A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia

In 1604, Pope Clement VIII despatched a delegation of Discalced Carmelites to Persia to exhort Shah Abbas I to join an alliance with him. Thus began almost two hundred years of Carmelite activity in the region. During their time there, the Order not only bore witness to the great Safavid dynasty and its demise: they also amassed a huge written record. Herbert Chick's two impressive volumes present an important collection of these writings. The records provide an unparalleled source of detailed information on the politics, diplomatic rituals, foreign policy concerns, and matters of court ceremony of the time, including correspondence between the Popes and the Shahs. Now extremely rare, the work remains an invaluable resource for scholars. This new edition contains an introduction by Rudi Matthee, an acknowledged authority on Safavid Persia.

H. Chick spent more than twenty years in Persia, where he was British Consul in Shiraz. His A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia is the achievement of a lifetime, involving the compilation, collation, and translation of thousands of pages of handwriting as well as additional materials gathered in the Vatican Library and other centers.

Rudi Matthee is Unidel Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Delaware and is an acknowledged authority on Safavid Persia. He is President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies and author of Persia in Crisis (I.B.Tauris, forthcoming).