Betsy’s Travels through India

In the Freer | Sackler Archives our best volunteer is a woman named Betsy.  Betsy has been working in the archives since 2001.  Fifteen years of detailed and focused attention that has led to the creation and availability of the Smith and Pope collections.  She is the quintessential no-nonsense woman with a heart of gold.

Sometimes I think that the hard work that goes into making a collection available (doing basic preservation, creating the finding aid, organizing the materials, etc.) is overlooked.  Making a collection accessible to the public is a monumental task.  Collections generally do not arrive ready to be put online, with digital surrogates and finding aids.  Often collections are literally a palette of boxes pulled out of someone’s basement or an unorganized hard drive of materials.  The person who is tasked with organizing a collection for access to the public has to preserve the thought processes of the collection's creator and at the same time ensure that the materials are organized in such a way that they can be combed through by eager researchers.

Betsy hard at work in the Freer | Sackler Archives

This past year Betsy has been working hard on the papers of Dr. Prince Aschwin de Lippe-Biesterfeld, PhD (1914-1988).  Lippe was curator in the Far Eastern Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1949 until 1973. He specialized in Chinese Classical Paintings.  The subject matter of this collection was a bit out of Betsy’s wheelhouse of knowledge, but she is more than capable of working through a collection regardless of subject matter expertise.

from Left to Right): James Cahill, Aschwin de Lippe, H. Bevil, and John Pope.  Taken at National Gallery of Art, 1961. 

There were, of course, some bumps along the way.  The biggest speed bump came with trying to identify locations in the countless photograph slides that Lippe had taken during his travels and study of India.  Betsy has a lot of experience with photographs and she first approached this problem from the angle of making all the negative and slide numbers match to at least give these photographs a sense of order for researchers. Secondarily, she made note of any writing on slides photographs and added those to the finding aid she was building in tandem with her physical overhaul of the Lippe collection.

Some of these notes had difficult to read hand writing.  One particular slide note was hard to read and Betsy asked me if I could make it out.  I starred at it for a while, afraid to verbalize my answer.  She jumped in and said it looks like the second word looked like Butterball, but I can’t make out the first word.  I felt better that I was not the only one who thought it said Butterball.  After a little time we determined that the first word was Krishna.  Since neither of us are subject matter experts, I did a search online and low and behold we discovered that Krishna’s Butterball is a real rock in India.

Krishna’s Butterball in Mahabalipuram, India. Prince Aschwin de Lippe Papers 1940-1988,FSA A2012.01 Box 11, Folder 33

Krishna’s Butterball is one small example of the amount of research and time that goes into making materials clear and organized. Betsy had to check out several books from the library to cross check and confirm locations in India.  She had to completely read through and then figure out a way to order Lippe’s research notes and notebooks so that they both preserved Lippe’s thought processes and could actually be accessed by scholars.

Working on an archival collection is always a long game.  Sometimes you only organize a few folders due to the complexity of the materials. Other days you have epiphanies about connections between various scattered materials and can go through several boxes. We are lucky to have someone as intelligent, tenacious, and dedicated as Betsy working in the Freer |Sackler Archives.

Collections Betsy has Organized:
Myron Bement Smith Collection
John Pope Papers
Prince Aschwin de Lippe Papers

Lara Amrod
Freer | Sackler Archives

Change the Station, Change the Noise: Space for the Inner Self in Wild Places

When one is alone at night in the depths of these woods, the stillness is at once awful and sublime. Every leaf seems to speak.

~ John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938) 

Our world is a huge ball of constant connection, be it from phones to tablets to computers. We are bombarded with noise; the noise of voices, opinions, statistics, and 24 hour news cycles. It was not so different at the turn of the 20th century. Communications were being invented and exploding around the world. Newspapers were the twitter of this era. Letter writing was texting. Phones were still in their infant stages of growth. There was a new kind of noise, and people were feeling just as overwhelmed by it as people today feel by their phones and online presence.

Yellowstone by Thomas Moran, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

It was around this time that people, such as John Muir and Aldo Leopold, were taking up the cause to save open spaces and to escape from the 'noise' of the modern world. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Many were doing the “Grand Tour” of Yellowstone, among them were Teddy Roosevelt and even Rudyard Kipling. Kipling visited Yellowstone in 1889, he wrote in his journals that he encountered “The Wonderland” one has only read about in books. Art collector, businessman, and founder of the Freer | Sackler Museum, Charles Lang Freer, was among the many Americans who discovered the beauty and peace in the natural wonders of the United States wilderness.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Freer often went hiking with Frederick Stuart Church, an artist, with whom Freer had become great friends. In the 1880s, Freer started building his renowned print collection and he was soon elected chair of the Detroit Club, which had been founded by prominent Detroit citizens to open an art museum. It was through this organization that Freer became friends with several leading American painters including Church, Gari Melchers, Dwight William Tryon, and Charles A. Platt.

