Seven Boughs of the Chenar

“One said that out in Kashmir
There is no shortage of beauty
That land is the place of gorgeous faces
In goodness is an envy of the heaven above”
Nizami Ganjavi (12th century)

Even during a short stay in Kashmir, one can easily encounter traces of deep historical and cultural connections with Iran. Mosques, Khaniqahs, shrines of Imams’ descendants, Chenar trees, Persian poems, names, and words continue to appear throughout the region.

Seven hundred years ago, Sufis and sages such as Seyyed Bulbul Shah Sohrevardi and Seyyed Ali Hamedani, accompanied by hundreds of followers and scholars, migrated from Iran to Kashmir. This peaceful land—with its remarkable landscape and long traditions of asceticism, mysticism, and contemplation—became an important ground for the presence and expansion of Islamic Sufism.

Seven Boughs of the Chenar is a photo installation created during the Khoj International Artists’ Workshop in Srinagar in 2007. The installation consisted of seven photographs suspended from the branches of a Chenar tree within the workshop site. Each work combined photographs I took of places historically connected to Iranian migration and Sufi traditions in Kashmir with imagery drawn from Persian miniature paintings from the same historical period.

* Chenar is the Persian name for the Oriental Plane tree.

Seven Boughs of the Chenar, India, 2007 © Tooraj Khamenehzadeh