VALLE, Pietro della.
Vierde[-zeste en leste] deel der voortreffelyke reizen van de deurluchtige reisiger Pietro della Valle, Edelman van Romen, in veel voorname gewesten des werrelts, sedert het jaar 1615, gedaan: namelijk in Turkijen, Egipten, Palestina, Persien, Oostindien, en in verscheide andere lantschappen, daar in hij al t aanmerkingswaerdige, dat er is, naerstiglijk opgespeurt, en naaukeurig aangemerkt, en veel treffelijke dingen, tot noch toe onbekent, ten toon gestelt heeft.
Amsterdam, widow of Jan Hendriksz. Boom, Jan Rieuwertsz and Abraham Wolfgang, 1665. 3 (of 6) volumes bound as 1. 4to. With 3 title-pages, 13 full-page engraved plates (1 crudely hand-coloured).
Contemporary vellum, manuscript spine title, later endpapers. 187, [1 blank]; [4], 186, [2 blank]; [4], 185, [11] pp.
€ 2,500
Volumes 4, 5 and 6 of the first Dutch edition (the first illustrated edition in any language) of Pietro della Valle's account of his travels in Turkey, Egypt, the Holy Land, Syria, Iraq, Persia (Iran) and India. Della Valle, an Italian nobleman, sailed from Venice in 1614 to Istanbul, where he arrived in August 1614, visiting Strofades and Chios en route. He spent a year exploring Istanbul then continued to Rhodes, Alexandria, Rosetta, Cairo, crossing the Sinai desert to Jerusalem, Damascus and Aleppo. Rather than return to Istanbul, Della Valle decided at this point to travel to Persia to meet the Safavid ruler Shah Abbas I. He travelled with the next caravan to Baghdad, where he married Ma'ani-Jowayri, daughter of a Nestorian Catholic father and an Armenian mother, and together they continued through snow-covered Kurdistan to Isfahan (Persia), which they reached in March 1617. Della Valle sojourned in Persia until early 1623, witnessing and commenting on the escalating conflict between Shah Abbas and the Portuguese empire. In 1621 he had decided to return to Europe and set off for the Persian Gulf, but the Persian and English blockade prevented his sailing. While waiting his pregnant wife suffered a miscarriage and died shortly afterwards. Della Valle had her body embalmed, determined to bury her in his family sepulchre in Rome. By way of India he finally sailed for Muscat in January 1623 and returned to Europe, where he arrived after a slow and difficult journey in 1626.
The book was rendered in Dutch by the celebrated translator Jan Hendrik Glazemaker. The plates include a hunting scene, a view of Persepolis, illustrations of mummies, an execution, and a sati ceremony in India (the burning of a recently widowed woman). The present first Dutch edition was a joint publication of Abraham Wolfgang, the widow Jan Hendrickz Boom and Jan Rieuwertsz.
Title-page with erased stamp, binding slightly soiled, otherwise in very good condition. Atabey 1270; Cat. NHSM I, p. 256; Howgego, to 1800, D30; Smitskamp, Philologia orientalis II, 232; Tobler, p. 95; cf. Gurney, "Della Valle, Pietro", in: Encyclopaedia Iranica (online ed.).
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