MORIER (James).
A Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, in the years 1808 and 1809; in which is included, Some Account of the Proceedings of His Majesty's Mission, under Sir Harford Jones, Bart. K.C. to the Court of the King of Persia.
MORIER (James).
A Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, in the years 1808 and 1809; in which is included, Some Account of the Proceedings of His Majesty's Mission, under Sir Harford Jones, Bart. K.C. to the Court of the King of Persia.
Morier was born in Smyrna, the second child of Clara and Isaac. His father was consul-general of the Levant Company at Constantinople.
While working in the Levant trade under Isaac’s tutelage, Morier had a chance meeting with Harford Jones. Suitably impressed by the young man, Jones offered him employment and thus a start to his career as a diplomat. “As his secretary he [Morier] accompanied Jones to Persia when Jones was appointed as special envoy to the shah to negotiate a treaty designed to protect India from attack by Russia or France” (ODNB).
Leaving England in 1807, they reached Tehran in 1809, where Jones secured a preliminary treaty with Fat’h-Ali Shah Qajar on the 12th of March. Morier was then sent back to England, leaving Tehran on the 7th of May, where he struggled to “finalize the treaty… in the face of differences between the British government and the East India Company over responsibility for policy in the Persian Gulf” (ODNB).
In the present text Morier relates his experiences of travel in Persia and of his time in the Qajar court. Harford Jones published his account in 1834, which is arguably a more detailed and nuanced description of the mission, but perhaps lacks the liveliness and humour with which Morier observed the people, customs and landscapes he encountered. Morier later drew on his specific view of Persian life to write his most famous work, the novel Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isphahan (1824).
Though prised as one of the most authoritative descriptions of Persian life to be published in the nineteenth century, Morier also travelled through Armenia and Turkey, and made sensitive observations about the culture and people of both.
