Fragment No. 46

Tehran Peace Museum: Remembering War, Building a Culture of Peace

Located on the northern side of Shahr Park in Tehran, the Tehran Peace Museum is a cultural institution that explores war and its human consequences through the themes of peace, awareness, and education. A significant part of the Museum’s focus is devoted to the consequences of chemical weapons and to the experiences of victims and survivors of the Iran-Iraq War.

The Tehran Peace Museum is not simply a place for displaying historical objects and documents. It seeks to transform the experience of war into an opportunity for reflection and dialogue about peace, humanitarian values, coexistence, and human responsibility.

From the Experience of War to Peace Education

The idea of establishing the Tehran Peace Museum emerged in the mid-2000s in connection with the activities of the Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support and its links with the international peace museum movement. Contacts with Hiroshima’s peace museums and the experience of visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum also contributed to the development of the project.

The Museum’s present building and exhibition were opened to the public in 2011. Since then, the Museum has developed activities focusing on the human and environmental consequences of war, while placing particular emphasis on peace education.

This approach brings personal testimonies together with documents, photographs, and historical objects. In doing so, it allows visitors to encounter war not only as a political or military event, but through the lives of people and the long-term consequences that can remain long after a conflict has ended.

The Legacy of Chemical Weapons

One of the Museum’s important themes is the history and consequences of chemical weapons. Documents, photographs, objects, and personal accounts related to victims and survivors form an important part of its collection and interpretation.

The significance of this material goes beyond documenting a particular period of history. Accounts of the physical and human consequences of chemical weapons reveal forms of suffering that may continue for years or even decades after the end of a war.

Here, a museum object is not merely a historical artefact. It can also serve as a witness to the past and as a starting point for reflection on how the repetition of violence might be prevented.

A Museum for Listening to Human Stories

One of the distinctive features of the Tehran Peace Museum is the presence of personal experiences of people who have directly encountered war. The testimonies of victims and survivors give the history of conflict a human dimension that is often less visible in official documents and military narratives.

Visitors therefore encounter history through individual experiences: people who witnessed war, suffered its consequences, and now share their memories with future generations.

This connection between memory, personal testimony, and education is an important part of the Museum’s identity.

Peace Education

The Museum’s activities extend beyond its permanent exhibitions. Throughout its work, the Tehran Peace Museum has hosted workshops, lectures, discussions, and educational programmes addressing peace, humanitarian law, disarmament, tolerance, and intercultural dialogue.

The Museum has developed a multi-generational peace education programme and has hosted workshops involving university students, civil society participants, experts, volunteers, and artists. It has also supported a more formal Peace Studies Group and a range of participatory discussion programmes.

In this way, the Museum seeks to move beyond the conventional role of an exhibition space and become a place for learning, dialogue, and social participation.

The Museum and the International Peace Museum Movement

The Tehran Peace Museum is connected with the international movement of museums for peace and participates in networks that bring together museums and cultural institutions working around peace education, human rights, remembrance, and the prevention of violence.

Within this broader context, the Tehran Peace Museum can be understood as part of an international effort to reconsider the role of museums: not simply as places where the past is preserved and displayed, but also as spaces where contemporary human questions can be explored.

Peace museums around the world emerge from very different historical and social contexts. What connects them is an interest in using memory and historical experience as a basis for reflection, dialogue, and consideration of the future.

From the Memory of War to a Culture of Peace

By placing the experience of war alongside the idea of peace, the Tehran Peace Museum raises a fundamental question: How can the memory of violence contribute to building a different future?

The Museum’s response lies less in a single statement than in its method of storytelling: listening to survivors, examining documents, encountering the material traces of war, and creating opportunities for dialogue.

From this perspective, the Tehran Peace Museum is not simply a place for remembering war. It seeks to transform the memory of conflict into an opportunity for education, awareness, and dialogue about peace.

A Museum Between Past and Future

Situated within the urban environment of Shahr Park, the Tehran Peace Museum occupies a space connected to the everyday life of Tehran while also offering visitors an opportunity to encounter the history and human consequences of war.

Its significance lies not only in its objects and documents, but in the relationship it creates between memory, human testimony, education, and dialogue.

Ultimately, the Tehran Peace Museum is a place that speaks about the past while looking towards the future—a future in which understanding the consequences of war can contribute to the development of a culture of peace, human dignity, and mutual respect.

Kheymeh Shab-Bazi is one of the best-known traditional forms of puppet theatre in Iran. It brings together puppets, music, dialogue, humour and storytelling within a small and intimate performance space. More than a form of entertainment, this traditional theatre preserves elements of Iranian popular culture and collective social memory.

The performance generally takes place inside or around a small structure known as a kheymeh, meaning “tent”. The puppeteers remain behind or beneath the stage and manipulate the puppets using threads, wires or other traditional techniques. The audience sits in front of the tent and follows the story through dialogue, music and the movements of the puppets.

One of the most distinctive features of Kheymeh Shab-Bazi is its recurring cast of familiar characters. Among them, Mobarak – usually rendered as Mubarak in English – holds a particularly important position. Mubarak is traditionally represented as a black-faced puppet wearing a red costume and cap. Through humour, jokes and unconventional behaviour, he engages in dialogue with the other characters. His conversations may touch upon social relations, human behaviour and everyday life – subjects that might otherwise be difficult to address directly.

The character of Mubarak offers an especially interesting example of the role of humour in Iranian theatrical traditions. Although he appears at first to be a simple comic character, his function often extends beyond entertainment. Mubarak can represent the voice of ordinary people. Through jokes, irony and satire, he exposes contradictions in everyday life and may even challenge characters who occupy positions of greater authority within the performance.

The Morshed, or principal performer and narrator, also plays a central role. The Morshed guides the performance, provides voices for the characters and works with music and rhythm to shape the atmosphere of the show. Kheymeh Shab-Bazi is therefore not simply a sequence of puppet movements; it is a combination of puppetry, performance, music, oral storytelling and comedy.

Music is an essential component of the performance. Percussion instruments and live music can accompany the entrance of characters, changes in scenes and comic moments. Rhythm gives the performance energy and helps establish a direct connection between the performers and their audience.

The stories often draw upon everyday life, social relationships, popular narratives and familiar characters. This close relationship with ordinary life has allowed Kheymeh Shab-Bazi to change over time and to adapt to new audiences while retaining its traditional character.

One of the most important aspects of Kheymeh Shab-Bazi is its transmission from one generation to the next. Knowledge of puppet-making, manipulation techniques, voice performance, music, stories and methods of engaging with an audience has traditionally been transmitted through practical instruction and experience. Preserving Kheymeh Shab-Bazi therefore means more than conserving a collection of old puppets. It means safeguarding a body of knowledge, skills, stories and performance practices.

Today, Kheymeh Shab-Bazi can continue to exist alongside modern forms of puppet theatre. Its significance lies not only in its historical background but also in its ability to establish a direct and human relationship with the audience. The small performance space, simple puppets, distinctive voices and live music create an intimate theatrical experience that is less common in many contemporary forms of performance.

Kheymeh Shab-Bazi can be understood as part of Iran’s theatrical heritage – a tradition formed at the intersection of art, entertainment, storytelling and social life. It demonstrates how a traditional performance can be simultaneously humorous, entertaining and reflective of society.

Preserving and presenting Kheymeh Shab-Bazi today provides an opportunity to understand an important part of Iran’s intangible cultural heritage. This heritage does not live only in historical objects; it also survives through voices, movements, skills, characters and collective memories.