The adventures of Haji Baba from Isfahan

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The picaresque novel The Adventures of Hadschi Baba from Isfahan (1824) is the main work of the British author James Morier and is counted among world literature.

This picaresque novel long influenced the opinion of England about Persia and daily oriental life; its translation into Persian in 1905 led to the development of the modern Persian socially critical novel.

Madar-e Shah Madrasa in Isfahan

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When Hajji Baba traveled with the English, he was astonished that they used to carefully write down their travel experiences and experiences in notebooks so that they could tell their compatriots about them after their return and thus familiarize them with the most remote regions of the world. The Persian Hadschi Baba followed this example and wrote down his life story during his stay in Constantinople , which, although it contains the experiences of a rather obscure and ordinary individual, was so full of contradictions, peculiarities and adventures that it - Haji Baba hoped - if published in Europe, it would attract readership.

This is how Haji Baba, the barber's son from Isphahan , tells his amazing career from the barber shop to high civil service. Through peasant shrewdness and mischievousness he manages to become secretary of the Persian ambassador. In the course of his life he adapts more and more to the behavior of the powerful and increasingly understands how to take advantage of situations. As a lovable crook, he learns to use the rules of a greedy and selfish world to his own advantage, but without becoming a ruthless or dangerous villain.

Emergence

Title page of the III. Second edition bands (1824)

James Morier, the British diplomat who was probably born in Smyrna ( Izmir ) at the end of the 18th century , lived for several years in Persia, where he worked at the court of the Shah of Persia. Diary entries of his travels through Persia, Armenia, Asia Minor to Constantinople from 1808 to 1812 led to the publication of two travelogues before he quit the diplomatic service to work as a writer from 1816.

The Adventures of Hajji Baba from Isfahan was his first novel, published in 1824, which Morier published under the pseudonym Peregrine Persic (German: "Persian Wanderer"), the alleged translator of the Hajji Baba reports. His profound knowledge of the country and his empathy for the mentality of the people enabled him to give the story a convincing oriental attitude towards life. His book is not only an informative historical document, but also an exciting novel written with humor and irony. After the first publication in Great Britain, the rumor arose that the figure of Hajji Baba was the life and character of a prominent figure of the Qajar period, "Abu'l-Hasan Khan Sirazi" , who was the British special ambassador in Persia from 1810 to 1813 and who wrote Hayrat Namah ("The Book of Miracles"). Morier had traveled with him to London and was also a member of the English legation that accompanied him on his return to Persia. During this time, Morier was able to acquire knowledge of Persian customs and traditions, opinions and convictions, as well as background information on popular belief and other aspects of oriental life. Whether these astonishing details that Morier processed in his book and the strangers were actually inaccessible, it was assumed that a Persian co-author and the later submitted translation into Persian must have been the actual original.

Originally it was suspected that the translation was the work of Haji Sheykh Ahmad Ruhi , a sharp critic of the dictatorial regime of the Qajars. It was only years later that it became known that it was a work by Mirza Habib Isfahani . The title of Isfahani's translation into Persian is Sargozasht-e Haji Baba-ye Isfahani . The first German translation comes from Friedrich Schott (1789–1846), an English and French teacher at the Knight Academy in Dresden, and appeared in 1824. The first French-language translation appeared in 1933 (Neuchâtel: Attinger).

criticism

The contemporary oriental travel and adventure novel became a bestseller immediately after its first publication and is now being published again in both the English original and the Persian translation. It has appeared in numerous other languages. The German edition is available in an edition of the Insel-Verlag from 1995 and in the antiquarian bookshop in earlier editions.

The satirical picaresque and travel novel, highly praised by contemporary critics and classified as ethnographically valuable, is now considered world literature .

Although the Persian version Sargozasht-e Haji Baba-ye Isfahani is the translation of the work, it is so authentic that even educated Persians who read the book in this translation were convinced that they were holding the original in their hands. Mohammad-Taqi Bahar (1880–1951), who is considered the greatest poet of Persian modernism, assessed the work as a masterpiece of Persian literature of the 19th century with great significance as a literary and social document that consequently had an impact on the development of the Persian novel , Walter Scott referred to Hajji Baba as an oriental gil blas .

It would be a mistake to apply European moral criteria to this book, which is entirely rooted in the oriental way of life. Morier has presented this atmosphere so dense, the local color so aptly, as a non-oriental has seldom succeeded. His book is not only an informative historical document, but also an exciting novel written with humor and irony.

Morier describes Hajji Baba's further experiences in his second novel, The adventures of Hajji Baba in England , published in 1828 . At no time could this work build on the success of the first volume.

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  1. ↑ Including: Diether Krywalski: Knaurs Lexikon der Weltliteratur. ISBN 978-3-426-77169-3 .
  2. ↑ "Morier, James Justinian." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica 2006. Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. 18 Sept 2007.
  3. ↑ Said I. Abdelwahed: England and the East in James Morier's Hajji Baba of Ispahan , available at [1] .
  4. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006
  5. ↑ Kamran Ekbal: The trip to Brazil of the Persian ambassador Mirza Abu'l-Hasan Khan Sirazi in 1810 , in: Die Welt des Islams , New Ser., Vol. 27, No. 1/3 (1987), pp. 23-44.
  6. ^ Henry McKenzie Johnston: Ottoman and Persian Odysseys: James Morier, Creator of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, and His Brothers .
  7. ^ Meyers Konversationslexikon Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna, fourth edition, 1885-1892
  8. ^ Afterword by Albrecht Neubert to the 1972 edition of the Dieterichschen Verlagsbuchhandlung Leipzig
  9. ^ JD Yohannan: The Persian Poetry in England 1770-1825 . Comparative Literature, Issue 4 of 1952, page 142.
  10. ↑ Abbas Amanat: HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica (English, including references)

expenditure

  • The colorful adventures of Hadschi Baba from Ispahan (Translated from the English by Friedrich Schott. With a foreword and explanatory notes by Wilhelm Adolph Lindau). Rein Verlag, Leipzig 1827, part 1 , part 2 , part 3
  • The adventures of Hajji Baba from Ispahan (Translated from the English by A. von Kühlmann-Redwitz). Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1913
  • The adventures of Hajji Baba from Isfahan (with an afterword by Albrecht Neubert). Leipzig Dieterichsche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1972
  • The adventures of Haji Baba. An oriental adventure novel . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt 1995. ISBN 978-3-458-33431-6
  • The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan . May Publishers Ltd 1986. ISBN 978-1-85077-145-6 .
  • James Morier (Author), Mirza Habib Isfahani (Translator): Sargozasht-E Haji Baba-Ye Isfahani . Bibliotheca Iranica - Persian Language Publications Series, No 9. ISBN 978-1-56859-042-4

filming

In 1954 the story was filmed with John Derek as Hajji Baba and Elaine Stewart as Princess Fakzia; Nat King Cole sang the theme song Hajji Baba . The book is by Richard J. Collins and directed by Don Weis .

literature

  • Terry H. Grabar: “Fact and Fiction: Morier's Hajji Baba”. In: Texas Studies in Literature and Language 11 (1969), pp. 1223-1236.
  • Henry McKenzie Johnston: Ottoman and Persian Odysseys: James Morier, Creator of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, and His Brothers . IB Tauris & Co 1998. ISBN 1-86064-330-2
  • Said I. Abdelwahed: England and the East in James Morier's Hajji Baba of Ispahan .
  • Muhsin Jassim Ali: Sheherazade in England: A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights . Three Continents Press, 1981.

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