istorical Understanding of Iranian Leisure in the Iranian and Foreign Travelogues (1600-1900)

Identifying developments, changes, and consistencies in leisure culture is a major indicator in understanding cultural and social changes. Leisure is an experience for representing and diffusing cultural values that far from elitist cultural orientations provides a picture of everyday’s life experiences and contexts. Drawing on cultural studies tradition and relying on some secondary notes and sources produced by travelers writings in the 18th and 19th century, the present paper aims to present a picture of the experience, meanings and perception of Iranians from their free time and to identify the conditions affecting it. My argument is that Iran’s pre-modern leisure culture witness a break both with its traditional and modern contexts. In the historical period covered, there has been no spontaneous development towards creating discipline, differentiation, professionalization, and commercialization of an acceptable and native leisure culture. The historical and cultural distance of Iranian society with the Western modern leisure, has revealed the inadequacies of Western conceptualization and therefore the necessity to attend cultural history to trace popular culture developments.