With that della Valle continued to Aleppo, where he spent three months. Aleppo was a cosmpolitan city, “for thither resort Jewes, Tartarians, Persians, Armenians, Egyptians, Indians, and many sorts of Christians, and injoy freedome of their consciences, and bring thither many kinds of rich merchandises,” according to a late-sixteenth-century English merchant. Valuing its role as a trade crossroads, the city respected the varied faiths of the travelers. According to a chaplain attached to the Company of English Merchants there, “In Aleppo, as I have walked the streetes, both Turkes and Moores, and other Nations, would very reverently salute me…. They have not offered me or any of my companie wrong.” The only insults he had suffered during ten years’ travels in the region, he claimed, were from his own countrymen.
In Aleppo della Valle made a crucial decision. He ought, according to his original plan, to have gone to Istanbul to return to Italy. But he hadn’t had enough. Always with an eye to the grand gesture, he conceived the notion of traveling to Persia to enlist in the service of Shah Abbas to fight against the enemy of Christian Europe, the Great Turk. Obtaining a forged passport from the Venetian consul in Aleppo, he and his his long-suffering servants Tomasso and Lorenzo and the painter shaved their heads and donned turbans. Thus disguised they joined a camel caravan and set off across the desert to Baghdad, a distance of nearly five hundred miles.
Della Valle did not realize then that he would not return to Italy for another ten years.
Loading Bales onto a Camel, ca. 1630. Isfahan, Persia. Ink and colors on paper, 14 × 11 cm. British Museum, ME 1920.0917.0.279.3.
The extent to which the Islamic empires valued and encouraged travel and trade is demonstrated by their legacy of roadside caravanserai. These were fortified inns, usually built around a large central court, where travelers and caravans could take shelter and rest after a day’s travel. Generally the structures presented a blank wall surmounted by towers to the outside world, since a minimum of openings made them easier to defend against thieves and invaders; some, however, were elaborately constructed, with domes, arcades, staircases, and friezes and ornamental motifs. A few also contained Turkish baths and small interior mosques. Besides an open courtyard there was usually a covered “winter hall” where pack animals could be protected during harsh winter nights.
In West Asia hundreds of caravanserai had been constructed by the end of the thirteenth century, and another wave of construction occurred throughout Anatolia, the eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt and North Africa during the early centuries of Ottoman rule. The result was an elaborate network of resting places, spaced about twenty miles apart, that greatly facilitated travel through the Islamic world. In Persia the greatest period of caravanserai construction took place during the rule of Shah Abbas, while in India Jahangir’s father, Akbar, was notable for supporting caravanserai. “The gracious sovereign cast an eye upon the comfort of travelers,” wrote Abul Fazl, the late sixteenth–early seventeenth century chronicler of Akbar’s reign, “and ordered that in the serais on the high roads, refuges and kitchens should be established.” Two English merchants who traveled these routes in 1615 and 1616 testified to the convenience of their resting places: “Every five or six coss [about ten or fifteen miles], there are serais built by the king or some great man, which add greatly to the beauty of the road, are very convenient for the accommodation of travelers, and serve to perpetuate the memory of their funders.”
Most caravanserai were established and maintained through nonprofit trusts called waqfs. Income from agriculture and shop rents was channeled though waqfs to support institutions for the public good such as mosques, baths, kitchens, cemeteries, and fountains. Maintenance of the Aya (Hagia) Sofia in Istanbul was supported by a waqf, for example, as would be the Taj Mahal in India, built by Jahangir’s son and successor, Shah Jahan. The institution was more popular and common in West Asia and North Africa, however, than it was in India. Waqfs were also often used to keep significant properties intact by preventing their being divided among a donor’s multiple heirs. In such a case one of the children would typically be appointed custodian of the property that was transmitted to the waqf, which tied up the property in perpetuity and prevented its subsequent sale. At the same time that capitalism was increasingly a factor driving economies in the new globalized world, especially in northern Europe, nonprofit foundations remained important in supporting caravan routes through the establishment and maintenance of caravanserai.
Merchant trade by means of the caravan routes was dominated by relatively small-scale peddlers, who sometimes traveled great distances. A late-sixteenth-century Armenian merchant’s account book, for example, shows that he traveled as far as Lhasa in Tibet. That he stayed among an Armenian community there suggests the range of trade diasporas by means of which residents abroad mediated and eased relations between traveling merchants and local cultures.
But the caravan trade was erratic and unpredictable. Market and trade conditions were obscure to individual peddlers, who were constantly attempting to obtain up-to-date information about the arrival of caravans and the costs and sale prices of goods in geographically distant areas. Without the buffer of middlemen prices fluctuated wildly, sometimes merely on the basis of rumors.
Caravan at the Tomb of Hatam, 1614, by Riza-yi Abbasi. From The Treasury of Mysteries (Makizan al-Asrar). Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper. page 18 × 28 cm. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, LTS1995.2.84.
