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Watercolour by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, 1841 Alexei Stolypin was Mikhail Lermontov's first cousin once removed and a close friend. Alexei was the son of Arkady Alexeyevich Stolypin, Procurator-General of the Senate, who was the brother of Lermontov's grandmother. On completing the School of Guards Sub-
Archive · The East · Books · Mores
In Cairo the shops stay open until nine in the evening, and sometimes later, depending on how trade is going. Light, colour, shouting, noise and movement stun the senses. Everything shouts: the Arabs shout, the cars hoot, the hawkers shout, the donkeys shout, but loudest of all shout the stallholders,
Archaeology · The East · Art · Museums
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Thutmose IV, c. 1400 BC.
In the Press · Faith · The East · Society
The Guardian once ran a rather strange story about how, in a telephone conversation with French President Jacques Chirac in 2003, George W. Bush appealed to their shared Christian faith as grounds for invading Iraq. Bush is supposed to have said to Chirac something along these lines: “Gog and Magog
Archive · Faith · The East · Heritage
So wrote the German Benedictine chronicler Otto of St Blasien of the sack of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204. He describes how the sack of Constantinople sent enormous Greek riches, above all the sacred treasures of the Cathedral of Saint Sophia and countless relics of the saints, flowing into
Coming Up · The East · Monarchies · Moscow · Museums
The exhibition “Descendants of Genghis Khan. Rus and the World” opens on 20 March. The display will include objects that tell of the legacy of the Mongol Empire and the Golden Horde, of Russo-Tatar ties and mutual cultural influence, of dynastic marriages and court ceremonial
Faith · The East · Heritage
By the beginning of the twentieth century several hundred Orthodox Christians lived in Beijing, and almost all of them were killed in the course of the Boxer uprising against foreign interference. Several tens of thousands of people took part in the rebellion. In June 1900 mass killings of foreign subjects
NB! · Archaeology · The East · Museums
Golden vase depicting winged bulls, found in a tomb at Marlik, in north-eastern Iran, that is, on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, in the territory of the ancient satrapy of Hyrcania. 12th-10th centuries BC. National Museum of Iran, Tehran
Archaeology · Architecture · Faith · The East
Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a Byzantine-period monastic complex in Sohag Governorate in Egypt. The find has been described as the most comprehensive of its kind in the region. The monastery comprises residential and communal buildings, small cell-like annexes for the monks, as well as service rooms
Faith · The East · Society · People
The statement says that Patriarch Bartholomew, guilty of the "dismemberment of Orthodox Ukraine", has now turned his attention to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and is acting jointly with British intelligence services to create religious structures under Constantinople's control. Russian intelligence also claims that the Patriarch'
The East · Society
But the very first fruit of Soviet-Iranian rapprochement was the Gilan Soviet Socialist Republic, founded in 1920. The Bolsheviks backed a nationalist movement, and the GSSR was proclaimed in the country, lasting only a year. During the Second World War the USSR and Great Britain occupied Iran to prevent
The East · Geography · Maps
The shared border between Iran and the USSR ran to 2,500 km of Azerbaijani-Iranian, Armenian-Iranian and Turkmen-Iranian land frontier, together with a maritime boundary across the Caspian Sea