From Varamin to Honolulu: The Displacement, Commodification, and Aestheticization of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s Luster Mihrab, 1863–2025

Keelan Overton and Hossein Nakhaei

The Visual Timeline

• 1863: Varamin Prince ʿAliqoli Mirza Eʿtezad al-Saltaneh and members of the Qajar court visit Varamin, perform ziyarat (pious visitation) to the Emamzadeh Yahya, and record notes about the tomb, including its mihrab.
• 1873: Vienna Persia (now Iran) participates in its first universal exposition. Examples of the country’s natural resources, arts, and crafts are displayed, including luster tiles.
• April 1875: Vienna A broken tile from the inner border of the still in situ mihrab of the Emamzadeh Yahya is acquired by the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry.
• 1875–76: Tehran and London Major Robert Murdoch Smith, buying agent for the South Kensington Museum in London, acquires thousands of works of art from Tehran-based collector Jules Richard, including tiles “from Verameen.”
• 1876: Varamin Mohammad Hasan Khan Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh visits the Emamzadeh Yahya, reads many of the mihrab’s inscriptions, and publishes an account of the shrine in the newspaper Iran.
• 1877: Tehran Eʿtezad al-Saltaneh compiles a biography (sharh-e halat) of Yahya b. ʿAli using historical genealogies and the inscription on the tomb’s sixteenth-century door as key sources.
• 1878–80: Sèvres French diplomat Émile Bernay sends a batch of luster star and cross tiles “from the interior of the mosque at Véramine” to the National Museum of Ceramics in Sèvres.
• 1881: Varamin French traveler Jane Dieulafoy visits Varamin and takes four important photographs of the Emamzadeh Yahya, including the only known image of its luster mihrab in situ.
• 1883: Paris Jane Dieulafoy publishes an article in Le Tour du monde in which she reproduces a general view of the Emamzadeh Yahya, praises its luster tilework, and notes that some of its tiles had been stolen and sold in Tehran.
• 1885: London Star and cross tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya are included in the first major exhibition of Persian art in Britain, organized by the Burlington Fine Arts Club, a gentleman’s club.
• 1887: Paris Jane Dieulafoy publishes her lavish travelogue La Perse, which includes her section on Varamin and the Emamzadeh Yahya but not her important photograph of the mihrab in situ.
• 1880s: Tehran Antoine Sevruguin—or a member of his studio—photographs a cabinet filled with luster objects and tiles in the Tehran house of Jules Richard, including some tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya.
• 1889: Vienna The broken tile from the inner border of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab officially enters the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, along with six luster tiles from the tomb’s dado.
• 1889: Paris Jules Richard visits the 1889 Exposition Universelle and displays many luster tiles. Naser al-Din Shah also attends the event and describes the profits made by dealers like Richard.
• 1894: London Star and cross tiles described as from the “mosque and monastery at Veramin” are included in a luxury monograph of the Persian ceramics collection of British collector Frederick DuCane Godman.
• 1897: Varamin German art historian Friedrich Sarre visits Varamin and the Emamzadeh Yahya. He is denied entry into the shrine but takes a general photograph of the site.
• 1899: Berlin Friedrich Sarre displays his collection at the Museum of Applied Arts, including a large panel of stars and cross tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya.
• 1900: Paris In advance of the 1900 Exposition Universelle, the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is shipped to Paris among the belongings of Iranian dignitary Mirza Hasan Khan Ashtiani Mostowfi al-Mamalek.
• 1900: Paris Mozaffar al-Din Shah attends the Exposition Universelle and signs a convention granting France a perpetual monopoly on archaeological excavation in Iran. The Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab does not appear to be displayed in the exhibition.
• 1900: Paris Members of the Persian delegation to Paris, including Mostowfi al-Mamalek, sell tiles and pearls brought from Iran. Rumors surround some of these tiles, perhaps those belonging to the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab.
• 1900–1: Paris A single tile from the outer border of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is now in the collection of French banker Octave Homberg Sr. and is reproduced. Meanwhile, the mihrab itself is displayed in a boutique in Paris.
