The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg

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Book Self Description

The fictional travel memoir Siyahatnameh-ye Ebrahim Beg [The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg] is the first modern Persian novel and a literary account of social, cultural, and political life in Iran toward the end of the 19th century. It relates the journey to Iran of an idealistic and patriotic Iranian youth from Egypt, who unexpectedly confronts widespread poverty, misery, wretchedness, religious hypocrisy, official and bureaucratic corruption, and political tyranny in the homeland of his father. He describes Iran as a backward country with nothing but disease, opium addiction, torture, and injustice. It has neither law nor order. Government officials and religious leaders alike extort money from the people, and bribery and corruption are as prevalent as the lack of education and health services. The book's forthright representation of social conditions in Iran at the end of the 19th century strongly influenced many of those who later participated in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 in the hope of bringing about reform. Maraghe'i's fictional travel diary influenced the course of Persian literature for much of the 20th century, which by and large consists of critiques of social conditions and political oppression. This English translation makes available to literary scholars, historians, and political scientists of Iran and the Middle East an important novel and social document of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.