Three Travelogues of Women from the Late Qajar Period: historical context - narrative strategies - female authorship

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stephan Conermann
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262268230

The here presented project aims at analyzing for the first time three travel accounts written by Iranian women in the Qajar periode (1796-1925) who travelled to Mecca and performed their Hajj between 1880 and 1900: 1. Mehrmah Hanum Esmat as-Saltaneh ["Safarnameh-ye Mekkeh" (1882)], 2. Haggiye Hanum Alaviyyeh Kermani ["Ruznameh-ye safar-e hagg" (1892/93)], 3. Sakineh Sultan Vaqar ad-Douleh ["Ruznameh-ye safar-e atabat va Mekkeh" (1899/1900)] They all belonged to the Qajar upper classes. Mehrmah Hanum Esmat as-Saltaneh was a cousin, and Sakineh Sultan Vaqar ad-Douleh one of the wives of the Qajar ruler Naser ad-Din Sah (reg. 1848-96), whereas the third author belonged to the local elite of Kerman. These female pilgrims reached their common destination Mecca through different routes, but they all felt the need to write about their experiences and by this means to transfer their knowledge to future (most probably female) travelers. It was their intention to convince their readership of the trueness of their own observations and the issues which they claimed to exist, in order to get approval and consent about the - at least potential - intersubjectivity of their experiences. The diversity of the applied narrative strategies in the texts aiming at the visualization of their experiences, points at the difficulty, that is linked to the attempt to bring the sum of travel, experience and remembrance as well as the notes taken while on travel together into a coherent text. Besides a historical-critical analysis of these texts, three main aspects will be in the focus of this study: (1) the contextualization of these texts, (2) the identification and analysis of the applied narrative strategies regarding questions about the women's experiences with the other and unknown situations as well as about their own perceptions and emotions and finally (3) the aspect of female authorship at the period in question.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants