i’ve spent the past couple of days attempting to read farsi and to be honest, i’m at a loss. the need to read a persian language stemmed from a photo i found of an incredible wooden mosque that turned out to reside in iran itself. through the power of google i’ve managed to work out that the mosque is actually part of the ‘wooden village’, an area of neyshabur city that, unsurprisingly, consists of purely wooden buildings - houses, shops, library, mosque and so on. that in itself isn’t exactly amazing - there are many communities whose architecture is wood-based - but the attention to detail and beauty of this village definitely is. it’s also nice to be able to look at something related to iran without bush-tinted glasses.


if you know anything about the wooden village, let me know as the majority of info available on the intertubes is, as i mentioned, written in farsi. there’s an iranian website dedicated to the village here but it seems to have been left for dead here (thanks rick). if you fancy looking for any info about the village yourself, here’s a hint - neyshabur (the city in which the woden village can be found) also seems to be known by the following names: neyshaboor, neyshabour, nishapur and, in persian, نیشابور.

anyway, have a look at these and tell me you’re not impressed…

the wooden mosque



sources, clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4

the wooden library



sources: top / bottom

the wooden houses



sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2, 3, 4

miscellaneous (all photos from here)







also, check out the photos’ source links for a limited amount of extra info.