James Justinian Morier

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James Justinian Morier (1780?-1849) was a British diplomat and author noted for his novels about Persia, most famously for the "Hajji Baba" series.

He was born in 1782 in 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 Smyrna business between 1799 and 1806.

He first visited Persia 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 Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor to Constantinople in the years 1808 and 1809'. In 1809 he accompanied the Persian envoy to Britain, Mirza Abul Hasan, and in 1810 returned to Persia as Secretary of Embassy on the staff of Sir Gore Ouseley, first ambassador to Persia. He remained there as Chargé d'Affaires in 1814 until 1816 and after his return to England he published 'A Second Journey through Persia to Constantinople between the years 1810 and 1816'. 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.

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

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.

'Ottoman and Persian Odysseys' a biography by Henry McKenzie Johnston (1998, I B Tauris & Co Ltd)