History of diplomatic, economic and military relations between Iran and Austria

Project team (Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences): Giorgio Rota, Sibylle Wentker (until 2018)

Fortlaufende Bearbeitung österreichischer Archivbestände zu Iran von den ältesten Beständen bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts und zu den österreichischen Militärmissionen im 19. Jahrhundert. Der derzeitige Schwerpunkt liegt auf der offiziellen österreichischen Militärmission von 1878, deren Ziel in der Errichtung eines Korps von 6000 Mann nach österreichischem Vorbild bestand. Von dem ersten Leiter dieser aus mehreren Offizieren bestehenden Mission, Oberst Adalbert Schönowski von Schönwiese, ist ein umfangreicher, zwei Bände umfassender handschriftlicher Bericht dieser Mission im Kriegsarchiv des Österreichschen Staatsarchiv erhalten, der Licht auf die Entstehung und Durchführung der Mission aus dessen Sicht wirft. Der Bericht von Schönowski wird im Rahmen dieses Projekts zur Publikation vorbereitet. Ein weiterer aktueller Fokus ist die Handelspolitik Österreichs in Bezug auf Iran in den Jahrzehnten um die Weltausstellung 1873 sowie die Hintergründe des persischen Beitrags zur Weltausstellung. 

Iranian and Central Asian Dragomans and Diplomats in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Florian Schwarz (Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Members of diaspora communities involved in transregional trade played an important role as cultural brokers in early modern Iran and Central Asia. While research so far has mostly focused on non-Muslim trade diasporas, e.g. Armenians, the present project looks into the contributions of Muslim trade diaspora communities as ‘(trans-)imperial elites’ to the transformations of the Persianate world in a period of increasing British and Russian domination in the second half of the 19th century until the emergence of territorial nation states after World War I. It also studies the effects these transformations had on the diaspora communities and networks themselves.

The focal point of the project is a comparative inquiry into the lives and careers of the Tatar-Bukharan-Russian diplomat and entrepreneur Mir Hajdar Mirbadalev (1856-1938) and his contemporary and colleague Mirza Reza Khan (Arfaʿoddouleh) (1854?-1937/8), member of the network of Iravani trades between northwestern Iran, Russian Transcaucasia and Istanbul.

Military Slavery in Safavid Persia

Giorgio Rota (Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

The extent (both chronological and geographical) and the systematic way in which slaves were used in the Muslim world to fulfil military duties makes military slavery a distinctive feature of Islamic states and statecraft. Owing to the lack of a clear-cut distinction between administrative and military careers, slaves were employed in the administration as well and, as a consequence of the vast amount of power they could concentrate in their hands, several cases occurred of slaves playing the role of strongmen or even founding new and independent dynasties. Traditionally, military slavery is considered as having appeared in the Muslim world under the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tasim (833-842), who formed a bodyguard made up of Turkish slaves. Since then on, most of the dynasties ruling the central Islamic lands availed themselves of slave soldiers. Among these military corps, the best known are probably the Ottoman Janissaries and the Egyptian Mamluks, the latter being virtually the sole to have been systematically studied in modern times.

Safavid slave soldiers (usually indicated as golams) are fully part of this political and military tradition. Mainly recruited among Georgian, Armenian and North Caucasian renegades, they were employed in increasingly great number starting with the end of the 16th century in both the army and the administration (although they were present and active in Persia, to a lesser extent, in earlier years as well). Eventually, they became the backbone of both until 1722, when the Safavids were overthrown by the Afghan invasion.

Their prominent role was remarked by contemporary observers and is regularly stressed today by modern students of Persian history. In spite of their importance, however, they have never been properly studied: rather, scholarly research on the Safavid golams dates back only to the early 1990’s. The “Military slavery in Safavid Persia” project aims at filling this gap.