The tomb of Hatam, a sixth-century Arab renowned for his generosity, was a popular pilgrimage site. In this image by the foremost painter of Shah Abbas’s court a youth drinks wine and eats fruit in a tent while other figures listen to a lecture about the tomb or gaze reverently at it.
While the caravan merchants’ transport costs were somewhat predictable, protection costs in the form of customs, bribes, and security expenses varied over routes and times depending on local situations. During the sixteenth century this situation remained unaffected by the Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean and other parts of Asia, because the Portuguese mainly operated on top of existing market channels. Niels Steensgaard, who has looked closely at competing trade routes during this period, maintains that the Portuguese operations were primarily directed at gathering of tribute and taxes and only secondarily at trade — “the tax-gatherer turned merchant in order to maximize his revenue.”
With the rise of the British and Dutch trade companies during the early seventeenth century, new political forces now operated in support of economic considerations rather than the other way around. The British and Dutch Companies internalized protection expenses so that their investors paid no more than cost for them. New maritime trade routes began to supplant the old overland caravan routes, which declined at this time rather than on the appearance of the Portuguese a century before.
After days of difficult travel through whirling sands, the caravan carrying Pietro della Valle was nearing Baghdad when tragedy struck — a thief sneaked into his tent and, uninterested in his books and manuscripts, made off with his fine Italian underwear.
Worse was to come. In Baghdad Tommaso — “because of some old rivalry he had with Lorenzo ever since Italy, springing from petty questions of precedence and some vain absurdities lodged in Tommaso’s head for no cause whatsoever,” della Valle said — knifed Lorenzo. Hearing the commotion della Valle rushed to the scene, and Lorenzo fell dead into his arms as Tomasso fled.
My horror at this I leave you to consider: first the ugliness of the crime in itself: life taken so evilly, and for no reason, from that poor man; then to see, under my protection, in my house, a person who for so long had served me so well so badly treated and betrayed; and then also what could be the consequence. We were in a country subject to the Turk, a country where we had no ambassador, nor consul, nor help whatsoever: very distant from the court, where justice is neither sought nor given, but only harsh treatment — especially to Christians.
Faced with this dilemma, della Valle
called on the assistance of a renegade from Malta with whom he had become friendly. It was to this person’s house that Tomasso had fled. They decided to wrap the body “in cotton bands because of all the blood still running, and to put it in a packing-case, well bound with cords.” All night long della Valle scrubbed and cleaned away the blood that was everywhere, and in the morning he called an ordinary porter and had the package carried to the Turk’s home, which was on the river. The next night he took the body from the container “and gave it burial in the middle of the Tigris.” Della Valle had Tomasso sent away to Aleppo “with letters asking the Consul and other friends to send him at once to Christian shores, either with his assent or by force if he would not go otherwise.”
Della Valle resumed touring the countryside. Baghdad was often confused at this time with Babylon, but della Valle realized that they were different places. Continuing the biblical theme of his journeys to this point, he set off down the Euphrates to locate the ruins, one of the first European travelers to do so. At night the party slept in tents, which Della Valle enjoyed: “I find the cleanliness of it makes it accommodation infinitely preferable to that afforded by our Italian inns, where a man is surrounded by unwashed individuals, and is served by greasy and sour-faced varlets, the mere sight of whom turns the stomach.”
It was on the caravan to the ruins of Babylon that della Valle fell in love with Maani Gioerida. When an alarm went up that the caravan was about to be attacked, della Valle had been impressed with the eighteen-year-old’s demeanor. Refusing to take cover, Maani had had stood her ground like a warrior. A month later, in December 1616, they were wed, as della Valle informed Dr. Schipano some fifty pages into the next letter he wrote. “It remains for me to tell you,” he oddly wrote, “of my Babylonian love, which I name thus to differentiate it from my loves of Rome and elsewhere.”
Now allied by marriage with a West Asian Christian family, della Valle continued his mission of making contact with Shah Abbas. Before setting out on the next caravan, he had a barber shave off the “Syrian” beard he had grown in his travels, to be replaced by the drooping mustachios that were all the rage in Persia, in emulation of the shah. The local barber “with great ceremony,” he reported, “removed, all in one piece, my long and famous beard that I had preserved and combed with incredible labor throughout the length and breadth of Turkey during the sixteen months or so since I had left Constantinople.” Confronted with the startling apparition of her husband’s newly shaven face, Maani burst into tears.
Maani’s mother was Armenian. The Armenian homeland was located at the southern end of the Caucasus Mountains, east of Turkey and north of Persia, near Mount Ararat. Like Baghdad, the chief Armenian city of Yerevan changed hands several times during the wars between Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Persia. Often the eastern part of Armenia would be controlled by the Persians and the western part by the Turks. But it was an area well situated for trade, and in developing their trade networks Armenians established small communities in far-flung parts of the world. The Armenian merchant diaspora extended from China to Tibet to India to Europe.
Shah Abbas was among the leaders most interested in developing his country’s economy. He developed bazaars in his principal cities and put resources into making the caravan routes secure for travelers and improving caravanserai and the infrastructure of roads and bridges. Two English merchants who passed through Persia in 1615 remarked that under Abbas, “merchants are used with much favour, lest they should make complaints to the king, who will have the merchants kindly treated.”
