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² Amanat, Abbas, “Mutahids and Missionaries: Shi‘i Responses to Christian Polemics in the Early Qajar Period,” in Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, ed. by Gleave, Robert (London, 2004).Google Scholar Cf. Ardakānī, Husayn Mahbūbī, Tārīkh-e Mo'assasāt-e Tamaddonī-ye Jadīd dar Īrān, 3 vols. (Tehran, 1354/1975);Google Scholar and Ekhtiar, Maryam, Modern Science, Education and Reform in Iran: The Dar al-Funun (Richmond, 1999).Google Scholar

³ For overviews of the Iranian students’ travels in Britain, see Azizi, Mohammad Hossein and Azizi, Farzaneh, “Government-Sponsored Iranian Medical Students Abroad (1811–1935),” Iranian Studies, 43, no. 3 (2010);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mojtaba Minovī, “Avvalīn Kārvān-e Ma‘refat”, Yaghmā, 6 (1953); Husayn Mahbūbī Ardakānī, “Duvvumīn Kārvān-e Ma‘refat,” Yaghmā, 18 (1965); and Wright, Denis, The Persians amongst the English: Episodes in Anglo-Persian History (London, 1985), 70–86.Google Scholar

⁴ On different aspects of the Iranian students' activities and investigations in Britain, see Green, Nile, “Paper Modernity? Notes on an Iranian Industrial Tour, 1818,” Iran: Journal of Persian Studies, 46 (2008);CrossRefGoogle Scholar idem, “Among the Dissenters: Reciprocal Ethnography in Nineteenth Century Inglistan,” Journal of Global History, 4, no. 2 (2009);Google Scholar idem, “Journeymen, Middlemen: Travel, Transculture and Technology in the Origins of Muslim Printing,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 41, no. 2 (2009)Google Scholar and idem, “Kebabs and Port Wine: The Culinary Cosmopolitanism of Anglo-Persian Dining, 1800–1835,” in Cosmopolitanisms in Muslim Contexts, ed. by Maclean, Derryl and Karmali, Sikeena (Edinburgh, 2011)Google Scholar. For summaries of their later careers in Iran, see Bāmdād, Mehdī, Sharh-e Hāl-e Rejāl-e Īrān dar Qarn-e 12, 13, 14 Hijrī, 6 vols. (Tehran, 1363/1984–85), 1: 241–44 and 2: 175–79.Google Scholar

⁵ Green, Nile, “The Trans-Colonial Opportunities of Bible Translation: Iranian Linguists between the Russian and British Empires,” in Trans-Colonial Modernities in Asia, 1800–1940, ed. by Michael Dodson and Brian Hatcher (London, 2011).Google Scholar On other Iranian and Indian travelers in Britain during this period, see Fisher, Michael H., Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain, 1600–1857 (Delhi, 2004)Google Scholar, and Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Historiography (New York, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Green, “Trans-Colonial Opportunities.”

⁷ “Persian Christians,” The Christian Observer, Conducted by Members of the Established Church for the Year 1820, vol. 19 (1821), 635.

⁸ On the wider impact of these evangelical contacts, see Green, Nile, “Persian Print and the Stanhope Revolution: Industrialization, Evangelicalism and the Birth of Printing in Early Qajar Iran,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30, no. 3 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem., “Stones from Bavaria: Iranian Lithography in its Global Contexts”, Iranian Studies 43, no. 3 (2010).Google Scholar

⁹ On Mirza Saleh and Watts, see Green, “Journeymen, Middlemen.”

¹⁰ Edward, W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London, 1978), 121.Google Scholar On the scripture as the acme of Orientalist skills, see the linguistic debates exchanged in Henderson, Ebenezer, An Appeal to the Members of the British and Foreign Bible Society, on the Subject of the Turkish New Testament, Printed at Paris, in 1819, Containing a View of Its History, an Exposure of Its Errors, and Palpable Proofs of the Necessity of Its Suppression (London, 1824)Google Scholar, and Lee, Samuel, Remarks on Dr. Henderson's Appeal to the Bible Society, on the Subject of the Turkish Version of the New Testament printed at Paris in 1819 (Cambridge, 1824)Google Scholar, especially 19–53 on the linguistic accuracy of translations.

¹¹ See Nile Green, “Parnassus of the Evangelical Empire: Oriental Learning in the English Universities, 1800–1850” (forthcoming).

¹² Green, “Trans-Colonial Opportunities.”

