¹ The above quotation is found in the introduction to the best known of such works: Hopkirk, Peter, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (New York, Kodansha, 1994), 2Google Scholar. This was preceded by a series on the Great Game by Edward Ingram, most notably The Beginning of the Great Game in Asia, 1828–34 (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar These works helped spawn an entire field of historical writing on the British and Russian imperial projects.

² There are several works that present a picture of Iran's place in the Great Game narrative, but largely uphold the dichotomy of European subjectivity and Iranian objectivity. For example, a recent work by Wynn, Antony, Persia in the Great Game: Sir Percy Sykes, Explorer, Consul, Soldier, Spy (London: John Murray, 2003)Google Scholar, is a biography of the British traveler and consul Percy Sykes in which “Persia” is simply a sphere of operations whose attention-worthy figures are British administrators and their shadowy Russian adversaries. Mojtahed-Zadeh, Pirouz, Small Players of the Great Game: The Settlement of Iran's Eastern Borderlands and the Creation of Afghanistan (London: Routledge-Curzon, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is valuable for its more specific focus on the settlement of Iran's eastern frontier, but presents a narrative drawn primarily from British documents and is again focused on the role of European diplomats and travelers, Another, Andreeva, Elena, Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism (London: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar, has little to do with the Great Game, but provides some insights into lesser known Russian travelogues on Iran and Central Asia.

³ Abbas Amanat, Editorial: “The Persian Puzzle,” New York Times, May 25, 2006, 27. Amanat, a prominent historian of nineteenth century Iran, links the victimization of Iran in the Great Game to the present nuclear standoff as the origins of the historical “complex” that has resulted in a continuing “national pursuit for empowerment.”

⁴ Hopkirk, The Great Game. This is in fact an amusing choice of metaphor to deny their historical agency, as the game of chess was itself introduced to Europeans through Iran.

⁵ Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh, “Fragile Frontiers: The Diminishing Domains of Qajar Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29 (2007): 205–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Bosworth, C.E., “Khorasan,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1994).Google Scholar

⁷ Safarnameh-ye Bukhara, ed. Zamani, Hosayn (Tehran, 1995/1373).Google Scholar

⁸ Wolff, Joseph, Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the Year 1843–1845, to Ascertain the Fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly (London: J.W. Parker, 1846). 330–40.Google Scholar Wolff notes that ‘Abbas Qoli Khan was formerly a governor of Bushire, and “therefore acquainted with English people.” Ibid., 332.

⁹ Hopkirk, The Great Game, 175–87; Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet argues “the allure of power and land drove Iran's monarchs eastward in search of imperial glory.” Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation (Princeton, 1999), 32.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Andreeva, Russia and Iran in the Great Game.

¹¹ Abbas Amanat et al., “Herat,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition (New York, 1996-).

¹² Lisan al-Molk, Muhammad Taqi Sepehr and Kiyanfar, Jamshid, Nasekh al-Tavarikh : Tarikh-e Qajariyeh (Tehran: Entesharat-e Asatir, 1998), 1: 488–9.Google Scholar

¹³ Kashani-Sabet, “Fragile Frontiers,” 218.

¹⁴ Yakubovskii, A. Yu. and Bosworth, C.E., “Marw al-Shahidjan,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1994).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Lal, Mohan, Travels in the Punjab, Afghanistan, and Turkistan, to Balk, Bokhara, and Herat; and a Visit to Great Britain and Germany (Patiala, 1971), 93.Google Scholar

¹⁶ This episode is colorfully retold in Hopkirk, The Great Game, 221–7.

¹⁷ Kashani-Sabet, “Fragile Frontiers,” 213–15.

¹⁸ Lal, Travels, 80.

¹⁹ Ibid., 81–2.

²⁰ Wolff, Narrative of a Mission, 262–74.

