CONTENTS
[THE ADVENTURES OF HAJJI BABA]
[CHAPTER I — Of Hajji Baba’s birth and education.]
[CHAPTER II — Hajji Baba commences his travels—His encounter with the Turcomans, and his captivity.]
[CHAPTER III — Into what hands Hajji Baba falls, and the fortune which his razors proved to him.]
[CHAPTER V — Hajji Baba becomes a robber in his own defence, and invades his native city.]
[CHAPTER VII — Hajji Baba evinces a feeling disposition—History of the poet Asker.]
[CHAPTER IX — Hajji Baba, in his distress, becomes a saka, or water-carrier.]
[CHAPTER X — He makes a soliloquy, and becomes an itinerant vendor of smoke.]
[CHAPTER XI — History of Dervish Sefer, and of two other dervishes.]
[CHAPTER XIII — Hajji Baba leaves Meshed, is cured of his sprain, and relates a story.]
[CHAPTER XIV — Of the man he meets, and the consequences of the encounter.]
[CHAPTER XV — Hajji Baba reaches Tehran, and goes to the poet’s house.]
[CHAPTER XVI — He makes plans for the future, and is involved in a quarrel.]
[CHAPTER XVII — He puts on new clothes, goes to the bath, and appears in a new character.]
[CHAPTER XVIII — The poet returns from captivity—the consequences of it for Hajji Baba.]
[CHAPTER XXI — He describes the manner in which the Shah of Persia takes medicine.]
[CHAPTER XXII — Hajji Baba asks the doctor for a salary, and of the success of his demand.]
[CHAPTER XXIII — He becomes dissatisfied with his situation, is idle, and falls in love.]
[CHAPTER XXV — The lovers meet again, and are very happy—Hajji Baba sings.]
[CHAPTER XXVI — The history of Zeenab, the Cûrdish slave.]
[CHAPTER XXXII — Hajji is appointed to a situation under government—He becomes an executioner.]
[CHAPTER XXXIII — He accompanies the Shah to his camp, and gets some insight into his profession.]
[CHAPTER XXXVII — The history of Yûsûf, the Armenian, and his wife Mariam.]
[CHAPTER XXXIX — The Armenian Yûsûf proves himself worthy of Hajji Baba’s confidence.]
[CHAPTER XLII — He proceeds to the king’s camp, and gives a specimen of lying on a grand scale.]
[CHAPTER XLVI — He becomes a saint, and associates with the most celebrated divine in Persia.]
[CHAPTER XLIX — He becomes heir to property which is not to be found, and his suspicions thereon.]
[CHAPTER LII — Hajji Baba quits his mother, and becomes the scribe to a celebrated man of the law.]
[CHAPTER LIV — Hajji Baba becomes a promoter of matrimony, and of the register he keeps.]
[CHAPTER LIX — Hajji Baba does not shine in honesty—The life and adventures of the mollah Nadân]
[CHAPTER LXIII — He is discovered and seized, but his good stars again befriend and set him free.]
[CHAPTER LXIV — He reaches Bagdad, meets his first master, and turns his views to commerce.]
[CHAPTER LXVI — He becomes a merchant, leaves Bagdad, and accompanies a caravan to Constantinople.]
[CHAPTER LXXIV — He becomes useful to an ambassador, who makes him a partaker of his confidence.]
[CHAPTER LXXV — Of his first essays in public life, and of the use he was to his employer.]
[CHAPTER LXXVI — Hajji Baba writes the history of Europe and with his ambassador returns to Persia.]
[CHAPTER LXXVII — The ceremony of receiving a Frank ambassador at the court is described.]
ILLUSTRATIONS
[Hajji Shaves the Camel-driver. 1.jpg]
[The Chaoûsh Tells What he Will Do when He Meets The Robbers. 2.jpg]
[Hajji’s Master and the Great Turcoman. 3.jpg]
[Hajji Baba Bleeds the Banou. 4.jpg]
[Turcomans Attack the Caravanserai. 5.jpg]
[The Prince’s Tent-pitcher Strikes Hajji over the Mouth With his Slipper. 6.jpg]
[Hajji Carries the Great Water-sack. 7.jpg]
[The Dervish Slays the Ape. 8.jpg]
[Hajji and the Disguised Mohtesib. 9.jpg]
[Hajji Receives the Ferosles. 10.jpg]
[The Shaving of the Ass. 11.jpg]
[Hajji is Cauterised for his Sprain. 12.jpg]
[‘Pretended to Receive a Violent Twitch.’ 13.jpg]
[Hajji Sings to Zeenab. 15.jpg]
[The Khanum Ill-treats Zeenab. 16.jpg]
[The Procession of Slaves Before the Shah. 17.jpg.]