¹³ On the role of the munshi in language teaching, see Fisher, Michael H., “Persian Professor in Britain: Mirza Muhammad Ibrahim at the East India Company's College, 1826–44,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 21 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nylund, Arabella Wennerström, Oriental Learning and Western Knowledge: The Encounter of Educational Traditions in Bengal, 1781–1835 (Stockholm, 1991).Google Scholar

¹⁴ On the employment of foreign travelers to London in Bible translation, Howsam, Leslie, Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society (Cambridge, 1991), 21–22.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Carlyle, Joseph Dacre, Specimens of Arabian Poetry, from the Earliest Time to the Extinction of the Khaliphat, with Some Account of the Authors (London, 1796), 179.Google Scholar I have been unable to trace further record of their association.

¹⁶ Modeen, Mirza Itesa, Shigurf Namah i Velaët, Or, Excellent Intelligence Concerning Europe: Being the Travels of Mirza Itesa Modeen in Great Britain and France, trans. by Alexander, James Edward (London, 1827), 64–66,Google Scholar and Jones, William, A Grammar of the Persian Language (London, 1828), ix.Google Scholar For claims of Jones's fuller reliance on Munshi E‘tesam al-Din, see Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, chapter 2. I am grateful to my anonymous reader for clarifications on Jones's circle.

¹⁷ Canton, William, A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 5 vols. (London, 1904–10), 1: 289–91,Google Scholar and Wali, Maulvi Abdul, The Life and Work of Jawad Sabat, an Arab Traveller, Writer and Apologist (Calcutta, 1925)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Shīrāzī, Mīrzā Sāleh, Majmū‘eh-ye Safarnāmehhā-ye Mīrzā Sāleh Shīrāzī, ed. by Sāleh, Gholāṃ Hossein Mīrzā (Tehran, 1364/1985).Google Scholar I have also consulted the original manuscript (British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections, Add. 24,034) to clarify the orthography and identification of personal names. I have previously translated parts of the Oxford section as Green, Nile, “The Madrasas of Oxford, 1818,” The Oxford Magazine, 253 (2006).Google Scholar

¹⁹ For overviews of the background to the students’ arrival, see Barrett, A.H., “A Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph D'Arcy, R.A. 1780–1848,” Iran, 43 (2005);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Wright, The Persians amongst the English, 70–86. On Indian Muslim travelers to England during the early nineteenth century, see Fisher, Michael H., Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain, 1600–1857 (Delhi, 2004);Google Scholar and Khan, Gulfishan, Indian Muslim Perceptions of the West during the Eighteenth Century (Karachi, 1998).Google Scholar

²⁰ On the travails of science-teaching in early nineteenth century Oxford, see Turner, G. L. E., “Experimental Science in Early-Nineteenth Century Oxford,” History of Universities, 8 (1989).Google Scholar

²¹ The Times, 29 September 1818, p. 3.

²² On Lee's career, see Lee, Alice M., A Scholar of a Past Generation: A Brief Memoir of Samuel Lee, by his Daughter (London, 1896).Google Scholar On Lee's early Cambridge years, see his obituary in the Church Missionary Society's Intelligencer (March 1853); and John, and Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses from the Earliest Times to 1900, 10 vols. (Cambridge, 1922–54), pt II, vol. 4,133.Google Scholar

²³ Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 350.

²⁴ Lee's letter to Scott is printed in Lee, A Scholar of a Past Generation, 2–8.

²⁵ Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 351.

²⁶ “To the Honourable and Reverend the Vice Chancellor, Heads of Houses, and Members of the Senate, of the University of Cambridge,” Cambridge University Archives, CUR 39.7.12 (1), p. 8.

²⁷ Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 350–52.

²⁸ Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 349–50.

²⁹ I am grateful to Revd Jonathan Holmes, Keeper of the Records at Queens', for help in identifying Jee and Mandell.

³⁰ Mandell, William, The Blessedness of Dying in the Lord, a Sermon, Preached on Occasion of the Death of King George the Third (Cambridge, 1820).Google Scholar

³¹ Lee, A Scholar of a Past Generation, 16.

³² Jones, Sir William A Grammar of the Persian Language, with Considerable Additions and Improvements by S. Lee, ed. by Lee, Samuel, 9th ed. (London, 1828), xix.Google Scholar

³³ Morselvand, Hasan, ed., Hayratnāmeh: Safarnāmeh-ye Mīrzā Abū al-Hasan Khān Īlchī be Landan (Tehran, 1364/1986),Google Scholar translated as Khan, Mirza Abul Hassan, A Persian at the Court of King George, 1809–10: The Journal of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan, trans. and ed. by Cloake, Margaret Morris (London, 1988).Google Scholar

³⁴ Lee, A Scholar of a Past Generation, 18. Lee's expertise and awareness by the early 1820s of the various scriptural translations made into Islamic languages over the previous centuries is made clear in Lee, Remarks, chapter 5.

