Rasht Museum: House of An Iranian Constitutional Revolution Era Poet
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Located in the home of Mirza Hossein Khan Kasmai (1866-1921), a Constitutional Revolution era (1905 – 1911) poet and journalist and Forest Movement (1914-1921) figure, Rasht Museum opened in 1971.
The 560 square-meter, two-story building of the museum is nearly a century old. The museum consists of an anthropology and an archeology section.
The first floor holds the anthropology display and showcases items such as furniture, personal grooming tools, medical instruments, bathing tools, smoking implements, lamps, leather workshop, utensils, pottery workshop, and tea drying machines, local kilims and historical carpets.
Contracts and deeds from the Qajar era (1785-1925) are also on display in this part. The anthropology section of the museum also showcases Iranian northern province of Gilan’s traditional outfits, handicrafts and musical instruments.
The archeology section of the museum is on the basement level and includes 40 displays that hold pre-Islamic archeological finds from Gilan and other parts of the country.
Some of the items on display include ceramic vessels in the shape of bulls, rams and birds, bronze utensils (chalices, ladles and pateras), jewelry and decorative ornaments items made of stone, glass, bone (bracelets, rings, earrings, necklaces and hairpins), Persian helmets (Kulah Khud), bronze mirrors dating back to the first millennium BC, bronze weapons (daggers, swords, knives and arrowheads), casks for storing liquids and food, small and large perfume holders from the Sassanid era (226-651 CE) to the early Islamic period, a stone stele from Rudkhan Castle, Achaemenid (550-330 BC) clay tablets, clay canteens with geometrical shapes, historical and Islamic coins, white marble tombstones with Naskh calligraphic engravings. The oldest items housed at the museum are arrowheads from the third millennium BC found in illegal excavations in Pir Kouh region.
Source: To Iran