Nishapur is a city in northeastern Iran that was
founded around the third century A.D., grew to
prominence in the eighth century, and was ruined by
invasions and earthquakes in the thirteenth century.
After that time, a much smaller settlement was
established just north of the ancient town, and the
once bustling metropolis lay underground—until a
team of excavators from the Metropolitan Museum
arrived in the mid-twentieth century. They worked at
Nishapur between 1935 and 1940, returning for a
final season in the winter of 1947–48.
The excavators had been drawn to the city because
of its fame in the medieval period, when it flourished
as a regional capital and was home to many religious
scholars. It was also known as an economic center—
Nishapur was located on the trade route known as
the Silk Road, which ran from China to the
Mediterranean Sea, crossing Central Asia, Iran, Iraq,
Syria, and Turkey along the way. In addition, Nishapur
was a source of turquoise and a center for growing
cotton, producing cotton textiles as well as several
types of fabric incorporating silk, called ‘attabi,
saqlatuni, and mulham. One of the most unusual
products of Nishapur, however, was its edible earth,
which was believed to have curative properties. At its
peak between the ninth and thirteenth centuries,
Nishapur had a population of approximately 100,000
to 200,000 people, and development covering an
area of approximately six and a half square miles.
The Museum’s team of researchers, Joseph Upton,
Walter Hauser, and Charles Wilkinson, worked at
Nishapur under a cooperative agreement with the
Iranian government that permitted them to excavate
so long as half of the material found was shared with
the Iran Bastan Museum in Tehran. Their trenches
were located throughout the medieval city, sited
where significant finds had already been made by
locals or where they could obtain permission to dig
(as much of the site was under cultivation). They
gave each site a name based on its local nickname or
a distinguishing topographical feature.
Two areas provided particularly rich finds. The first
site to be excavated, called Sabz Pushan (“green
mound” in Persian), had been a thriving residential
neighborhood occupied between the ninth and
twelfth centuries, with houses of three to four rooms
connected by small alleys. Of the large area this
neighborhood once occupied, approximately fifteen
houses were eventually excavated. One of these
houses had particularly well-preserved decoration,
with carved stucco panels covering the lower part of
the wall, the dado, in several rooms (Sabz Pushan
Room). The panels were originally painted in bright
yellows, reds, and blues, with equally colorful murals
on the plaster walls above, but once the panels were
exposed to the air, the colors that the excavators first
saw quickly disappeared.
At a part of the site the locals called Tepe Madrasa,
the excavators had expected to find one of
Nishapur’s famed institutions of learning, or madrasa.
Instead, they uncovered a large residential area with
a mosque that had been developed and rebuilt in
several phases between the ninth and twelfth
centuries. Inside one of the residences, perhaps the
palace of the city’s ninth-century governors, they
found a room with an extraordinary set of wall
paintings whose iconography appears unique to the
site (40.170.176).
Hundreds of objects were discovered during the
course of the excavations. Each year, the Museum’s
share was shipped back to New York, where the
objects were restored and placed on display.
Recently, the conservators in the Museum’s
Department of Objects Conservation have re-treated
all the excavated objects under a special grant to
preserve this important archaeological source.
These objects were significant in providing
information on several different artistic traditions. In
terms of ceramics, they brought to light several types
whose decoration was unique to this part of Iran.
These were typically decorated with strong-colored
slips, made of diluted clay, in bold patterns
(38.40.137; 38.40.290; 40.170.15; 40.170.25;
38.40.247). The distinctive ceramics produced in
Nishapur were traded around the region, and have
been found at Herat, Merv, and Samarqand.
The evidence from the excavations also revealed
much about the development of architectural
decoration in northeastern Iran. Walls in residences
and public buildings throughout Nishapur were
decorated in many different ways, from frescoes to
carved and painted stucco, terracotta panels to
glazed ceramic tiles. The range of imagery was also
wide, including geometric and vegetal patterns,
calligraphy, figures, and animals. The refined tradition
of wall painting shows links with the earlier history of
the region, such as Buddhist paintings in Central Asia
and Sasanian paintings in Iran, as well as with
contemporary painting of Iraq. Carved stucco
decoration, perennially important in Iranian
architecture, was represented in examples found
throughout the site (Sabz Pushan Room; 40.170.441).
The exteriors of large public buildings were clad in
baked bricks set in decorative patterns, large
terracotta panels carved with multilayered ornament,
or glazed tiles, often in shades of bright blue.
In addition, Nishapur was an important center for the
manufacture of glass (39.40.101), metal (38.40.240),
and stone vessels (38.40.116) as well as textiles.
None of the latter were found in the excavations, no
doubt due to their highly perishable nature. However,
beautifully decorated spindle whorls were excavated
by the hundreds. Smaller items such as toys, game
pieces, musical instruments, and beads throw light
on everyday activities in Nishapur and give us a
better understanding of daily life for its citizens
(40.170.232; 38.40.116; 40.170.132; 48.101.70).
Marika Sardar
Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art
- (RP.125)
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