Volume 114 Literary Translation in Modern Iran. A sociological study by Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam Advisory Board

2.  Little is known about the assumed poem in which Mohammad Khan Sepahsalar, the prime 
minister of Nasir al-Din Shah, was arguably satirized (for an account of the latter, see Sa’adat-
Nuri 1345/1966). Esfahani has written some notes about himself in his still unpublished “Divan,” 
that is, the collection of his poems, which is said to be in Beyazit Devlet Kütüphanesi [the 
state library of Beyazit] in Istanbul. In part of it, we read: “In there [Tehran], they [the Persian 
authorities] decided to arrest and harass [me] on the false accusation of satirizing Sepahsalar 
Mohammad Khan, the prime Minister” (see Afshar 1339/1960: 492–493).

60  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
Once upon a time in Britain, Persia, and India
The four people we will study here were born in the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries. Although they never actually met each other, their interests and practices 
did. Two of them were British and two were Persian. Below, we will tell the story 
of one British author and three agents of translation.
James Justinian Morier
James Justinian Morier (Figure 3) was born in 1782 of Swiss and Dutch parents 
in Smyrna, on the Turkish side of the Aegean Sea. Forty-two years later in 1824, 
after his two diplomatic missions to Persia, he published the picaresque novel The 
Adventures, which secured his fame.
Figure 3.  James Justinian Morier (L) and Mirza Habib Esfahani (R)
Morier’s missions to Persia in the early nineteenth century (1808 and 1811, 
amounting to a total stay of six years) formed part of Britain’s policy of securing 
its imperial power in a country which was historically a zone of conflict between 
the Russians, the Ottoman Empire, and Napoleonic France (see Johnston 1998). 
Before publishing his three-volume best seller The Adventures (1824a), Morier 
published two books on his journeys to Persia and Asia Minor (1812, 1818) provid-
ing ethnographic accounts of the early Qajar period.
3
 Before The Adventures was 
published, the British readership had been exposed to Alain-René Lesage’s Histoire 
de Gil Blas de Santillane (1715–1735, four volumes, Paris; English version, 1749) 
3.  1812. A Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, in the Years 1808 
and 1809. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown; 1818. A Second Journey through 
Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, between the Years 1810 and 1816. London: 
Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown.

 
Chapter 3.  The Qajar period (1795–1925)  61
and Thomas Hope’s novel Anastasius (1819), two popular picaresque novels, the 
former of which is argued to be the model for Morier’s The Adventures (Amanat 
2003, Rastegar 2007).
The Adventures narrates the peculiar story of Hajji Baba, a barber’s son from 
Isfahan, Persia, and his picaresque adventures through hardships and misfortunes, 
and the way he succeeds, mainly because of his resourcefulness, in attaining a 
position as secretary to a Persian diplomat (for a detailed account of the story, see 
Amanat 2003).
Mirza Habib Esfahani
Moving on to Persia: Mirza Habib Esfahani (hereafter Esfahani; Figure 3) was 
born in 1251/1836 in a village called Ben, near the modern-day city of Shahr-e 
Kord in Iran. As an outspoken writer and poet accused of “slandering the prime 
minister of the time” (Sanjabi 1998: 252), he escaped in 1866 to Constantinople. 
Apparently, around 1886 (Yazici 2003: 426), Esfahani translated The Adventures 
into Persian. He died in 1893 (Afshar 1339/1960: 494). He had never seen his 
translation published, nor was he recognized as the translator for more than half 
of a century.
Long before the Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911), Esfahani, having 
completed his studies in theology, literature, and Islamic methodology in both 
Persia and Baghdad, Iraq, and having established contacts with Persian dissidents 
abroad, was forced to leave Persia as mentioned earlier (see Sanjabi 1998: 252, 
Balaÿ and Cuypers 1983: 41). Esfahani was also accused of being a member of 
the Faramush-khaneh, a secret society modeled on European Masonic lodges, 
and an atheist, though there is little or no evidence for these accusations (see 
Azarang 1381/2002: 35). Esfahani made Constantinople his home in 1866 (Afshar 
1339/1960: 493). He worked there as a Persian instructor and translator, at a time 
when the Ottomans’ sociocultural environment was changing due to the politi-
cal movement of the Young Ottomans (see Paker 1998: 577–578). Constantinople 
was also becoming one of the centers of the Persian intelligentsia and dissidents, 
providing a forum for publishing the Persian press.
Various Iranian scholars talk of Esfahani learning French and other languages 
while in exile. However, only one non-Iranian scholar provides reliable evidence. 
In his study of the nineteenth-century calligraphers, Stanley (2006: 96) examines 
Esfahani’s role and his book, Hat ve Hâtttân (1887–1888) [calligraphy and callig-
raphers]. He quotes from Inal, “a successor” of Esfahani, that Habib (Esfahani was 
known in Constantinople as Habib Efendi) “for 21 years taught Persian and Arabic 
at the Galatasaray Lycée [high school] and Persian and French at the Darüşşafaka 
[a secondary school]” (Stanley 2006: 96). Esfahani also published Dastur-e Sokhan, 
the first systematic Persian grammar in 1872 in Constantinople (see Armaghan 

