
The Tomb of Queen Esther in Persia - CrocodileStreet
http://riowang.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-tomb-of-queen-esther-in-persia.html
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kweks
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](http://travel.ninjito.com/2014-08-18-Iran)

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Ricker
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.

~~~
kweks
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..

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eternalban
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Daniel)

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

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
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.

~~~
hetman
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.

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jonah
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."

~~~
virmundi
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.

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pazimzadeh
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](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/xIro8),
[http://imgur.com/a/iwawP](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.

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

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

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Jun8
Fascinating place! On a related note HONY is currently doing Iran
([http://www.humansofnewyork.com/](http://www.humansofnewyork.com/)), you
should check it out if you haven't done so for the intimate portraits or
regular people.

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

~~~
steve19
Can you link me to their guided trips?

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

~~~
jeremyswank
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](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).

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prewett
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?

~~~
eternalban
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](https://youtu.be/k6cmvM5oj3Q)

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

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Herodotus38
Could you give a source for that? From what I've read Mordechai was her uncle.

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totalrobe
This is nice and all but why on HN?

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koenigdavidmj
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](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
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davidw
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.

