By far the most amusing work on Persia that has ever been published

That’s what Lord Curzon thought about Thomas Herbert’s A relation of some yeares travaile… into the Territories of the Persian Monarchie. 

Herbert’s account, of his journey to Persia in 1627-29 as a junior member of the Dodmore Cotton embassy, is one of my favourites too, even if most Safavid historians pay much less attention to it.

It was surely especially influential on seventeenth century European ideas about Persia: it was so popular that, after its first edition in 1634, it was reprinted and augmented five times, with additional Dutch and French translations appearing in 1653 and 1668 respectively. And although Herbert’s travels were later than some other travellers who are now much more frequently referred to – and lauded as providing uniquely accurate details – his book was published before theirs.

Pietro della Valle, for example, visited in 1617-23 but the first volume of his letters was only published in 1650. Brentjes has written of how he “needed three decades to prepare the letters he had written … Two thick volumes of manuscripts in the Vatican Library testify to the amount of work he invested in adapting his originals to the tastes and mores of the public”. Other delays reflected other publishing problems.

The memoir of Figueroa’s 1617-19 journey was only published, in a French translation, in 1667. Even Chardin and Kaempfer both had to wait three decades before their narratives were published. The date and popularity of Herbert’s publications must make them important early influences on the symbolic image of Persia.

But maybe the most fascinating thing about all Herbert’s editions is how much they changed. And these changes, too, tell us much about seventeenth century ideas about Persia. Especially the influence of what Lindsay Allen has described as the “self-sustaining and often incestuous string of publications”.

This is just a taster, though. It’s the start of a blog mini-series on Herbert as an example of how early writings give insights into the development of ideas about ‘the other’.

Next is: The Dodmore Cotton embassy: as background