62  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
1308/1929, Afshar 1339/1960), and several publications in Persian and Turkish, 
including his Persian translations of Molière’s Le Misanthrope in 1869–1870 and 
Lesage’s Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane.
4
Haji Sheikh Ahmad Ruhi Kermani
Haji Sheikh Ahmad Ruhi Kermani (hereafter Kermani, Figure 4) was born in about 
1272/1855 in Persia. Kermani was an associate of Esfahani in Constantinople, 
and while crossing the Ottoman-Persian border in 1897, he was arrested by the 
Ottomans, being suspected of having played a part in the murder of Nasir al-
Din Shah (1831–1896), the then king of Persia. Kermani was butchered in Tabriz, 
Persia, by the Persian authorities, and a manuscript copy of Esfahani’s translation 
of The Adventures was found among his belongings.
Figure 4.  Haji Sheikh Ahmad Ruhi Kermani (L) and Major D. C. Phillott (R)
The role of Kermani has become less prominent in the discourse surrounding The 
Adventures, mainly because he was misidentified as the translator of the book. He 
arrived in Constantinople possibly in 1886 and worked as a Persian and Arabic 
instructor and a copyist of manuscripts. Kermani soon took an active role in the 
political movement of the time, led by Jamal al-Din Afghani, a political activist 
who was aiming to unify the Islamic world against the Qajars’ despotism. Kermani 
is reported to have cooperated with Esfahani as an editor and copyist (Modarres-
Sadeghi 1379/2000a: 14). His political correspondence with the Muslim theologians 
4.  For a list of Esfahani’s works, see Afshar 1339/1960: 495, 1342/1963; Modarres-Sadeghi 
1379/2000a; for his translation of Le Misanthrope, see Sanjabi 1998; for various versions of Gil 
Blas in Persian, see Azarang 1381/2002: 38–39. For a review of Esfahani’s translation of Gil Blas 
into Persian, see Emami 1378/2000.

 
Chapter 3.  The Qajar period (1795–1925)  63
(ulema) of Qum, Najaf, and Mashhad was seized by the Persian authorities, who 
demanded his extradition from the Ottoman Empire. Pressure was intensified 
after the assassination of Nasir al-Din Shah, the Qajar king, in 1896 by an associate 
of Kermani and his circle. Kermani and two other associates were extradited to 
Persia where they met their tragic end (see Modarres-Sadeghi 1379/2000a: 16; and 
Phillott’s introduction to the 1905 edition of the Persian translation).
5
The misidentification of Kermani as the Persian translator of The Adventures 
remains an interesting case of the myriad ways agency can be misattributed in 
intercultural transfers. In his introduction to The Adventures, Edward Browne, 
who described Kermani as “a man of much learning and imposing appearance” 
(1910: 93), tells of a letter he received from Kermani in 1892, in which Esfahani is 
introduced as the translator of The Adventures from French. Kermani asks Browne 
for his cooperation in publishing the book, because, despite Esfahani’s willingness 
to publish the translation in Constantinople, the “Censor of the Press” (Browne 
1895: xxi) would not permit it. It is not exactly clear what censor Kermani is talk-
ing about here. However, we can assume it should be the censor of the press which 
was prevalent during the period of Abdüllhamit II (1876–1908) in the Ottoman 
territory (see Demircioğlu 2009: 138). Having identified Esfahani as the Persian 
translator in 1895, Browne committed a similar mistake in his fourth volume of 
The Literary History of Persia in 1924 by misidentifying Kermani as the transla-
tor. Kamshad, who has published a facsimile of Kermani’s letter to Browne and is 
credited with being one of the Iranian scholars who identify Esfahani as the first 
Persian translator of The Adventures, attributes Browne’s mistake to his age and 
“poor health” (1966: 23). In the same vein, Rastegar suspects that Browne’s “delib-
erate misidentification” might have been due to his support for Persian constitu-
tionalists, with whom Kermani was covertly affiliated (2007: 258).
Of particular interest is how Phillott (see below) remained totally unaware of 
Browne’s introduction to The Adventures (1895), and even more surprising is his 
erroneous identification of Kermani as the translator in his introduction to the 
second edition (1924) from Cambridge where he, as Kamshad (1966: 23) argues, 
must have met Browne.
Similar attempts have been made to save Esfahani from oblivion. The Persian 
scholar Mojtaba Minovi is known to have found a manuscript of Esfahani’s 
translation in the University of Istanbul Library in 1961 (see Modarres-Sadeghi 
5.  The account of the execution as reported by Phillott runs as follows: “A wire from Tehran to 
Tabriz and the two suspects were secretly butchered in a kitchen, in the presence of the Governor, 
who – so it is said – while superintending the execution was moved to tears. The butchery was 
carried out on the 4th of Safar (A.D. 1896 about), A.H. 1314. The bodies were afterwards thrown 
into a well.” (1905: v)