²¹ “Muhammad Shah Kadjar,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1994).Google Scholar

²² There is a discrepancy in the date of ‘Abbas Quli Khan's departure from Tehran. According to Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, he departed on Tuesday 23 Safar Tushqan-Il; Husayn Zamani's annotation of the text places this date in 1259, or in the Gregorian calendar Saturday March 25, 1843, nearly a year before Wolff's own departure. If we accept this as a typo for “1260,” we arrive at Gregorian date Thursday (not Tuesday) March 14, 1844, which predates Wolff's arrival in Bukhara. Given the arrival of ‘Abbas Quli Khan in Bukhara in late May 1844, according to both ‘Abbas Quli Khan and Joseph Wolff's accounts, this would place his departure in the approximate time frame of mid-to-late March 1844. Zamani also does not seem to have been aware of Joseph Wolff's travelogue, and admits in the introduction his dating of the text and of the author's dates are somewhat approximate. See Safarnameh-ye Bukhara, 15, 20.

²³ Muḥammad Ḥasan Khān, I‘timād al-Salṭaneh, and Taymūr Burhān Līmūdehī, Maṭla‘ al-Shams: tārīkh-e ar-e aqdas va Mash‘had-e muqaddas dar tārīkh va jughrāfiyā-ye mashrūḥ-e balād va amākin-e Khurāsān, shāmel, tavārīkh-e mota‘alliqeh (Tehran: Farhangsarā, 1983).Google Scholar

²⁴ Moḥammad Ḥasan Khān, Partaw Nuī Alā, and Muḥammad Alī Sepānlū, Mer'āt al-Boldān (Nashr-e Asfār, 1985). As noted in Storey, C.A., Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey (Oxford: Luzac & Co., 1927)Google Scholar, the Joghrafiya-ye Kashan was written in response to a questionnaire from the Qajar court to compile geographical information, presumably for the ongoing Mer'āt al-Boldān project. A number of similar geographical treatises appear in other Qajar provincial centers through the 1870s. The content of these works closely follows the model of the Matla' al-Shams.

²⁵ Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, 30.

²⁶ Ibid., 32.

²⁷ Ibid., 32–3.

²⁸ Joseph Wolff was, in fact, born in Germany and later settled in England and became an Anglican minister. From there, he entered the service of British India as a missionary.

²⁹ Safarnameh-yi Bokhara, 34.

³⁰ Kashani-Sabet, “Fragile Frontiers.”

³¹ Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, 35.

³² Joseph Wolff, Narrative of a Mission, 313.

³³ Joseph Ibid., 316. Wolff later writes “The kindness I experienced from Abbas Kouli Khan at this trying period, when so many evils beset my path, and my life was on the brink of destruction, I must ever remember with the deepest gratitude, though he was by no means without apprehension for his own fate, but labored, as all at Bukhara must, under terrible misgivings of his own personal safety.” Ibid., 332.

³⁴ Hopkirk, The Great Game, 279.

³⁵ Presently the city of Mary, Turkmenistan.

³⁶ Manuchehr is a mythical pre-Islamic king appearing in Ferdowsi's Persian epic the Shahnameh.

³⁷ Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, 37.

³⁸ Hedayat, Reza Qoli Khan, Tarikh Rawzat al-Safa Nasiri (Tehran, 1996), 10: 30.Google Scholar

³⁹ Lisan al-Molk and Kiyanfar, Nasekh al-Tavarikh, 3: 1202.

⁴⁰ India, Persian Boundary Commission, Goldsmid, F. J. et al., Eastern Persia: An Account of the Journeys of the Persian Boundary Commission, 1870–71–72 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1876).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Kashani-Sabet, “Fragile Frontiers.”

⁴² For example, in Kerman, the territories of Makran, in present-day Pakistan, were singled out by local geographers as not within provincial frontiers given the disobedience of its local headmen at the time of writing (Tehran, 1874).Vaziri-Kermani, Ahmad ‘Ali Khan, Joghrafiya-ye Kerman (Ibn Sina, 1974), 22.Google Scholar

⁴³ The point made by Kashani-Sabet that land and territorial boundaries became the focus of nationalist discourse in the nineteenth century was carefully, and rightly, qualified by noting that the frontiers themselves were fluid and “zones of friction and fluctuation.” Kashani Sabet, Frontier Fictions, 9–10.