• 1901: Paris and St. Petersburg Parisian dealer Clotilde Duffeuty sells another tile taken from the outer border of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab to the Stieglitz Central School of Technical Drawing in St. Petersburg.
• 1901: London Star and cross tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya are reproduced in a large catalog of photographic plates of the ceramic and glass collection of British collector Frederick DuCane Godman.
• 1901: Berlin Friedrich Sarre publishes photographs of Varamin’s Ilkhanid congregational mosque in the plate volume of his Denkmäler Persischer Baukunst. The volume does not include images of the Emamzadeh Yahya.
• 1903: Paris Two isolated tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab are displayed in the “Exposition des Arts Musulman.” Both are in the collection of French banker Octave Homberg Sr.
• 1906: Varamin Swedish explorer Sven Hedin publishes a map indicating “Kuhne gil” (Kohneh Gel), the village home to what he calls the “Imamsadeh-Yahiya, a mosque-mausoleum.”
• 1906: Paris Ottoman collector-dealer-author Hakky-Bey holds a six-day sale of over seven hundred lots at Hôtel Drouot, highlighting luster tiles from the “Collection de professeur Richard, Exposition de 1889.”
• 1907: Iran A leading mojtahed (religious authority) of the Constitutional Revolution (1906–11) apparently gives Mostowfi al-Mamalek, now prime minister, permission to “dispose of” the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab.
• 1907: Paris The outer border tile from the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab in the collection of Octave Homberg Sr. is published in a sizeable French manual on Islamic art, making this its third known reproduction.
• 1910–12: Berlin and Munich Friedrich Sarre reproduces the first known photograph of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab in its displaced state in his text volume of Denkmäler Persischer Baukunst. The photograph was probably taken in Paris around 1900.
• 1911: Paris French writer Henry-René d’Allemagne devotes a section to the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab in his travelogue, noting how it had been displayed in Paris a decade earlier and been the focus of “pilgrimage” by “amateurs of Oriental art.”
• 1911: Paris and London Armenian dealer Hagop Kevorkian organizes three exhibitions between Paris and London. These sales include ceramics dug up during his commercial excavations in central Iran and also tiles taken from sacred sites.
• 1912: New York Building on the momentum of his exhibitions in Paris and London, Kevorkian organizes an “Exhibition of Mohammedan Art” in midtown Manhattan highlighting materials “discovered in Central Persia” during his commercial excavations.
• 1912–13: Tehran and Paris Kevorkian travels to Tehran to negotiate the purchase of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab from Mostowfi al-Mamalek. His “excellent relations” with Abolqasem Khan Naser al-Molk—regent to the young shah—help his cause, and he acquires the mihrab by August 1913.
• 1913: London The luster mihrab from Kashan’s Masjed-e Meydan, now in the collection of British telegraph official John Richard Preece, is offered for sale at Vincent Robinson galleries in London.
• 1913: Detroit Hagop Kevorkian offers the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab for sale to Detroit-based American industrialist Charles Lang Freer for £16,000 ($77,792). Their detailed negotiations unfold over eight months, but Freer does not purchase the piece.
• 1913: Paris and St. Petersburg French dealer Clotilde Duffeuty sells over 950 luster tiles to the Stieglitz Central School of Technical Drawing in St. Petersburg. The sale includes many tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya and the tombstone panel presumed to have sat on Yahya b. ʿAli’s cenotaph.
• 1914: New York The Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is displayed on American soil for the first time during Hagop Kevorkian’s March–April exhibition of his collection. In the popular press, the mihrab is valued around $200,000.
• 1914: Philadelphia Kevorkian offers the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab for sale to George Byron Gordon, director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The dealer and director will negotiate the mihrab’s display and acquisition for thirteen years.
• 1914–18: World War I Kevorkian ships the mihrab back to London, the location of his partner Debenhams Limited, a large retailer. The First World War is in progress, meaning the mihrab is now in a war zone.