64  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
1379/2000a: 12), while Jamalzadeh, another Persian author, makes a similar claim 
(see Afshar 1339/1960, Kamshad 2010). Let us see who is who here. Writing an 
introduction for an edition of Morier’s in 1895, Brown referred to Kermani’s let-
ter and translated it into English. In it, Esfahani was recognized as the Persian 
translator of The Adventures from French. This remained unknown until Kamshad 
in his study (1966: 23) reproduced a facsimile of Kermani’s letter to Browne. 
Disagreement exists among Iranian scholars who claim to identify Esfahani as 
the translator. While Kamshad’s claim is based on Kermani’s letter, others look 
at Esfahani’s manuscript. Minovi is probably the only Iranian who has actually 
seen Esfahani’s manuscript in 1961 in the library of the University of Istanbul, 
with the record number of F. 266 (despite some attempts, we have not been able 
to examine it closely). Minovi is said to have given a microfilm of the manu-
script to the library of the University of Tehran, numbered 3603. Jamalzadeh 
(1362/1983: 673) covers Minovi’s discovery in 1961 of Esfahani’s manuscript, 
quoting from Minovi’s letters. However, it is not clear why Jamalzadeh claims the 
credit (1348/1969 and 1362/1983). Kamshad (2010) has argued that he informed 
Jamalzadeh about his discovery and did not think of the credit as he was “young, 
inattentive and these things did not matter” to him at the time. Interestingly 
enough, Afshar (1339/1960) does not mention Minovi’s discovery and gives the 
credit to Jamalzadeh (Afshar 1342/1963).
Douglas Craven Phillott
The last agent of translation in our story is Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) 
Douglas Craven Phillott (Figure 4). Phillott was born in 1860 in India, and al-
though his name is hardly remembered in Britain, he is remembered, at least by 
the Iranians, for his role as the editor and the main publishing agent of the first 
Persian translation of The Adventures in Calcutta, India in 1905 (Figure 5).
As mentioned above, the manuscript copy of Esfahani’s translation of 
The Adventures was found among Kermani’s belongings. However, until very 
recently it was not clear how the manuscript was handed over to Kermani’s 
family in Kerman, more than 1,500 kilometers from Tabriz. Phillott in his 
introduction to the 1905 edition states that “[T]he present edition is printed 
from a MS. copied from, and again collated with, the original MS. that the 
translator sent to his native town.” We have recently found some letters writ-
ten by Kermani while in Constantinople to her family in Kerman that are 
revealing (see Kermani, n.d.). In one undated letter, Kermani informs that:  
مداتسرف هیده شیارب مدوخ سکع هعطق کی اب هتشون اباب یجاح هخسن کی مه نم و«
 
[and I have made a copy of Hajji Baba and have sent it to him (the governor of 
Kerman) with my photo]
«
. This discovery now sheds light on how Phillott came 
into the possession of Hajji Baba’s manuscript and the photo that appeared in 