⁴⁴ Goldsmid et al., Eastern Persia.

⁴⁵ Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, 31.

⁴⁶ Khanykov, Nikolai Vladimirovich, Bukhara: Its Amir and its People (London, 1845), 2.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Hedayat, Rawzat al-Safa, 10: 30. On Yar Muhammad Khan, see Yapp, M.E., “Kamran Shah Durrani,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1994).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, 37.

⁴⁹ Joseph Wolff, who developed a strong rapport with ‘Abbas Qoli Khan, in fact took up this cause in his own right and wrote an open letter to the monarchs of Europe while still in captivity in Bukhara after the issue of slavery was raised before the amir. He writes “two hundred thousand Persian slaves, many of them people of high talent, sigh in the kingdom of Bokhara. Endeavor to effect their liberation, and I shall rejoice in the grave that my blood has been thus the cause of the ransom of so many human beings. I am much too agitated, and too closely watched, to be able to say more.” Narrative of a Mission, 337–8. The figure of 200,000 is clearly hyperbolic.

⁵⁰ Lisan al-Molk and Kiyanfar, Nasekh al-Tavarikh, 1: 496.

⁵¹ Kelly, J.B., Britain and the Persian Gulf 1795–1880 (Oxford, 1968).Google Scholar

⁵² Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, 38.

⁵³ Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, 37.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 32. Taqiyyeh refers to the doctrine of pious dissimulation of beliefs in Shi'i Islam, formulated in the eighth century at a time when Shi'ism was largely an underground movement. This was designed to preserve the community underground in the face of external threats.

⁵⁵ Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, 31.

⁵⁶ E. Yarshater, “Afrasiab,” Encyclopedia Iranica online edition (New York, 1996-).

⁵⁷ Lisan al-Molk and Kiyanfar, Nasekh al-Tavarikh, 1: 503.

⁵⁸ Safarnameh-ye Bokhara, 37–8.

⁵⁹ Pottinger, Henry, Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde; Accompanied by a Geographical and Historical Account of Those Countries (Longhurst, 1816), 221.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Burnes, Alexander, Wilson, H.H., and Prinsep, James. Travels into Bokhara; Containing the Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus from the Sea to Lahore, with Presents from the King of Great Britain; and an Account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary and Persia. Performed by Order of the Supreme Government of India, in the Years of 1831, 32, and 33 (London: J. Murray, 1835), 6–7, 217.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Sykes, Percy, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia; or Eight Years in Iran (London: J. Murray, 1902), ix.Google Scholar Marco Polo is curiously indexed as the “father of modern geography,” ibid., 475.

⁶² Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles, 168. Frequent references are found in this work to Sykes being the first European since Alexander at various sites. See for example ibid., ix, 34, 35, 113, 129, 142, 168, 306.

⁶³ Burnes et al., Travels, 214–19.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 212.

⁶⁵ Hopkirk, The Great Game, 289.

⁶⁶ Even highly theoretical works on the Qajars tend to use “Qajar Iran,” “the Qajar state,” and “Qajar Empire” interchangeably, reinforcing this ambiguity in one of the most basic assumptions shaping the historiography of the politics of this period. For example, Abrahamian's Weberian assessment of the Qajar system of power, one of the most widely cited theoretical works on the Qajar Empire, declines the use of the “empire” label. See Abrahamian, Ervand, “Oriental Despotism: The Case of Qajar Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974): 3–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In Vanessa Martin's seminal study of Qajar political relations, the term “empire” appears in the text only in relation to the Ottoman and British Empires, but never in reference to the Qajars. Martin, Vanessa, The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in Nineteenth-Century Persia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁷ Barkey, Karen, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2008), 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁸ Martin, The Qajar Pact.