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The Ouseley Brothers and Their Journey to Persia 1810-15

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The Ouseley Brothers and Their Journey to Persia 1810-15 The Ouseley brothers and their journey to Persia 1810-15 Insights into the world of the traveller in the early nineteenth century William H Martin and Sandra Mason The Ouseley brothers and their journey to Persia 1810-15 Insights into the world of the traveller in the early nineteenth century William H Martin and Sandra Mason Leisure Consultants Dry Drayton, Cambridge 2018 ii Copyright © 2018 William H Martin and Sandra Mason The right of William H Martin and Sandra Mason to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-1-873450-03-1 Published in 2018 by Leisure Consultants Dry Drayton Cambridge, UK. Printed and bound by Victoire Press Bar Hill Cambridge, UK. iii Contents List of illustrations iv Preface v Acknowledgements vi Note on names and spellings vii 1. The people concerned 1 2. The embassy to Persia 4 3. The nature of the journey 8 4. What the reports tell us 15 5. A taste of the reports – Gore Ouseley 24 6. A taste of the reports – William Ouseley 28 7. A taste of the reports – James Morier 33 8. A taste of the reports – William Price 40 9. What happened afterwards 45 Appendix 1. Further details of the journey 47 Appendix 2. Information on the key people 51 Appendix 3. The Ouseleys as collectors 56 Notes 58 Bibliography 59 Index 61 iv List of illustrations 1. The Ouseley brothers viii 2. James Justinian Morier viii 3. Members of the embassy party July 1810 3 4. One of the embassy ships near Madeira 6 5. An overview of the embassy’s journey 7 6. From Bombay to Constantinople 9 7. A takht-e ravan or travelling chair 12 8. On the road from Bushehr to Shiraz 13 9. Persian musicians 13 10. Royal palace and meidan in Isfahan 14 11. Reception of the embassy near Tehran 14 12. A Persian breakfast 23 13. Tomb of Sheikh Seffi at Ardebil 23 14. The fallen statue of Shapúr at Bishapur 32 15. Fragment of Persepolis sculpture 39 16. Elephant races in Tehran 44 17. Persepolis from the east 44 Apart from the portraits in Figures 1 and 2, all the illustrations are derived from the four reports on the embassy to Persia (see Bibliography). The portraits are in the public domain. Front cover image see Figure 1. Back cover colophon based on Ouseley manuscript of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1460/61. v Preface Our interest in the Ouseley brothers starts with the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Those who have worked in this field will be aware of a manuscript of verses attributed to Khayyám which is in the Bodleian Library and is often referred to as ‘Ouseley 140’ (the library shelf mark). This is one of the two Khayyám manuscripts that Edward FitzGerald used as the basis of his famous version of the poem, published in 18591. We became curious about the name Ouseley and the reason why it was attached to this copy of the Rubáiyát. This led us to William and Gore Ouseley, two brothers living in the late Georgian and early Victorian periods, both of whom were important collectors of Persian and Arabic manuscripts. Their collections largely ended up in the Bodleian Library, the so-called Ouseley 140 coming from the elder brother, William2. The brothers were also notable writers and scholars, particularly William, and they separately travelled and worked in India in the period between 1787 and 1805. Subsequently they together undertook one of their most important journeys, an official visit to Persia between 1810 and 1815. This journey is the core focus of our present study. We have chosen to pay particular attention to the Ouseley brothers’ journey to Persia for a number of reasons. First, it was a visit of international relevance, concerned with the relations between various Western countries and the Persian government which were key to maintaining peace in the region. Second, the journey has been remarkably well documented. Both brothers wrote accounts of various aspects of the journey as did two other members of the British party, James Morier and William Price. Third, despite these accounts being available, there appears to have been no attempt to study them in detail, nor to put them in the context of the lives of the Ouseley brothers, who are important examples of oriental scholars in this early period. Our report attempts to remedy these omissions. Sources for, and content of, this study The main sources for this study have been the accounts of the trip, mentioned above, by four members of the embassy to Persia. These have been supplemented by two other important publications, a near contemporary Memoir of Gore Ouseley written by another orientalist Rev. James Reynolds, and a more recent biography of James Morier and his brothers, which draws on newly located family letters. In addition, we have consulted various histories of the period, notably Sir Denis Wright’s valuable volume on The English amongst the Persians, and John Malcolm’s A History of Persia. These and other published sources are documented in the Bibliography. We have attempted also to investigate the different elements of the Ouseley family, particularly the siblings and descendants of William and Gore, in hopes of identifying the location of family papers and archives which seem to be largely lacking from any public sources. This search has so far had very limited success; what we know is set vi out in Appendix 2. In Appendix 3, we give information on the important Ouseley collections now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The main part of this report consists of a presentation of various aspects of the British mission sent to Persia in 1810. This includes the following: a description of the people who went on the mission; an outline of the extensive journeys undertaken, both to get there and back, and while in Persia; and an analysis of the comments made by different members of the party relevant to topics ranging from the customs of the Persia court to archaeological remains, and from the state of village life to the position of women in society. There are also quotations from each of the four reports, designed to give the flavour of the actual experience in the writers’ own words and style. A final section summarises what happened to the four authors after they returned from Persia. Our work is essentially a progress report on research that could be carried further. There is undoubtedly more detailed material that could be extracted from the accounts of the Persian trip and there is also more to be learned about the Ouseley family. We hope that what we have done will encourage others to look further into this interesting subject. Acknowledgements In preparing this report we have had help from many people. We are particularly grateful for the assistance we received from the librarians at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, in locating information relating to the Ouseley brothers and the items from their collections held by the library. We also appreciate being able to access various Ouseley documents and publications in the University Library in Cambridge. Further thanks are due to colleagues, friends and family with whom we have discussed the research over a number of years and who have helped us to clear our minds on important aspects of this report. Our final acknowledgement is to those who provide resources for online research in the form of digitised libraries and encyclopaedias. These facilities have become a crucial element in much research work today and it is hard to imagine how we could have completed this project without them. vii Note on names and spellings The problems of transliterating Persian and other Middle Eastern names and words are well known. The lack of specification of short vowels and the use of accents for long vowels are particular issues. In our case, we are dealing with four different writers, each of whom has their own approach to transliteration. In addition, the accepted approach to the Western spelling of key cities has changed and, in a few case, the names themselves have been altered. The policy we have adopted is based on the following principles. Where we quote directly from one of the four authors, we have retained their spelling and accenting (or lack of it). In our own writing, we have tried to use the most commonly accepted modern spelling of names of people and places. For people, we have included accents for long vowels where this is customary. But, for place names, we have not done this, since it seems more normal for a modern reader to see, for example Tehran rather than Tehrán, and Shiraz rather than Shiráz. We have generally referred to the country being described and its language as Persia and Persian, since the use of the modern name Iran seems out of place in a story of the early nineteenth century. In the table below, we note some of the key differences in place names between that normal for some of our four authors and modern practice. Accents have been omitted in both cases. Modern name Earlier name or spelling Tehran Teheran Isfahan Ispahan Qom Koom Bushehr Busheir Yerevan Erivan Tbilisi Teflis/Tiflis Istanbul Constantinople Izmir Smyrna Mumbai Bombay Sri Lanka Ceylon viii Figure 1.
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