 
Chapter 3.  The Qajar period (1795–1925)  65
the frontispiece of the book. This copy can be also the base of the manuscript in 
circulation in the pre-print form in Persia at the time.
6
Kalbasi (1382/2003: 44) assumes that Kermani’s family, having feared the gov-
ernment’s brutality, sought Phillott’s support for the publication of the manuscript. 
Phillott, who was the British consul in Kerman at the time, appreciated the manu-
script immediately. Phillott went to India, edited and annotated the manuscript, 
and published the translation in 1905 at the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. 
Although he is viewed as the savior of the book (Modarres-Sadeghi 1379/2000a), 
he committed a substantial error by introducing Kermani as the translator.
Figure 5.  The title page of The Adventures of Haji Baba of Ispahan, edited by Phillott and 
published in 1905 in Calcutta
Phillott’s work on the Persian manuscript had a pedagogical purpose. On each page 
of the Persian copy, he provides footnotes explaining Persian words and expres-
sions, proverbs, idioms, and, in some cases, noting mistakes in the translation (e.g., 
on page 1, footnote 6). He sometimes misinterprets Esfahani’s translation (e.g., on 
page xiv, for Persian 
ربراب
 [porter] he suggests 
لّمحتم
 [bearing/suffering], which 
does not carry the ironic meaning in Esfahani’s translation; cf. Modarres-Sadeghi’s 
analysis of Phillott’s work on the 1905 edition, 1379/2000a: 43–44).
6.  Since no trace of either of these two manuscripts has been found (we found no trace of them 
in our visit to Felsted (UK) in 2013 where Phillott lived in his later years), we cannot ascertain 
Kermani’s textual agency nor the exact weight of Phillott’s editorial agency.

66  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
Figure 6 provides a simple illustration of the movement of our agents of trans-
lation and the texts, and Table 4 provides the timeline for the key events in the 
translation and production of The Adventures into Persian.
Constantinople
2
Tabriz
Isfahan
Kerman
Calcutta
3
2
1
Figure 6.  The movement of the agents of translation and the texts of The Adventures
1, Esfahani; 2, Kermani; 3, Phillott; → Movement of agents of translation; - - → Movement of texts
Table 4.  Timeline of the key events in the translation and production of The Adventures 
in English and Persian
Year
Event
1824
Publication of Morier’s The Adventures in England and France
1866
Esfahani leaves Persia for Constantinople
1886
Esfahani translates The Adventures into Persian 
1886
Kermani arrives in Constantinople
1896
Kermani is butchered in Tabriz, Persia
1905
Phillott edits and publishes The Adventures in Persian in Calcutta, India.
He mistakenly names Kermani as the Persian translator
1961–1966
Esfahani is recognized as the Persian translator
1379/2000
Publication of Modarres-Sadeghi ’s critical edition of The Adventures
in Tehran, based on the microfilm of Esfahani’s manuscript

 
Chapter 3.  The Qajar period (1795–1925)  67
Previous scholarship on The Adventures
Scholarly work on The Adventures and its Persian translation can be divided into 
two groups of views expressed by Iranian and non-Iranian scholars, respectively.
Iranian scholarship
Iranian scholars have exposed both the original and the translation to critical 
analyses. Views range from speculations about the originality of the book (Minovi 
1367/1988), possibly due to Morier’s introduction to The Adventures, where he 
relates a story in which he bases his novel on a Persian manuscript (see below), 
to regarding the original as a “one-sided, prejudiced, and exaggerated picture of 
Persians” (Kamshad 1966, see also Nateq 1353/1974, Amanat 2003). While the 
majority of critics praise the translation and even consider it to be superior to the 
original (Emami 1372/1993, Ghanoonparvar 1996, Azarang 1381/2002), argu-
ing that it is an example of a “translation method in the classic Persian [prose]” 
(Kalbasi 1382/2003: 49), others criticize Morier and Esfahani, the Persian transla-
tor. For some, Morier’s book is “an Orientalist project par excellence” that serves 
the “reassurance of Europe’s cultural and moral superiority and the civilizing mis-
sion of the imperial powers” (Amanat 2003: 561, original emphasis). In the same 
vein, the translation is seen as “the beginning of the colonial literatures” (Nateq 
1353/1974: 32). Still, some see the sociopolitical context as a key factor for the trans-
lation in the events surrounding and leading up to the Constitutional Revolution 
(1905–1911). However, they criticize the translator’s strategies as being affected by 
his political background and his exile in Turkey (Kamshad 1966, Hoseini 2006).
Against this background, the second editor of the Persian translation (Modarres-
Sadeghi 1379/2000a), takes a different line. In the introduction to his critical edition, 
he draws on Morier’s argumentative “ploy” to maintain that Morier used a manu-
script that he had received from a certain Hajji Baba in Tucat, Turkey on his way 
home and that he had it either as the basis for his novel or his English translation. 
Modarres-Sadeghi argues that no one except Esfahani, the Persian translator, gave 
credit to Morier’s “ploy” and that Esfahani’s purpose has been “the reconstruction 
and the revival of the work Morier claims his novel is based on” (1379/2000a: 21).
One scholar has moved the critical discourse surrounding the original and the 
translation away from the dominant discourse outlined above. Rastegar (2007: 251) 
argues that the “inter-cultural power dynamics and the construction of literary 
value in the social contexts of both their origin and their destination” have been 
largely missing in the critique of literary translations such as The Adventures. The 
critic shows how a text like Morier’s novel has been appropriated for “both colo-
nialist-orientalist as well as anticolonialist revolutionary imaginaries” (Rastegar 
2007: 251).

