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The German Other: Nasir al-Din Shah's Perceptions of Difference and Gender during his Visits to Germany, 1873–89

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

David Motadel
David Motadel*
Affiliation:
History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge
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Abstract

The article examines the travelogues kept by the Qajar ruler Nasir al-Din Shah during his European tours in 1873, 1878 and 1889. To the monarch, Europe appeared to be an exotic and at times troubling place and he recorded his experiences with delight, criticism and humor. Focusing on his notes on Germany, the article explores Nasir al-Din Shah's encounters with people on the streets and at court, and in particular his perception of the female sex. Scholarship has either neglected the diaries or rejected them as a historical source, referring to the strong influence of literary convention and the Shah's alleged lack of understanding of the political, social and cultural conditions in Europe. Drawing on the uncensored versions of the diaries, the article argues that a closer look at the texts reveals fruitful, often amusing, insight into the monarch's experiences with social roles and cultural patterns alien to him. It suggests that a more careful reading of the diaries will also be beneficial in regard to the Shah's perception of European history and monuments, technology and scientific innovations, and landscape.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , July 2011 , pp. 563 - 579
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2011

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Dominic P. Brookshaw, Houchang E. Chehabi, Richard J. Evans, Rachel G. Hoffman, Iradj Motadel and Valentina Pugliano for their critical comments on earlier drafts of the article.

References

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13 Krüger, “Reisetagebücher,” 184.

14 William L. Hanaway, “Persian Travel Narratives: Notes toward the Definition of a Nineteenth-Century Genre,” in Society and Culture, ed. Daniel, 256.

15 For a historical periodisation of nineteenth-century travelogues, including the Shah's diaries, see Ringer, Monica M., “The Quest for the Secret of Strength in Iranian Nineteenth-Century Travel Literature: Rethinking Tradition in the Safarnameh,” in Iran and the Surrounding World 1501–2001: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics, ed. Keddie, Nikki and Matthee, Rudi (Seattle, 2002), 146–61Google Scholar. Isolated incidents of travel writing can be found already in the Middle Ages, most importantly Nasir Khusraw's influential safarnama of the eleventh century. For an overview of pre-Qajar travelogues, see Afshar, “Persian Travelogues,” 145–48. Afshar estimates that around 500 Persian travelogues were produced during the Qajar period, see p. 149. Generally, modern travel literature was developed as a genre at more or less the same time in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan, Central Asia and India, although the tradition of the travelogue reached back into the eighteenth century in the Ottoman Empire and British India, see Göçek, Müge, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; and Cole, Juan R. I., “Invisible Occidentalism: Eighteenth-century Indo-Persian Constructions of the West,” Iranian Studies, 25, nos. 3–4 (1992): 3–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Krüger, “Reisetagebücher,” 185.

17 D'Hulster, “The Sojourn of Nasir a-Din,” 51.

18 Braun, Hellmut, “Geschichte Irans seit 1500,” Handbuch der Orientalistik, ed. Spuler, Bertold, vol. 6, 3 (Leiden and Cologne, 1959), 130Google Scholar.

19 Krüger, “Reisetagebücher.”

20 Krüger, “Reisetagebücher,” 174–75.

21 Krüger, “Reisetagebücher,” 184.

22 Krüger, “Reisetagebücher,” 185.

23 In the case of travelogues to Europe, a comprehensive and critical research overview has been provided by Naghmeh Sohrabi, “Signs taken for wonder: Nineteenth century Persian travel literature to Europe” (PhD diss., Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 2005). Other genres of Persian prose have also been discussed as historical sources; see for example the assessment of memoirs of the Qajar era by Fragner, Bert G., Persische Memoirenliteratur als Quelle zur Neueren Geschichte Irans (Wiesbaden, 1979)Google Scholar.

24 Hanaway, “Travel Narratives,” 252.

25 Ringer, “The Quest,” 147–49, 158.

26 Ghanoonparvar, Mohammad R., In a Persian Mirror (Austin, TX, 1993)Google Scholar, quote at 12, see also 11–37; Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Historiography (New York, 2001), 35–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 For a theoretical introduction, see for instance Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and articles in Clark, Stephen H., ed., Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit (London, 1999)Google Scholar; see also Osterhammel, Jürgen, “Von Kolumbus bis Cook: Aspekte einer Literatur-und Erfahrungsgeschichte des überseeischen Reisens,” in Neue Impulse der Reiseforschung, ed. Maurer, Michael (Berlin, 1999), 97–131Google Scholar

29 Jürgen Osterhammel, “Ex-zentrische Geschichte: Außenansichten europäischer Modernität,” Jahrbuch des Wissenschaftskollegs zu Berlin 2000/2001 (2002): 296–318.

30 Conrad, Sebastian and Osterhammel, Jürgen, “Einleitung,” in Das Kaiserreich transnational: Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914, ed., Conrad, Sebastian and Osterhammel, Jürgen (Göttingen, 2004), 17Google Scholar.

31 For the case of Iran see Braaksma, Michiel, Travel and Literature: An Attempt at a Literary Appreciation of English Travel-Books about Persia (Göttingen, 1938)Google Scholar; see also Pratt, Imperial Eyes and Blanton, Casey, Travel Writing: The Self and the World (New York and London, 2002), 1–29Google Scholar.

