Persian Home
A typical Persian yard was often situated in front of the home, and where one would walk into upon entering the dwelling. The yard was the center of the house, and typically housed a shallow pool of water in its center. The bedrooms were located few steps up and surrounded the yard. Few families often times lived together, consisting of the parents, their children and their son's wives and children. Each nuclear family would share a room and everyone would cook and eat together.
The homes in the Jewish quarter were not nearly as nice as the one pictured here, often times run down and much less grand.
Sar Chal
Head of the Pit
Given the Jews’ status as a najjes (dirty), the most straightforward way to limit physical contact between Muslims and Jews was to segregate them geographically. In Iranian cities with high Jewish populations like Esfahan, Kashan, Tehran, and Hamedan, Jews were segregated into designated neighborhoods, sometimes within the main city walls and sometimes outside of them. The internal layout of each mahaleh (ghetto) played an important role in distinguishing Jewish life in Iran from the history of other ethno-religious communities.
The most prominent Ghetto in Iran was the one located in Tehran, known as Sar Chal, literary The Head of The Pit.
Mahaleh
The Jewish Quarter
This is an image of a typical road in the Jewish quarter. The roadways were oftentimes quite narrow. Pedestrian and their mules or heavy carts filled the tiny ways. During rainy seasons the space was even harder to maneuver as it was filled with water and mud.
The Holocaust and The Polish Refugees
Starting in 1942, the port city of Bandar Pahlavi (now called Bandar-e Anzali) received up to 2,500 Polish refugees per day, totaling 116,000 (5,000-6,000 of them were Jewish, and of that number, nearly 1,000 were children).
Polish Jewish refugees in a tent orphanage in Tehran, 1942. Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/David Laor.