#Nishapur

[fashionbooksmilano]

Ceramiche Persiane IX-XIV Secolo - Michail

a cura di Giovanni Curatola

Michail, Ancient & Islamic Pottery, Milano 1993, 103 pagine, 23x23cm,

euro 45,00

email if you want to buy booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

Mostra Milano Michail c/o Galleria Garzanti Via Spiga 30

Cento emozioni nella preziosa ed elegante collezione di ceramiche antiche ideata e realizzata da Louise Michail e la figlia Narghes Sorgato, frutto di un’appassionata e competente ricerca di anni. Piccoli capolavori dell’arte fittile prodotti in Persia tra il IX e il XIV secolo. Rare ceramiche da Nishapur, con decorazioni a macchie, a stampo, epigrafiche, spesso recanti interessanti ornamentazioni a tema naturalistico, realizzate con la tecnica a lustro metallico sotto invetriatura. Uno scroscio di genialità ed estro proveniente dalle steppe centro-asiatiche, ricca di soluzioni tecniche sofisticate, frutto di sperimentazioni continue e originali. Cerchi immaginifici, monocromatici o in vivaci bicromie, per questi preziosi reperti medievali, ognuno dei quali ci racconta una storia, talvolta ci reca attraverso i secoli un messaggio a contenuto beneaugurale capace di emozionare come se fosse stato scritto ai giorni nostri.

02/01/24

[polymorphousculturevulture]

Bird ceramic Plate, Nishapur, Iran, X and XI centuries AD.

[leitoracomcompanhia]

Em Nishapur

Um novo mausoléu foi inaugurado em 1961. Pretendia ser um símbolo da moderna arquitetura iraniana e da sua ligação às tradições culturais do país. Rodeado por um jardim permite que as flores continuem a cair sobre a campa do poeta.

A fotografia foi roubada à wikipedia.

[avetruth]

Nilhan Sarıgül. Selçuklu başkenti Nîşâbûr: kuruluşundan büyük Selçuklu hâkimiyetinin sonuna kadar. Yüksek lisans tezi (2018) https://www.avetruthbooks.com/2023/10/nilhan-sarigul-selcuklu-baskenti-nisabur-kurulusundan-buyuk-selcuklu-hakimiyetinin-sonuna-kadar-yuksek-lisans-tezi-2018.html

[majestativa]

Drink the wine of mystic knowledge, but don’t then forget to keep your lips closed.

— ATTAR ⚜️ Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition, transl. by David Fideler & Sabrineh Fideler, (2010)

[edwordsmyth]

"I saw Love above faith or infidelity; I saw it bear no sign of doubt or certainty. Faithlessness, assurance, doubt, and religion I saw convene in the presence of Reason. Since I surpassed Reason by a hundred realms I can say I discern infidelity and faith. All the barriers along the Path are self-made. I found them similar to Alexander’s rampart. You shall be fully effaced upon the Path. I saw the road leading us closer to this. When I took up the task of description I saw the features with my bodily eyes. For every feature I annihilated I saw another one lying in ambush. When my soul transcended description I saw it drown in an ocean of flames. As my harvest burned in that ocean I saw the moon and the sun harvesting my crop. You could say the ocean was infinite. I saw the Paradise and the houris in it. When I traversed such an ocean I saw the Rakhsh of sun beneath a saddle. I considered the two worlds as a ring; I saw the heart as a gemstone upon that ring." -ʿAṭṭār of Nishapur

[myartisdangerous]

What shadow is ever separated from its maker? Do you see? The shadow and its maker are one and the same, so get over surfaces and delve into mysteries.

- Attar, The Conference of the Birds

[nmnmrsz]

Painting by Habiballah of Sava, ~1600.

Attar, The Conference of the Birds, ~1177.

