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Central Asia

More Silk Road Adventures - The Caucasus - The Palace of Shaki Khans

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The Palace of Shaki Khans

 

Much more contemporary is the the Palace of Shaki Khans, completed in 1797 as a summer residence - around the same time as the Presidential White House in Washington DC.  But the Khan's lifestyle was somewhat different to that of George Washington or John Adams. The Khans (kings - after Genghis Kahn and the Khanates) typically had five wives and a household staffed by concubines and other women and managed by eunuchs (castrated males). In order to ensure the purity of the male succession sons who had reached puberty were also moved out of home.  So the family household needed to be insulated from the outside world and this was evident in the original architecture of the building. 

As I mention later, in Armenia, the Romantic Poet Lord Byron visited this region in 1876 on his Grand Tour.  He subsequently explored the Khan's domestic arrangements in his epic satirical poem Don Juan, in which the eponymous hero is smuggled into a Turkish seraglio (harem) as a woman and is kept a secret by several girls for their pleasure. 

This was the first time that the general public in Britain and the US had become aware of what was actually a very common upper-class domestic arrangement across the one-time Khanates, including China and India.  The poem was published sequentially in a series of Cantos.  It outraged polite society for its salacious content and thus became immensely popular, with each new Canto awaited like new episodes of Game of Thrones or Star Wars.  In a later Canto 'The Don' becomes a favourite in the Court of Catherine the Great of Russia and one of her numerous lovers.  After his earlier, less readable, epic poem, Childe Harold, Byron had been famously condemned as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'.  Now he became enormously wealthy, as well as notorious - a model for the Byronic Hero - like the Bronte's: Heathcliff and Rochester and Pushkin's: Eugene Onegin - 'hero' of Tchaikovsky's eponymous opera. Read more...

But this idyllic lifestyle (for the Khan) did not continue for long after building this palace, because, as we have seen, 16 years later the Khanate fell (a second time) to the Russian Empire - under Alexander I, Catherine the Great's grandson.

 

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The Palace of Shaki Khans - its beauty has ensured its survival
 Within the fortress grounds is another Armenian Christian Church - now a museum

 

The palace was then used as offices by local government and suffered accordingly - drawing-pins in the woodwork? 

In 1848 Hussein Khan Mushtag's grandson, together with locally famous poet Karim agha Fateh, set about its restoration. In the 1950's it was renovated further, during Soviet times, as a national treasure then, more recently, when seeking it's nomination for UNESCO World Heritage listing, important to tourism.

Visiting this jewel box is via a guided tour (don't touch the walls).  Photos are banned inside so I can't show you pictures of the interior - but you can see one in Wikipedia and if you can find Joanna Lumley's Silk Tour Adventures on your device, there's quite a long segment, particularly admiring the windows (golly gosh).  Its beauty has ensured its survival from among a larger complex of palaces and administrative buildings, no longer extant, which once resided within the walls of the Sheki Khans' Fortress.  Yet they are not all gone.  Within the grounds we found another interesting building that turned out to be another Armenian Christian Church, used according to the sign, as a museum (closed). 

The following day we crossed into Georgia


 

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Crossing to Georgia
There are more images in the Azerbaijan Album See more...

 

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Travel

Bridge over the River Kwai

 

 

In 1957-58 the film ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai‘ was ground breaking.  It was remarkable for being mainly shot on location (in Ceylon not Thailand) rather than in a studio and for involving the construction and demolition of a real, fully functioning rail bridge.   It's still regarded by many as one of the finest movies ever made. 

One of the things a tourist to Bangkok is encouraged to do is to take a day trip to the actual bridge.

Read more: Bridge over the River Kwai

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Royal Wedding

 

 

 


It often surprises our international interlocutors, for example in Romania, Russia or Germany, that Australia is a monarchy.  More surprisingly, that our Monarch is not the privileged descendent of an early Australian squatter or more typically a medieval warlord but Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain and Northern Island - who I suppose could qualify as the latter.

Thus unlike those ex-colonial Americans, British Royal weddings are not just about celebrity.  To Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders, in addition to several smaller Commonwealth countries, they have a bearing our shared Monarchy.

Yet in Australia, except for occasional visits and the endorsement of our choice of viceroys, matters royal are mainly the preoccupation of the readers of women's magazines.

That women's magazines enjoy almost exclusive monopoly of this element of the National culture is rather strange in these days of gender equality.  There's nary a mention in the men's magazines.  Scan them as I might at the barber's or when browsing a newsstand - few protagonists who are not engaged in sport; modifying equipment or buildings; or exposing their breasts; get a look in. 

But a Royal wedding hypes things up, so there is collateral involvement.  Husbands and partners are drawn in.

Read more: The Royal Wedding

Opinions and Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

 

 

 

Bertrand Russell (Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)) has been a major influence on my life.  I asked for and was given a copy of his collected Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell for my 21st birthday and although I never agreed entirely with every one of his opinions I have always respected them.

In 1950 Russell won the Nobel Prize in literature but remained a controversial figure.  He was responsible for the Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955. The signatories included Albert Einstein, just before his death, and ten other eminent intellectuals and scientists. They warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons and called on governments to find alternative ways of resolving conflict.   Russell went on to become the first president of the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) and subsequently organised opposition to the Vietnam War. He could be seen in 50's news-reels at the head of CND demonstrations with his long divorced second wife Dora, for which he was jailed again at the age of 89.  

In 1958 Gerald Holtom, created a logo for the movement by stylising, superimposing and circling the semaphore letters ND.

Some four years earlier I'd gained my semaphore badge in the Cubs, so like many children of my vintage, I already knew that:  = N(uclear)   = D(isarmament)

The logo soon became ubiquitous, graphitied onto walls and pavements, and widely used as a peace symbol in the 60s and 70s, particularly in hippie communes and crudely painted on VW camper-vans.

 

 (otherwise known as the phallic Mercedes).

 

Read more: Bertrand Russell

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