James Morier

James Justinian Morier was a British diplomat, and author noted for his novels about the Qajar dynasty in Iran, most famously for the Hajji Baba series. These were filmed in 1954. Morier was born in Ottoman Smyrna, the second son of Isaac Morier, a Swiss-born merchant, British by naturalization, and a member of the London-based Levant Company, and Elizabeth Clara Van Lennep. After private education in England, he worked in his father's Smyrna business between 1799 and 1806. 

He entered the diplomatic service through the influence of his uncle, Admiral William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock. He first visited Iran in 1808 as secretary to Harford Jones-Brydges, a special British envoy to the Shah. He published an account of his experiences in 1812 under the title A Journey through Iran, Armenia, and Asia Minor to Constantinople in the years 1808 and 1809. In 1809 he accompanied the Iranian envoy, Mirza Abul Hasan, to Britain, and in 1810 returned to Iran as Secretary of the Embassy on the staff of Sir Gore Ouseley, the first Ambassador to Iran. 

He remained there as Chargé d'Affaires from 1814–1816. After his return to England, he published A Second Journey through Iran to Constantinople between the years 1810 and 1816. Morier married Harriet Fulke Greville in London in 1820. Between 1824 and 1826, he was special commissioner to Mexico, where he negotiated a British-Mexican Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation ratified in 1827.

With his knowledge of Eastern life and manners, Morier wrote several entertaining novels. The most popular was The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1824) and its sequel, The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan in England (1828). The former novel is a sort of Gil Blas set in Persia. The Persian minister to England is said to have protested on behalf of his government against its satire and manner of speaking. There followed Zohrab the Hostage (1832), Ayesha the Maid of Kars (1834), and The Mirza (1841), all full of brilliant description, character-painting, delicate satire, and several others of lesser quality.