• 1915–16: Philadelphia During the war, Hagop Kevorkian and George Byron Gordon correspond about several loans and purchases. Kevorkian sees the Penn Museum as a potential permanent home for the mihrab.
• 1918: New York and Philadelphia Preparations begin for the Penn Museum’s “Exhibition of Muhammadan Art,” and Kevorkian agrees to lend the mihrab. Many letters are exchanged about its transport, installation, and insurance (valued at $125,000).
• 1918: Philadelphia The mihrab is displayed for over three months in the Penn Museum’s “Exhibition of Mohammedan Art.” Its missing tiles are filled with white plaster, including meaningless inscriptional filler in the lower right border.
• 1919: London, New York, Philadelphia Kevorkian’s partner in London (Debenhams) instructs him to return the mihrab to New York. Meanwhile, the dealer insists that the Penn Museum purchase nine loans, which will allow the mihrab to stay in the museum for longer.
• 1922: Tehran The Society for National Heritage is established “to preserve and restore historical buildings and to honor the legacy of Iran’s artistic and cultural achievement.” Mostowfi al-Mamalek, who sold the mihrab to Kevorkian in 1912–13, is a founding member.
• 1923: Varamin German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld visits the Emamzadeh Yahya, writes a transcription of the tomb’s stucco inscription, and records the shrine’s name as “Imāmzâdeh Yahyā” and its location in “Kuhnagil” (Kohneh Gel).
• 1925: Petrograd (St. Petersburg) The large batch of tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya acquired by the Stieglitz Museum in 1913 is transferred to the “Oriental Department” of the nearby State Hermitage Museum.
• 1925: Philadelphia In advance of the mihrab’s reinstallation in the Penn Museum, Hagop Kevorkian and George Bryon Gordon exchange a series of letters about its cleaning and areas of previous restoration.
• 1926: New York Kevorkian displays his Persian art collection at Anderson Galleries and sends viewing invitations to George Byron Gordon (Penn Museum) and other museum directors, giving them the priority to purchase.
• 1926: Philadelphia The mihrab is installed for a second time in the Penn Museum, in a small gallery within the new Eckley Brinton Coxe Junior Egyptian Wing. The plaster inscriptional filler of 1918 remains in place in the lower right.
• 1927: Philadelphia George Byron Gordon, director of the Penn Museum, dies suddenly. For over a decade, he had played an instrumental role in keeping the mihrab in the museum, constantly negotiating with Kevorkian.
• 1927–28: Berlin Friedrich Sarre acquires luster tiles for the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, including the mihrab from Kashan’s Masjed-e Meydan, which was first offered for sale in 1913.
• 1929: Philadelphia The Board of Managers of the Penn Museum decline Kevorkian’s asking price of $125,000 for the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab. They offer $30,000, citing the sale of the Masjed-e Meydan’s mihrab to the Kaiser Frederick Museum in Berlin for about $27,000.
• 1930: Philadelphia The Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is selected for inclusion in the pending International Exhibition of Persian Art in London. In advance of the show, Kevorkian and others discuss how to approach the missing tiles in the outer border.
• 1931: London The mihrab is displayed in the International Exhibition of Persian Art in London for two months. It is elevated on a pedestal, and the missing tiles on the lower right are filled with tiles from a different luster mihrab.
• 1931: Philadelphia The mihrab is shipped from London to New York and slightly damaged during the process. The Penn Museum covers the necessary repairs, and the “important piece” is soon reinstalled in the museum for a third time.
• 1932: Philadelphia Two tiles isolated from the mihrab for decades and previously owned by French collector Octave Homberg are acquired by Kevorkian and reinstalled in the ensemble in Philadelphia, marking a positive intervention and reunion.
• 1933: Varamin The Emamzadeh Yahya is registered as an Iranian national heritage site, but the tomb of Yahya b. ʿAli is confused as the demolished structure that once stood beside it. The registration document makes no mention of the tiles that were stolen from the tomb.