The birds must cross seven valleys in order to find Simorgh, who lives on the mountain Qaf: 1. Yearning / Quest (the Wayfarer casts aside all dogma, belief, and unbelief), 2. Love (reason is abandoned for the sake of love), 3. Gnosis / Insight into Mystery (worldly knowledge becomes utterly useless), 4. Detachment / Independence (all desires and attachments to the world are given up. Here, what is assumed to be 'reality' vanishes), 5. Unity (the Wayfarer realizes that everything is connected and that the Beloved is beyond everything, including harmony, multiplicity, and eternity), 6. Wonderment / Bewilderment (entranced by the beauty of the Beloved, the Wayfarer becomes perplexed and, steeped in awe, finds that he has never known or understood anything), 7. Poverty / Fulfilment in Annihilation (the self disappears into the universe and the Wayfarer becomes timeless, existing in both the past and the future).

«.... You came as thirty birds and therefore saw these selfsame thirty birds, not less nor more; If you had come as forty, fifty – here. An answering forty, fifty, would appear; Though you have struggled, wandered, travelled far, it is yourselves you see and what you are.' (Who sees the Lord? It is himself each sees; What ant's sight could discern the Pleiades? What anvil could be lifted by an ant? Or could a fly subdue an elephant?) 'How much you thought you knew and saw; but you now know that all you trusted was untrue. Though you traversed the Valleys' depths and fought with all the dangers that the journey brought, the journey was in Me, the deeds were Mine – You slept secure in Being's inmost shrine. And since you came as thirty birds, you see these thirty birds when you discover Me, the Simorgh, Truth's last flawless jewel, the light in which you will be lost to mortal sight, dispersed to nothingness until once more you find in Me the selves you were before.' Then, as they listened to the Simorgh's words, a trembling dissolution filled the birds – The substance of their being was undone, and they were lost like shade before the sun; Neither the pilgrims nor their guide remained. The Simorgh ceased to speak, and silence reigned. .... All shadows are made nothing in the one unchanging light of Truth's eternal sun' .... Those who can speak still wander far away from that dark truth they struggle to convey, and by analogies they try to show the forms men's partial knowledge cannot know. (But these are not the subject for my rhyme; They need another book, another time - And those who merit them will one day see this Nothingness and this Eternity; While you still travel in your worldly state, you cannot pass beyond this glorious gate.) .... You have no knowledge of what lies ahead; Think deeply, ponder, do not be misled .... Blindly they saw themselves and deaf they heard - But who can speak of this? I know if I betrayed my knowledge I would surely die; If it were lawful for me to relate such truths to those who have not reached this state, those gone before us would have made some sign; But no Sign comes, and silence must be mine. Here eloquence can find no jewel but one, that silence when the longed-for goal is won. The greatest orator would here be made in love with silence and forget his trade, and I too cease: I have described the Way - Now, you must act - there is no more to say.»

[loneberry]

--Qur-an, 27:16 *

--Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams *

Liquid speech. Sonic mirrors. Language may just be humans imitating the birds imitating the river. I'm sad my birder friends have gone home. One is a Bachelard scholar. We waxed rhapsodic about this passage while discussing deep listening. The birder friends made me aware that even in my urban yard there's so much ornithological variety. Those twitters high up in the ficus leaves? It's the Allen's hummingbird, which I dreamed the same night I dreamed I migrated to Sofia, Bulgaria:

Dream I bought a half-finished house in Sofia, Bulgaria, but it was somehow on the border of the Italian Alps, in a quiet marsh. I see the map in my mind. How far am I from the Black Sea? How it glimmered when seen from above. Narrow streets. The station was dark. Ate our cheap station food by the light of our cell phones (I have a “candlelight” option on the bottom of my cell phone). Were we going to the sea?

The house had three trees inside. I didn’t want to cut them down. One had white fuzzy leaves and produced a strange fruit that was a cross between a date and an olive, but much larger. Was it a Bulgarian specialty? I asked a woman with a beautiful garden. She spoke perfect English. 

In the center of the living room was a bathing basin. There was a library with a loft. The plan was to run a community center out of it. 

I see a coppery hummingbird with a red spot.

[eyeoftheheart]

“What you most want, what you travel around wishing to find, lose yourself as lovers lose themselves, and you'll be that.”

