Mirza Mohammad Ali ( Persian: میرزا محمد علی), better known as Hajj Sayyah ( Persian: حاج سياح "the traveler", 1836–1925), was a famous

Iranian American Iranian Americans are United States citizens or nationals who are of Iranian ancestry or who hold Iranian citizenship. Iranian Americans are among the most highly educated people in the United States. They have historically excelled in busine ...

world traveler and political activist. He is the first Iranian to obtain

American citizenship Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails Americans with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constitut ...

. According to a decree issued by the District Court of the 12th Judicial District of the State of California, he naturalized on May 26, 1875.

Early life

Hajj Sayyah was born in 1836 in the town of

Mahallat Mahallat ( fa, محلات, also Romanized as Maḩallāt; also known as Mahallāt Bāla and Maḩallāt-e Bālā) is the capital of Mahallat County, Markazi Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, the city had population of 35,31910,285 families. ...

, Sublime State of Iran. His studies exposed him at a young age to modern and democratic ideas that were then spreading throughout parts of the world. The stark difference that he observed between the treatment suffered by most Persia under their autocratic rulers and those ideas he studied inspired him to see the rest of the world.

Journey

At the age of 23, Hajj Sayyah embarked on a remarkable journey around the globe, and which would last for nearly 18 years. He began his travels by wandering throughout

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former ...

and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

for more than six years. Often, he traveled alone and in poverty. The motivation for his travels was his thirst for knowledge and spiritual strength. He wanted to learn as much as he could about the world and how other people lived to bring those ideas back to Persia. As a result of his observations throughout his travels, he concluded that human beings are supposed to live in reasonably-humane societies and, to enjoy basic human rights. Hajj Sayyah came to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

through

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. During his ten-year stay in the country, he met with many prominent personalities such as US President

Ulysses Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...

on more than one occasion. His travels across the United States eventually took him to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, where he spent several months. In the course of studying Hajj Sayyahʼs life, Dr. Ali Ferdowsi recently discovered through

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nat ...

documents that Hajj Sayyah had become a US citizen on May 26, 1875, the first Iranian to do so.

Political activist

Upon returning to Persia in July 1877, Hajj Sayyah became politically active and was imprisoned for having instigated a clandestine letter writing campaign to the monarch and clergy regarding the unbearable living conditions in Persia. After his release, fearing further persecution he sought the protection of the US legation in Tehran. That move puzzled many Persians, who wondered why he felt that the US government would protect him. Hajj Sayyah went on to play a major role in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 in Persia, and he remained active until his death in 1925, at the age of 89.Mehrbanoo Nasser Deyhim in: An Iranian in Nineteenth Century Europe, p.17.

Early life

Journey

Political activist

References

Further reading