Iran - Guilan, a rural heritage museum Written and Photographed by Kourosh Ziabari
About 15 km away from Rasht, the capital city of the Guilan province,
there is a green and calm highway, with its two sides surrounded
by rush and pine trees. A little further, lies an open area decorated
with wooden tableaux and billboards including "Musee patrimoine
rural de Guilan".
That French title remembers the glorious opening ceremony of
"Guilan museum of rural heritage" in March 2007 where
Professor Christian Bromberger gave an attractive lecture about
the history of Gilak tribe in front of hundreds enamoured with
Persian culture.
Guilan museum of rural heritage is a unique Ecomuseum that has
been constructed in order to show the hidden corners of Guilan
people's culture and lifestyle to tourists from around the world.
After paying a very skimpy amount of tax to the incumbent at
the gate, you will take way into a natural corridor with tall
maple trees along the sides and their foliage acting as roofs,
preventing the sun and rain from damaging the traditional cobblestone
floor of this narrow rural route.
The artificial wooden fence on the two sides of the corridor
extends all around the museum that is designed exactly like a
small village and includes all parts of a real hamlet such as
teahouse, playground, municipality, stable and lake.
The museum is mainly dedicated to anthropology and is taken into
account of a good and reliable source for sociological studies
especially to researchers who want to gather more valuable information
on Gilak's life.
Gilak people are a large ethnic group whose main homeland is
Guilan province. The history of their habitation in northern parts
of Iran dates back to about 300 BC and they are also said to be
one of the oldest living tribe in Iran.
The Eco-museum shows the cultural and ethnic diversity of 27
Gilak subgroups in 27 cottages, in each of them there are girls
wearing traditional costumes, some of them cooking traditional
foods or making handicrafts. It is necessary to know that the
total surface area of museum is about 260 hectares.
Guilan is one of the smallest provinces in Iran with less than
2.5 million habitants, though it is consisted of about 30 ethnic
clans such as Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Gilaks, Persians, Talishyans,
Galeshians and Tabarids.
The people of Gilan are very well-known because of their good
manner of hospitality and reception as the types of various foods
cooked in Gilan show the serious concerns and efforts of Gilak
housewives to provide their guests with the best possible situation
of residence and enjoyment.
The members of Gilak tribes are said to be the happiest communal
groups in Iran and their spirited type of clothing proves it indeed
while their friendly and human behaviour is another sign of their
tranquil and warm social relations. Their local wearing models
are absolutely harmonious with the peaceful and wholesome Islamic
rules of clothing, though they strongly show an ideological independence
from the common dressing types used in the other parts of Iran.
For example, the women dressing of Rudsar city in the Eastern
Guilan have been used in the opening ceremony of Athens 2004 Olympics
and you
will find women wearing this colorful outfit in "Guilan museum
of rural heritage" as tour-guides.
We traveled to most parts of this eco-museum in our passage but
we are not to remain unaware about the live artistic shows which
hold in the playground. The playground is an almost large and
wide area flatted with sand soil, encircled with planted shrubs
and rounded by enclosed stockade made of mud and adobe. Such a
playground is a suitable place for local shows, games and live
music while the most of Guilan villages hold it.
The most interesting of these shows all is the Gilaki traditional
rope-dancing performed daily by the members of a noble and ancient
family of Lahijan (a large city near Rudsar) whose members involve
in local sports and games for many years. The father of the family,
who is about 80 years old, rides a bicycle on a 3 meters thick
rope and then accomplishes some fireworks. He chafes a blaming
torch on his head, body and hands without being burnt or hurt.
Guilan is reckoned as the green pearl of Iran and Iran itself
is counted as a piece of heaven on the earth. The rural heritage
museum of Guilan exposes a small-scale view of the 7500 year old
land of Caspian Sea borderline and enchants every viewer who has
never seen such a pure "green".
Kourosh Ziabari,
an 18 year old freelance blogger and journalist from Iran,
published the book "7+1" which is a collection of
his interviews with 7 contemporary Iranian authors. He is
the contributing author of Opednews.com and the Irani-based
correspondent of OhMyNews international.
