The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies [Through the Black-Sea, And the Country of Colchis].

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

The First Volume [all published], Containing the Author's Voyage from Paris to Ispahan. To which is added, The Coronation of the Present King of Persia, Solyman the Third. London: Printed for Moses Pitt, 1686. Foolscap folio, bound in original full old calf (skilfully re-backed, with raised bands and morocco title-label). (ii, xiv, 418, vi, 4, 154, 6pp.). Complete with engraved portrait, additional engraved illustrated title-page, title-page vignette, 3 engraved illustrated chapter-heads, an illustrated tail-piece, 1 folding engraved map, and 21 engraved plates (of which 15 are folding). One corner of the final index leaf is torn, though without loss of text; this is otherwise an excellent complete copy of the FIRST ENGLISH EDITION (published simultaneously in French). As early as 1665 John Chardin, son of a French merchant jeweller, accompanied one of his father's business associates, Antoine Raisin of Lyon, on a voyage to Persia. Chardin was aged just twenty-one. Raisin and Chardin successfully conducted business with Shah Abbas II, securing a profitable commission for jewels, before proceeding further east to India in search of diamonds, and thereby establishing links with the East Indies trade. Returning to Persia on the way home to Europe, Chardin witnessed the coronation of Suleiman III in 1669 (an account of which is to be found at the rear of the present work). Compelled by an "earnest desireƒ?? to improve my knowledge in that vast Empire, to be enabled to produce to the World useful and Ample Relations of it" (Preface), as well as to advance his fortunes, Chardin embarked on a second voyage from Paris to Persia in 1671, this time remaining until 1677. As Chardin explains in the Preface, the present volume (the first of four volumes) encompasses this journey from Paris to Esfahan and concludes in the year 1673. As he writes, whilst there "I made some particular Journeys, as well of Curiosity as Business, to prosecute my intentions, studying the Language, and assiduously frequenting the most eminent and most knowing Men of the Nation, the better to inform my self in all things that were Curious and New to us in Europe, concerning a Country that may well be called, Another World" On his return to France, Chardin was approached by the English envoy Henry Saville, who encouraged the merchant traveller to immigrate to England, which he duly did in the spring of 1681. The entrepreneurial Parisian was appointed to the East India Company two years after his arrival. Chardin subsequently worked on the publication of his memoirs, in which he was ably assisted by John Evelyn. "By the time of his death in 1712 Chardin's chronicles of life and society in Persia had become one of the fundamental texts for this burgeoning field of study, and his meticulous accounts of the Country earned him the praise of Gibbon, Montesquieu, and Voltaire." (Oxford DNB, online edn, 2008).