However, isolated incidents of immurement, rather than elements of continuous traditions, are attested or alleged from numerous other parts of the world as well, and some of these notable incidents are included. Instances of immurement as an element of massacre within the context of war or revolution are also noted. Immuring living persons as a type of human sacrifice is also reported, for example, as part of grand burial ceremonies in some cultures. As a motif in legends and folklore, many tales of immurement exist.
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Najah, on hearing of the treatment his master had undergone at the hands of Nafis, marched toward Zabid and killed Nafis by immuring him in a wall in 1050 (or, according to some chronicles, 1022). He adopted the use of royal umbrella and struck the coinage in his name. Najah lost Aden to the Banu Ma'an Dynasty, only Zabid remained under his possession. Being of an Abyssinian slave origin, Najah was not recognized as a sovereign by the tribal elements in the Yemeni highlands.
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A tradition existed in Persia of walling up criminals and leaving them to die of hunger or thirst. The traveller M. A. Hume-Griffith stayed in Persia from 1900 to 1903, and she wrote the following:Hume-Griffith (1909), pp. 138–139 Travelling back and forth to Persia from 1630 to 1668 as a gem merchant, Jean Baptiste Tavernier observed much the same custom that Hume-Griffith noted some 250 years later. Tavernier notes that immuring was principally a punishment for thieves, and that immurement left the convict's head out in the open.
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Thus the custom is a > substitute for the old practice of immuring a living person in the walls, or > crushing him under the foundation-stone of a new building, in order to give > strength and durability to the structure, or more definitely in order that > the angry ghost may haunt the place and guard it against the intrusion of > enemies. Ancient Japanese legends talk about Hitobashira (人柱, "human pillar"), in which maidens were buried alive at the base or near some constructions as a prayer to ensure the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks.
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According to a Latvian legend as many as three people might have been immured in tunnels under the Grobiņa Castle. A daughter of a knight living in the castle did not approve of her father's choice of a young nobleman as her future husband. Said knight also pillaged surrounding areas and took prisoners to live in the tunnels, among these a handsome young man whom the daughter took a liking to, helping him escape. Her fate wasn't so lucky as the knight and his future son-in-law punished her by immuring her in one of the tunnels.
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Andrea della Robbia and other members of his family created glazed terracotta tondi that were often framed in a wreath of fruit and leaves and which were intended for immuring in a stuccoed wall. In Brunelleschi's Hospital of the Innocents, Florence, 1421–24, Andrea della Robbia provided glazed terracotta babes in swaddling clothes in tondos with plain blue backgrounds to be set in the spandrels of the arches. In the sixteenth century the painterly style of istoriato decoration for maiolica wares was applied to large circular dishes (see also charger). The tondo has also been used as a design element in architecture since the Renaissance; it may serve centred in the gable-end of a pediment or under the round-headed arch that was revived in the fifteenth century.
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His reign was the outstanding creative period of the Safavid era. But the civil wars and troubles of his childhood (when many of his relatives were murdered) left him with a dark twist of suspicion and brutality at the centre of his personality." Donald Rayfield described him as "exceptionally perspicacious and active," but also "a murderous paranoiac when aroused." The Cambridge History of Iran rejects the view that the death of Abbas marked the beginning of the decline of the Safavid dynasty as Iran continued to prosper throughout the 17th century, but blames him for the poor statesmanship of the later Safavid shahs: "The elimination of royal princes, whether by blinding or immuring them in the harem, their exclusion from the affairs of state and from contact with the leading aristocracy of the empire and the generals, all the abuses of the princes' education, which were nothing new but which became the normal practice with Abbas at the court of Isfahan, effectively put a stop to the training of competent successors, that is to say, efficient princes prepared to meet the demands of ruling as kings.
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