"Filthy Muscovite" Diplomats and the "Uzbeks of the Franks"

A friend on facebook posted this account of a visit by Jean Chardin to the Persian royal court in the late 1600s.

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It really defies summarization. You just have to read it:

The ambassadors drank no wine; only the Muscovite was served with some of his own country brandy. I was surprised that they gave no wine to that ambassador, being the king himself drank largely, as well as most of the grandees. I asked one of the nobleman there present the reason thereof. He answered me, that it was out of grandeur and the better to preserve the respect due to his royal majesty; and then smiling, he told me further that it was still kept in memory what one of his countrymen had done in a solemn audience, which he had of the late king. I presently desired to be informed what that was. He told me that in the year 1664, two Muscovite extraordinary ambassadors at the audience the king gave them, drank so excessively that they quite lost their senses. The king drank [to] their master’s health and would needs have them pledge it in a cup that held about two pints. The second ambassador, not being able to digest so much wine, had a pressing inclination to vomit, and not knowing where to disembogue, he took his great sable cap which he half filled. It is well known that the Muscovites wear large and high caps. His colleague, who was above him, and the secretary of the embassy, who was below him, enraged at so foul an action done in the presence of the king of Persia, and of the whole court, reprimanded him and jogged him with their elbows, to remind him of going out. But he, being very drunk, and not knowing either what was said to him nor what he himself did, clapped his cap upon his head, which presently covered him all over with nastiness. The king and all the assembly broke into a loud laughter thereat, which lasted about half an hour, during which time the companions of the filthy Muscovite were forcing him by dint of blows with their fists to rise and go out. The king was not at all angry; he only broke up the assembly and said as he went away that the Muscovites were the Uzbeks of the Franks. He thereby intimated that as among the Mohammedans there is no nation so nasty, so meanly educated, nor so clownish as the Uzbeks (who are the Tartars along the River Oxus). So among the Europeans there was not any that equaled the Muscovites in those foul qualities.

I think one could write an entire dissertation based on Persian and European stereotyping of Uzbeks. Historical accounts are full of non-Uzbeks ridiculing or demeaning Uzbeks. The trend reached its peak with the British writings that came about as a response to the rather poor treatment accorded to British spies travellers by certain Uzbek khans/emirs. The tradition is still present today, most notable in the writings of the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid.