Aliyeh Shirazi and the Museum: The Museum in an Iranian Woman's Travelogue in the Nineteenth Century

The first Iranian museums, in the new sense of the word, were established by Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848-1896) in Tehran. Most of our knowledge about these museums are provided by a few Iranian courtiers—most notably Etemad al-Saltaneh (1843-1896)—and a few western travelers. Āliyeh Shirāzi should be credited as the first Iranian woman who has written about the museum. In 1892, she made a pilgrimage from Kerman to Mecca through Mumbai, and she returned to Iran via Qasr-e Shirin in the west of Iran. In Mumbai, she visited a royal collection situated in a garden owned by the Queen of England. On her way back home, she spent some time in Tehran, where she was privileged to visit the Royal Museum in the Golestan Palace. Despite the brevity of her notes, they provide valuable details overlooked in other accounts concerning the Iranian museums in question. This short article seeks to contribute to the history of the museum in Iran based on the account of Aliyeh Shirazi, a female traveler and writer of the nineteenth century.