The European other, the Indo-Iranian self and the discourse of wonder in the earliest Persian travelogues of Europe

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the concluding decades of the eighteenth century, as European power was ascending in Asia, Indians and Iranians travelled to Europe and wrote about European society, culture, and politics. This article analyses the earliest Persian travelogues of England by an Indian and an Iranian to show how the Indo-Iranian travellers comprehended European civilisation and envisaged their own status vis-à-vis Europeans. By analysing Shigarfnamah-yi Wilayat (1785) by Mirza I’tisam al-Din (1730–1800), and Hayratnamah-yi Sufara (1810) by Mirza Abu al-Hasan Khan Shirazi (1776–1846), it argues the Indian and Iranian travellers presented the political, social, and military developments in England as wondrous to inform their readers about their desirability, and to critique some undesirable aspects of their own societies and cultures. By analysing these two Persian travelogues, this article also sheds light on some of the commonalities in perceptions of European civilisation circulating in the Persianate world in this period.