³⁵ “Account of the Rev. Mr. Lee,” Oxford University and City Herald, 26 September 1818, back page: “Mr. Lee has in hand a new translation of the Old Testament into Persian, in conjunction with Mirza Khaleel.” Also BFBS Archive, BSA/D1/1/(45–7), Letters of Professor Samuel Lee.

³⁶ The slight discrepancy in dates (the 1818 of Alice Lee versus the 1819 of Saleh's recorded stay with Lee) might also be explained either by the existence of the earlier visit we have suggested previously or by the fact that Lee's daughter was writing her father's memoirs several decades later.

³⁷ A brief account of Mirza Khalil's career at the college is found in Andrew Hambling, The East India Company at Haileybury, 1806–1857 ([n.p.], 2005), 38.

³⁸ Cambridge University Archives, CUR 39.7.12 (1), p. 8.

³⁹ On the foundation of the chair and on early modern Arabic scholarship in the universities more generally, see Toomer, G. J., Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ Lee, A Scholar of a Past Generation, 19–20.

⁴¹ “To the Honourable and Reverend the Vice Chancellor, Heads of Houses, and Members of the Senate, of the University of Cambridge” (privately printed letter from Lee containing the full text of all seven testimonials), Cambridge University Archives, CUR 39.7.12 (1), 11 pp.

⁴² Cambridge University Archives, CUR 39.7.12 (1), p. 5. On earlier motivations behind the patronage of Arabic scholarship, see Feingold, M., “Patrons and Professors: The Origins and Motives for the Endowment of University Chairs—in Particular the Laudian Professorship of Arabic”, in The “Arabick” Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. by Russell, G. A. (Leiden, 1994).Google Scholar

⁴³ On Mirza Saleh and Shakespear, see Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 167–68.

⁴⁵ Cambridge University Archives, CUR 39.7.12 (1), pp. 8–9. The letter, addressed to the Vice Chancellor, was composed in Persian and here translated in literal form; the handwritten Persian document appears to have been lost. The letter was dated Rabi‘ al-Sani 1234 (February 1819), being the same month in which the other testimonials were written. A somewhat amended extract from the letter is also printed in Lee, A Scholar of a Past Generation, 20.

⁴⁴ I am grateful to Revd Jonathan Holmes, Keeper of the Records at Queens', for first alerting me to the peculiar circumstances of Lee's election to the Sir Thomas Adams chair.

⁴⁶ Lee, Revd Samuel, BD, Controversial Tracts on Christianity and Mohammedanism, by H. Martyn and Some of the Most Eminent Writers of Persia, Translated and Explained; to which is Appended an Additional Tract (London, 1828).Google Scholar For a recent study of the debates, see Amanat, Abbas, “Mujtahids and Missionaries: Shī‘ī Responses to Christian Polemics in the Early Qajar Period”, in Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, ed. by Gleave, Robert (London, 2005).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ For the translations of Mirza Ibrahim and Muhammad Reza's texts, see Lee, Controversial Tracts, 1–71, 161–450. Lee had come into the possession of Martyn's manuscripts through the help of James Morier, who had brought Martyn's papers back from Constantinople after his death at Tokat in 1812.

⁴⁸ Lee, Controversial Tracts, cxviii. The original correspondence between Mirza Saleh and Lee is preserved in the Archive of the British and Foreign Bible Society (Cambridge University Library), BSA/D1/1/185–186.

⁴⁹ Lee, Remarks, 583.

⁵¹ I have clarified this identification by consulting the original manuscript of the travelogue: BL, Oriental and India Office Collections, Add. 24,034, folio 157v.

⁵² Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 321.

⁵⁰ I have consulted the small collection of materials related to Macbride in the Hertford College archive. However, none of Macbride's private papers shed additional light on the meetings with the Iranians. I am grateful to Dr Tony Barnard, college archivist, for providing access to Macbride's papers.

⁵³ Reynolds, J. S., “Hill, John,” in The Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, 1730–1860, 2 vols., ed. by Lewis, D. M. (Oxford, 1995).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 321–24.

