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

本文介绍的项目旨在首次分析卡扎尔时期（1796-1925）伊朗妇女在1880年至1900年期间前往麦加并进行朝觐的三个旅行记录：2. Mehrmah Hanum Esmat as-Saltaneh[“safarnamh -ye Mekkeh”（1882）]，2 . Haggiye Hanum Alaviyyeh Kermani[“ruznamh -ye safar-e hagg”（1892/93）]，（1899/1900）他们都属于卡扎尔上层阶级。Mehrmah Hanum Esmat as-Saltaneh是堂兄，Sakineh Sultan Vaqar ad-Douleh是卡扎尔统治者Naser ad-Din Sah （reg）的妻子之一。（1848- 1896），而第三位作者属于克尔曼当地的精英。这些女性朝圣者通过不同的路线到达了她们共同的目的地麦加，但她们都觉得有必要把她们的经历写下来，并通过这种方式将她们的知识传授给未来的旅行者（最有可能是女性）。他们的意图是让读者相信他们自己的观察和他们声称存在的问题的真实性，以便获得对他们的经验的——至少是潜在的——主体间性的认可和同意。文本中应用的叙事策略的多样性旨在将他们的经历可视化，指出了困难，这与试图将旅行，经历和记忆的总和以及旅行时所做的笔记结合在一起形成连贯的文本有关。除了对这些文本进行历史批判分析外，本研究还将重点关注三个主要方面：(1)这些文本的语境化；(2)识别和分析有关女性在其他和未知情况下的经历以及她们自己的感知和情感的问题的应用叙事策略；最后(3)有关时期女性作者的方面。

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.