The ambassadors of Shah I Abbas at the courts of Christian Europe

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Baku State University (Azerbaijan, Baku)

The ambassadors of Shah I Abbas at the courts of Christian Europe

PhD candidate Heydarli G.

Annotation

This article examines the progress of a series of ambassadorial visits to Europe during the reign of Shah Abbas I Safari. The reign of Shah Abbas I (1587--1629) inaugurated a new chapter in Safavid-European relations. He opened his country to the world in unprecedented 'ways. Shah Abbas consolidated the state by securing the borders, establishing a central administration and bureaucracy, fortifying the economy and creating a standing army responsible not to the tribal heads, but to the Shah as the head of the state. Shah Abbas's energetie foreign policy led him to send missions to Europe. Considerable diplomacy took place between Europe and Safavids Empire over diverting the silk trade away from the traditional Anatolian route and through the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless, Shah's attitude towards the European ambassadors, travelers, merchants, or even priests was a major factor in the creation of 'many works about the reign of Shah Abbas. Close attention is paid to the ambassadors and their action in this article.

Keywords: ambassadorial visits, Safavid-- European relations, Shah Abbas I Safavi, silk trade.

Анотація

Досліджується діяльність експедицій посольства е Європу під чає правління Сефевідского Шаха Аббаса І. У період Шаха Аббаса відносини Сефеві-Европа стали початком нової ери. Він відкрив свою країну світу безпрецедентним чином. Активна зовнішня політика привела його до відправки місій в Європу. Між Європою та Сефевідською імперією реалізована дуже важлива дипломатія, щоб перетворити шовкову торгівлю в бік традиційної Анатолійської лінії і затоки Басри. У цій статті конкретно розглядаються посольства і "їх діяльність.

Ключові слова: візити послів, відносини Сефеві-Европа, Шах Аббас І Сафаві, шовкова торгівля.

By the time of Shah `Abbas Europe was divided and developing as independent states rather than large empires. The Holy Roman Empire had broken up, and its vast holdings, following the 1556 abdication of the Habsburg emperor Charles V, were divided up, Charles V's grandson, King Philip III of Spain, inherited Spain, Italy, and the Low Countries (which later became Belgium and the Netherlands) from his father King Philip II, and Charles V's grandson Rudolf II inherited Austria and the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Religiously, Europe was also disunited. In the aftermath of Protestant Reformations, conflicts broke out along sectarian lines, culminating in the Thirty Years War that began in 1618.

As Shah Abbas entered into diplomatic relations with various European powers, two main issues dominated the messages that ambassadors, diplomats, religious figures and envoys relayed back: 1) the desire to establish a European - Safavid alliance 2) the desire to divert the silk trade from an overland east-west route that went through Ottoman territory to a north-south route that went by sea. The second part of his offer contained not only trade concessions for European enterprises but also privileges for Christian missionaries [1].

The main information about the open-minded attitude of Shah Abbas to the Cristian world and their religion came to Europe from the monk missionaries who visited Safavids from as early as the mid - 1590s. Official letters and personal letters of monk missionaries were first published in London in 1939, under the title «А Chronicle of Carmelites in Persia. Papal mission of the XVII-th and the XVIII-th centuries» This chronicle also includes instructions and reports of not only Carmelite monks but also members of the Augustinian order carrying out diplomatic assignments of the Roman Curia in Safavids Empire. Despite the political impasses and failure to forge alliance, as a result of the exchanges the Safavids and the various European powers became increasingly familiar with each other, as more and more individuals traveled between Europe and Safavids, to extent that, for example, Shakespeare made reference to « the Sophy»-an Anglicized version of « Safavi»-in his play Twelfth night. Luxury Safavi silk and carpets was exchanged for gold and silver and became popular In Europe until 19^th century.

The first official embassy of Shah Abbas in Europe (1599-1602). The first and perhaps the best known Europeans who visited Safavid court during Shah Abbas' reign were an Englishman and his brother. In 1598, at the apparent bidding of the Earl of Essex, Sir Anthony Sherley and his brother, Sir Robert Sherley traveled to Qazvin with a party of some twenty-five people. They arrived in Qazvin in December 1598, some nine months after Shah `Abbas had already moved the capital to Isfahan and was away on his Uzbek campaign. Soon after the Sherleys' arrival, however, Shah' Abbas marched proudly and triumphantly back to Qazvin after his victory against the Uzbeks and met the brothers there [2].

