The Qajar monarch, Nasir al-Din Shah, ruled Iran for the second half of the nineteenth century (1848-96), a momentous period in which the forces of colonialism and Western commercial interests were fully unleashed on the Islamic world. Within Iran itself, centuries-old, traditional modes of government were called into question by reforming spirits, anxious for their country to adapt to the demands of the new industrial age.

On 19 April 1873 the Shah set out on a trip which was to take him to Russia, Germany, Belgium, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Turkey, and Georgia. During the tour he faithfully recorded his impressions of Europe in a Diary.

1. Within a year of the Shah's visit to Europe, Sir James W. Redhouse, a well-known British Orientalist scholar had published a translation of the Shah's Diary. The present volume is a reprint of the original edition first published in London in 1874. It remains a document of nineteenth century social history which records a vanished world of European imperialism and industrial and technological change, a world where monarchs behaved with greater decorum and discretion than nowadays.