32 Ringer, “The Quest,” 148–49, 158.

33 Ghanoonparvar, Persian Mirror, 11–37; Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 35–53.

34 For a general examination of the “invention of Iran” in the late Qajar period see Cole, Juan R. I., “Marking Boundaries, Marking Time: The Iranian Past and the Construction of the Self by Qajar Thinkers,” Iranian Studies, 29, no. 1–2 (1996–97): 35–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vaziri, Mostafa, Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Ashraf, Ahmad, “Iranian Identity IV.: In the 19th and 20th Centuries,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Yarshater, Ehsan, vol. 13 (New York, 2006), 522–30Google Scholar; Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804–1946 (Princeton, NJ, 1999)Google Scholar; idem., ‘Cultures of Iranianness: The Evolving Polemic of Iranian Nationalism’, in Iran and the Surrounding World, ed. Keddie and Matthee, 162–81; Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 12, 15–48. Afshin Marashi stresses the importance of Nasir al-Din Shah's tours to Europe in the outset of the nation-building process in Iran. He concentrates on the influence of European royal urban ceremonies on the creation of a new public image of the monarchy in Iran, however, rather than analyzing the impact that the visits and the Shah's accounts of them had on the emergence of national self-awareness among the Qajar elites. For the general context, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; and Hobsbawm, Eric, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Program, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar.

35 For the tradition of the term “Farangi” in Iranian literature, see Ghanoonparvar, Persian Mirror, 2–5 (general), 11 (on safarnamas).

36 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 79.

37 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 259.

38 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 92.

39 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1878, 122.

40 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 109.

41 Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Eroticizing Europe,” in Society and Culture, ed. Daniel, 332–34; on the phenomenon of “Seeing oneself being seen” see also Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 35–37, 74–76.

42 Ibid.

43 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 270.

44 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 259.

45 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 290.

46 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 278.

47 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 277–78.

48 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 271.

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50 Tavakoli-Targhi, “Eroticizing,” 311.

51 See note 49.

52 Descriptions about German women: Küstrin: Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 81; Berlin theater: 97 Baden: 119; Berlin ballet: 89; Cologne zoo: 107; Wiesbaden: 109, 114; Frankfurt zoo: 115; Baden: 123; Berlin: Nasir al-Din Shah, 1878, 125; Baden, 135; Berlin: Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, I: 216, 244, 226; Berlin theater: 247; Baden: II, 280; Munich: 301.

53 See for instance Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 97.

54 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 115. Also, the German popular magazine Gartenlaube reported about the meeting with Miss Ottilie Lichterfeld, a pianist from Berlin, see Rhenanus, “Persische Diamanten im Taunusbade,” Gartenlaube (June 1873): 440.

55 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 246.

56 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 78.

57 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 93.

58 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 101.

59 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 103.

60 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 103.

61 However, by the late Nasiri period the traditional way of life was changing amongst the courtly class of women. Nonetheless, the harem remained at least physically segregated from official court life, see Mansureh Ettehadieh, “The Social Condition of Women in Qajar Society,” in Society and Culture, ed. Daniel, 76.

62 Reuss to Bismarck, 25 May 1873, St. Petersburg, Federal Archives Berlin, R901, No. 51021, 83.

63 On leading a lady by the arm, see for example Deutscher Reichs-Anzeiger und Königlich Preußischer Staats-Anzeiger, evening (4 June 1873): 1–2; evening (5 June 1873): 1; Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt, evening (11 June 1889): 2–3; evening (11 June 1889): 2–3; “Das diesjährige Stiftungsfest des Lehrbataillons zu Potsdam,” Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung (29 June 1889): 660.

64 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 97; see also about Bismarck's wife: 102.

65 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 115.

66 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 86.

67 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 94.

68 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 250.

69 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 250.

70 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, “Gender Transformations: Beauty, Love, and Sexuality in Qajar Iran,” Iranian Studies, 34, no. 1–4 (2001): 89–91CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; see also idem, Women with Mustaches, 11–25, 232–35 in particular.

71 Rhenanus, “Persische Diamanten,” 440.

72 Rodd retells the story about Nasir al-Din Shah, when writing about Muzaffar al-Din Shah's visit to Europe in 1902, see Rodd, James Rennell, Social and Diplomatic Memories 1902–1919 (Third Series) (London, 1925), 17Google Scholar.

73 Quoted in Röhl, John C. G., Wilhelm II: The Kaiser's Personal Monarchy, 1888–1900 (Cambridge, 2004), 126Google Scholar.

74 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 100.

75 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 96.

76 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 88.

77 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 118; see also Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, II: 243.

78 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, I: 212.

79 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 84 (unflattering); Nasir al-Din Shah, 1878, 119 (more positive).

80 Nasir al-Din Shah, 1889, I: 216. When he first met her in 1873, though, he had a pretty negative impression: “The right hand of the Crown Prince's wife, specifically her forearm, revealed an awful wound, very unpleasant, as she was wearing see-through clothes” (Nasir al-Din Shah, 1873, 94).

81 Hanaway, “Travel Narratives,” 263.

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