After a brief stay in Qazvin, Shah' Abbas took the Sherleys and their entourage to Isfahan with him. Shah Abbas treated both brothers, especially Anthony Sherley, with much hospitality and paid them a great deal of attention. At the time of the Sherleys' arrival in Iran, Shah `Abbas was interested in gaining support for an alliance against the Ottomans. Abbas had been persuaded by Anthony Sherley to expand what was originally planned simply as an embassy to Madrid, as a result of exchange of letters conducted through Estadoda India, into a much grander politico- economic project involving negotiations with the emperor, the queen of England, the kings of France, Spain, Poland and Scotland, and lastly the pope, who as «father of the Christian Princes», would be instrumental in cementing an anti - Ottoman alliance. The embassy contained three groups, that of the Safavi ambassador Husain Ali Beg, that of Sherley, that led by Augustinian friar Nicolao De Melo. At the end of April 1599 the embassy set off for Caspian en route to Russia, choosing this rather than the Mediterranean route both in order to avoid travelling through Ottoman territory and in order to test viability of the route for the export of Safavid silk [2, p. 139]. Only five month later was the embassy allowed to leave Moscow and it would do without De Melo. Various reason for his continued imprisonment were put forward in the contemporary sources. According to Carmelite missionary Juan Tadeo de San Eliseo, who met De Melo in Russia, confessional differences were at the root of De Melo's difficulties, brought about by his baptism of a baby girl according to the Catholic rite [3, p. 78].

The reduced embassy continued on its way through Europe, although it did not visit the courts of France, England or Scotland. Sherley was able to meet in person with Rudolph II, the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, whom he saw in Prague. Upon their arrival in Rome, in 1601, things took a turn for the worse. Sherley had sold most of gifts intended for European monarchs, and which became infamous for the constant quarrelling between its senior figures and included the conversion to Christianity of Husain Ali Beg's nephew and a number ofhis retinue. Of the six converts to Catholicism, three would be baptised in Rome by Clement VIII with senior figures from the college of cardinals as godfather, while the others were baptised in Spain in the presence of members of royal family. A Brief from Pope Clement VIII to Shah Abbas dated 6.6.1601 explained this baptism by Pope: «After that he had been with us for a number of days the higly respected personage, Husain Ali Baig, whom Your Highness sent to us and whom We have seen with much pleasure and treated with every consideration together with all his companions, when he had already been kindly and honourably received by Us in farewell audience and was about to depart from this dear city of ours, his three companions said that they wished to become Christians and to be regenerated by the sacred laver of baptism. These are Sha Husain Riza and Ali who when carefully questioned openly and publicly answered that they wanted to receive the Christian Faith and be baptized. Therefore, since they are grown men an possessed of the faculty of reasoning and without any force or fear of anyone whatsoever, but of their own free will and voluntarily desire to profess the Christian religion. We, who from Our office are bound to open to all seeking it the gate of life and eternal salvation by baptism, could not repel and reject them. For, when it be a question of salvation of the eternal soul, We are unable not to receive those coming voluntarily to Christ the author of life and salvation. So, just as it has happened, We write to tell Your Highness of the matter, so that You may not be surprised if, the three men above named do not return to Persia with Husain Ali Baig» [2, p. 234]. All of this caused Husain Ali Beg to proceed on his own to Spain. Anthony, meanwhile, went to Venice, where he exchanged letters with Philip III of Spain. There English agents discovered the letters, pronouncing them treasonable. Anthony was subsequently imprisoned and stayed behind bars from April 1603 until some time later that year (fig.l).

In Spain Husain Ali Beg's nephew, who accompanied him on the journey and one of his companions, Uruch Beg, converted to Christianity. The king of Spain gave them Christian names of Felipe and Juan. This Uruch Beg taking the name Don Juan de Persia, published as Relaciones de Don Juan de Persia (Valladolid, 1604), remains an important source of information on the embassy of Sherley and Husain Ali Beg to Europe, and on the history of customs of Safavids. During these converts a Safavid envoy was murdered in Valladolid and his body disposed of without ceremony, and indeed with public scorn, so that dogs ate half-buried legs, the Portuguese Crown official and satirical writer Tom Pinheiro da Veiga deplored the lack of reciprocity: «this is certainly disgraceful and embarrassing for Spain, and one of the worst and most reprehensible deeds I ever saw, because it is worthy of barbarians; and in fact they treat our ambassadors with more respect, honouring them in all things, even though they have a different religion and are such powerful and wealthy Lords».

