Taken for Wonder: Nineteenth-Century Travel Accounts from Iran to Europe

by Naghmeh Sohrabi

Overview

Accounts of travel to far-flung places have deservedly gripped the imagination of readers for centuries. Yet travelogues can reveal much more than the customs of a foreign land; they can also serve as a window into the culture and concerns of their place of origin. Drawing on a series of travel narratives by Iranian visitors to Europe in the nineteenth century, Taken for Wonder illustrates how these writings reflect the complicated political agendas of diplomats, merchants, kings, and others during the Qajar Dynasty.

Using texts that correspond to four monarchic reigns in this period, the book shifts the traditional framework of analysis from the act of travel to that of writing travel. Hayratnamah (The Book of Wonder), an Iranian ambassador's account of his visit to the court of King George III, provides the first example. Sohrabi's reading reveals a narrative calculated to reinforce the grandeur and stability of the Qajars to its Persian readers rather than merely recount the lifestyle of the English court. Similarly, the political motives at work in Mirza Fattah Khan Garmrudi's accounts of his European journey are explored in light of Britain's 1837 occupation of Iran. A subsequent chapter considers the ways Nasir al-Din Shah, the longest reigning Qajar monarch, viewed his European travelogues as a tool for domestic politics and international diplomacy. The study concludes with two travel accounts by non-government officials, demonstrating how the genre became a mode for critiquing the Qajar Dynasty and instigating political reform at the close of the nineteenth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199829705
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/17/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Naghmeh Sohrabi is Associate Director for Research at Brandeis University's Crown Center for Middle East Studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Notes on Transliteration

Chapter 1: Writing Travel, Making Genre

Chapter 2: The Reluctant Tourist: Mirza Abul Hasan Khan and his 'Book of Wonder'

Chapter 3: Long Day's Journey into Night: Mirza Fattah Khan Garmrudi's accounts of Europe 68

Chapter 4: The Traveling King: Nasir al-Din Shah and his Books of Travel

Chapter 5: A Darvish and a Merchant walk into Europe: The Popularization of Travel of Writing 155

Conclusion

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Long neglected both as a literary genre and as a rich source of historical information, Persian travel literature is just beginning to attract the critical and analytical attention it has always deserved. With its sophisticated theoretical anchoring and its nuanced discussion of nineteenth-century Iranian travelogues, Taken for Wonder stands to give rise to a new understanding of the part that this uniquely important type of writing has played in processes of contact, cross-fertilization, and modeling that keeps cultures in constant back and forth glances." —Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, University of Maryland

From the Publisher