Sub-project: Bio-Bibliographical Index on Safavid Golams

In the frame of the project 'Military slavery in Safavid Persia', Giorgio Rota is currently working at a bio-bibliographical index including names of Safavid golams, of eunuchs (who were very often, if not mostly, of Caucasian origin), of their relatives and of Caucasians in the Safavid service (irrespective of whether they are explicitly described as golams in the primary Persian sources or not). Two sections at the end of the main text include names from the 18th century and from the Qajar period. The main text of the index is based on Persian narrative and documentary sources. Data from non-Persian primary sources and scholarly literature on individual golams (not on the golam institution as a whole or on Muslim military slavery in general) are entered in the footnotes, together with the remarks of the editor. The index contains now more than 300 names and it will represent an important tool for research of social, economic and of course prosopographical nature.

The Oasis of Bukhara

Florian Schwarz (Institute for Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

The project aims at a long-durée landscape history of the Oasis of Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan. It is part of a cooperation of the Institute of Iranian Studies with the Mission Archéologique Franco-Ouzbèke dans l'Oasis de Boukhara of the Musée du Louvre (Principal investigator Dr. Rocco Rante).

The groundwork is laid by a study of the historical geography of the Oasis. Major progress in comparison to earlier research is made through the systematic study of historical documents (such as endowment deeds) and the integration of textual and archaeological evidence. The identification and localization of toponyms, hydrogaphy and administrative structures in antique, medieval, early modern and modern texts, inscriptions and documents is the first step towards establishing a reliable framework to tackle questions such as the dynamics of population, settlement, administration and communication, the management of economic resources, interactions between (sub-)urban and rural communities, sacred landscapes, and social dymanics in the longue durée.

Travelogues in the Persophone World (LATE 18TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURIES)

Project team: Christine Nölle-Karimi (PI, Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic increase in the output of Persian travelogues. Along with the growing British and Russian intervention, the geographical span of the journeys widened, and Iranians began to record their travels to Europe. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of travelers still reported on familiar destinations, either within Iran or in the neighboring Muslim countries.

This project analyzes the impressions gathered by Iranian travelers among their Muslim neighbors and compares them to those of visitors from Central Asia, Afghanistan, and India. It is my contention that travelogues produced within the Persophone world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries bear witness to the development of spatial, political and social demarcations that prefigure the break up of the vast Indo-Persian realm into national affiliations. The narrative issuing from individual perceptions yields important data for understanding the relationship between encounters abroad and the construction of (internal) spaces. The travelers’ observations, interactions and verbal exchanges are articulated within the meta-narrative of their time, while shaping it in return. The position assigned to the homeland within the regional setting further provides indications as to the nascent conception of the nation state.

On a certain level, travelogues may be read as repositories of data on local circumstances. But the focus of this project is on the travelers’ perceptions and projections of geographical, political and social entities. The analysis is geared to the travelers’ perspective and assesses the mode in which they order and communicate their experience: How do the actors position themselves in relation to the foreign environment, and how do they represent their fellows? Space is shaped by the claims and the discussions of the authors. The attributes they attach to unfamiliar settings are of crucial importance. By selecting noteworthy items and reporting them to their compatriots, they act in many ways as translators.

Borders are an important element in the construction of space. In nineteenth-century travelogues, their designation assumes an unprecedented importance. From these accounts, the present-day international borders become tangible, decades before they were actually delineated in the international treaties. Furthermore, we may speak of the shaping of inner boundaries. The encounter with foreign phenomena brings out the contours of the homeland and helps to define its place within larger regional, confessional and cultural denominations. This trend can be observed in the travelogues of two Iranian missions that were conducted to Bukhara and Khiva in 1844 and 1851 respectively. Rather than attempting to decode and domesticate Central Asian attributes, the authors, ʿAbbās Qulī Khān and Riżā Qulī Khan Hidāyat, emphasize those divergences which highlight their own cultural and political identity. The Central Asian khanates, they locate within a hierarchy of civilization and statecraft which is determined according to European parameters. Although never explicitly referred to as such, Europe figures implicitly as a point of reference throughout these narratives. The resulting image is that of a downward spiral of globalization, the lower end of which is apportioned to Bukhara and Khiva. In this attempt at locating “home” within the global setting and the corresponding dissociation from Central Asia, we may already detect an early figure of the Iranian nation as “imagined community” in the mid-nineteenth century.