For Iranians, Isfahan is the cradle of modern-day polo

It is probably the last thing you would expect to come across in the capital of Iran: A polo club, more commonly associated with the aristocracy.
Nestling in the foothills of the Alborz mountains on the southeastern edge of heavily polluted Tehran, the Qasr-e Firouze Chowgan Club is surrounded by greenery and shielded from view by a military camp.
Qasr-e Firouze is Farsi for the Turquoise Palace and chowgan means polo — a game the Iranians say originated in Persia more than two millennia ago.
To back the claim, they point to drawings dating from the time of Darius I (522-486 BC) in which a horseman is depicted holding a long mallet in one hand.
Today polo is still played in Iran.
On one sunny and clear day, ambassadors, wealthy amateurs and officials rubbed shoulders in a crowd of around 500 people who watched four teams play in a charity tournament to raise funds for a diabetes association.
“We organize matches and tournaments almost every week,” the deputy head of the national Iranian Polo Federation, Mohammad Ali Bigham, told AFP.
The polo enthusiast and player boasted that his federation has 150 accredited members, both men and women — despite the strict Islamic dress code imposed on the women. Tradition says that the game was exported from ancient Persia first to Constantinople or modern-day Istanbul, before later drifting east to the plains of Afghanistan and then to Tibet where chowgan became known as “pulu.”
And the rest is history. Chowgan-pulu spread to India where it was adopted by the Raj and the British drew up a new set of rules for the game they simply called polo.
For Iranians, the historic central city of Isfahan is the cradle of modern-day polo.
During the 16th century, the Safavid Shah Abbas, famed for the architectural marvels built in Isfahan, ordered the construction of a huge polo field in Naqsh-e Jahan Square in the city center so he could watch players from a terrace in his palace.
Over the centuries polo in Iran was a game reserved for the military elite, royal court officials and the aristocracy.
After the 1979 Iranian revolution that toppled the shah, the game was banned.
But it was rehabilitated in the 1990s, and a national polo federation soon saw the light of day.
The rebirth of polo in Iran was largely due to a countrywide growth in a sense of “Iranian identity.”
“In Iran, it is better not to say that polo is the sport of the nobility. The authorities encourage the game because it was born in Iran,” said one polo enthusiast, who asked not to be identified.