May 26  Mashhad - first stop the bathhouse museum!

What an amazing place!  Mahdi Quli Beq, a Turkish Amir (leader) of Khorasan in C11th bequeathed this bathhouse and other properties to the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza, where we’re heading next. 

The bathhouse is now a museum and is beautifully restored with well labeled exhibits including samovars, clothing, washing implements and cosmetics. It also houses a rather special photographic exhibition of traditional crafts and artisans at work. 

The walls and ceilings are painted with images depicting contemporary stories of those times. These are many layers thick as the humidity impacted the stucco and colours. 

The building comprised many rooms with different uses including an open area containing a huge blue pool for the young women to play in when the men weren’t around - there were separate access times for the men and women. Under the floor at one end of the house was brick lined room called a Stockehold, basically the furnace room, which provided heating for the walls and various pools and baths via copper trays (Tians) throughout the building. A brilliant design. 

Then we headed next door to the Holy Shrine. 

[To see my pix of this please go to www.flickr.com/photos/hwheat8pix/  and go to Albums and find ‘Bathhouse museum’. 

Or go to Facebook.com/heather.wheat.925 ]