Persian Ambassadors, their Circassians, and the Politics of Elizabethan and Regency England

Abstract

The coincidence of the appearance of two Circassian women as wives of ambassadors on the Anglo-Persian diplomatic and political stage has generated more than passing interest in academic and lay literature. Though the story of Sir Robert Sherley and Lady Teresia Sherley is better known in British circles, and has even generated renewed interest with two simultaneous exhibitions in 2009 in London, the story of Fath Ali Shah's Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Abol Hassan Khan, has not received sufficient attention, and has certainly not been fully explored in the context of the politics of Regency England. The present article revisits key moments of the life of the Sherleys and of Abol Hassan Khan and Delaram, his Circassian wife, but goes beyond the retelling of their journeys to focus on how the latter two's visit to England generated bawdy depictions in the popular press and became the vehicle for political satire quite unconnected to their persons.