Today, history echoes when I hear of bombing runs on cities in the ongoing Gulf war. I shudder. Iran alone has 29 UNESCO heritage sites, placing it among the top 10 countries with the most landmarks enjoying the protective status — which alas offers no defense against belligerent air forces. Many have suffered damage.
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Attacks on one city in particular concern me — Isfahan. It’s home to the four-century old Abbasi Mosque, a glorious complex of blue and turquoise, built in a style that inspired its slightly later contemporary, the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. The Taj is made of inlaid marble, while the mosque is covered in resplendently innumerable tiles. The interior dome of the Indian wonder has an austere geometricity (it is, after all, a tomb); the inside of the Iranian dome is exultant cosmography, riotous joy laid out in punctilious symmetry. A stray bomb damaging this miracle of human craftsmanship would be as abominable as an assault on the Taj.
The threat to Isfahan’s shrine is very real. This week, US President Donald Trump posted video of an attack on the city, saying it hit “a lot of stuff.” One of the bombing objectives is to knock out the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, which is about 20 kilometers (about 13 miles) away from the Abbasi — also called the Shah (or King’s) Mosque. That’s roughly the length of the small island of Manhattan, or the distance from St. Paul’s Cathedral to Wembley Stadium in London.
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The Iranian nuclear research hub is considered a legitimate target by the US and Israel because it converts uranium yellowcake into a form that can be refined for use in nuclear reactors or, with even more time in centrifuges, weapons-grade material for warheads (that part of the process is done either at Natanz, about 80 miles up the road from Isfahan, or Fordow, 165 miles away in a neighboring province). The mosque has not suffered a direct hit, but reverberations of the bombings have reportedly been powerful enough to loosen tiles and damage windows.While the mosque and its adjoining square may be delicate, their significance is far more robust than just a beautiful view. The area is practically the same size and as bustling as St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan. It is the probably the most visited domestic tourist site in Iran — and its symbolism is central to the country’s sense of self.
Isfahan became the capital of Persia in 1597 when Shah Abbas the Great moved his government there amid a grand transformation of the empire. That included the mass conversion of the populace within a generation to Shi’a Islam, a dramatic spiritual metamorphosis that set the nation apart from the great Sunni Muslim powers of the day, Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India. Isfahan became the ceremonial center of his alternate imperium, a projection of national identity so potently embodied in architecture that, more than three centuries later, the 1979 Iranian Revolution claimed it too. Having overthrown the monarchy, the theocracy officially subbed out the word “shah” and made the official name of the shrine the Imam Mosque — a reference to the ayatollah who led the revolution and took charge of the country, Imam Khomeini.
The US knows what can happen when its monuments are destroyed. After 9/11, outrage galvanized the populace in support of vengeance until a cycle of forever wars sapped the American will. Who can foretell the consequences if Isfahan’s mosque suffers irreparable harm, even by accident? But I’m certain of one thing: Nothing will be sacred.
(The article reflects the author’s views and not necessarily those of the publication.)
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