In terms of actual results of these embassies, Shah Abbas received a number of polite letters containing offers of friendship from the leaders to whom he had sent messages. But despite this courtesy, the European powers were simply not interested enough or sufficiently united to form a specific plan.

european embassy safavids abbas

Figure 1. Aegidius Sadelerll, Sir Anthony Sherley Ambassador of the Shah of Persia, (Prague, 1601-1605). The BritishMuseum, London.

A second Safavid embassy to Europe (1609-1615). When Anthony Sherley left Isfahan his brother Robert Sherley (fig.2) remained with fourteen other Englishmen. There, in February 1608, he married Sampsonia a Christian Circassian lady of the Circassian nobility of Safavids. She was brought to Safavids Court by her paternal aunt, who had become a favourite wife of Shah Abbas and grew up in Isfahan. After being baptized by the Carmelites, she adopted the Teresia in addition to her own name. She became known in the west by the name Lady Teresia Sampsonia Shirley. According to the Chronicle of Carmelites, the enemies of Robert Sherley had an attempt made on his life: a band fell on the caravan and after binding the arms of servants tied Sherley to a tree and tried to make him drink poison.At that moment a sword fell from the hands of the one miscreant and Sherley's wife, like a true Amazon bounded on it and proceeded to thrust and cut and kill some of the band, putting to flight the rest [2, p. 345].

In 1608 Shah Abbas sent Rober Sherley on a diplomatic to James I of Englandand to other European princes for the purpose of uniting them in a confederacy against the Ottoman Empire. Firstly, he together with Ali Quli Beg met with the king of Poland. He was received by Sigismund III Vasa. In June of 1608, he arrived in Germany, where he received the title of Count Palatine and was appointed to Knight of the Holy Roman Empire by Emperor Rudolph II. From Germany, Sir Robert travelled to Florence and then Rome. He presented to the Pope the letters from Shah Abbas.

Shah `Abbas sought, primarily, a Christian alliance against the Otto mans in which it was hoped that the papacy would assist, directly and indirectly, by rallying other Catholic rulers. He was willing to offer the papacy his support in reuniting the «schismatic» Orthodox churches of Armenia and Georgia, allowing, for example, the creation of a Catholic bishopric in Armenia and the appointment of a papal nuncio with authority over the Shah's Christian subjects [4, p. 109].

The ambassadors were received with much ceremony, and their visits were accompanied by the contemporaneous publication of prints and, over the next few years, by visual commemoration in fresco in the Vatican library and the Sala Regia of the Quirinale, and in stone in Paul V's tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore. Sherley's distinctive headgear was duly noted by all observers. It was a turban with a crucifix at the top. Presenting himself as a Catholic subject of the Shah not only helped secure Sherley's recognition in Rome, it also accorded well enough with his master's intentions. Since one goal of the embassy was to demonstrate Shah `Abbas's tolerance of Catholics, and to offer up the conversion of his Christian subjects, Sherley may have also hoped to underline the multi confessional nature of the Abbas' empire. Pope Paul V awarded him the title of Conte De Palatin in a magnificient ceremony [5, p. 525].

Then Sherleys travelled to Holland, where dealings in Safavid silk were proposed to the Dutch States- General, and to England, where Robert Sherley is said to have made like proposals to Henry, Prince of Wales and to a group of merchants who in due course fitted out some three ships, by one of which the Sherleys sailed to India.

In 1611, James the First received Robert Shirley in Hampton-Court Palace and Shirley granted him the letters by Abbas. James signed business-friendly - friendly treaty having the knowledge of the political benefits of relations with Safavids and then wrote a letter to King Abbas. Also, Shirley was awarded Knight Courtier and Knight degree.

Figure 2. Abbas as a new ceaser being honored by the Trumpets of Fame together with the 1609-1615 Persian embassy Allegorie del'Ocassion by Fransll Francken 1628.

When Robert Sherley (fig.3) was in Europe, Shah `Abbas sent Antonio de Gouvea, an Augustinian missionary who had come to Isfahan a year earlier to meet the shah, to Spain. With him traveled a Qizilbash merchant-envoy, Dengiz Beg Rumlu, who carried 120 bales of silk with him. Gouvea reached Madrid in early 1611 [6, p. 47]. There he conveyed the Safavid proposal that the Spanish send representatives to Hormuz where they would be able to buy all the silk that the Safavid ruler was in the habit of sending to Europe via Ottoman territory. The hundred bales of silk would give rise to a great deal of misunderstanding, for after Dengiz Beg had sold more than half for his own gain, de Gouvea proceeded to offer the remaining bales to the Spanish king as a gift. The Spanish king persuaded the pope to elevate de Gouvea to the rank of bishop of Cyrene and Apostolic vicar of the Armenians of lsfahan.

