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One
of the first things a visitor sees upon entering the
Boulder-Dushanbe Teahouse is The Seven Beauties sculpture.
The women¹s graceful lines and monochromtic bronze skin,
clothes, and water vessels are the perfect counterpoint for the
colorful ceiling, wall decoration, and furnishings of the
Teahouse. Knowing something about the background of this sculpture
makes their presence in the choihona (teahouse) even more
special.
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Boulder-Dushanbe
Teahouse Café
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The
Seven Beauties are characters in the romantic Persian poem, Haft
Paykar, the masterpiece of Nizami Ganjavi, a native not of
Tajikistan, but rather of Azerbaijan. Azerbijan is another
republic of the former Soviet Union located to the west of the
Caspian Sea. Although the Azeribajanis are culturally related to
Turks, one of the fashionable literary languages of the time was
Persian, which is closely related to Tajiki, so Tajiks also regard
him as one of their own.
The poem The Seven Beauties
was completed in 1197 and recounts the history of pre-Islamic
Sassanian (Iranian) ruler Bahram V Gur, who discovers a mysterious
room in his palace in which there are portraits of seven
princesses, each from one of the seven parts of the then-known
world: India, Greece, Mahgreb (Egypt/North Africa), Persia,
Khwarazm (more or less Central Asia, where Tajikistan is located),
Russia (Slavonia), China (Eastern Turkestan), and Rum (Byzantium,
now Turkey).
The pleasure-loving Bahram sends his
messengers to all regions to secure the princesses as his brides.
His architect Shida builds a palace containing seven domed
chambers for them. Bahram spends a long time visiting each of
them, indulging himself in wine, women, and tales. Each of the
seven wives recounts tales of love, frustration of unrequited
love, and sometimes fulfillment, but at another level each tale
examines morality, virtue, and justice.
Here is a brief
picture of the seven stories. The number seven was and is a
magical number in the Persian world, and each of the seven
princesses is linked to a day of the week, one of the planets (it
was believed then that there were only seven and that the sun and
the moon were two of them) and a color with symbolic meaning.
Indian
Beauty (Black Dome/Saturday/Saturn) An
Indian king hears of a town in China where everyone wears black.
He visits it and meets the beautiful queen who withholds her love
from him. The King returns to his land and then wears only black
because of his sadness from unrequited love.
Greek
Beauty (Yellow
Dome/Sunday/Sun) A king whose horoscope predicts
danger in marriage, discards his concubines after one night; but
the devoted service of one causes him to fall in love with her.
She rejects him until he convinces her of his honesty and
truthfulness. They marry.
Turkish
Beauty (Green
Dome/Monday/Moon) A man falls in love with a woman
whose veil is briefly lifted by the wind. Unbeknownst to him, she
is the wife of an acquaintance who soon dies. Impressed by the
man's virtue when he brings her husband¹s belongings, she
agrees to marry him.
Russian
Beauty (Red
Dome/Tuesday/Mars) A beautiful and graceful artist
finds no man worthy of her, so she shuts herself up in a fortress
and declares that only he who finds the way to her will win her.
A prince, after discovering the way, answers a set of riddles and
wins her love.
Egyptian
Beauty (Turquoise
Dome/Wednesday/Mercury) Several people promise to
guide an Egyptian boy, who is lost in a demon-filled desert, to
safety. But they don¹t do it; so, finally, he appeals to
God, who does. The boy then wears only turquoise robes of
mourning in renunciation of the world.
Chinese
Beauty (Sandalwood
Dome/Thursday/Jupiter) Good, traveling in the
desert, is robbed and blinded by his companion Bad. The daughter
of a Kurdish chief finds and cures Good. They marry and Good then
becomes king and pardons Bad, who is killed by a less-forgiving
King of the Kurds.
Central
Asian Beauty (White
Dome/Friday/Venus) A young man visits a garden and
hears music. He finds a group of maidens feasting and falls in
love with one of them. His passion is returned, but their attempt
at an affair is thwarted, so he decides to ask her to be his
legal wife. All ends well.
No
person has yet determined which of the seven beauties in the
Teahouse scupture is which. This is one of the many mysteries of
the Teahouse!
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