The Tomb of Queen Esther in Persia | Hacker News Reader

The Tomb of Queen Esther in Persia

riowang.blogspot.com

I happened to head through this region last year. The desert near Isfahan is absolutely mind blowing.

It's like procedural generation meets the clone stamp tool.

http://travel.ninjito.com/2014-08-18-Iran

Beautiful! Those hills in the latter photos bear some resemblance to Oregon's "Painted Hills": http://traveloregon.com/see-do/attractions/outdoors-nature/p...

Beautiful.

Wow, this really looks great. I was thinking about traveling there as well, but couldn't convince any friend. They had doubts if it was secure enough. Is it? I still want to go one day. I have also been to Tashkent once, and it is just so different from anything you have seen so far, and so beautiful.

Unequivocally, there's no safety situation in Iran. It's probably best to add an asterisk: Assuming you're not hanging around the Iraq / Afghani borders.

Iran is a beautiful country with a big PR problem. Yes the government sucks, but it's just a government. It will pass. The persian culture has survived for thousands of years, and they have a lot to show for it.

They're not 'fantatical muslims'. In fact, islam was only introduced after the arabs invaded.

The best part about countries with PR problems is that if you do bother to make the effort to understand and to go there - everyone is very, very happy to see, meet, chat, help etc with you - because they know that just by being there, you understand a little bit of their culture.

Finally, now is the moment to go there. With the embargos falling, and the embassies opening etc, Iran will be flooded with tourists, and this unique eco-system will be permanently changed.

I'm taking my parents there this year for that reason alone..

Relations between the two tribes go back at least 3000 years if not earlier. (The city of Rages, then Ray, and now a suburb of Teheran, apparently had a substantial Jewish community during the Median period, per Book of Tobit [2]) Typically quite friendly and simpatico.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Daniel

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Tobit

Which two tribes?

Persians and Jews.

Are Persians a tribe? Which tribe are Persian Jews a part of?

Yes. The old Persians were one of the major tribes who lived in the Iranian plateau circa 1000 BCE.

"Persian" is a historical mistake started by Herodotus, Iran was Iran from the begining. start to learn the proper name after a long time 2500+ years is a long time.

Are you saying "Iranian" is the correct term for all the people living in past and present day Iran? Because that's...wrong.

You are correct that Iran has always been called Iran (Eraan).

Persians refer to the sub-set of Aryanman of Eran-Zameen ["Land of Arya"] that settled in the general area of the province of Fars (Perse) and after the overthrow of the Median Aryanman (likely forefathers of the Kurds) ascended the world stage [1].

[1]: http://www.iranchamber.com/history/darius/darius_inscription...

Many of the features of Second Temple Judaism (and hence Christianity) were thought to have been influenced by Zoroastrianism, from the time of the Babylonian Captivity onwards.

One must be very careful when determining the level of influence as this can often be quite an emotionally charged topic with interests that go beyond the purely academic on both sides.

Some of the ideas that area said to be influential, historically don't appear fully formed in Zoroastrianism until after contact with Christianity. Like the other religions, Zoroastrianism did not appear in its modern form but gradually evolved some of its modern ideas.

My grandparents/dad/uncle lived in Tehran in the 50s. They always had such wonderful things to say about the people and the culture and the art.

Today, in the US, the Iranians I talk to say "we hope one day it will again be a country we would want to live in."

I hope they will live there too. I look forward to the day where repatriation occurs en masse from the US. I think it would allow the return of intelligentsia as well skill labor to areas that sorely need it. While I admit there will be a loss for the US, I doubt that whole extended families will up and leave. In the end, I hope that it will lead to a better understanding and camaraderie for US and formerly hostile countries.

Iran is a beautiful country, I'd like to go back sometime. Here are some of my favorite pictures from my time there which I sometimes use for design inspiration: http://imgur.com/a/ll2no. I put some of them through Google Deep Dream for some strange results: http://imgur.com/a/xIro8, http://imgur.com/a/iwawP

Incidentally, my first pen was a red Lamy, back in France where children were required (still are?) to use fountain pens. I had no idea it was a classic or famous in anyway. A very solid pen which can withstand a lot of chewing.

Scrolling up and down on your last link makes my eyes play tricks on me - they look like they start animating.

The second one is animated, the other three not as far as I can tell.

Fascinating place! On a related note HONY is currently doing Iran (http://www.humansofnewyork.com/), you should check it out if you haven't done so for the intimate portraits or regular people.

What a nice surprise to see 'Poemas del río Wang' blog on HN. Top notch writing and they also do guided trips.

Can you link me to their guided trips?

What exactly are they? I could not figure it out. A humanist society that translates book!?

The blogger at Poemas del río Wang is a personal friend of mine. (Sometimes I also write for his blog.) By profession he is a translator and art historian, a Hungarian by birth living in Berlin. I have gone on many of his tours, and travelled with him personally as well. I can unreservedly recommend his tours, but they fill up quickly. Most of the participants are Hungarian speakers, but he can translate on the fly into English, and other languages, too.

A link to his upcoming Iran trip: http://riowang.blogspot.cz/2015/08/come-with-us-to-iran.html

Incidentally, I wanted to go on this trip, but as a US passport holder, I would not be free to go wherever I want without an Iranian-appointed guide on a limited itinerary (at least as I understand the situation).

Previous posts from there:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8200913

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8109981

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3426855

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2480543

I think of Iran as desert (a particularly beautiful one, judging from the pictures), but I can't imagine Persia having the resources from a desert to become a world power. Was the area of Iran always a desert?

Iran is a big country with diverse climate. More information here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Iran

Ancient Iranians were hackers in the best sense [1], and experts at long range transport of water. Water was conveyed from the Alborz mountain range all the way to the south. The mongols destroyed much of this network (that was still functional after a thousand years) and that pretty much put an end to verdant growth in the central and easter regions.

[1]: https://youtu.be/k6cmvM5oj3Q

BTW Mordechai and Queen Esther were cousins. In contrast to what the blog says, he was not her uncle.

Could you give a source for that? From what I've read Mordechai was her uncle.

This is nice and all but why on HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click "flag" at the top.

I'll add - this is something that's interesting - it's new knowledge for many people. It's not political or an 'outrage article' about some injustice.

In addition to koenigdavidmj's correct answer, maybe I'll repeat something I posted yesterday:

If there's something we could do to get more high-quality links posted about history, arts and letters, geography, anthropology, etc.—the myriads of interesting stories outside HN's couple of core grooves—I would love to hear about it. We rarely have enough of those.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10127481

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