The Imagology of Iranians in Eastern and Western Cities of Iran in Ibn Batuta’s Travelogue

The main goal of imagology is to represent the images of ethnic groups and nations in the literary works of another nation, and travelogues are among the important texts in which the travel writer pictures his views through his travels to other countries. These images, on the one hand, reflect the characteristics of the people of those countries and, on the other hand, reveal the individual and ethnic characteristics of the travel writer. This study sought to identify the images of different types of eastern and western cities of eighth century Iran by identifying and analyzing Ibn Battuta's travelogue, as one of the important works of travel literature in Arabic literature, and to analyze and interpret the reasons for this attitude of Ibn Battuta and to know him to some extent. In this regard, with a descriptive-comparative method, we divided the image of Iranians in the two areas of eastern and western cities into three types of positive, negative and neutral images and based on economic, social, cultural, religious and political characteristics. The this research is important because for the first time the eastern and western cities of eighth century Iran are compared and the view of a Moroccan tourist on Iranians is analyzed. The results show that out of a total of 51 images extracted, the opinion of Ibn Battuta about 80% of the images of Iranians is positive and 20% is negative. The reasons for this positive attitude are rooted in the social and cultural similarities between Iran and Tangier, as well as the well-being of the situation in Iran compared to other countries and territories. Also, in general, we see the better economic situation of the western cities of Iran compared to the eastern cities, which was due to the widespread destruction of the economic infrastructure of the eastern cities of Iran, including markets and caravanserais, caused by the Mongol invasion.