Wine, music and ascension to God. Plaster molding marvel reflects the kasrat-beh-vahdat concept at the entertainment hall in Ali Qapu Palace, Isfahan, Iran.
Tears have come to me twice so far from merely walking into a room in Iran.
The first was at Kashan’s Sultan Amir Bathhouse.
And then today, as I walked into what 400 years ago was the king’s entertainment hall at the Isfahan’s Ali Qapu Palace.
My guide and friend Abdulreza Soleimani was talking but I can’t recall what at the moment.
I was mumbling to myself: “What happened to you Iran? What happened?”
This was the room where Shah Abbas I entertained. The musicians were hidden in tiny quarters on the four sides of room, from which their music would spill into the room but they could not see the inside of the hall.
 It's all plaster! Close-up of 400-year-old plaster moldings. |
 "Before and after plaster molding repair at Ali Qapu Palace. The right side—the modern work isn't as straight as the left side—the 400-year-old original. |
 Restoration artists at work at Ali Qapu Palace, Isfahan, Iran. |
“Listen to the silence,” Soleimani pled with us.
“Do you hear the silence? This was the kind of silence the music penetrated. You see, in this age there was actually a philosophy of silence.”
The king sat in the middle of the room, where I stood now, surrounded on four sides with 3D plaster moldings shaped like bottles of wine and other containers, perhaps hundreds of each, in row after row, each row building upon the other, and changing shape and size, and giving way to other themes, until they met in the center of the dome.
The concept is called “kasrat-beh-vahdat”—literally “plurality to singularity”—one of the oldest and most revered concepts of Islam. Plurality—represented by all the beauty I was surrounded with—is the world and its people. Singularity—the golden center of the dome I was starring at—is God.
It says to mankind all things end in God and all things come from God.
I strode closer to the plaster moldings. Each representation of the wine bottle—in which sometimes actual bottles were placed—was perfectly identical to the other and in complete symmetry with the other elements.
How could they pull off that kind of perfection 400 years ago?
“You have to remember that the people who did this work were artists who had devoted their lives to expression of art and spirituality,” Soleimani said.
“You and I want wages to work. But the artist of 400 years ago was in the business of satisfying himself. He gave himself to his work.
“Hafez created a collection like no other but did not make a penny.”
Why even bother? Photos would never do justice to the dome at the king's entertainment room at Ali Qapu Palace, Isfahan, Iran
He showed me new plaster work created with modern equipment. The shapes were off. They symmetry was not as perfect as the 400-year-old.
How could the ancient people be more exact? What were their tools?
“The tools of the heart!” Soleimani snapped back. “What tools did Rumi use to ascend to the heavens?”
“You see Ali,” he turned toward me. “You have to understand that Iran is not a geographic location. Iran is a way of thinking; it’s a way of loving.
“When you’re back in America never think of yourself as being from a place. Think of yourself as devotion, of thought—that took thousands of years to form.”
The architects and their artisans used "the tools of the heart," says art historian Abdulreza Soliemani, speaking at the king's entertainment hall at Ali Qapu Palace, Isfahan, Iran. Beautiful tourist on the left not part of the entertainment.