• 1935: Berlin Friedrich Sarre reproduces the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab for a third time, using the 1918 Philadelphia photograph. This is the first time that the mihrab is published next to the tombstone panel naming “Emam Yahya,” which is erroneously identified as a mihrab.
• 1935: Leningrad (St. Petersburg) The Third International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology Art is accompanied by an enormous exhibition of 25,000 objects at the Hermitage. Luster tiles—including the tombstone of “Emam Yahya”—are a major focus of the exhibition, conference, and proceedings.
• 1937: Honolulu Construction begins of Shangri La, the Honolulu home of Doris Duke Cromwell, the American billionaire heiress who will soon acquire the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab. The Hawaiian home is located on about five acres next to the Pacific Ocean.
• 1938: Iran Doris Duke and her husband visit Iran for about four weeks. The trip is planned by Arthur Upham Pope, and the couple is accompanied by Mary Crane, a graduate student working on Persian art and architectural history.
• 1938–39: Honolulu Construction of Shangri La is largely complete, and Doris Duke and her husband are photographed at home for an article published in Life magazine. This is the first time that the American public can see her private retreat.
• 1938–39: London and Leningrad The Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is reproduced in two major international scholarly compendiums: the six-volume A Survey of Persian Art and the proceedings of the Third International Congress held in Leningrad in 1935.
• Spring 1939: Iran The American Institute of Persian Art and Archaeology conducts its fifteenth architectural survey in Iran. The team includes graduate student Mary Crane and art historian Donald Wilber, who conduct fieldwork at the Emamzadeh Yahya.
• 1939–40: New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquires the mosaic mihrab from the Madreseh-ye Emamiyeh in Esfahan, which had also been displayed in London in 1931. Mary Crane publishes a short article on the mihrab and madrasa.
• 1939–1945: World War II During the Second World War, European museums and collections face heightened risks. The State Museums of Berlin are bombed, and an important luster panel is taken as booty to the Soviet Union.
• 1940: Philadelphia The Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is photographed for the last time in the Penn Museum before being sent to New York for exhibition. Between 1918 and 1940, the mihrab was displayed at least three times in the museum.
• 1940: New York The mihrab is displayed for a second time in New York, in “Six Thousand Years of Persian Art,” another major exhibition organized by Arthur Upham Pope and the American Institute of Iranian Art and Archaeology.
• June 1940: New York and Honolulu During the final weeks of the mihrab’s exhibition in New York, twenty-eight-year-old American heiress Doris Duke becomes interested in its acquisition. Graduate student Mary Crane serves as her agent and begins negotiations with Hagop Kevorkian.
• June 1940: New York and Philadelphia Following the Persian art exhibition in New York, Kevorkian decides to keep the mihrab in that city, and its twenty-two years (1918–40) of association with the Penn Museum in Philadelphia come to an end.
• July 1940: New York and Honolulu Mary Crane continues negotiating with Kevorkian for Duke’s purchase of the mihrab. The dealer reveals his asking price of $150,000, and the fate of the mihrab begins to crystallize: “whoever can pay for it can have it.”
• Fall 1940: Honolulu Kevorkian and Duke settle on the price of $150,000, and preparations begin at Shangri La for its installation in a small room on the eastern end of the house facing the living room. A major concern is fitting the mihrab within the existing low ceiling.
• December 1940: Honolulu Preparations continue for the mihrab’s installation. Crane provides a numbered diagram indicating each tile’s location and emphasizes the need for some free space on the sides and top. Each of the mihrab’s sixty tiles will be mounted to a wooden backing using hooks and brackets.
• December 1940: Honolulu In order to make the mihrab fit within the low ceiling, the last tile of the outer border is partially buried in the ground. As a result, the final word of the Qur’anic verse is cut off, compromising the integrity of the sacred text and disrupting the composition of the tiles.
• December 1940: Honolulu The mihrab is installed in what becomes known as the ‘Mihrab Room.’ For the next sixty-two years (until Shangri La opens as a museum), this invaluable example of Iranian religious, architectural, and cultural heritage will only be accessible to a privileged few.
