Cultivation Projects
The Scent of Roses in the Desert
Tracking Down Europe’s Secret
Haj Ali Akbar Sanati (1858–1938), a knowledge-hungry trader from the Iranian desert town of Kerman, was looking for an answer to the question of what made Europe so successful. Around 1901 he set off on foot to find it. His path led him via India and the Ottoman Empire to Vienna. He was gone for ten years before returning to Kerman by way of Russia and Central Asia. With him he brought the answer to his quest: education and industry were the secret he had been searching for. So in his home town Kerman, until then a quiet backwater, he founded a textile industry as well as an orphanage that gave children not only shelter but also an upbringing and instruction, including instruction in industrial work. He took for himself the name Sanati, which is Persian Farsi and means ‘industrial’. At that time family names were unknown in Iran. Many of the orphans chose to take the name Sanati, however. In the early 1960s Homayoun Sanati’s father established a museum of modern art and a library on the site of the orphanage. They are still there today.
