With the beginning of the new era in the West, a break was gradually created between the features of the Eastern and Iranian worlds, and with the establishment of the foundation of modernity in Europe, this break became deeper..
Examining the reports and travelogues of Europeans from the point of view of political thought allows us to examine this rupture as an irreversible process and shed light on Iran's confrontation with renewal and its failure in Iran..
The different view of "others" in the travelogues of Europeans, if properly understood and explained, is actually the same distance that should be created to understand the distinct transformation that the West and Iran found following the beginning of the new era, but this distance from reality It was not possible due to the decline of thought in Iran, and the reality of historical transformation was not seen except in the bright shadow of the traditional thought of the ancient era, which fell into a downward spiral with the Safavids and especially after them..
Therefore, if the considerations of Europeans' travelogues about the way of ruling and the nature of Iran's political power are taken into consideration as an "other" view of that reality, it is possible to reconstruct those considerations as a different point of view, and in this case, it is natural to emphasize their mistakes and misrepresentations. It will not go anywhere, but understanding that point of view and reconstructing the considerations of the travelogues of the Europeans as a critic arising from the thought of renewal will allow us to create a distance that the Iranian historians could not create with the historical transformation, relying on the travelogues of the Europeans.…
Just as the Greek and Roman world reflected on the foundation of their culture and civilization in the differentiation and challenge with the "barbarian" world, the new West also faced a new and if we can say a double challenge with the East to determine its identity and personality..
With his history, Herodotus placed a "mirror" in front of the foreigners whom he called barbarians, and in this sense, his writing should be understood as a possibility rather than as an evaluation or prejudice of foreign historiography and necessarily foreign to the nature of civilization and culture of Iran. Awareness of the distinction between Greece and "barbarians" and their different perception of the world and man should be reflected upon.
Herodotus' history was an attempt to formulate the historical idea of the distinction between Greeks and barbarians, and this history, rather than having a basis in reality, was the "reconstruction of reality" based on the idea of distinction and the beginning of awareness of it, and this idea and awareness in the passage of time, in turn, The distinct reality of the two worlds of the Greeks and the barbarians gave existence and gave a new face to reality.
In the preface of his travelogue, Jean Chardin, a French merchant and traveler, also pointed out the same distinction between Iran and Europe of his time and that Iran is like "another world" compared to "our Europe", he writes that his intention in writing a travelogue is to make the reader He will be informed about what can attract his curiosity about a country that can be called another world either because of the distance or because of the difference in its morals and principles..
A reflection about Iran
The first volume, pp. 227-228
With preliminary considerations in the concept of Iran
Dr. Javad Tabatabai