Charles Lang Freer in the Catskills, Freer | Sackler Archives

Freer and Church often hiked and camped out throughout the famous Catskills Mountains. The Catskills are a famous refuge for outdoors seekers, hikers, and artists. The area has been made famous through stories and artwork by such illustrious people as Washing Irving and Thomas Cole.


Falls at Catskill by Thomas Cole, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Freer viewed traveling into nature as a means of finding balance in a world overrun by industry and competition. As he wrote to Frank Hecker in 1892, "We spend nearly all of our hours outdoors and like the springs of these mountains we have a feverish desire to keep in constant motion. The springs minister to our refreshment, the air invigorates us…" Through Freer’s receptiveness to the power of wallowing in the natural world, he gained an abiding appreciation of landscape painting. Painter Dwight Tryon was just beginning to get recognized in 1889 when Freer bought his landscape, The Rising Moon: Autumn right off the easel in Tryon's studio.


The Rising Moon: Autumn by Dwight William Tryon,
Freer | Sackler Smithsonian's Museums of Asian Art

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~ John Muir








So it seems even the important personages of the early 20th century were looking for "down time" and "disconnection" from modern communications and noise.  It was a way to not only connect back to the physical world around them, but to reconnect with themselves and one another.  Perhaps we all need this sacred space to reconnect with the inner most chambers of ourselves? 


4c Forest Conservation Single,
National Postal Museum Collection

Teddy Roosevelt ended up being one of great advocates for creating National Parks, he became known at the "conservationist president." Yellowstone, the first National Park was created by Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. Roosevelt toured Yosemite with John Muir in 1903 and ushered in the National Monuments Acts Act in 1906, which helped to create many preserves and parks. On August 25th, 1916, The National Park Service, was finally created and is celebrating its 100th anniversary today. We have always needed the land, not just for sustenance, but for the wild places that can replenish our inner selves, so they run over with renewed inspiration for living. Not all wild places need be far away, it can be as simple as taking the time to visit your local park. Looking at the clouds, the trees, observing the dappling light play through the trees, jumping in a lake. Be in the moment, be in a different type of noise. Oliver Sacks may have phrased it best in these modern times, “We seek ... a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in." Choose a day and just wander down your local streets, free of everything, but your moving legs and open ears.

Charles Lang Freer in the Catskills, Freer | Sackler Archives

Only one who wanders finds new paths. ~ Norwegian proverb

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. 

 -  John Lubbock



The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by Thomas Moran, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Lara Amrod, Archivist
Freer | Sackler Archives



References
Avery, Kevin J. Hudson River School. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Wing, 2004.

Kipling, Rudyard. From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel (Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Lawton, Thomas and Merrill, Linda. Freer: A Legacy of Art. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, 1993.

National Park Service. Theodore Roosevelt and Conservation.

National Park Service. Yellowstone: A History of the First National Park. 2009.

Ice Cream! Come and get your Ice Cream.

We have been having some interesting weather of late here in the D.C. region. D.C. can be a very hot and humid place in the summer, but that doesn’t stop tourists from visiting this city or from buying ice cream that will inevitably melt down their fingers in the heat. How did hot countries and countries at the height of summer ever get ice cream without the benefit of modern day freezers?

Dwight Eisenhower eating an ice cream bar.  AC0451-0000037.tif
Good Humor Ice Cream Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Well, ice cream and “ice cream trucks” actually has a long history. It is believed that ice cream originated in China starting with rice being mixed with milk and then stuck in the snow to freeze. Later the upper classes sent servants into the mountains to get snow so that fruit and juices could be added, creating an early form of sorbet. Of course, the working class could not afford such indulgences.

In the late 17th century, was one of the first places in Europe to serve ice cream to the general public was Café Procope in Paris, but it was still for the upper echelon and not a wide spread treat. Several early American Presidents loved ice cream, including George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson who created his own vanilla ice cream recipe . At this point, ice cream was more common, but it was still reserved for special occasions.

Good Humor Vendor with Pushcart. Neg. No. 92-11719.
Good Humor Ice Cream Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

Ice cream treats received some assistance from Carol von Linde, who invented industrial refrigeration in the 1870s. This invention along with many from the industrial Revolution made it much easier to produce, transport, and store ice cream and many other perishable items. Soon new and different flavors followed including the invention of ice cream soda.

“Won't You Have an Ice Cream Soda with Me” Sheet Music. Catalog No. 1982.0745.04.
National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center. 

It was through the cafes of Paris that King Nasser uddin Shah, of Iran, first learned about ice cream, but it was his successor, Mozaffar uddin Shah, who brought bastani, or ice cream to Iran. Akbar Mashdi (Akbar Mashahdi Malayeri) was the first Iranian to vend ice creams. He was famous in Iran and was known as far afield in places such as Los Angeles and Paris. Mashdi was born in a remote village in 1868 and worked many different jobs before selling ice cream. One of his earlier jobs was transporting tea and sugar to northern cities and bringing back firewood to Tehran. Mashdi became friends with Mohammad Rish, who had ties with Mozaffar uddin Shah’s courtiers. This is how Mashdi became familiar with the tasty treat that is ice cream.