⁵⁵ Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 345, 353. For fuller discussion of the apprenticeship, see Green, “Journeymen, Middlemen.”

⁵⁶ Kitāb Mazāmīr Dā’ūd al-Malik wa al-Nabī [Arabic] (London, 1819). The Testament subsequently appeared from the same workshop as Kitāb al-‘Ahd al-Jadīd, ya‘nī, Injīl al-Muqaddas, li-Rabbinā Yasū‘ al-Masīh [Arabic] (London, 1821).

⁵⁷ Fisher, Michael H., Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain, 1600–1857 (Delhi, 2004), 121–23.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Howsam, Cheap Bibles, 22.

⁵⁹ Said, E. W., Culture and Imperialism (London, 1993), 131 and chapter 3.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ On the long diplomatic wrangle over the Iranian students’ finances, see Barrett, “A Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph D'Arcy.”

⁶¹ Fisher, Counterflows to Colonialism, 103–36.

⁶² For full discussion and reconstruction of the visit, see Green, “Paper Modernity?”

⁶³ Gregory, Olinthus, Lessons Astronomical and Philosophical for the Amusement and Instruction of British Youth, 5th edition (London, 1815)Google Scholar, Mathematics for Practical Men (London, 1825). In a pointer to his wider acquaintances, Gregory dedicated the latter book of mathematics for engineers to no less a figure than Thomas Telford (1757–1834).

⁶⁴ Good, J. M., Gregory, O. and Bosworth, N. “assisted by other gentlemen of eminence,” Pantologia: A New (Cabinet) Cyclopædia (London, 1813).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Gregory, Olinthus, Letters to a Friend, on the Evidences, Doctrines, and Duties of the Christian Religion (London, 1851 [1815]), iii.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ On the telescope, see Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 355–57. For details of the meetings in the West Country, see Green, “Among the Dissenters.”

⁶⁷ Gregory, Letters to a Friend.

⁶⁸ Gregory, Letters to a Friend, 65.

⁶⁹ Gregory, Letters to a Friend, 46; on the uselessness of equations for solving the divine mysteries, see 58–61.

⁷⁰ Gregory, Letters to a Friend, 129–56.

⁷¹ “The Persian Princes,” The Times, 7 December 1818, p. 3.

⁷² For fuller discussion, see Green, “Among the Dissenters.”.

⁷³ The Times, 29 September 1818, p. 3. I am grateful to A. R. Morton, Archivist, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst for help in identifying Olinthus Gregory.

⁷⁴ Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 318. On Lord Percy's role in founding the CBC, see Port, Michael, Six Hundred New Churches: The Church Building Commission, 1818–1856 (London, 1961), 29.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Shīrāzī, Majmū‘eh, 332. More, Hannah, Practical Piety, or The Influence of the Religion of the Heart on the Conduct of the Life (London, 1811).Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Gregory, Olinthus, The Works of Robert Hall, MA (London, 1832), 298.Google Scholar The sermon (pp. 275–316) was originally preached in London in 1814.

⁷⁷ Eqbāl, ‘Abbās, “Ketāb-e Hājjī Bābā va Dāstān-e Nokhostīn Mohasselīn-e Īrānī dar Farang,” Yādgār, 1, no. 5 (1364/1944–45): 33.Google Scholar On the transfer and local adaptation of European science in India during this period, see Raj, Kapil, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (New York, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁸⁰ Buckland, Revd William, BD FRS MGS, Vindiciæ Geologicæ; or The Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained, in an Inaugural Lecture delivered before University of Oxford, May 15, 1819, on the Endowment of a Readership in Geology by His Royal Highness the Prince Regent (Oxford, 1820), 23.Google Scholar

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⁸² Buckland, Revd William, Geology and Mineralogy, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, 2 vols. (London, 1836), 1: chapter 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁸⁵ Details of these and similar scientific books are found in Mas‘ūdī, Akram, ed., Fehrest-e Ketābhā’i Chāp-e Sangī-ye Īrān Maujūd dar Ketābkhāneh-ye Dāneshgāh-ye Tehrān (Tehran, 1379s/2001), 136–39;Google Scholar and Soltānīfar, Sadīqa, ed., Fehrest-e Kotob-e Darsī-ye Chāp-e Sangī Maujūd dar Ketābkhāneh-ye Mellī-ye Jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī-ye Īrān (Tehran, 1376s/1998), 93–94.Google Scholar More generally, see Afshar, Iraj, “Book Translations as a Cultural Activity in Iran, 1806–1896,” Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 41 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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