Junoobi Aeshiai Musalmanon Ka Tassavvur-i-Maghrib: Attharveen Sadi Ke Do Nadir Safarnamay
By Najeeba Arif
Al-Faisal Nashran, Lahore
ISBN: 978-96950311862
310pp.

Academic, creative writer and poet Najeeba Arif’s latest book, Junoobi Aeshiai Musalmanon Ka Tassavvur-i-Maghrib: Attharveen Sadi Ke Do Nadir Safarnamay [South Asian Muslims’ Concept of the West: Two Rare Travelogues from the 18th Century], is a treasure trove of literary history that she discovered in two of the earliest travelogues written by Muslim South Asians in the 1700s.

The first is Safarnama-i-Roos-o-Cheen [Travelogue of Russia and China] by Muhammad Abdullah and the second is Taareekh-i-Jadeed [New History] by Munshi Ismail.

Arif’s book comprises quite a fair amount of material. After a research-based ‘Ibtidaiya’ [Preface], there are separate introductions to each travelogue. Then come scans of the original works as well as their Persian-to-Urdu translations by two distinguished scholars of Persian: Professor Sarfaraz Zafar and Dr. Jawad Hamdani.

Also included are a list of the 280 rare manuscripts in oriental scholar Simon Digby’s collection (wherefrom Arif discovered Taereekh-i-Jadeed with the help of historians Francesca Orsini and Richard Harris), Digby’s English translation of Taareekh-i-Jadeed and scans of two letters written to him by noted historian Peter Marshall.

With two writers, three translators, and an eminent researcher and literary historian compiling, annotating and introducing it, Junoobi Aeshiai…, like all works of such an archaeological nature, is essentially a product of collaboration.

Arif’s introduction gives a sense of the time in which these travelogues were written. She writes that, for Europe, and particularly England, it was a century of revolution and change. The iron industry was making amazing progress and manpower trained in using machinery was needed. The industrial revolution also brought a complete overhaul in the system of modern education, which pushed society into some new and very different directions.

Comparing this to what was happening in India, Arif states: “By the start of the 18th century, India was a more stable and prosperous country than most European countries … India was truly a multinational society.” However, with the decline of the Mughal empire and the East India Company’s victories at the battles of Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764), the Subcontinent saw a clash, and then embrace, of the two civilisations.

Both Abdullah and Ismail’s travelogues were written during this time. Therefore, they hold great significance as they are “not merely the reflection of an individual’s routines, but also the mirror of a nation, a period, a way of living, a society, a civilisation.”

That being said, Abdullah’s Safarnama-i-Roos-o-Cheen is more of a microphone than a mirror. A quick narrative using only a couple of verbs — ‘arrived’ and ‘stayed’ — for the most part, it mainly announces the places where the traveller arrived and stayed. Some dates are given here and there, but it doesn’t mention the year of Abdullah’s travels. The proper nouns used also give rise to several questions, but Arif’s history-backed analyses allows one to find some convincing answers.

Because he mentions submitting, upon his return, a report to the “Sahibaan-i-Aalishaan” [Excellencies], Arif notes that Abdullah could have been a paid employee of the English: “It appears that the officers of the East India Company might have sent him on a spy mission to Russia and China.”

Interestingly, Abdullah has been labelled the first Indian traveller to the Dayaar-i-Farang [the European World or, more generally, the West] by Italian researcher Alessandro Bausani, as quoted by Ikram Chughtai in his foreword to Yousuf Khan Kambal Posh’s Urdu travelogue Tareekh-i-Yousufi [The History of Yusuf]. Arif appears to endorse this. Referring to the Indians’ conceptualisation of the West in the 18th century, she states: “[Abdullah’s] travelogue doesn’t recount any travels to those regions that we now see as the Western countries, but in the India of that period, Russia was also considered as a Western country.”

Munshi Ismail’s Taareekh-i-Jadeed, on the other hand, is the work of someone who has a developed taste for writing. The extensive vocabulary, very formal tone and poetic expressions make the text what Digby calls a “proem”.

Ismail frequently quotes poetry and proverbs and, at one point, seems to have composed some verses himself, stating: “It’s not possible to say anything about the mountains except their height. So, these verses were revealed: Never saw mountains as high as these/ Even a thought of them would daze the mind.”

Despite his literary taste, though, Munshi succeeds in betraying himself as a completely colonised subject. He compares himself to other munshis [either a secretary or language teacher in the south Asian context], who were “unaware of the social statuses of the upper, middle lower and equal classes” and, as we find out, the reason he stands out is not his professional knowledge or critical ability, but his sycophancy.

Munshi’s ‘awareness’ of the status of the East India Company officers makes him verbally prostrate as he gives a long list of honorifics every time he mentions them. The extract Arif includes from Digby’s “condensed” English translation shows Ismail’s mention of one David Anderson, who was in charge of the translation of administrative documents: “that Lord of Generosity, that Repository of Noble Traits, that Binder of the Collection of Testing Works, Fakhr al Dawla Mister David Anderson Bahadur Dilavar Jang — May his fortune endure!”

As pointed out by Arif, Munshi fails to see or mention the East India Company’s exploitative taxes during the Great Bengal Famine of 1770.

As perhaps some of the earliest examples of travelogues from South Asia, Safarnama-i-Roos-o-Cheen and Taareekh-i-Jadeed are far from being perfect. But their presentation in this book is quite educational. Unsuspecting, uncritical and voluntarily colonised, Abdullah and Ismail remind us of the present-day agents of imperialism and their silence.

Arif, meanwhile, takes care of the minutest details of punctuation, which is often overlooked in Urdu. For instance, she puts any explanatory comments included in the original texts within parentheses, insertions from external sources in brackets and explains why the meaning of any phrase is not given in a footnote. I particularly like that this book not only inspires more literary historical studies, but also facilitates this by including an index, a list of Digby’s collection, a detailed bibliography and the names of several libraries that house many other works awaiting their readers.

On leave from the International Islamic University, Islamabad, the reviewer is currently a visiting professor at McGill University, Canada. His most recent book is Lisaaniyat: Aik Jaame Taaruf and he tweets @SheerazDasti

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 30th, 2023