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Invisible Occidentalism: Eighteenth-Century Indo-Persian Constructions of the West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Juan R. I. Cole
Juan R. I. Cole*
Affiliation:
Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Michigan
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Extract

Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them.

—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Marco Polo's encounter with Kublai Khan, which Italo Calvino made the framework for his exploration of the fantastic in urban life, stands as a useful parable for the nature of the interaction of West and East in the period between 1200 and 1700, when myriads of Europeans produced journals and accounts of their journeys into the rest of the world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3-4 , 1992 , pp. 3 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1992

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was read at a conference on the Eighteenth Century held in November, 1991 at the University of California, Berkeley. The author is grateful to James Turner, the organizer, as well as to Barbara Metcalf and Nasir Hussain, the commentators.

References

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2. Lewis, Bernard, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982)Google Scholar; Göcek, Fatma Müge, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. For a strong statement of the thesis of early modern cultural isolation between the northern and southern Mediterranean lands, see Hess, Andrew C., The Forgotten Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. For the European impact in the Persian Gulf see Juan Cole, R. I., “Rival Empires of Trade and Imami Shi'ism in Eastern Arabia, 1300-1800,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987): 177-204CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For eighteenth-century Iran and its relations with the British East India Company in the Persian Gulf see Perry, John R., Karim Khan Zand (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the British view see Kelly, J. B., Britain and the Persian Gulf 1795-1880 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

4. See Philip Calkins, B., “The Formation of a Regionally Oriented Ruling Group in Bengal 1700-1740,” Journal of Asian Studies 29 (1970):799-806CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barnett, Richard B., North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720-1801 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Cole, J. R. I., Roots of North Indian Shi'ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722-1859 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

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6. The classic statement of this theory is Robinson, Ronald, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration,” in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds., Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London: Longman, 1972), 117-42Google Scholar.

7. Mir Shushtari, ‘Abdul-Latif Khan, Tuḥfat al-'ālam va ẕayl al-tuḥfah, ed. Muvahhid, S. (Tehran: Tahuri, 1984), 277, 329Google Scholar.

8. I have used Isfahani, Mirza Abu Talib, Masīr-i ṭālibī fl bilād-i ifrangī, ed. Khadivjam, Husayn (Tehran: Shirkat-i sihami, 1972)Google Scholar; Stewart, Charles (trans.), Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (New Delhi: Sona, repr. 1972)Google Scholar. The accounts of Shushtari and Abu Talib are briefly noticed in Denis Wright, The Persians amongst the English: Episodes in Anglo-Persian History (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985), 44- 52.

9. Bihbahani, Aqa Ahmad, “Mir'āt al-ahwāl-i jahān-numā,” (London, British Library, Persian MS, Add. 24,052)Google Scholar; the MS circulated very widely in manuscript in India and Iran, and I understand it has recently been published in Iran, but I know of no nineteenth-century lithograph edition.

10. Shushtari, Tuḥfat, 275.

11. Abu Talib, Masīr-i ṭālibī, 232-3; Eng. trans., 129-30.

12. Ibid., 232; Eng. trans., 130.

13. Shushtari, Tuḥfat, 275-6.

14. Ibid, 276.

15. Abu Talib, Masīr-i ṭālibī, 239-42; Eng. trans., 134-9.

16. Bihbahani, “Mir'āt,” foil. 270a-b.

17. See Cole, J. R. I., “Shi'i Clerics in Iraq and Iran, 1722-1780: The Akhbari- Usuli Conflict Reconsidered,” Iranian Studies 18 (1985): 3-34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, more generally, Said Arjomand, Amir, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Bihbahani, “Mir'āt,” fol. 273a.

19. Shushtari, Tuḥfat, 284.

20. Ibid., 299.

21. Ibid., 316.

22. Ibid., 298-9, 312.

23. Bihbahani, “Mir'āt,” fol. 227b.

24. Abu Talib, Masīr-i ṭālibī, 182; Eng. trans., 103.

25. Ibid., 195-6; Eng. trans., 110.

26. Ibid., 205-14, 263-4; Eng. trans., 114-22, 181-2.

27. Shushtari, Tuḥfat, 300-303.

28. Ibid., 306-7.

29. Abu Talib, Masīr-i ṭālibī, 188; Eng. trans., 106.

30. Bihbahani, “Mir'āt,” foil. 227b ff.

31. Shushtari, Tuḥfat, 315.

32. Ibid., 295.

33. Abu Talib, Travels, 343-5.

34. Ibid., 348-51.

35. Shushtari, Tuḥfat, 316.

36. Abu Talib, Masīr-i ṭālibī, 265-74; Eng. trans., 167-77.

37. Ibid., 270, 272; Eng. trans., 173, 177 (quote).

38. Ibid., 279-81; Eng. trans., 156-60.

39. Eisenstein, Elizabeth, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) (2 vols. in one)Google Scholar.

40. I am grateful to Barbara Metcalf for this suggestion.