An Iranian in Nineteenth Century Europe

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.

[…] 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

(from the introduction)

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