James Justinian Morier

James Justinian Morier
Morier, portrait by an unknown artist
Occupation	Novelist, diplomat
Notable works	The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan

James Justinian Morier (1780 – March 19, 1849) was a British diplomat and author noted for his novels about Qajar dynasty Iran, most famously for the Hajji Baba series.

Early life

He was born in 1780 in Ottoman İzmir (Smyrna), the second son of Isaac Morier, a Swiss-born merchant, British by naturalisation, and a member of the London-based Levant Company, and Elizabeth Clara Van Lennep. After private education in England, he worked in his father's İzmir business between 1799 and 1806.

Diplomatic career

Career in Iran

He first visited Iran in 1808 as secretary to Harford (later Sir Harford) Jones, a special British envoy to the Shah, publishing an account of his experiences in 1812 under the title A Journey through Iran, Armenia and Asia Minor to Constantinople in the years 1808 and 1809. In 1809 he accompanied the Iranian envoy to Britain, Mirza Abul Hasan, and in 1810 returned to Iran as Secretary of Embassy on the staff of Sir Gore Ouseley, first ambassador to Iran. He remained there as Chargé d'Affaires in 1814 until 1816 and after his return to England he published A Second Journey through Iran to Constantinople between the years 1810 and 1816.

Commissioner to Mexico

He married Harriet Fulke Greville in London in 1820 and between 1824 and 1826 he was special commissioner to Mexico negotiating the treaty with that country that was eventually ratified in 1827.

Novelist career

With his knowledge of Eastern life and manners he wrote several entertaining novels. The most popular of these was The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1824) and its sequel The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan in England (1828). There followed Zohrab the Hostage (1832), Ayesha the Maid of Kars (1834), and The Mirza (1841), all full of brilliant description, character-painting, and delicate satire, and several others of lesser quality.

Death

Morier died at Brighton on 20 March 1849, his wife in London in 1858.

Legacy

Operation Hajji Baba, a humanitarian airlift operation conducted in 1952 by the US Air Force, took its name from the Hajji Baba novels.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.
• Johnston, Henry McKenzie. Ottoman and Iranian (Persian) Odysseys. I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 1998.
• Boyne, Walter J. "The Pilgrim Airlift". Air Force Magazine, March 2007.

External links

• The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan set forth in Eighty Chapters, full text
• The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, excerpt at Project Gutenberg
• Ayesha, Maid of Kars at Google Books