saadi has about 700 ghazals, mostly with the essence of love and some with mysticism sermons. He uses irony in his works to represent and criticize the deficiencies and corruptions in the society of his time.

The Greatest Ghazal Poet

The ghazals of Saadi are collected in four groups: Old Sonnets (written in his youth); Tayebat and Badaye (written in his middle age); and Khavateem (written in his old days). Most experts believe Saadi’s Old Sonnets are about earthy love, while his Khavateem is more about mystical love, as well as ethics and piety. According to this dichotomy, they guess Saadi practically passed the earthy love to the mystical love during the different stages of his life.

Saadi’s Artistic Style of Writing

Saadi elaborately distinguishes between spiritual and mundane aspects of life in his works. He tries to visualize the deepest meanings of life in the most tangible contexts and close to conversational language as far as possible in a way that even common people can get the most out of his writings. Saadi’s writing style is called Saj’ in Persian and Arabic, and it is a kind of prose characterized by rhythm as well as rhyme. This artistic style of writing reaches its peak in Saadi’s Golestan. His prose style is described as simple but impossible to imitate.

Saadi Shirazi Poems

The writing style of Saadi undoubtedly had a huge influence on Persian literature and many great poets who followed him. There is a surprising similarity between his language and modern Persian. After about eight centuries, his works are still easy to understand and admirable in different languages. Many of the Persian proverbs have been taken from his works. Translations include “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”, “what can you expect from a hog but a grunt?” and “Haste makes waste.” Among the well-known western poets who translated Saadi’s works are Goethe and Andre du Ryer- the first European who presented Saadi to the west for the first time in 1634. Golestan was translated into Latin in 1651. Sir Richard Francis Burton translated Golestan into English for the first time.

In one of the most well-known immortal poetries of Saadi, he considers all humans as different parts of a whole body, regardless of social barriers and race:
Human beings are members of a whole,
In the creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of a human you cannot retain.
This poem conveys such a deep humane universal concept that is printed on the ten-thousand-Rial bill to remind everyone of the love and peace in everyday life.

Tomb of Saadi

It is one of the major tourist attractions in Shiraz to visit his mausoleum, also known as Saadieh. It is located in a beautiful garden beside Delgosha Garden (dating back to the Sassanid era). The tomb was built in the 13th century. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in the 17th century. The present-day building was built between the years 1950 and 1952. It was inspired by Chehel Sotoun and built by the architect Mohsen Foroughi. Many Persian elements have been used in its architecture. It is also a National Heritage Site. It is visited annually by thousands of visitors who respect him and adore the eloquence in his works. Most of the tours to Iran include Saadieh in their itineraries while visiting Shiraz during their travel to Iran. To commemorate Saadi, 21 March is celebrated as the National Day of Saadi in Iran every year.

Are you planning to travel to Iran? Please read Things to do in Shiraz and Check out our Iran tours.