Mehmandari: Hosting and Minding Foreign Visitors in Safavid and Qajar Iran

with Rudi Matthee

Mehmandari, the practice of having foreigners visiting in an official capacity welcomed, accompanied, and provided for by the host country, is very old in Iran. My presentation traces the historical roots of the practice and follows its development through the Safavid period and until late Qajar times.  I next examine the responsibilities of the officer in charge, the mehmandar, to argue that, aside from serving as a court-appointed host, this official functioned above all as a minder, tasked to monitor the movements of envoys and to find out the real reasons for their visit. I further discuss the practice of accommodating visitors and their entourage and of providing them with victuals, the per diem official visitors were entitled to, and the burden this put on the local population, with all the corruption and graft it involved (Image credit: Debraj Ghosh)

About the speaker:

Rudi Matthee obtained both a BA and an MA in Oriental Languages and Cultures from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of California in Los Angeles.  He serves as the John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Delaware. He authored five books, most recently Angels Tapping at the Wine-shop’s Door: A History of Alcohol in the Islamic World (Oxford UP, 2023), four of which received awards. Matthee also edited respectively coedited six volumes, most recently The Safavid World (Routledge, 2021). He currently serves as the President of the Persian Heritage Foundation. He is a two-time fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2002-03 and 2017). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2026).