The Concept of the West in the Qajar Era's Historical Reports

Abstract

Sharing a destiny for story and history is not anything complex, because some speculation on the concept of history can be useful. History means researching those events that have been accounted for, observed or attended by a researcher or a number of researchers working to build a construction of narratives concerning those events. Identity is a criteria based on which the historized event can be studied. Identity as an accumulative and condensed thing entails two simultaneously growing traits: on the one hand, it leads to the recognition of beings and re-understanding of the becomings. When we speak of identity as a process, we indeed talk about the continuity of historized phenomena that an individual, group, community or nation seeks to reply when answering the questions raised respecting its past. These questions can include who it was? Where has it been? What has it been? What is it now? Such questions imply the recognition of actually existing characterizations and reinventing the historically existing distinctions. It is founded upon a huge number of concepts and conducts that form themselves vis-à-vis the other. Re-reading six Qajar era's historical works, the author seeks to identify the Western element of identity in the historical reports of the Qajar era.

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