Early Muslim Travel Accounts of Britain
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Notes Introduction 1. For more on Naser-ed-Din, see Khair et al. (2006: 245–60). I am grateful to Tabish Khair for alerting me to the Shah’s travelogue. 2. Surprisingly, Cohen’s later essay does not reference Said’s concept of travel- ling theory. 3. It is also difficult to contain these writers within a particular temporal period, since most of their key texts are set in the recent past rather than in the present. This issue will be tackled at length in a chapter on the turn to historical fiction in my next book, Muslim Representations of Britain, 1988–Present. 4. Among the 21 writers, only Tayeb Salih’s classic novel Season of Migration to the North (1966) has achieved the level of success necessary to activate the so- called massive translation machine. It was published as a Penguin Modern Classics edition in 2003 and according to Jamal Mahjoub has been translated into over 30 languages (2009: n. pag.). 5. All of the pre-twentieth century texts in Chapter 1, and Maimoona Sultan and the Aga Khan’s texts from Chapter 2, are now available to online readers, thanks to Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and Openlibrary.org. 6. In the British context, ‘Asian’ denotes South Asian, unlike in the USA, where the word usually means East Asian. 7. It is advisable to imagine scare quotes around ‘England-returned’ throughout this work. 8. See James Procter’s idea of ‘devolved literature’ (2003: 3), Corinne Fowler and Lynne Pearce’s expansion of the term in Postcolonial Manchester (2013: 1, 5–6), and the University of Edinburgh’s seminar series Representing Muslims in Scotland and the North-East (Adam and Cherry, 2015: n. pag.). 1 Orientalism in Reverse: Early Muslim Travel Accounts of Britain 1. Kaiser Haq claims that of two remaining Persian manuscripts, one is in the British Museum and the other in the Khoda Buksh Library in Bankipur, Bihar (Haq, 2001: 13). However, according to Ahmaḍ Munzavı̄ , there are at least six extant manuscripts of Shigarf-nama-‘i Vilayat (1973: 4043–4). Muhammad Isa Waley, Curator of Persian and Turkish at the British Library, informed me by email in September 2014 that four of the Persian manuscripts are there. They were formerly in the British Museum but became part of the British Library collections in 1974. 2. I’tesamuddin, in Haq (2001: 16, 27). All references are to this edition of The Wonders of Vilayet and will be cited parenthetically by page number in the text. 3. Rozina Visram calls attention to the fact that the slang term ‘Blighty’ for Britain is a corruption of bilayati or Vilayet (1986: 193). 223 224 Notes 4. It seems almost certain from the context that the palace is in London, so this is not a description of King George’s other famous home, the Brighton Royal Pavilion (see pp. 16–17, 111). Nor is this Buckingham Palace, since that did not become the monarch’s official residence until 1837. 5. I’tesamuddin, in Haq (2001: 71). For more on Persian-language writers’ expe- riences at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, see Green (2011). 6. Humayun Ansari lists just five offspring, Rosanna, Henry, Horatio, Frederick, and Arthur (2001: 58). From Michael Fisher’s work I have found references to three more children: Amelia, William, and Deen Junior (1996: 251, 262). 7. I will pick up on this discussion of the ultimate sacrifice made by many South Asian Muslims during the First World War in my next book. 8. For more on earlier networks and connections, see Susheila Nasta’s welcome recent edited collection, India in Britain (Nasta, 2012). 9. Highmore (2009: 185). See also Basu (1999: xxix–xxxii). 10. Abu Taleb (1814a: 171–2). All references are to this edition of Volume 1 of Abu Taleb’s Travels and will be cited parenthetically with ‘Vol. 1’ and the page number in the text. 11. Horsman’s fellow Persian scholar Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi similarly claims I’tesamuddin (whom he calls Mirza I‘tisam al-Din) unproblem- atically as a Persian writer, not mentioning the latter’s residence in and attachment to India. Conversely, the South Asian experts also neglect the Persianate aspects of these writers. The main exception is Tabish Khair, who provides useful analysis of Indo–Persian as a language in work on Abu Taleb and I’tesamuddin (Khair, 2001; Khair et al., 2006: 318–19). 12. Abu Taleb (1810: 58). All references are to this edition of Volume 2 of Abu Taleb’s Travels and will be cited parenthetically with ‘Vol. 2’ and the page number in the text. The comparison between European and Eastern servants is a common one, and Asian travellers almost universally find the European ‘help’ to be superior (see, for example, Sultan, 1913: 101). 13. See Chapters 4 and 5 for more discussion of the postwar deprivation of migrants from Muslim backgrounds. 