[‘Explosion Took Place in the Very Room.’ 18.jpg]
[‘Beheld Her Fair Form in the Air, Falling Down The Giddy Height.’ 19.jpg]
[The Two Russians Drive Back the Persians. 20.jpg]
[Hajji Takes Sanctuary. 22.jpg]
[“O Mercy! Mercy!” Cried Kior Ali’. 24.jpg]
[‘Where the Dead Body of a Jew Lay Extended.’ 25.jpg]
[Hajji’s Father Dying. 26.jpg]
[The Diviner and the Rice. 27.jpg]
[Hajji Interviews the Fair Candidates for Marriage. 28.jpg]
[The Degradation of Hajji and the Mollah. 30.jpg]
[Drowning of the Mollah Bashi. 31.jpg]
[Hajji in the Mollah Bashi’s House. 32.jpg]
[Hajji Leaves the Village Hurriedly After Collecting The Money. 33.jpg]
[Hajji Meets Osman Aga Again. 34.jpg]
[The Curing of Hajji Baba. 35.jpg]
[Shekerleb Approaches Hajji. 36.jpg]
[Hajji Curses Shekerleb and Her Relations. 37.jpg]
INTRODUCTION
In the first decade of the present century Persia was for a short time the pivot of the Oriental interest of English and Indian statesmen. But little known and scarcely visited during the preceding century, it suddenly and simultaneously focussed the ambitions of Russia, the apprehensions of Great Britain, the Asiatic schemes of France. The envoys of great Powers flocked to its court, and vied with each other in the magnificence of the display and the prodigality of the gifts with which they sought to attract the superb graces of its sovereign, Fath Ali Shah. Among these supplicants for the Persian alliance, then appraised at much beyond its real value, the most assiduous and also the most profuse were the British, agitated at one moment by the prospect of an Afghan invasion of India, at another by the fear of an overland march against Delhi of the combined armies of Napoleon and the Tsar. These apprehensions were equally illusory; but while they lasted they supplied the excuse for a constant stream of embassies, some from the British sovereign, others from the viceregal court at Calcutta, and were reproduced in a bewildering succession of Anglo-Persian Treaties. Sir John Malcolm, Sir Harford Jones, Sir Gore Ouseley, and Sir Henry Ellis were the plenipotentiaries who negotiated these several instruments; and the principal coadjutor of the last three diplomats was James Justinian Morier, the author of "Hajji Baba."
