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IRAN
AND THE WORLD IN THE SAFAVID AGE
Abstracts
Brentjes, Dr. Sonja,
Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Institute for the History of
Science, Frankfurt, The Presence of Ancient Secular and Sacred
Texts and Authors in the Diary of Pietro della Valle (1586-1652),
his Manuscript Letters, and their Published Version
Most of the published and
unpublished travel accounts of Catholic and Protestant visitors to
the Safavid Empire in early modern times as well as maps made in
Venice, Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, and other towns of Catholic and
Protestant Europe identify the Safavid Empire with Persia and
discuss its geography and history in terms of ancient Greek and
Latin literature and the Bible.
As a result, the Safavid Empire is shaped as a timeless,
Occidentalised Iranian hybrid of unchanging manners and
structures.
While the construction of
this hybrid imagery can easily be recognized as unrelated to
Safavid reality, the relationship between this imagery and early
modern intellectual mentality in Catholic and Protestant Europe
has been taken for granted. The
perception of Safavid Iran in terms of classical geography and
history has been seen as a natural result of the profound respect
of early modern scholars for ancient Greek and Latin authors and
of the deep permeation of early modern society in Western Europe
by Catholic or Protestant beliefs.
Under the impact of J. W.
Goethe's remarks about the refreshing directness of della Valle's
published letters, most modern writers about these letters took
them to be simple, direct reports about an easily accessible
Safavid reality. Bietenholz, on the contrary, characterized della Valle's
published letters as Kunstbriefe, meaning that della Valle
constructed his letters by choosing carefully his subjects, modes
of portrayal, and forms of legitimating and proof.
There is, however, no sign of awareness in Bietenholz'
book, that the published letters differ substantially from della
Valle's original letters and from his diary.
A
comparative study of della Valle's unpublished letters and his
first diary with the published form of his letters shows that the
portrayal of the Safavid Empire in terms of ancient classical
literature and the Bible is a construction achieved in years of
careful reading after his return to Rome. This difference between
the various components of della Valle's oeuvre lead to the
conclusion that published early modern European sources can only
be used for Safavid history after they have been conceptualised
and investigated in terms of unpublished letters, drawings, and
other material.
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