 Tabriz in Monaco
More on Prince Arfa's villa
By Farhad Diba
December 12, 2003
The Iranian
In response to "Home
of the unknown" by
Faryar Mansouri, The Iranian, November 15, 2003 and "Villa
Danesh", by Manouchehr M. Eskandari-Qajar.
Villa Danesh has often been the source of conjecture
and I have seen articles, through a period of time, describing
it as
a curiosity of unknown origin. However, all we have to do is to
refer to the man who built it.
 Prince Mirza Reza Khan Daniche Arfa-od-Douleh Emir
Nouyan, to address him by his full name and titles, as per his
own description, has
written the story of the conception and completion of his house
in Monte Carlo in a book entitled: Poésie et Art Persans
a Monaco (1910-1919), (the grammatical error in the title is as
published). The copy in my library is dedicated by the author to
Sir
Percy Cox.
In the first chapter - Pourquoi j'ai construit Danichgah
- he says that he built a house in a country that he had never
visited and did not see the house until after completion. The design
of the house is said to be copied from his house in Tabriz, which
was also called "Danesh-Abad". He says that he
was accorded the name Danesh by "les savants persans".
The villa was named "Daneshgah" which renders the double
meaning: first, it connotes a place of learning and, secondly,
it describes the residence of a man called Danesh.
 He moved in, with his family, towards the end of
1910. The mosaïc
lion and sun was the work of an Italian called
Tamagno. The house was full of antiques, both Persian and European,
as well as a well-stocked library. Amongst these books was a volume
by Philippe Casimir, which said that Cyrus, by annexing Phoenicia
in 538 B.C., had also acquired Monaco. This fact drove Mirza Reza
Khan to commissioning the Italian sculptor, Domenico Agliardi,
to erect a monument
to Cyrus on the terrace of the villa, a labour
of three years with stone from Brescia.
He also arranged a "Peace Gallery" in
a part of the house, as well as a monument
to Darius, placed on
a terrace, which
took eight years' of the same sculptor's time. The villa was inaugurated by Prince Albert I of Monaco on 29 April
1918.
Some articles appeared in the French journal L'Union,
giving descriptions of the works at the villa. Somewhere in my
library lies a reminder to the sad demise of the villa, in the
form of
the catalogue for the sale
at auction of
the contents of the house. The family was involved in the foreign
office of the Persian government. One brother, Bagha-ul-Saltaneh
was in Cairo whilst another, Moffakham-ul-Saltaneh was Consul
at Jeddah.
 As for his own political role, Mirza Reza Khan started
his diplomatic career as Second-Secretary at the Persian Consulate
in Tiflis (an
important outpost for Persia at that time), returning five years
later (1891) as Consul, residing at his Villa
Férouzi in
Borjom.
He then moved on to being the Persian Minister at
St.Petersbourg (1895), the Persian delegate to the Peace Conference
at the Hague
(1899) and then Ambassador at Constantinople for five years. His
wife wrote a book in German, about their stay in Turkey. He was
then called to Iran between 1912-1914 and for a time was in charge
of Public Education. He wrote some twenty books, mostly poetry,
the main one - "Perles d'Orient" - contains
some 200 distichs and was published in Constantinople in 1904 (my
copy has his photo with a dedication by him - see scan).
In this book, he states (in verse) that, after schooling
in Tabriz, he was sent to Tehran, where he attended "L'Académie" and
entered government service at the age of 25, obtaining the
honorific 'Khan' and the rank of Colonel. He was a
member of the frontier commission of Khorassan-Ahal (1884) headed
by Soleiman Khan Saheb-Ekhtiar, and then became an aide-de-camp
of Nasser-ed-din Shah, travelling in the Shah's entourage
on the third royal visit to Europe.
 On 26 April 1904 he was decorated by the Shah with
the highest military order of Emir-Nouyan (Generalissimo).
As Dr. Eskandari-Qajar has described, he was devoted to Ahmad Shah
and was also his aide-de
camp. There is an autographed photo of Ahmad Shah in his book.
It would be interesting if some scholar took on
the task of writing a biography of Prince Arfa >>>
See additional
note
Author
Farhad Diba is the author
of "Mohammad Mossadegh:
A Political Biography" (1983).
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