James Baillie Fraser left his native Scotland for India in 1813. After a short and unsuccessful stint working in a trading business in Kolkata (Calcutta), in 1815 he joined his brother William Fraser on an expedition to find the sources of the Jumna and Ganges rivers. He documented the trip in Journal of a Tour through Part of the Snowy Range of the Himālā Mountains, published in 1820. A skilled artist who produced sketches and acquatints of different parts of India, in 1821 Fraser accompanied Dr. Andrew Jukes of the East India Company on a diplomatic mission to Persia. Jukes died in Isfahan in late 1821, but Fraser continued the journey, visiting Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz, and other cities before returning to London. This book is Fraser's account of his voyage through Khorasān, a historical region that includes parts of present-day Iran, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. It contains detailed information about the peoples of the region and their customs, religious practices, and forms of government. Appended to the main work is a lengthy "Geographical Sketch of the Principal Districts of Khorasan," with descriptions of the countryside and of towns such as Herat, Afghanistan. At the end are listed the route and travel distances from Mashad to Herat, Herat to Kabul, Kabul to Balkh, and between various other points. Also included are several tables with geographic and meteorological data.

James Baillie Fraser left his native Scotland for India in 1813. After a short and unsuccessful stint working in a trading business in Kolkata (Calcutta), in 1815 he joined his brother William Fraser on an expedition to find the sources of the Jumna and Ganges rivers. He documented the trip in Journal of a Tour through Part of the Snowy Range of the Himālā Mountains, published in 1820. A skilled artist who produced sketches and acquatints of different parts of India, in 1821 Fraser accompanied Dr. Andrew Jukes of the East India Company on a diplomatic mission to Persia. Jukes died in Isfahan in late 1821, but Fraser continued the journey, visiting Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz, and other cities before returning to London. This book is Fraser's account of his voyage through Khorasān, a historical region that includes parts of present-day Iran, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. It contains detailed information about the peoples of the region and their customs, religious practices, and forms of government. Appended to the main work is a lengthy "Geographical Sketch of the Principal Districts of Khorasan," with descriptions of the countryside and of towns such as Herat, Afghanistan. At the end are listed the route and travel distances from Mashad to Herat, Herat to Kabul, Kabul to Balkh, and between various other points. Also included are several tables with geographic and meteorological data.

Uses political practices and a socially-oriented approach to explain imperial formation under the Qajars in early nineteenth-century Iran.

The leading authority on slavery and the African diaspora in modern Iran presents the first history of slavery in this key Middle Eastern country and shows how slavery helped to shape the nation's unique character.

Winner of The 2018 Saidi-Sirjani Book Award In The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870, Thomas O'Flynn vividly paints the life and times of missionary enterprises in early nineteenth-century Russia and Persia at a moment of immense change when Tsarist Russia embarked on an expansionist campaign reaching to the Caucasus. Simultaneously he charts the relationship between the new Persian dynasty of the Qājārs and missionary activity on the part of European and American missionaries. This book reconstructs that world from a predominantly religious perspective. It recounts the sustaining ideals as well as the everyday struggles of the western missionaries, Protestant (Scottish, Basel and American Congregationalist) and Catholic (Jesuit and Vincentian). It looks at the reactions of diverse tribal peoples, the Tatars of the North Caucasus, the Kabardians and Circassians. Persia was the ultimate goal of these missionaries, which they eventually reached in the 1820s. Altogether this study throws light on the troubled course of history in West Asia and provides the background to politico-religious conflicts in Chechnya and Persia that persist to the present day.