People at Maydan-I Mashq's ice cream cart in Tehran. FSA A.4 2.12.Sm.01.
Myron Bement Smith Collection: Antoin Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Gift of Katherine Dennis Smith, 1973-1985. 

When Reza Shah came to power Reza Khan, Mohammad Rish, and Mashdi seized the moment to found the first ice cream shop in Iran. Rish only stayed in the ice cream business for two years, but Mashdi would sell ice cream for the rest of his life. Due to a lack of modern refrigeration, Mashdi worked a lot in the wintertime and in the mountains near Tehran. People, including, Mashdi had to use natural refrigeration. To preserve ice cream during the hot summer months, they would dig very deep holes. Everyone from commoners to courtiers purchased ice creams from Mashdi.

Lara Amrod, Archivist
Freer | Sackler Archives


References
History of Ice Cream (Bastani) in Iran by Ahmad Jalali Farahani, June 2004
The History of Ice Cream by Emily Upton June 16, 2013

The Saga of a Battle Ready Volunteer: AKA A Diamond in the Rough

Places of business go through a lot of changes.  Archives are no different.  Seasons and interns come and go.  You have some volunteers for a year or two and others are around forever, becoming part of your work family.  They are indispensable.  The Freer|Sackler Archives has such a volunteer in Betsy.  She has been working here for fifteen years and rarely misses a week, unless she is off traveling the world.  Betsy is an extremely intelligent, quiet, and dedicated volunteer.  She volunteers several places in the region and the Smithsonian is very lucky to have her.  

Bonfil's photograph of Palmyra found in Smith Collection.

Betsy has worked on many collections for us, but none was bigger or more important than the Myron Bement Smith Collection.  Smith was a classical archaeologist, architect, and art historian from New York who had a lifelong devotion to West Asia, accumulating some 87,000 items documenting Islamic art and culture from Spain to India, with an emphasis on architecture.  Smith, like so many scholars of this era, was a methodical man who kept records of everything. This has ended up making his collection even more invaluable to researchers.  For example, some items, such as Félix Bonfils’ 1860s photographs of Palmyra have recently become invaluable because they are the only representations of these important sites.

A few years ago we hit a snag with the Smith Collection, which we thought was done.  We were immensely lucky to have Betsy as our wing woman. We had a researcher, who had worked with the Smith collection before, request something from the finding aid and we went to retrieve it.  Then something odd happened - we could not find the materials. It was not Betsy’s day in the archives, so we requested the researcher come back the next day.  We were hoping it was us just not looking in the right place, rather than something missing.

Myron Bement Smith and his wife Katharine.

Some of the recovered Smith materials.

The next day rolled around and Betsy looked for the materials as well, but, sadly, she could not find them either.  It was decision making time.  My boss, Betsy, and I talked it out and we came to the decision that all the physical locations in the finding aid needed to be checked.  Was Betsy willing to do this?  Thankfully, she was willing.  During this time, my boss and I were relocating some collections to better utilize the space in the archives.  We were moving glass plates and adjusting shelves when low and behold there, under a shelf, were the missing items from the Smith collection. 

There was another powwow about the Smith Collection and we all decided that Betsy’s check of the Smith collection should expand to the entire finding aid.  The ever hard working Betsy agreed because she wanted the collection to be accurate and as useful to researchers as possible.  She and I worked together even going so far as to re-label a good chunk of the boxes.  Wonderful things have come from overhauling this collection and finding aid, researchers from different areas of study have used this collection and we continue to get requests for this collection on a weekly basis.  All of Betsy’s hard work was worth it.  As she has said, she just wants the collection to be of use and it very much is.

This was a large, important project and Betsy had been working on it for years. So she knuckled down and went through it to make it better, to make it shine. Working with Betsy on this project was educational, meaningful, and wonderful.  I had the honor of getting to know this brilliant woman who volunteers for the Smithsonian and I got to hone my skills as an archivist.

Read more about overhauling this finding aid in Excavating a Finding Aid in Archival Outlook.

Lara Amrod, Archivist

Freer | Sackler Archives


Where have All the Scrolls Gone?

Have you been spending time lately thinking of just the right words to put in that 144 character tweet? Have you wondered is this photograph good enough before posting to Instagram?  Have you been wondering what important people will think of your blogs?



Tang Dynasty Scroll

The formats have changed, but how we interact, appear, or present ourselves to others has always been a part of society.  But how did people present thoughts, ideas, etc. to one another before the advent of computers?  Well, of course, there were letters.  There were cards.  Handwriting and drawing were also a huge factor when few people had cameras (and definitely not in your phone). 

