According to the International Exhibition of Iranian Stone, 170 years have passed since the first expo was held in London in 1851, and during this period, these exhibitions have undergone many changes. Cameras were not yet in use at the time, and what historians have as visual documents are some of the lesser-known paintings used in some exhibition books.

By the order of the Prime Minister during the Qajar period, our country Iran chose Expo 1851 London as a destination for trade development. Because Mirza Mohammad Taghikhan Farahani, known as Amirkabir, was very interested in the development of exports and the growth of industries, he invited industry owners to exhibit their goods, according to an announcement in the newspaper Vaqaye Etefaqiyah. It took about 3 months for a special group from Iran to be prepared, equipped and sent to the UK by land. It took 6 months for the expo to be fully held and, of course, 3 months for the delegation to return to Iran; Therefore, the emergence of Keshuman in this event took exactly one whole year.

At that time, Iran exhibited some of the architectural masterpieces of the Safavid period in the form of the exterior of its pavilion, along with the country's export goods, including handmade Tabriz carpets, Kurdistan carpets, high quality saffron and pistachios, and it is said that merchants with empty hands and full pockets They returned to Iran.

This means that everything they had taken abroad as an export product was sold and there was nothing left to return to Iran. In addition, the products as the main goods, some artistic goods such as painting and calligraphy, including book covers, pens, gilding, etc., painting around the room and hall, calligraphy pieces and old lines whose margins and text are painted and gilded. Be, the box and the mirror frame and the shoulder frame and the book frame and the hunting frame and ... were displayed in this event.

According to unconfirmed narrations, the late Amir Kabir, although he had ordered to attend this exhibition event, was killed by Naser al-Din Shah in the Finn Bath of Kashan in the same period of one year and never saw the fruit of his creative idea. The idea paved the way for subsequent exhibition activities in other countries, especially periodic exhibitions.

Iran had a special presence in 9 other world events after the London Expo. The 1900 Paris Expo, 1967 Montreal, 1993 Taijon, 1998 Brisbane, 2000 Hannover, 2005 Aichi, 2010 Shanghai, 2015 Milan and the 2017 Regional Expo on the eve of Kazakhstan were events in which our country had its own pavilion.

Nasser al-Din Shah and the Expo 1867

Feedback on the positive events of the expo reached the king after the return of the merchants, and after hearing the positive news in this regard, he was eager to see the next expo in person. In 1867 he left for Paris as a large delegation to attend the French Expo. Of course, he was so fascinated by the splendor of European cities that he spent almost an important part of his trip in sightseeing and entertainment centers. Except for the last one or two days! In the book of Naser al-Din Shah's memoirs on the third trip to Farangistan, the second book, by the efforts of Mohammad Ismail Rezvani and Fatemeh Ghaziha, we read pages 236 to 238: "We woke up in the morning, I got dressed. Today is the last day of Paris and the situation is strange; On the one hand, they tie the knot, on the other hand, they connect us and Aziz al-Sultan [Milijak II], they bring photos and furniture and they want to get money. The situation is strange! I rode in a carriage to the Elysee to say goodbye to Carnot.

Amin al-Sultan and ... were. At the foot of the steps stood General Le Ruger, the Chancellor's's secretary, Secretary Spoiler. Carnot was also found. I went upstairs and we talked for a while. Carnot's wife came, gave us a small Carnot statue in the box, and we returned home. After an hour of riding with Amina Al-Sultan and ... we went to the exhibition [exhibition]. I entered in a carriage and went to the French property in the center. Our whole tour was limited to seeing French industries. I walked a lot, my legs were tired, we watched a lot of jewelry, gold and silver jewelry, gilding, mazfaz [watercolor] work, porcelain, crystal, mirrors, other objects. I bought some jewelry. I bought jewelry, gold and crystal for 1,500 tomans.

It was so good and exquisite porcelain that if you had two crores of cash, you would give it all away and buy jewelry and other things. Time was short, because the exhibition closes immediately at six in the afternoon and people have to go out, but the outside of the exposition and the Eiffel Tower is open until morning. In short, it was an inconspicuous mirror in French, seven cubits long, three cubits wide, but four cubits wide. The first is the largest mirror ever made in the world.

French industrial factories have made a lot of progress in textiles and crystals, porcelain, hardware, etc. Today, of course, I saw more jewelry worth three crores of tomans. All the pearls, colored diamonds, were ten kinds of diamonds that a person would fall in love with. But it was very expensive. In the evening, I returned to the exposition and rode in a carriage. It was so crowded that we got in the carriage perfectly and I left. We went straight to the house of Nazar Agha, the ambassador of Iran, he had a beautiful house, we sat for a while and ate dinner, he has three or four big and small boys, he had a funny little four-year-old girl, his daughter and children also know Turkish. From there I returned home. At night, because I was very tired and had to go to the German windmill tomorrow, I did not go anywhere. "Amina al-Sultan went to the Paris Observatory and watched the moon with a large [telescope]."

Good name Mr. Chancellor

In recent decades, the exhibition industry activists have named several exhibition halls throughout the provinces because of the service that this figure has rendered to the exhibition industry about a century and a half ago. For example, Isfahan province, which has recently acquired a huge and glorious site, has named its first exhibition hall in this complex Behnam Amirkabir. This place is installed in 3 separate halls with 7,800 square meters of useful exhibition space, which is twice the current space of the exhibition in Isfahan city bridge (the previous location of the exhibition site). In East Azarbaijan province, about 15 years ago, it became one of the most important and largest exhibition halls named after the famous Iranian Chancellor and reminds him of his services. This hall has about 10 thousand square meters of exhibition space.