68  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
Non-Iranian scholarship
A group of so-called “orientalists” and British critics have collectively viewed the 
work within the framework of an orientalist novel. They point to the book’s en-
tertaining qualities as a picaresque novel (Scott and Williams 1968), its ethno-
graphic value (Jennings 1949, Altick 1895/1954), and its educational significance 
for “every cultivated Englishman” (Browne 1895: ix). For Balaÿ and Cuypers, the 
translation is part of Iran’s Constitutional literature that “reinforces the original 
text” (1983: 41). Attempts have also been made to identity the fictional characters 
and their real counterparts (Grabar 1969, Moussa-Mahmoud 1961/62, Weitzman 
1970) or otherwise to connect the incidents in the novel to the real world (Curzon 
1895). Two other interesting and yet less-known studies include Polonsky (2005), 
on the Russian translation of Morier’s works in the 1830s, and Krotkoff (1987), 
who identifies the real “the Reverend Doctor Fungruben,” introduced in the in-
troduction of The Adventures as being Joseph von Hammer, later Freiherr von 
Hammer-Purgstall.
Textual analyses
Textual comparison of the English and Persian versions of The Adventures is lim-
ited to four cases, to the best of our knowledge. Kamshad praises Esfahani’s writing 
style and its impact on “the awakening of the people and on bringing forth the 
Revolution” (1966: 26). However, he criticizes the translator for allowing his atti-
tude to “Iran’s religious and political establishments” (ibid.: 24) to lead to a series 
of alterations, additions, and omissions. Kamshad’s critique is supported by one 
textual example in his analysis. His critique of the translator’s methods and politi-
cal ideology reflects a traditional, equivalence-based approach to translation. This 
was the dominant approach in translation during the 1960s and afterwards in Iran.
The second textual comparison, by Emami (1372/1993), is based on criteria 
of accuracy, faithfulness, and fluency, of which the translator is argued to be ac-
complished in only the latter. Emami’s analysis is based on four texts: the English 
version, the French version (Defauconpret’s translation of 1824), and two Persian 
editions – Phillott (1924) and Jamalzadeh (1348/1969), whose edited translation 
has been severely attacked (see Modarres-Sadeghi 1379/2000a: 28, 1379/2000b: 71). 
Emami argues that Esfahani’s translation is not “accurate.” However, it re-
mains a “successful” translation for being faithful to the “spirit of the original” 
(1372/1993: 48). In addition, Emami finds that the French translator mistranslates 
the English “courier” to “courtesan,” while Esfahani’s translation follows the English 
version. Emami once again shows the strong prevalence of the equivalence-based 
approach to translation in Iran. Emami’s fascination with the translator’s method 

 
Chapter 3.  The Qajar period (1795–1925)  69
urges him to resurrect the original text instead of the translation.
7
 For Emami, 
Esfahani’s translation remains as successful as Edward Fitzgerald’s adaptation of 
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1852), both of which “are not conforming to 
underlying translation principles” (Emami 1372/1993: 49).