• Spring 1941: Honolulu Mary Crane provides a design of inscriptional filler for the lower right border of the mihrab. Compared to earlier fillers in this area, the selection of text is accurate (the opening words of sura al-Jumuʿah), however, the basmala is missing.
• May 1941: Honolulu Doris Duke leaves Hawaii as the threat of the Second World War looms. Shangri La is in the evacuation zone and left under the watch of property manager Commander R. W. Swearingen (Waldo), a retired naval officer.
• December 1941: Honolulu Pearl Harbor is bombed by Japan, and the mihrab is deinstalled and stored in the basement. During the war, Shangri La is used as a rest retreat for army and naval officers, and Duke works for the United Seamen’s Service and International News Service.
• 1945–46: Honolulu Shortly after the conclusion of the Second World War, preparations begin for Duke’s return to Shangri La. The mihrab is reinstalled in the ‘Mihrab Room’ in July 1946. Six tiles are jumbled during this process, disrupting its Qur’anic verses.
• 1947: Honolulu Doris Duke publishes a short photo article—“My Honolulu House”—in Town and Country magazine. A photograph of the mihrab is reproduced, albeit in reverse, and Duke describes it as the “high spot, the focal point of the house.”
• 1948–49: Tehran Mehdi Bahrami—director of the department of Islamic art at the Iran Bastan Museum (now the National Museum of Iran)—publishes the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab as on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
• 1953: Tehran Jane Dieulafoy’s travelogue is translated into Persian and serves as a key reference on the Emamzadeh Yahya for Iranian audiences. The mihrab of the Emamzadeh Shah Hosayn in Varamin is inaccurately captioned as the mihrab of the Emamzadeh Yahya.
• 1955: Princeton, New Jersey Based on his visit to Varamin in May 1939, Donald Wilber devotes an entry to the Emamzadeh Yahya in his book on Iranian Ilkhanid architecture. His short text can be considered the first assessment of the site in English scholarship.
• 1958–61: Denver, Colorado The first tile missing from the mihrab’s outer border, inscribed with the opening words of the basmala (بسم الله الرحمن ا), enters the Denver Art Museum and is erroneously described as “Section of a Façade Tile from a Mosque at Sultanabad, XV century.”
• 1965: Honolulu Doris Duke recognizes the value of her Honolulu home and collection and adds a second codicil to her will creating the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. She stipulates that Shangri La is to become a public institution “to promote the study and understanding of Middle Eastern Art and Culture.”
• 1966: Honolulu The mihrab is reproduced in Vogue, again in reverse, in an article on Shangri La. On the mihrab, the author writes, “Perhaps her [Duke’s] greatest masterwork of Muslim art is from Persia…the thirteenth-century mihrab, a holy object, the Muslim equivalent of a high altar.”
• 1966: Tehran The mihrab is reproduced for the first time in Persian in a printed edition of a medieval manuscript. It is placed next to an image of the panel attributed to Yahya b. ʿAli’s cenotaph, and its location is listed as Philadelphia, despite being in Hawaii for twenty-six years.
• 1970: Tehran Historian Alaoddin Azari Damirchi publishes the first monograph dedicated to Varamin and its monuments. The brief section on the Emamzadeh Yahya includes excerpts from Dieulafoy’s description of the luster tiles, but no images of the tomb’s interior are reproduced.
• 1970s–90s: Honolulu The mihrab is documented and photographed at Shangri La and included in an inventory of the art collection. Its inventory card records its description, purchase year, vendor, price, and location and repeats a statement provided by dealer Hagop Kevorkian.
• 1980–85: Varamin The Emamzadeh Yahya is the focus of a three-year restoration campaign by the National Organization for the Preservation of Historic Monuments of Iran. The imprints of luster tiles that once framed the mihrab are revealed, and a fragment of a luster cross is mounted at the top of the mihrab void.
• 1996: Tehran The original 1933 registration document of the Emamzadeh Yahya is reviewed, and no additional information on the site is provided. Instead, it is confused with the Emamzadeh Yahya in Tehran’s Oudlajan neighborhood, and a four-page description of the Tehran shrine is added to the file.