~ Attar of Nishapur

"Looking For Your Own Face" as translated by Coleman Barks in The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia

[inspofromancientworld]

Legendary Creatures: Simurgh

By Alaexis - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2115489

A simurgh (سیمرغ, also spelled senmurv, simorgh, simorg, simurg, simoorg, simorq or simourv) is a Persian bird that is related to the phoenix that spans an area from Georgia, to Armenia, and the Byzantine Empire and other areas that were influenced by the Persian Empire.

By Unknown author - This file has been provided by the British Library from its digital collections.Catalogue entry: IOSM J.67, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31453107

The word simurgh is related to the words meaning 'the bird of Saēna', a raptor, probably an eagle, falcon, or sparrowhawk as the Sanskrit śyenaḥ (श्येनः) meaning 'bird of prey'. Though it is also closely related to the phrase sī murğ (سی مرغ) that means 'thirty birds', which was used by Sufi poet Abū Ḥāmid bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm (c. 1145 – c. 1221; Persian: ابوحمید بن ابوبکر ابراهیم), better known by his pen-names Farīd ud-Dīn (فریدالدین) and ʿAṭṭār of Nishapur (عطار نیشاپوری) in his The Conference of the Birds as a word play.

By Nickmard Khoey - https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickmard/2887513290/in/set-72157607483985460/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5619184

The simurgh is frequently depicted as a winged creature, large enough to carry an elephant or a whale, with the body of a peacock, head of a dog, and claws of lions. Sometimes, it has a human face. It is old enough that it 'had seen the destruction of the world three times over'. It also plunges itself into flames every 1,700 years, similar to phoenixes.

By Painting: Unknown 7th century artist.Photographer: undetermined - This file has been extracted from another file, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=95912662

They are benevolent, purifying land, bestowing fertility, mediating the union between the Earth and the sky by serving as a messenger. It lived in the Tree of Life in the middle of the world sea. When it flew away from the Tree of Life, the Tree shook so hard that it lost leaves, which became the seeds of every plant. It also expresses the divine mandate of kingship and priesthood.

By From the Sarai Albums. - http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/Pictures1/im16.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5760173

Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (940-ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی 1019/1025), also Firdawsi or Ferdowsi (فردوسی) wrote the most famous story about the simurgh in his Shahnameh (Book of Kings). In it, a prince named Zal, son of Saam, was born albino, causing his father to cast him out, believing him to be demonic. A simurgh rescues him and raises him, teaching him wisdom as they have all knowledge. When Sal was old enough, he wanted to rejoing humanity and the simurgh and the simurgh gave him three feathers to call her should he need her help. He married a woman named Rudaba who had a difficult labor with their first child. The simurgh responded to his call for help and taught him to perform a cesarean section.

[letoghanima]

daemyra appreciation week: day 2 – songs/lyrics ⤷ the conference of birds, attar of nishapur

[tammuz]

Persian jug with painted bands of calligraphy and foliage from the city of Nishapur, dating back to 10th-12th centuries CE. Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV.

Photo by Babylon Chronicle

[desertflowerbowling]

malevolent poetry references: season 1

part 4: the voices

this is the first of multiple times that this phrase appears in the show. it appears to have originated from a medieval Persian fable, written by the Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur. the phrase was popularized in the west following an early nineteenth century translation and retelling of the story by Edward Fitzgerald.

part 5: the gift

this is a line from “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by the American poet Robert Frost. it was first published in 1923, eleven years before the events of malevolent.

part 8: the caves

the quotation here comes from “Cassilda’s Song”, a poem written by Robert W. Chambers as a preface to his 1895 book, The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories.

part 12: the end

this isn’t poetry, but it is a notable reference, because it is a quote from H.P. Lovecraft. the full quote is: “The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.”

[majestativa]

The destruction of the heart is in reliance on humankind.

— Futayma of Nishapur, Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure, (2003)

[holycosmolo9y]

Elephant figure, carved of stone

Nishapur, Iran

(10th century CE)