People had to figure out ways to leave a good impression with different types of material.  Many people chose to create letters, but not just any letters.  They chose to make the letter a continuous and often decorous scroll.  This made for a unique and memorable exchange of ideas.

Scrolls date back as far as ancient Egypt and were the first editable record keeping texts.  They were great because they were flexible and could be long unlike their cousin, the clay tablet. This communication technology lasted until the Romans created the codex, or bound book, around the first century A.D.  Regardless, scrolls were respected and used more by the Romans well into their civilization. 

Qing Dynasty Handscroll

So imagine carrying around scrolls instead of phones or e-readers.  And now imagine you would only be carrying one around if you were someone who could read, like an official. So no devices that fit in your pocket.  And no instant access to all the information you want.

A shift from the scroll started to happen in the first century A.D. The adoption of the codex among early Christians is as explainable as the attraction of modern nerdy groups to cyberspace. With both groups of people there has been a need for a reading and communication mode suited to construct a society of unconventional dispersed individuals.  There was also a rising working class with increased a need for notebooks or account books.



Codex Washingtonensis

 A codex consists of folded pieces of vellum, papyrus, or paper that are then bound on one end so that the “pages” can be flipped through.  The continuous scroll stayed in use, but quickly lost ground to this new and easier to handle reading format.  Scrolls could be ten meters long, it was much easier to flip through folded pages of a codex than to have to unroll six meters of scroll to get to the passage you wanted! Random access points may seem like a small thing, but they changed the way people processed information.  The next big change for books would come with the movable type of Guttenberg.

A Group of Geese

 The use of scrolls never completely disappeared, but moved to the background.  Scrolls are still used for ceremonial texts or decoration, especially in Asian and Islamic cultures.  These scrolls were often elaborately decorated with calligraphic writing that included the use of embossing and pigments.  These cultures also created hanging art scrolls.

A scroll letter to Freer from Harada.

Scrolls are still occasionally used in this day and age.  In the early 20th century it was used as part of nice gifts or thank you cards between people. It was also used famously by Jack Kerouac to write his novel On the Road.  Kerouac said that he hated to stop typing to put paper in the typewriter so he taped the papers together so he did not have to interrupt his creativity.  In addition, the jargon “to scroll” or “scrolling” used on computers and internet dates back to scrolls.  So in some ways, scrolls have never gone away.

For more information on Kerouac's On the Road Scroll please see watch this video.

Lara Amrod, Archivist

Freer | Sackler Archives

References

The Book: The Life Story of a Technology by Nicole Howard. John Hopkins University Press, 2009.

From Scroll to Screen by Lev Grossman.  New York Times, September 2, 2011.

Great Evolution of Books by Ken Liu.  PowellBooks.Blog March 10, 2016

History of Scrolls

Codex

Throwback Thursday: Squeeze Making

Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blog-a-thon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.

With the abundance of technology that surrounds us every day, it’s easy to forget how we ever got along without it. Never fear, archives are here to help answer this and many more questions! For example, how did archaeologists capture and render a three-dimensional image in the early 20th century? We’re glad you asked. Before the invention of 3-D scanners and printers, there were squeezes.

The Sassanian Inscription of Paikuli (Iraq): Squeeze B.8, Middle Persian Version. 

A squeeze is a series of moldable paper, pulp, latex, or plaster that are layered on top of each other and moistened to create a wet pulp. The substance is then pressed, into a low relief inscription. When the material is dry and removed, it becomes a multidimensional mirror-image representation of the original inscription.

Paper squeezes being applied to an inscription.

Squeezes (bottom right) applied to Naqsh-i Rajab (Iran): Sassanid rock reliefs picturing Shapur I, mounted, with suite on foot.

Excavation of Pasargadae (Iran): Gate R (Gate house, palace with the relief): View of winged figure with paper squeeze applied on face.

The images shown here are from the Ernst Herzfeld Papers housed in the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. The Archives holds 393 squeezes from the ancient Near East, the largest collection outside of Iran and Iraq. To learn more, visit the Squeeze Imaging Project.

Chelsea Fairley
Freer|Sackler Archives

All is Made New Again

Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blog-a-thon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.

In this second information age, libraries and archives are constantly working to put “hidden” materials, collections, and data online so the public and scholars can discover bits of the past and make connections that may have seemed lost.

Over the last few months, working with the Freer Sackler’s wonderful Digital Media and Technology team, the archives has been able to streamline and improve our website.   We now have new and improved resource gateways for various collections including Ernst Herzfeld and Antoine Sevruguin.

Alice Roosevelt on the deck of the SS Manchuria.

We have also been able to add an entirely new gateway dedicated to Alice in Asia: The Taft 1905 Mission to Asia.  This collection came to the archives through a member of the Roosevelt family.  The collection is filled with wonderful photographs and portraits.  Most recently, the wonderful new resource gateway was featured on Smithsonian Magazine’s blog.

