Sheikh Bahaii is said to have been born in Baalbek in Lebanon in the middle of the 16th century to a Shiite family who later moved to the Iran of the Shiite Safavid Dynasty.

 

He studied well, becoming a mathematician, engineer, astronomer, philosopher and theologian, as well as a mystic and poet later. His student Molla Sadra went on to become the pre-eminent philosopher of the last few centuries of Shiite Islam.

 

The Sheikh is credited with developing the new Iranian capital of Isfahan of Shah Abbas the Great, and his bathhouse which had an undying flame heating the water is well known in Iran.

 

However, the location of the house in which he lived in his later years was not widely known in recent times, and so, when an unsuspecting émigré couple returning to Iran and looking for a traditional home bought an old house in Isfahan, they were in for an amazing surprise!

 

In this multimedia report replete with beautiful architectural images, we hear the story of Sheikh Bahaii’s house from the new owners, Mrs Jalali and her husband, Abdolazim Jalali. We are led around the result of 17 years of restorative architectural and archaeological work by the couple and their associates, and their labour of love.

 

 

 

This report from Jadidonline archive (February 2009) is republished in memory of Abdolazim Jalali who died recently in Tehran.