Persia’s primary export was silk. To pump up the silk trade, Abbas nationalized the silk-producing northern regions, putting them under the control of Safavid treasury officials. Then he did something that profoundly affected the course of Armenian life: in 1605 Abbas forcibly resettled the entire Armenian community from its native region, called Julfa. The immediate cause of the relocation was a retreat that Abbas ordered in response to an Ottoman advance in the Armenian region. In the course of the retreat he instituted a scorched earth policy, destroying and depopulating villages as he went. The entire area was laid utterly to waste, leaving a barren landscape through which it would be difficult for a Turkish army to provision itself.
The refugee Armenian population was made to move to his new capital of Isfahan, where a new district was created for them, called, with Orwellian irony, New Julfa. There they employed their skills as merchants in trading Iranian silk. They also served as bankers and investors, and assisted in the collection of taxes.
Shah Abbas, ca. 1617, by Bishandas. Colors and ink on paper. 16 × 19 cm. Harvard University Art Museums, Gift of Stuart Cary Welch, Jr., 1999.304.
This sketch of Shah Abbas was made by an artist in the Mughal emperor Jahangir’s court. The artist, Bishandas, was chosen to accompany a Mughal embassy to Persia because of his skill at portraiture.
The sketch, made when the shah was returning from a polo match, has a lively and spontaneous quality. The personaliy of the shah, captured by the artist in this casual moment, comes through more forcefully than in more carefully worked finished paintings.
Jahangir was pleased with his artist’s work and rewarded him with an elephant upon his return.
The merchants of New Julfa were given autonomy and protection. They were allowed to retain their Christian religion. They became prosperous and thrived. They built churches, merchant centers, and schools. After Abbas died, however, the Safavid state weakened, both politically and economically; some Persians grew jealous of the Armenians’ prosperity and privileges, and they later endured a more difficult existence. For a time, however, New Julfa represented a rare instance of forced relocation through which, painful though it must have been, both the state and the people were able to find new opportunities for growth.
While exploring around Baghdad Pietro della Valle heard reports of a European who was living the life of a nomadic Bedouin in the desert. He had been told “that when he goes to Aleppo … his dress and speech are such that the Arabs themselves would hold him a true Bedouin.”
This mysterious figure was a Scot from “the Mearns” (Kincardineshire) named George Strachan, who was then about forty-three years old. Strachan was serving as physician to Amir Fayyad, a regional leader in the Euphrates area. Fayyad was nominally subject to the Ottomans but effectively independent. Strachan’s apparent influence on him was intriguing, because it suggested to della Valle that a European could affect policy in West Asia.
Strachan had been educated in France, had taught in Italy, and had then traveled along much the same itinerary as della Valle. In fact, the two were comparable in several respects: both were Catholic, both were of noble lineage (though Strachan did not have della Valle’s luxury of living off inherited wealth), both were trained in the classics (though Strachan was the better scholar), both had an interest in “Oriental” languages and culture.
It was common for Catholic Scots to be educated in France, but Strachan spent many years there, acquiring by all accounts a deep knowledge of many disciplines. He changed schools often — as many as four times in a single academic year — which probably attests to a certainly restlessness in his temperament. As the youngest of the sons in his family he did not have the ready-made opportunities of his older brothers, and he had to invent a life for himself. He toyed with the idea of becoming a Jesuit priest but in the end settled for the life of an itinerant scholar. Perhaps he was somehow unsuited to permanent employment in any one place for a length of time.
Anxious to add new languages to his arsenal that already included Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and modern European languages, he headed east. He was in Aleppo in 1615 when he learned that Amir Fayyad was in need of a physician. He had never studied medicine, but he acquired a couple of medical books and had a Flemish physician who was in Aleppo at the time teach him a few prescriptions. So armed, he presented himself to the amir as a doctor. By good judgment or good fortune, he helped his patient recover, and his reputation was made. H
e also won the support of the amir’s wife by assuring him that frequenting other women was bad for his health. According to della Valle, “everybody is extremely kind to him, and now in the desert when you say ‘Strachan’ you need not say anything more.”
Strachan later traveled to Isfahan and met della Valle there, and the two later met up again in India. Della Valle reported on Strachan’s nomadic life and his move to Persia:
By those arts and manners, he lived in the desert under tents for two years, in the company of nomadic Arabs, and told me that he found that kind of life extremely pleasant, because of the continuous but slow wanderings, which are not tiresome, because of the noble sport of hunting diverse kinds of game, at which the most noble among them spent their time; but essentially because of the generous mode of freedom in which they live there: no enclosure in city walls, no subjection to the rule of anyone, except the prince [the amir], when he happens to be present. Finally, however, because the Emir was urging him to be circumcised, he resolved not to delay his departure. Therefore, at a time when the Emir’s camp had settled in a certain place near Baghdad, he seized that opportunity to leave skillfully, with no little sorrow and affliction of her who believed herself his wife.
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