Aleppo (Syria): Madrasa al-Zahiriyya, Entrance Portal: Plan, Elevetion and Section

Furthermore, we have created collection level records for all of our collections.  In addition, through the development of the SOVA project all our finding aids are now searchable and downloadable PDFs.  This will be a great help to scholars who want to dig into collections.  This also makes our daily work load much more manageable because these new changes allow us to find errors and correct them immediately.

Collection organization starts from the the physical formats (paper, photographs, film) into understandable series boxes and order.  It is now also necessary to insure that the context and organization (also preservation of creator’s thoughts) are preserved in an online setting.

Lara Amrod
Freer|Sackler Archives

Swinging Window: Photography as Reflection

Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blog-a-thon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.

We have camera phones.  We have selfie sticks.  We have twitter.  We have Facebook. Basically we can take and share photos endlessly.  They have become a piece of our minute to minute lives.

In many ways, we live in the best documented era in history. In other ways, we have lost something, there is less time for memory and reflection.  Even when photography became easier individuals still had to think before grabbing a photograph because it used film. Now we can take a photograph every second.  There is no space for time.

Constructed panorama of New York City (Hara Silk Album).

In 2013 The Freer Sackler Archives acquired a lovely collection of materials from Veronika Soul.  This collection includes postcards and images of a Japanese families’ travels in the 1920s.  It is interesting to look and see what really caught the eye of the photographer.  There are some candid photographs of construction in New York City, street scenes, and people. 

In some ways, not so different from what you or I would take photos of, but at the same time we can take a thousand photographs a day and not really capture what catches our attention for good or bad.

Boardwalk of New York City (Hara Silk Album).

Think of the last time you looked at something with wonder.  Think of the last time something stole your breath away.  Not easy is it? Or perhaps the memory is not from recent years?  In this photograph collection you can feel the excitement and awe radiating from the images.  It makes them more captivating than they might be otherwise.  The photographer was awed by what he saw and it is felt by the viewer in the most visceral way. 

Capturing all the flavors of New York City (Hara Silk Album).

Perhaps the art of photograph is dead?  Perhaps the instantaneous accessibility of everything from TV series to information is diminishing its important or resonance with individuals?  It is collections like these that make one stop to think.  Have we lost the ability to reflect?  What will the future think of us?  How will we help the future? Can twenty photographs taken on the same day be as telling as one thoughtfully taken one?

There are many things in our lives than can be used for reflection an old bike, a favorite toy, and even old family photographs.  Perhaps we need to sit still and take a look. 

Lara Amrod
Freer|Sackler Archives

Message in a Box

The Freer | Sackler Archives is blessed to have many wonderful volunteers.  Many have been working for the archives for years. They all have collections that they come in every week to work on and care for.  One volunteer, the lovely Charlene, has been work on the Pauline B. and Myron S. Falk, Jr. Papers for several years. She is currently organizing all of the Falk correspondence. Recently, she stumbled upon some truly wonderful letters both sent and received by the Falks.  

They are filled with humor, life, and wonderful use of language.  One can’t help but stop to hear what neat letter Charlene has found on a particular day.  You get the impression that the Falks were warm, intelligent, and entertaining people to be around.

Pauline Falk worked with the Lincoln School for many years.

These letters have given us something more precious that a window into the Falks lives.  They have given us an idea of how diversely and uniquely individuals expressed themselves to one another. You can picture the people writing these letters as if they are in the room.  Furthermore, it reminds us how fun, complex, and different the English language can be.  

Excerpt from Mrs. Pauline Falk's 50th High School Reunion.   It took place in 1978 for the class of 1928.  Several of the classmates could not attend the reunion, but then sent delightful notes to be read at the reunion.

In yet another way, it makes us more aware that the art of letter writing is dying. We have email. We have Facebook. We have Twitter.  We have an endless amount of devices to keep us connected.   We communicate instantly and uniquely, but in a different more abrupt way.

The written word seems to be fighting a losing battle in the war of communication.   This is an era of abbreviated thought, where pausing to contemplate and write a personal letter and send it seems as foreign as an alien planet.

Letter thanking Pauline Falk for all her dedicated service to the Lincoln School, 1953.

Of course, email can be and is used to write thoughtful letters, but more often than not, the language of email seems to have given way to short perfunctory business sentences.  The idea of allowing one’s thoughts to wander deeply before putting words down is almost lost.

Perhaps we should all take the time to pause and breathe before we write and send our next email (or, perhaps, even a physical letter) to a friend.

