Reversing the Colonial Gaze
Persian Travelers Abroad

A transformative account of the adventures of Persian travelers in the nineteenth century, moving beyond Eurocentric approaches to travel narratives.

Hamid Dabashi (Author)

9781108738453, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 March 2022

410 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

'Via this rich exploration of hitherto little-studied examples of travel literature in Persian, Dabashi not only provides a framework for understanding a crucial transition period in the history of Iran in a global context, but also offers refreshing insights into ongoing debates on modernity and the role of orientalism.' Gabrielle van den Berg, Universiteit Leiden

Exploring the furthest reaches of the globe, Persian travelers from Iran and India travelled across Russian and Ottoman territories, to Asia, Africa, North and South America, Europe and beyond. Remapping the world through their travelogues, Reversing the Colonial Gaze offers a comprehensive and transformative analysis of the journeys of over a dozen of these nineteenth-century Persian travelers. By moving beyond the dominant Eurocentric perspectives on travel narratives, Hamid Dabashi works to reverse the colonial gaze which has thus far been cast upon these rich body of travelogues. His lyrical and engaging re-evaluation of these journeys, complimented by close-readings of seminal travelogues, challenges the systematic neglect of these narratives in scholarly literature. Opening up the entirety of these overlooked or abused travelogues, Dabashi reveals not a mere repetition of cliché accounts of Iranian or Muslim encounters with the West, but a path-breaking introduction to a constellation of revelatory travel narratives that re-imagine and reclaim the world beyond colonial borders.

1. Mr Shushtari travels to India
2. Mirza Abu Taleb travels from India
3. An Ilchi wonders about the world
4. A colonial officer is turned upside down
5. A Shirazi shares his travelogues
6. A wandering monarch
7. Hajj Sayyah leads a peripatetic life
8. In the company of a refined prince
9. A wandering mystic
10. In and out of a homeland
11. The fact and fiction of a homeland
12. Professor Sayyah comes home to teach.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]