The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan

Adventures of Hajji Baba of
Ispahan, by James Morier

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Title: The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
Author: James Morier
Release Date: May 5, 2007 [EBook #21331]
Language: English
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Produced by James Tenison

THE ADVENTURES OF HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN

BY

JAMES MORIER

ILLUSTRATED BY H.R. MILLAR

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE HON. GEORGE CURZON,
M.P.

MACMILLAN AND CO. LONDON AND NEW YORK
1895
All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION
In the first decade of the present century Persia was for a short time the
pivot of the Oriental interest of English and Indian statesmen. But little
known and scarcely visited during the preceding century, it suddenly
and simultaneously focussed the ambitions of Russia, the
apprehensions of Great Britain, the Asiatic schemes of France. The
envoys of great Powers flocked to its court, and vied with each other in
the magnificence of the display and the prodigality of the gifts with
which they sought to attract the superb graces of its sovereign, Fath Ali
Shah. Among these supplicants for the Persian alliance, then appraised
at much beyond its real value, the most assiduous and also the most
profuse were the British, agitated at one moment by the prospect of an
Afghan invasion of India, at another by the fear of an overland march
against Delhi of the combined armies of Napoleon and the Tsar. These
apprehensions were equally illusory; but while they lasted they
supplied the excuse for a constant stream of embassies, some from the
British sovereign, others from the viceregal court at Calcutta, and were
reproduced in a bewildering succession of Anglo-Persian Treaties. Sir

John Malcolm, Sir Harford Jones, Sir Gore Ouseley, and Sir Henry
Ellis were the plenipotentiaries who negotiated these several
instruments; and the principal coadjutor of the last three diplomats was
James Justinian Morier, the author of “Hajji Baba.”
Born and nurtured in an Oriental atmosphere (though educated at
Harrow), he was one of three out of four sons, whom their father,
himself British Consul at Constantinople, dedicated to the Diplomatic
or Consular service in Eastern Europe or in Asia. His Persian
experience began when at the age of twenty-eight he accompanied Sir
Harford Jones as private secretary, in 1808-1809, on that mission from
the British Court direct which excited the bitter jealousy and provoked
the undignified recriminations of the Indian Government. After the
Treaty had been concluded, James Morier returned to England, being
accompanied by the Persian envoy to the Court of St. James, who
figures in this narrative as Mirza Firouz, and whose droll experiences in
this country he subsequently related in the volume entitled “Hajji Baba
in England.” While at home, Morier wrote the first of the two works
upon Persia, and his journeys and experiences in and about that country,
which, together with the writings of Sir John Malcolm, and the later
publications of Sir W. Ouseley, Sir R. Ker Porter, and J. Baillie Frazer,
familiarised the cultivated Englishman of the first quarter of this
century with Persian history and habits to a degree far beyond that
enjoyed by the corresponding Englishman of the present day. Returning
to Persia with Sir Gore Ouseley in 1811-12 to assist the latter in the
negotiation of a fresh Treaty, to meet the novel situation of a
Franco-Russian alliance, Morier remained in Tehran as charge
d’affaire after his chief had left, and in 1814 rendered similar aid to Sir
H. Ellis in the conclusion of a still further Treaty superseding that of
Ouseley, which had never been ratified. After his return to England in
1815, appeared the account of his second journey. Finally, nearly ten
years later, there was issued in 1824 the ripened product of his Persian
experiences and reflections in the shape of the inimitable story to which
is prefixed this introduction. “Hajji Baba” at once became a favourite
of the cultured reading public, and passed speedily through several
editions. That popularity has never since been exhausted; and the
constant demand for a new issue is a proof not merely of the intrinsic

merit of the book as a contemporary portrait of Persian manners and
life, but also of the fidelity with which it continues to reflect, after the
lapse of three-quarters of a century, the salient and unchanging
characteristics of a singularly unchanging Oriental people. Its author,
having left the Diplomatic service, died in 1849. The