Lara Amrod
Freer|Sackler Archives

Renewed Exposure to the Presence of Africans in Persia: Digitizing the Collections of Antoin Sevruguin Photographs in the Archives of the Freer|Sackler

This second of two blog posts was written by Xavier Courouble, cataloger of the collections of Antoin Sevruguin Photographs and the Ernst Herzfeld Papers at Freer Sackler Archives, Smithsonian Institution.  This post explores the presence of individuals of African descent at religious events in Qajar Iran.

Groups of Attendants at a Religious Gathering.
Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933). Albumen print taken before 1896. Myron Bement Smith Collection of Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
(FSA A2011.03 B.09).

Africans in Shiite Rituals during the Qajar Dynasty

The three photographs, taken by Antoin Sevruguin at the beginning of the twentieth century, depict a private performance and a large public procession, annually held during the first ten days of Moharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. They are part of the mourning ceremonies of Moharram, commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hosayn at Karbala in 61 AH/680 CE and reaching their climax on the tenth day of the month (Ashura). Expression of grief during public mourning processions are accompanied by assemblies held in buildings erected for the purpose (hosayniyas or takias), as well as in mosques and private houses. At these assemblies, called rowzeh-khani, professional reciters recount the tragedy at Karbala, curse the enemies, and arouse the emotions of the mourners who respond by congregational singing of dirges. The public mourning processions, held on the tenth day, display the traditional customs of the old time, displaying certain pre-Islamic funerary practices, such as the use of dark colored banners and horses.

The formal group portrait, with an individual of African descent at the center and a master storyteller slightly on the left, holding little folded scripts in the palm of his hand, depicts a traditional setting for a private performance of rowzeh-khani. As witnessed in the photograph, Africans, mostly Abyssinians or Swahilis, did participate in Shia rituals in roles that are still understudied. Yet, according to popular belief, participation in rowzeh-khani ensures participants of all classes of society of intercession by Hosayn on the Judgment Day. In the eyes of the Shiites, Hosayn fought and sacrificed his life for the underdog, the unprivileged, the oppressed, and humiliated. During the Qajar period, the rowzeh-khani sermons, while continuing to recount the tragedy at Karbala, to reflect on its meaning, and to recite elegies in memory of the martyred Imam, had also evolved into a discussion on subjects of discontent including social injustice, political oppression, economic disparities, and social upheaval of the day, making this Shiite commemorative ritual a very important political weapon. The Qajar elites were enthusiastic patrons of Shiite rituals, most notably both the rowzeh-khani and the public Moharram processions. These rituals served to strengthen the bonds of loyalty between the state and its subjects, thus ensuring the Qajar elites a certain degree of religious and political legitimacy.

Gathering of a Large Crowd (probably a Muharram Procession) at the Maydan-i Tupkhana, Tehran (Iran).
Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933). Glass plate negative taken before 1896. Myron Bement Smith Collection of Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
(FSA A.4 2.12.GN.50.05).

The African Presence in Qajar Iran

In these three Sevruguin photographs, the almost invisible presence of individuals of African descent provides an opportunity to examine the sources, destinations, and existence of Africans in Iran and the Persian Gulf. According to Mirzai Behnaz, for centuries, Africans were drawn in small numbers at one time or another from the interior region of East Africa, forming a small percentage of the country’s multi-ethnic enslaved population. The sea trade route of the Indian Ocean significantly facilitated the transport of a large number of Africans from the Swahili coast to Muscat and Sur from where they were eventually carried into the Ottoman Empire, the Arab States, and Iran. Pilgrims were

also bringing enslaved peoples through western and southwestern Iran from the Arabian cities of Baghdad, Karbala, Mecca and Medina.

The majority of enslaved Africans mostly served as pearl fishers, agricultural laborers or domestics. A small number were conveyed from southern ports to the interior and were absorbed in different urban areas and socioeconomic sectors. They were mainly employed as domestics. Some were engaged in specific tasks in the harems of Shahs and princes. Among them, one group consisted of eunuchs who served at the court of the Shah. Another group of Africans was engaged in the royal army as confidential household troops or guards of princes, called ghulam-1 Shahi.

During the Qajar dynastic period (1795-1925), African men, women and children were brought to Iran in greater numbers than the country had ever witnessed. Aristocratic and wealthy families
incorporated domestic slaves into their household as both investments and symbols of prosperity. Additionally, economic forces driven by the expansion of foreign trade in the south and commercial farming innovations in the south-eastern provinces gave rise to the need for new sources of slave labor. The development of the trade in enslaved Africans was given religious justification by some in Islamic societies on the grounds of the need to convert a large number of Africans in Islam. Enslaved people were considered to be part of the household, and since Islam opened many ways for their emancipation they could gradually be absorbed into the society, therefore leading to the formation of diasporic communities of Afro-Iranians along the shores of the Persian Gulf from the southwest to the southeastern parts of Iran.

Ashura Reenactment Procession.
Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933). Glass plate negative taken before 1896. Myron Bement Smith Collection of Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
(FSA A.4 2.12.GN.21.03).

