Muslim dragomans and diplomats who were deeply rooted in Persophone societies in Iran and Central Asia operated across various regional economic and political zones in Asia and Europe. Their ranks included subjects of sovereign or (partly) dependent states in the Iranian sphere (the kingdoms of Qajar and early Pahlavi Iran and of Afghanistan and the Central Asian emirates/khanates) and also subjects of European empires. Emerged from early modern transregional commercial, religious and diplomatic networks, they were transformed into a new elite of professional diplomats in the 19th century. Deeply entangled with other mobile elites (Baltic German, Armenian etc.), they were influential agents of mediation and change between the 1860s and the First World War. Individuals with a background as dragomans/diplomats played important roles in efforts to reform language and script in Iran, Central Asia and the Caucasus as well as in the Ottoman Empire. This issue will be in the focus of a doctoral project, which re-contextualizes late 19th-century language and script reform efforts in the realm of plurilingual trans-imperial professionals and explores how they were appropriated in early 20th-century in the process of radical modernization and nation building.