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No Choice but to Travel
Safavid Travelogues Written in Persian
Abstract This paper introduces twenty-two Persian travelogues dating from the Safavid era (1501–1722), which can roughly be divided into three categories; private travels, missions, and pilgrimages. It aims to show that Safavid travelogues, a hitherto somewhat neglected literary phenomenon, form part of a Persian travelogue tradition and that the accounts often comprise relevant autobiographical information. Since the travelogues’ contents, tropes and forms are however partly a result of (evolving) literary standards of travel writing, it is often only through a close reading that we are able to uncover—or at least catch a glimpse of—the authors’ Selbstbilder.
Keywords Safavids, Travelogue, Mas̱navī, Diplomatic Mission, Pilgrimage