14. Abu Taleb (1814b: 165–6). All references are to this edition of Volume 3 of Abu Taleb’s Travels and will be cited parenthetically with ‘Vol. 3’ and the page number in the text. 15. In Sumita Mukherjee’s chapter ‘The Representation and Display of South Asians, 1870–1950’, she writes: One of the most visible social groups of South Asians in Britain, partic- ularly following the coronation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877, were Indian princes. As part of the spectacle and splendour of empire, Indian princes, and soldiers, were encouraged to be present at imperial ceremonies in Britain as well as in India. (2012: 208–9) This is correct, but the emphasis on the post-Indian Rebellion period, British Empire, and the South Asian diaspora in the sourcebook to which she contributes understandably leads to neglect of the Muslim princes from Notes 225 other nationalities in earlier periods who had been equally visible in Britain. As Assaad Y. Khayat writes, ‘Many will remember the visit which the three members of the Royal Family of Persia made to England in the summer of the year 1836’ (in Meerza, 1971, Vol. 1: viii). 16. See Abul Hassan (1988); Morier (1948). 17. I would have liked to include an early Arab travel account of Britain in this chapter too, but it has proven difficult to find one that is available in English. Rasheed el-Enany’s comprehensive study Arab Representations of the Occident proved an invaluable source in unearthing Arabic texts. El-Enany drew my attention to Ali Mubarak’s Alam al-Din (1882), a book which mostly deals with Egypt and France, in the form of a conversation between an Egyptian and an Englishman (el-Enany, 2006: 25–7). It thus sheds light on Arab views but is not set in Britain. Muhammad Bayram al-Khanis al-Tunisi’s The Purest Consideration in the Location of Countries (1885) features the autho- rial persona visiting many countries including Britain. El-Enany describes it as a religiously-inflected text that is less accessible than Alam al-Din (2006: 30–3). Jurji Zaydan’s A Journey to Europe (1912) encompasses sojourns in France, Britain and Switzerland, but its author is a Christian (el-Enany, 2006: 37–9). In addition, none of these texts has been translated into English. This leaves us with only Ahmad Fāris al-Shidyāq who broadly (although not entirely) fits my criteria and whose work is available in translation. His Leg Over Leg defies easy categorization, but I discuss this genre-bending Arabic Tristram Shandy-esque marvel in the next chapter, on early Muslim fiction about Britain. 18. Meerza (1971, Vol. 2: 162). All references are to Volume 2, unless otherwise stated, and to this edition of the Meerza princes’ Journal of a Residence in England. References will be cited parenthetically by page number in the text. 19. According to Najaf, the East India Company College tutors about 10,000 bud- ding colonial administrators in ‘the high sciences, both of the Mohammedan, and the Frank, and the Greek literature, and of all languages’ (139). 20. Mitchiner (2009: 2–6); Eskandari-Qajar (2011: 257, 259, fn. 21, 260, 260, fn. 25). Assaad Y. Kayat and the princes also dedicate Journal of a Residence in England to Ouseley (Meerza, 1971, Vol. 1: v). It is probably his elder brother William whom Abu Taleb describes meeting as ‘Sir W. Ouseley’ in the early nineteenth century, about whom he writes, ‘This gentleman being possessed of a great taste for Oriental literature has by uncommon perseverance acquired such a knowledge of Persian as to be able to translate freely from that language; and has published one or two books to facilitate the study of it’ (Vol. 1: 231). 21. Notions of cultural translation stem from the discipline of anthropology; the seminal text in this area is James Clifford and George E. Marcus’s col- lection Writing Culture (1986), particularly its introduction and the essay by Talal Asad. See also my own article on cultural translation, ethnography, and Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land (Chambers, 2006). 22. Inexplicably, Najaf completely avoids mention of Wales in his discussions of the British state (see, for example, 126). 23. In accordance with Islamic teaching, Najaf has little respect for the celibacy of monks and nuns, seeing the practice as ‘restrain[ing] human progression’ (203; see also Shah, 1954: 26). 226 Notes 24. This book, A Voice from Lebanon, falls outside the scope of this study because it is by a Christian (Kayat, 1847). 25. A regular phrase in Journal of a Residence in England is ‘we lost our senses’ (9, 79, 102, 105, 109, 130, 174, 189). This happens so often that the true wonder is that anything was written at all! 2 ‘Truly a person progresses by travelling and interacting with different peoples’: Travelogues and Life Writing of the Twentieth Century 1.