These are photos from Tehran of a man wrestling a bear, which is just the type of real world strangeness that was often included in men’s magazines like the ones we feature regularly. Why wrestle a bear? Well, why not? We all have our interests. These may have been shot near what is now known as Park-e Shahr, which previously had been a bustling old-city neighborhood eventually bulldozed during the reign of Reza Shah to create the park. The area is adjacent to the UNESCO World Heritage structure Golestan Palace.
We found an interesting account in Persian about bear wrestling in Tehran, which apparently, after centuries as a common sight in the city, finally went out of vogue during the 1980s: The maerkegirs did not have a specific hangout in old Tehran. They mostly set up shop in busy and high-traffic areas where people were more likely to gather. Watching the maerkegirs was free, but they tried to convince people to give them money as a gift during the performances. From the Qajar era to the end of the second Pahlavi era, the work and burden of the maerkegirs was small, until gradually, with the introduction of more entertainment, the presence of the maerkegirs diminished.
Bear wrestling certainly looks like a sweaty activity, but at least this particular practitioner didn’t wear his good clothes. It looks dangerous too, though the bear has a restraining chain, which, when performances went sideways, we presume was probably grabbed by a couple of handlers as another guy (below) swung his whacking stick. As busking goes, we’d rather play Oasis covers on an acoustic guitar, but you do what you can to earn a little coinage. These shots date from between 1949 and 1951.
