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In the 1990s as a student in visual art (painting), I was increasingly inspired by the visual arts of the pastoral nomads of Iran. My guess is that such inspiration had begun to grow in me since childhood, when I was living among Qashqai tribes in Fahliyoun of Mamasani, in Fars province.

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Being familiar with Bakhtiari pastoral nomads, I began my visits and fieldwork research among them in the 1990s. This personal transhumance continued for about ten years, and I focused more and more on the study of mortuary motifs and funerary images that I observed on the surfaces of their tombstones in the middle of the Bakhtiari territories, situated in the south-west of the Zagros Mountains.

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Very soon, a unique genre of Bakhtiari tombstones, lion tombstones (Bard-e Shir), inspired my attention. Amazed by their design, volume and techniques of execution, by the help of my ethnographical fieldwork (participation, observation and interview) and also visual and material culture studies, I found out that the majority of these unique nomadic animal tombstones were made by seasonal non-Bakhtiari stone carvers.

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With the help of epigraphic studies and analysis of their epitaphs, I discovered that some of these rare and stylish tombstones of the Islamic world were sculpted by the professional stone carvers of Hefshejan  during the mid-19th century. It was in 1997 that for the first time I visited this city and asked for the Bagheri family. Immediately I was directed to their family workshop, and then I told them my story and how I found the lion tombstones that their great grandfathers made for the Bakhtiari nomads in Lali plain of Masjid Soleyman in Khouzestan.

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They could not believe my story and were unaware of the existence of those lion tombstones, but confirmed that they had heard such legends from their fathers. This was the beginning of our friendship; I stayed a year with them (1997-98) to learn about their techniques of stone carving and sculpting, and also how to make the stone carving tools in the traditional manner.

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In 2000, I moved to France to continue my PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnography in the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and very soon I became familiar with the theories of Anthropology of Technique, created and applied by André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1986), the famous French archaeologist, anthropologist and scientist. I was inspired by his theories of anthropology of technique and the usage of tools for the production of objects. In this regard, it was only in 2002 that I became familiar with “The Traditional Crafts of Persia”, a very important book written by Dr. Hans Eberhard Wulff (1907-1967), published in 1967 by M.I.T. Press.

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At that time I was focusing on the study of the techniques of production of Hafshejani stone carvers. Dr. Wulff’s book has a special section on stone carving, masonry and their techniques of production which assisted me greatly in my own research. I thought that if I could find the original manuscripts and his archival materials based on which he wrote his magnificent book, maybe I could uncover more information, especially photographs, regarding the life and works of stone carvers in Iran back to the 1930s.

With the help of a grant from the University of Michigan, in 2003 I went to MIT to see if I could find Dr. Wulff’s archive and book manuscript. Once there, I talked to the staff of MIT press who confirmed that they had no idea who Dr. Wulff was or where I could find his research materials. Back in Paris after a few weeks, I forgot the story and finished my PhD in 2007.

After seventeen years, only recently (August 2019), during my fieldwork in Australia, I accidentally succeeded in finding Dr. Wulff’s entire collection and research materials.​

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