ONLINE RESOURCE
- AFRICANS IN PERSIA, photographs taken by Antoin Sevruguin, from the collections of Sevruguin photographs at National Anthropological Archives and the Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- IRAN IN PHOTOGRAPHS, an online exhibition part of the Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- SEVRUGUIN RESOURCE PAGE, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- MYRON BEMENT SMITH COLLECTION OF SEVRUGUIN PHOTOGRAPHS, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- STEPHEN ARPEE COLLECTION OF SEVRUGUIN PHOTOGRAPHS, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- JAY BISNO COLLECTION OF SEVRUGUIN PHOTOGRAPHS, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- SAILORS AND DAUGHTERS: EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE INDIAN OCEAN, an online exhibition part of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s programming for Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean: From Oman to East Africa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
- AYOUB Mahmoud, Ashura.  Encyclopædia Iranica, Vol. II, Fasc. 8, pp. 874-876, an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/asura (Originally published: December 15, 1987).
- BETTERIDGE Anne, Festival III: Shi'ite.  Encyclopædia Iranica, Vol. IX, Fasc. 5, pp. 550-555, an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/festivals-iii-iv-v (Originally published: December 15, 1999).
- CALMARD Jean, Azadari.  Encyclopædia Iranica, Vol. III, Fasc. 2, pp. 174-177, an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/azadari (Originally published: December 15, 1987).
- CHELKOWSKI Peter, Ta'zia.  Encyclopædia Iranica, an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/tazia  (Originally published: July 15, 2009).
- JAFRI Syed Husain Mohammad, The Origins and Early Development of Shi'a Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. See preview here
- KHOSRONEJAD Pedram (Ed.), Women's Rituals and Ceremonies in Shiite Iran and Muslim Communities: Methodological and Theoretical Challenges, Berlin, Germany: Lit Verlag Dr. W.
Hopf, 2015. See preview here
- MOMEN Moojan, An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. See book review here
- PLESSNER Martin, Al-Muharram, Encyclopædia of Islam. Vol. 7, second edition, Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1993. 

Renewed Exposure to the Presence of Africans in Persia: Digitizing the Collections of Antoin Sevruguin Photographs in the Archives of the Freer|Sackler, The Smithsonian’s Museum of Asian Art

This is the first of two blog posts written by Xavier Courouble, cataloger of the collections of Antoin Sevruguin Photographs and the Ernst Herzfeld Papers at Freer Sackler Archives, Smithsonian Institution. This post explores the presence of individuals of African descent at the royal court of Qajar Iran.

Nasir Al-Din Shah and his Eunuchs.
Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933). Glass plate negative taken before 1896. Myron Bement Smith Collection of Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (FSA A.4 2.12.GN.51.02).

The group portrait photograph, taken by Antoin Sevruguin at the end of the nineteenth century shows Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar (ruled 1848-1896) among several of his personal attendants, many wearing the eunuch’s uniform, a high fur-skin hat and a long, loose robe over the trousers. Under Nasir al-Din Shah, the royal eunuchs, dominated by eunuchs of African descent, enjoyed power and wealth. Some of them obtained villages and lands belonging to the royal domain. Haji Sarvar Khan I'timad al-Harem, standing to the right of Nasir al-Din Shah, initially included in an imperial gift, held the eunuch most coveted position of chief of the royal harem from 1887 until Nasir al-Din’s Shah’s assassination in 1896. In that position Haji Sarvar Khan held the keys to the royal quarters and the harem doors. He controlled the other eunuchs of the royal harem, a total of 38 in 1887, and was an intermediary between the court officers and high ranking dignitaries, the royal women, and the shah himself. After 1896 he went to Tabriz to become Muhammad Ali Mirza's (the crown prince) head of the harem's eunuchs.

Nasir Al-Din Shah Supervising a Banquet for Ashpazan.
Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933). Glass plate negative taken before 1896. Myron Bement Smith Collection of Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (FSA A.4 2.12.GN.17.02).

