Leili Ahmadi
Leili is a student who has recently completed her GCSE examinations and is aiming to expand her knowledge of Persian literature and history and her cultural heritage generally, although she was born and raised in the United Kingdom.
In August 2022, she was working as an intern at the Cambridge Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies at Pembroke College, helping with processing the images and producing summaries of two historical photography exhibitions, which reflect the political role of Persia in her communication with the two empires during the fin de siecle period - Britain and Russia. The first exhibition which took place both in England and Iran with the accompanying catalogue consists of the photographs of Iran - people of various ethnic groups, nature and architectural monuments, taken over two decades from the 1920s by a Pembroke graduate Laurence Lockhart (1890-1975) during his travels when he was among the first employees of the British Petroleum Company. The second series of the photographs belongs to Alexander Iyas (1869-1914), who was serving under Vladimir Minorsky (1877-1966) during the preparations for the demarcation of the Persian-Turkish border and communication with various Kurdish tribes in the 1920s. A series of the prints of Iyas’s photographs is the latest acquisition of the Centre.
The aim of Leili’s work was to prepare the materials to be entered on to the Centre’s website, which is going to be a part of the Cambridge Digital Library.
During her internship Leili worked not only with the images of the Great Game but also prepared for publication the illustrations from the so-called Shahriar Shahnama manuscript, which was presented to the Centre by Ali Javad in 2014 in Washington in memory of his late brother. Previously, the manuscript used to belong to a famous American socialite Elizabeth Robertson, also known under several other surnames - Miller, Weicker and Fondaras. Her family produced several governors of Connecticut and a Republican senator.
This 16th-century Shiraz manuscript has 32 miniature paintings. It is incomplete, the text ending abruptly in the middle of the story of Rustam's impending death at the hands of Shaghad. It also contains a lengthy version of the later interpolated cycle of Barzunama.
Leili enjoyed her work and left Cambridge with newly developed skills and a better appreciation of the turbulent history of Iran and its rich and ancient culture.