Born and nurtured in an Oriental atmosphere (though educated at Harrow), he was one of three out of four sons, whom their father, himself British Consul at Constantinople, dedicated to the Diplomatic or Consular service in Eastern Europe or in Asia. His Persian experience began when at the age of twenty-eight he accompanied Sir Harford Jones as private secretary, in 1808-1809, on that mission from the British Court direct which excited the bitter jealousy and provoked the undignified recriminations of the Indian Government. After the Treaty had been concluded, James Morier returned to England, being accompanied by the Persian envoy to the Court of St. James, who figures in this narrative as Mirza Firouz, and whose droll experiences in this country he subsequently related in the volume entitled "Hajji Baba in England." While at home, Morier wrote the first of the two works upon Persia, and his journeys and experiences in and about that country, which, together with the writings of Sir John Malcolm, and the later publications of Sir W. Ouseley, Sir R. Ker Porter, and J. Baillie Frazer, familiarised the cultivated Englishman of the first quarter of this century with Persian history and habits to a degree far beyond that enjoyed by the corresponding Englishman of the present day. Returning to Persia with Sir Gore Ouseley in 1811-12 to assist the latter in the negotiation of a fresh Treaty, to meet the novel situation of a Franco-Russian alliance, Morier remained in Tehran as charge d'affaire after his chief had left, and in 1814 rendered similar aid to Sir H. Ellis in the conclusion of a still further Treaty superseding that of Ouseley, which had never been ratified. After his return to England in 1815, appeared the account of his second journey. Finally, nearly ten years later, there was issued in 1824 the ripened product of his Persian experiences and reflections in the shape of the inimitable story to which is prefixed this introduction. "Hajji Baba" at once became a favourite of the cultured reading public, and passed speedily through several editions. That popularity has never since been exhausted; and the constant demand for a new issue is a proof not merely of the intrinsic merit of the book as a contemporary portrait of Persian manners and life, but also of the fidelity with which it continues to reflect, after the lapse of three-quarters of a century, the salient and unchanging characteristics of a singularly unchanging Oriental people. Its author, having left the Diplomatic service, died in 1849. The celebrity of the family name has, however, been revindicated in more recent diplomatic history by the services of his nephew, the late Sir Robert Morier, who died in 1893, while British Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
James Morier was an artist as well as an author. The bulk of the illustrations in his two journeys were reproduced from his own drawings; and he left upon his death a number of scrap-books, whose unpublished contents are, I believe, not unlikely to see the light. In the Preface to the second edition of Hajji Baba he also spoke of 'numerous notes which his long residence in Persia would have enabled him to add,' but which his reluctance to increase the size of the work led him to omit. These, if they ever existed in a separate form, are no longer in the possession of his family, and may therefore be presumed to have ceased to exist. Their place can now only be ineffectually supplied, as in the present instance, by the observations of later travellers over the familiar ground, and of inferior gleaners in the same still prolific field.
Such was the historic mise-en-scène in which James Morier penned his famous satire. I next turn to the work itself. The idea of criticising, and still more of satirising, a country or a people under the guise of a fictitious narrator is familiar in the literature of many lands. More commonly the device adopted is that of introducing upon the scene the denizen of some other country or clime. Here, as in the case of the immortal Gil Blas of Santillane, with whom Hajji Baba has been not inaptly compared, the infinitely more difficult plan is preferred of exposing the foibles of a people through the mouth of one of their own nationality. Hajji Baba is a Persian of the Persians, typical not merely of the life and surroundings, but of the character and instincts and manner of thought of his countrymen. And yet it is from his lips that flows the delightful stream of naive confession and mordant sarcasm that never seems either ill-natured or artificial, that lashes without vindictiveness, and excoriates without malice. In strict ratio, however, to the verisimilitude of the performance, must be esteemed the talents of the non-Oriental writer, who was responsible for so lifelike a creation. No man could, have written or could now write such a book unless he were steeped and saturated, not merely in Oriental experience, but in Oriental forms of expression and modes of thought. To these qualifications must be added great powers of insight and long observation. James Morier spent less than six years in Persia; and yet in a lifetime he could scarcely have improved upon the quality of his diagnosis. If the scenic and poetic accessories of a Persian picture are (except in the story of Yusuf and Mariam and a few other instances) somewhat wanting, their comparative neglect is more than compensated by the scrupulous exactitude of the dramatic properties with which is invested each incident in the tale. The hero, a characteristic Persian adventurer, one part good fellow, and three parts knave, always the plaything of fortune—whether barber, water-carrier, pipe-seller, dervish, doctor's servant, sub-executioner, scribe and mollah, outcast, vender of pipe-sticks, Turkish merchant, or secretary to an ambassador—equally accepting her buffets and profiting by her caresses, never reluctant to lie or cheat or thieve, or get the better of anybody else in a warfare where every one was similarly engaged in the effort to get the better of him, and equipped with the ready casuistry to justify any transgression of the moral code, Hajji Baba never strikes a really false chord, or does or says anything intrinsically improbable; but, whether in success or adversity, as a victim of the roguery of others, or as a rogue himself, is faithful to a type of human character which modern times and a European surrounding are incapable of producing, but which is natural to a state of society in which men live by their wits, where the scullion of one day may be the grandee of the next, and the loftiest is not exempt from the extreme vicissitudes of fortune, and in which a despotic sovereign is the apex of a half-civilised community of jealous and struggling slaves.