 Nasir al-Din Shah's Intimate Relationship with the Royal Attendants

Born July 17, 1831 in Tehran, Nasir al-Din Shah, a younger son of Mohammad Shah, was named heir apparent of the Qajar dynasty through the influence of his mother, Malik Jahan. According to Abbas Amanat, in his early years, Nasir al-Din received only a haphazard education, largely isolated from the outside. He was confined to his mother’s residential quarters, where a host of eunuchs, maids, and playmates compensated for the noticeable lack of parent care. An Abyssinian eunuch, Bashir Khan, a purchased slave of Malik Jahan, was in charge of overseeing the prince’s affairs. Bashir, like other black eunuchs in the Qajar harem, was treated with a peculiar mixture of awe and intimacy. He was a capable manager whose severe side was complemented by a sentimental, sometimes childish temperament. Later on, when he became the Shah’s chief eunuch, Bashir took pride in his personal attendance to Nasir al-Din over the years. By contrast, a combination of gratitude, pity, and old grudges best characterized Nasir al-Din’s ambivalent attitude toward his eunuch. Bashir was executed under order from Nasir al-Din in 1859 in an outburst of kingly rage! Intimacy with maids and servants and their children, who often were his playmates, may explain Nasir al-din’s unreserved reliance in later life on the servant class. It was this class that first introduced him to the outside world and taught him values of friendship and loyalty. In a society accustomed to treating children as miniature adults, princes even more than other children were in need of moral support to take them through the difficult passage of early adulthood. The sheer political demands on Nasir al-Din to behave majestically, particularly when his apparency was perpetually under question, required that he adopt a mask of solemnness and gravity that could only be put aside in the private company of his attendants. This self-imposed façade of grandeur, so characteristic of Nasir al-Din Shah’s public life, was a defense mechanism painfully developed in his childhood and rehearsed in the privacy of his inner court to conceal his shyness and vulnerability.

Standing Portrait of Nasir Al-Din Shah.
Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933). Glass plate negative taken before 1896. Myron Bement Smith Collection of Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery   Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (FSA A.4 2.12.GN.51.08).

The Collections of Antoin Sevruguin Photographs

 The practice of photography was taken up in Iran soon after its invention in Europe, and Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar was an enthusiastic amateur himself. The glass plate negatives were taken by Antoin Sevruguin who, in the late nineteenth century, had fully established one of the most successful commercial photography studios in Tehran, Iran, with ties to the court of Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar. Despite numerous devastating incidents throughout Sevruguin’s career–the loss of more than half of the glass plates in a 1908 blast and fire, and the confiscation by order of the Shah of the remainder of the negatives in the mid-1920’s--695 glass plates negatives survived and were purchased in 1951-1952 from the American Presbyterian Mission in Tehran (Iran) by Myron Bement Smith. Ultimately the Myron B. Smith Papers and his collection of Sevruguin photographs were donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1973.They are included in the growing collections of Sevruguin photographs in the Freer Sackler Archives.

In Fall 2012, 1,072 photographs were digitized and cataloged from the collection of glass negatives from the Myron Bement Smith Collection, Subseries 2.12: Antoin Sevruguin Photographs; the collection of silver prints purchased by John Upton in 1928 in the Myron Bement Smith Collection, Subseries 2.12: Antoin Sevruguin Photographs; and the collection of albumen prints in the Stephen Arpee Collection of Sevruguin Photographs.

Nasir Al-Din Shah and Court with Bags of Money Owed to the Treasury.
Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933). Glass plate negative taken in 1890. Myron Bement Smith Collection of Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery   Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
(FSA A.4 2.12.GN.19.01).

ONLINE RESOURCE

- AFRICANS IN PERSIA, photographs taken by Antoin Sevruguin, from the collections of Sevruguin photographs at National Anthropological Archives and the Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- IRAN IN PHOTOGRAPHS, an online exhibition part of the Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- SEVRUGUIN RESOURCE PAGE, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- MYRON BEMENT SMITH COLLECTION OF SEVRUGUIN PHOTOGRAPHS, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- STEPHEN ARPEE COLLECTION OF SEVRUGUIN PHOTOGRAPHS, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- JAY BISNO COLLECTION OF SEVRUGUIN PHOTOGRAPHS, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- SAILORS AND DAUGHTERS: EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE INDIAN OCEAN, an online exhibition part of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s programming for Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean: From Oman to East Africa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

- AMANAT, Abbas, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir Al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831-1896, University of California Press, 1997. Abstract available here
- BEHNAZ A. Mirzai, The Slave Trade and The African Diaspora in Iran, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, 2005. PDF file accessible here
- CACCHIOLI, Niambi, Disputed Freedom; Fugitive Slaves, Asylum and Manumission in Iran, 1851 – 1913, in The Slave Route. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. PDF file Accessible here
- FLOOR, Willem, Barda and Barda-dãri {Slaves and Slavery}, iv. From the Mongols to the Abolition of the Slavery.  Encyclopædia Iranica, III/7, p. 762; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/barda-iv (accessed on 27 May 2012).
- MOGHADDAM, Maria Sabaye, African Diaspora in Iran: Zar Ritual and African Cultural Influence. ASA 2013 Annual Meeting Paper. Abstract accessible here
- RICKS, Thomas, Slaves and Slaves Trading in Shi’I iran, AD 1500-1900, in Conceptualizing / Re-conceptualizing Africa; The Construction of African Historical Identity. Edited by Maghan Keita. Leiden; Boston; Koln: Brill, 2002. PDF file accessible here
- SHERIFF, Abdul, The Twilight of Slavery in the Persian Gulf, in  Monsoon and migration: Dhow Culture Dialogues, Zanzibar: Ziff Journal, 2, 2005. PDF file accessible here