Sahhafbashi began traveling widely in 1896, including to the United States, Japan, and Europe, and continued traveling into 1897. Along with
Mehdi Qoli Hedayat (who traveled to Japan in 1904, seven years after Sahhafbashi), he was one of the first Iranians to write an individual travelogue based on firsthand experiences in East Asia. His itinerary began on 12 May 1896, traveling from Tehran across the
Caspian Sea to the port of
Anzali by steamship, then a train to Moscow and from thereon to Berlin. From Berlin, he traveled widely across Europe, including London and Paris; across the Atlantic to New York City, Niagara Falls, and Canada. He then crossed the North American continent by rail and ended in Vancouver and
Victoria, British Columbia. From there, he crossed the Pacific to the Japanese port of
Yokohama. In addition to the kinetoscope, he also brought a cinematograph from London back to Iran and provided a Persian-language description for the machine. In 1904, only nine years after the first movie screening in Europe by the
Lumiere brothers, Sahhafbashi opened the first public movie theater in
Tehran in the backyard of his antique shop on Cheragh Gaz Avenue. The movie house showed comedies,
trick films, Russian documentaries, and newsreels from the
First Boer War in South Africa. Within a month, it was banned by the cleric
Fazlullah Nouri, possibly because it opened during the holy month of
Ramadan. Within this month, the twelve-year old
Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh, one of the most prominent writers in Iran in the 20th century, saw his first film.
Political activities Sahhafbashi, like other early pioneers of Iranian cinema, was a constitutionalist and supported the replacement of the despotic monarchy with a parliamentary monarchy. During the
Persian Constitutional Revolution in 1909, he joined a secret society that advocated for progressive reforms; in one of the group's meetings, he encouraged members to wear black clothing as a show of mourning for "our mother country, [which] is in the throes of death". He also wrote a letter to
Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar in which he threatened to overthrow the king.
Other activities Sahhafbashi also imported other Western scientific equipment such as X-ray machines, phonographs, and steam-powered automobiles. He was also the man who opened the first "Hamām-e nomré" (a kind of public shower with separate bathrooms) in Iran. (''History of Iran's Cinema'', by Jamal Omid. In Abolqasem Rezaee's quotes about his father, Mirza Ebrahim.) == Later life ==