DESCRIPTION
HAJ SAYYAH (1836-1924) catches wanderlust and decides to travel. He sets off
west and returns eighteen years later. His wanderings take him throughout all
of Europe, America. he is the first Iranian to become an American citizen and
the Orient. Later he becomes a major player in the Constitutional Revolution.
These diaries recount his European adventures.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION
"is endowed with a special, almost poetic beauty, that of a work which
comes from a good heart, will, as European cities are seen through the eyes
of an Iranian of the last decades of the nineteenth century, and seen with no
hint of prejudice, or the narrator’s personal intrusion, also learn something
of the refinement of the Iranian character when it is at its best. It is a book
that seems on first sight to move slowly, but which has a rhythm of its own
that gives it lightness and quickness. It has a quality no discerning reader
can fail to appreciate, while, for the specialist, it should provide pleasure
as well as another work to be added to those relevant to the history of the
Iranian awakening of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "
-- Peter Avery
REVIEW
We can say that it is the best and the most meaningful travel diary that
has ever been written by an Iranian during the last two centuries.
-- Ali Dehbashi
AUTHOR
Haj Muhammad Ali Sayyah (1836-1924), was born in Mahallat, Iran, to a peasant
family. As a child he grew up in Tehran, where he started studying traditional
Islamic sciences. Later, with the financial support of his uncle, he was sent
to the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq to continue his studies. There
he not only mastered Islamic sciences but also became familiar with the advanced
civilizations of the time through his meeting a number of Middle Eastern thinkers
acquainted with the West. After completing his studies, he returned to his native
Mahallat where he found the disruptive conditions of his homeland very disappointing.
His father, Mulla Muhammad Reza, decided that his son was educated enough and
ready to start life; he sent him to Muhajiran to live with his rich uncle. There
Haj Sayyah realized that his family?s plan was for him to marry his cousin.
He was not pleased with the idea of staying in Muhajiran for the rest of his
life and living off his wife, he vowed to free himself from the confines of
family life. In 1859, at the age of twenty-three, at a time when travelling
abroad was not easy and few people ventured it, he left Muhajiran with meager
means and without informing his family. Haj Sayyah was married in his forties
and had three sons and one daughter. He died in Tehran at the age of ninety-two.
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