Upon his return to Persia in 1613, Dengiz Beg was executed. At the same time, other Safavid envoy Zain-ul- Abidin Beg, who was in Europe, sent a letter to the shah. He had written that all Christian princes' professions of friendship were false and that all they wanted was for the Turks and Safavids to destroy each-other and the Muslim religion included. Carmelite friar John Thaddeus noted that: «The shah when reading this letter said: `You will see what a fire I shall alight in Christendom within two years.' This year he is going to march in the direction ofTabriz: if he be victorious, next year they may look to see him in Hurmuz, because all the time his thoughts are on how to get hold of it» [2,p. 456].

Carmelite fathers describe Antonio de Gouvea's arrival in their reports: «Over this new title (Visitor of the Armenian Church) the Shah too began on the one hand to be annoyed and on the other to mock because he considered the business of the silk and the rest to have been so badly manage. Finally, when he (Bishop) had arrived at Isfahan, they gave him an honourable reception, the Shah dissimulating and showing him a smiling face and paying him many compliments. But afterwards, the Shah asked `which was the value of the silk and which the «saughat» - a Persian word for present or souvenir-from the king of Spain. The Bishop answered that the saughat consisted of some pieces of gold and very curious things with stones of great value: while the value of the silk was represented by all those spices he had brought from India, i.e. a large quantity of pepper and cinnamon, etc. [7,p.65], The Shah then had calculations made as to how much all those spices would be worth, and they reckoned it at very little, but even if taken at a wide margin, in Persia they could not be worth 15000 ducats: and, when the pieces of gold and those spices are added together against value of the silk, they say it would not reach half the value of the silk; because at a minimum each load of silk delivered from Persia in Aleppo is worth 1000 ducats, and therefore in Spain would be worth something more...

Afterwards when the Shah saw himself so cheated, he sent to tell the Bishop that «his lordship had to pay for all the silk, as well as the ineterst (on its value)» for the past years because that silk belonged to a mosque of his, to which he assigned this deal in order to bring it in some profit [8, p. 134]. In defence the Bishop asserted that the silk was nothing but a present. When the Shah learnt this, he took it very ill and compelled the Bishop to write to his Majesty the king of Spain about this... When the king of Spain had this brought to his notice, he was greatly annoyed with the Bishop, because the latter had not reported to him that the silk was for sale ; and he sent out instructions making clear his displeasure with the Bishop, but these arrived when the Bishop had already left Persia» [9, p. 151].

Consequently, the embassy (fig.4) which led by Robert Sherley became successful. The opening of English trading posts in the Persian Gulf could provide an excellent opportunity for trade in the East. The idea of moving the silk trade to the road that ran along the Caspian Sea and the Volga to the White Sea and from there to the North Sea began to take on a more and more concrete shape [10, p. 234]. The English had the right of transit and free trade in Russia, and raising the agreements signed by Robert Shirley on behalf of the Safavid Shah, they became convinced that he had provided benefits forEnglish merchants [11, p. 367].

Figure 3. Matthias Greuter, Sir Robert Sherley ambassador of the Shah of Persia (Rome, 1609). The British Museum, London.

Figure 4. Party of Persian Emissaries, 1615-1617, Sala Regia, Quirinal Palace, Rome. Photograph courtesy of Giovanni Ricci-Novara.

Conclusion

Shah Abbas proceeded to exert a great deal of effort in an attempt to put Safavids on the world stage. He received numerous ambassadors, envoys, and travelers at his court and deftly tried extract as much political advantage as he could from each encounter. Not content simply to receive visitors, he also sent a number of his own embassies to various part of the world, in order to gain support for an alliance or to divert the silk trade [12, p. 123]. Shah `Abbas's geopolitical strategy extended to the newly created European maritime companies, the English and Dutch East India Companies These were allowed to operate in his realm, and more particularly to ompete for the silk the shah meant to redirect via the maritime route. In 1622 the English, anxious to improve their standing with the court, gave the shah naval support in his expedition to drive the Portuguese out of Hormuz. In return they received the (theoretical) right to collect the moiety of the tolls of Bandar-i `Abbas in perpetuity. As a result of Shah's silk diplomacy Safavid silk and carpet admired Europeans. Anthony van Dyck, Ruben, Velasquez had painted portrats with Safavid carpets [11, p. 352]. These carpets were the symbol of luxury.

References

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