Born into a wealthy Edinburgh family, Fraser travelled in the East for both business and pleasure. Connected with India through his brother who was an employee of the East India Company, in 1821 he visited Persia on the way home to England. Arriving in Isfahan he proceeded to Meshed with the intention of continuing to Bukhara, but was prevented from doing so by the political situation in Central Asia. Instead he journeyed along the Caspian shores, thence from Tabriz to Baghdad via Kurdistan. These journeys provided material for two books of travel: Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in the Years 1821 and 1822 (1825) and Travels and Adventures in the Persian Provinces on the Southern Banks of the Caspian Sea (1826). Fraser returned to Persia a decade later to gather political intelligence, publishing A Winter's Journey from Constantinople to Tehran in 1838, and Travels in Kurdistan, Mesopotamia etc in 1840. George. N. Curzon praised Fraser for his ‘admirable books of travel’ that displayed ‘broad acquaintance with and faithful portraiture of every aspect of modern Persian life’ (1892: 1. 22, 24). However, in pointing out the critical view he took of the Qajars, especially the Princes he met on his journeys through the Caspian region, Denis Wright counts Fraser an early exponent of the ‘jaundiced view of the Persians [which] helped to sow seeds of resentment and misunderstanding between the two countries’ (1977: 154).