Europeans on the maydan as military sports centre

Relatively few Westerners are known to have been in Isfahan between 1590 and 1602.

The notorious Sherley brothers and their party did, however, visit in 1599. Their story was certainly popular: it was considered interesting enough to appear in at least four English versions before 1602. Translations appeared in French and Spanish, and Anthony Sherley rehashed his “prolix and pompous” pronouncements in 1613[1]. Elements of the tale were dramatised – most famously in Twelfth Night (1601/2), but also in The Three English Brothers (1607)[2]. Extracts were also included in early modern England’s two major compilations of travel narratives: Hakluyt and Purchas[3].

The Sherley party spent several months in Isfahan[4], but although they declared the place a “famous city”, they seem to have spent their time on “hawking, hunting, and other sports” rather than in making detailed observations or even in engaging in simple sightseeing[5]. The maydan in Isfahan was not specifically described. All the various accounts were focused more on (European) political objectives and personal aggrandizement (especially of Anthony Sherley), than on empirical reporting[6].

This was not because there was nothing to say. John Cartwright visited Isfahan shortly after Anthony Sherley left[7] and provides an eventful description of the “At-Maidan, which is the greatest marketplace or high street of Hifpaan [sic]”. Cartwright provides details of Abbas’ morning routine of visiting his stables and his armourers, and writes of how, at three in the afternoon, the Shah usually “makes his entry” into the maydan, where:

“are erected certain high scaffolds where the multitude do sit to behold the warlike exercises performed by the King and his courtiers, as at their running and leaping, their shooting with bows and arrows, at a mark both above and beneath, their playing at tennis [actually polo], all which they perform on horseback with diverse more too long to write of. In this place also is to be seen several times in the year, the pleasant sight of fireworks, of banquets, of musickes, of wrastlings, and of whatsoever triumphes else is to be showed for the declaration of the joy of this people”[8].

Matthee has written of how the seventeenth-century travellers “represent a unique moment in the history of alterity” – no longer moralistic missionaries and not yet omniscient imperialists[9]. Cartwright certainly fits into this mould – indeed he is something of a pioneer[10]. In contrast, the Sherleys, with all their political, religious and financial problems, were – had to be – more self-interested: they spent their lives “covering their tracks”[11]. The accounts by members of their party had specific objectives, and therefore different outcomes than straightforward observation[12].