num_pages: 297
description: "The fictional travel memoir Siyahatnameh-ye Ebrahim Beg [The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg] is the first modern Persian novel and a literary account of social cultural, and political life in Iran toward the end of the 19th century. It relates the journey to Iran of an idealistic and patriotic Iranian youth from Egypt, who unexpectedly confronts widespread poverty, misery, wretchedness, religious hypocrisy, official and bureaucratic corruption, and political tyranny in the homeland of his father. He describes Iran as a backward country with nothing but disease, opium addiction, torture, and injustice. It has neither law nor order. Government officials and religious leaders alike extort money from the people, and bribery and corruption are as prevalent as the lack of education and health services. The book's forthright representation of social conditions in Iran at the end of the 19th century strongly influenced many of those who later participated in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1903-1911 in the hope of bringing about reform. This English translation makes available to literary scholars, historians, and political scientists of Iran and the Middle East an important novel and social document of the late 19th and early 20th centuries."
language: Persian
title: The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg (Bibliotheca Iranica. Persian Fiction in Translation Series)
titlecomplete: The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg (Bibliotheca Iranica. Persian Fiction in Translation Series) (English and Persian Edition)
publisher: Mazda Pub