ABSTRACT
The considerable number of the travel books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with their detailed, vivid descriptions and drawings, played a significant role in stimulating Western scholars' interest in Iran. The wide range of information documented in these sources introduced the European reader to the art, literature, languages, customs-in short, the culture of this Eastern country. Thus, the first examples of the European travellers who came to the East exclusively in pursuit of knowledge and not for political, commercial, and/or religious reasons, appeared in the eighteenth century. 1 The observation and description period led to the serious and systematic study of the Orient. This, in turn, provided the impetus for the inception of "Orientalism," from which, later on, Iranian studies branched out.