• 2000: United States Tomoko Masuya publishes an article in which she examines the “plunder” of Persian luster tiles from several medieval Iranian sites, including the Emamzadeh Yahya. A general view of the tomb is reproduced, and the mihrab is described as in a “private collection in the United States.”
• 2002: Honolulu Shangri La opens as a museum owned and operated by the Doris Duke Foundation of Islamic Art. The mihrab is celebrated as the masterpiece of the collection and reproduced in an inaugural book, but its physical access remains limited by the museum’s isolation in the Pacific and on the island.
• 2002–4: Digital Space The mihrab’s visibility increases through the presentation of recent color photography on Shangri La’s website. Meanwhile, the Emamzadeh Yahya is included on Archnet, where it is described as a “naked tomb shrine” and represented by three photographs from the 1950s to 1970s.
• 2003: Varamin The mihrab is reproduced in a book published in Varamin using the photograph taken at the Penn Museum in in 1918. Its location is confused as both the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and simply Philadelphia, neither of which is correct.
• 2008–9: Tehran A Survey of Persian Art (1938–39) is translated into Persian, and the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab is again reproduced using the photograph taken at the Penn Museum in 1918. The caption describes it as in the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin.
• 2010s: Varamin A collage with Jane Dieulafoy’s prints and photographs of the tomb’s tiles on view in the Hermitage is displayed in the mihrab void. This important act of remembrance inadvertently leads to some confusion, since the pictured mihrab from another Varamini site is misidentified as the Emamzadeh Yahya’s.
• 2010–14: Print: Persian The Emamzadeh Yahya is included in Iranian encyclopedic series and articles and considered both as an architectural monument and a living shrine. Art historical analyses use sources like Jane Dieulafoy, Donald Wilber, and Archnet and are unaware of the mihrab’s presence in Hawaii.
• 2014–16: Print: English After several visits to Shangri La, Sheila Blair publishes the first detailed study of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s mihrab in English, contextualizing it in relation to five other mihrabs and highlighting its jumbled tiles. The article includes many color photographs of the mihrab.
• 2018: The Museum The Emamzadeh Yahya and its tiles resonate in museums. In Honolulu, visitors take pictures in front of the mihrab. In Denver, the single tile from the mihrab is exhibited as likely from a mosque. In London, museumgoers see the shrine through a photograph taken in 1978.
• 2018–19: Digital Space A virtual tour of Shangri La allows international audiences to experience the property in a more tangible and dynamic way. The mihrab can now be appreciated within the broader setting of the ‘Mihrab Gallery,’ where it is surrounded by many luster tiles from medieval Iran.
• 2018–22: Print and Digital The visibility of the Emamzadeh Yahya and its mihrab continues to rise. INHA (Paris) digitizes Jane Dieulafoy’s photographs, including her view of the mihrab in situ. Color images from Shangri La’s website are used in Iran, and researchers in the United States write about the present life of the shrine.
• 2021–24: Artistic Response The mihrabs preserved in Honolulu and Berlin and absent in Varamin and Kashan are the focus of responses by contemporary artists. Artists in Hawai‘i perform in the ‘Mihrab Gallery,’ and Abbas Akbari produces an educational film documenting his creation of a replica of the Masjed-e Meydan’s mihrab.
• 2025: Digital Space The Emamzadeh Yahya website launches and includes over twenty original contributions on the shrine and Varamin. The project’s interdisciplinary approach fosters a holistic viewing of the site between the field, museum, and archive, and its educational mission aims to increase understanding and share resources.

Enter the Essay

Bibliography

Citation: Keelan Overton and Hossein Nakhaei, “From Varamin to Honolulu: The Displacement, Commodification, and Aestheticization of the Emamzadeh Yahya’s Luster Mihrab, 1863–2025.” Visual Timeline in The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine, directed and edited by Keelan Overton. 33 Arches Productions, November 16, 2025. Host: Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online.