Review

Reviewed Work(s): Under Two Lions. On the Knowledge of Persia in the Republic of
Venice (ca. 1450-1797) by Giorgio Rota: Viaggio e Giornale per Parte dell'Asia (1671-1675)
[Journey and Journal of a Part of Asia] by Ambrogio Bembo: The Travels and Journal
of Ambrosio Bembo by Clara Bargellini and Anthony Welch
Review by: Rudi Matthee
Source: Iranian Studies , NOVEMBER 2011, Vol. 44, No. 6 (NOVEMBER 2011), pp. 920-924
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of International Society of Iranian
Studies

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920 Reviews

in Iran by extending the tradition to the field of Anthropology. Ultimately,

Zeydabadi-Nejad's contribution lies in the data and research that supports his ethno-
graphy of filmmaking in Iran, rather than in rethinking or revitalizing a critical dis-
course on the social aspects of Iranian cinema, an approach well represented in the
cinema studies of Iran.

Somy Kim
University of Texas, Austin
© 2011, Somy Kim
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2011.586816

Under Two Lions. On the Knowledge of Persia in the Republic of Venice (ca.
1450-1797), Giorgio Rota. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichische Akademie der Wis-
senschaft, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7001-6658-0, 80pp, bibliography, index.

Viaggio e Giornale per Parte dell'Asia (1671-1675) [Journey and Journal of a

Part of Asia], Ambrogio Bembo. Turin: CEMEO, 2005, ISBN 88-87828-10-5,
xvii + 454pp., illustrations, maps, index.

The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo, Ambrosio Bembo, translated from
the Italian by Clara Bargellini, edited and annotated with an Introduction by
Anthony Welch. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-
24939-4, xii + 451pp., illustrations, maps, index.

Throughout the medieval period, and as late as the seventeenth century, Venice main-
tained a lively trade with the eastern Mediterranean, the Ottoman Empire and the
lands beyond, including Iran. Its role as a terminus for merchants from the Middle
East is nicely illustrated in the name of one of its merchant hostels, the Fondaco dei
Turchi . The Serenissima also served as Europe's window on the Orient. An indepen-
dent merchant republic, Venice maintained diplomatic relations with the Ottoman
Empire and, less frequently, exchanged envoys with Iran. Its resident informants in
Istanbul, the baili, provided the Senate with news about matters of eastern politics
and trade.
In the last decade, the interaction between Venice and the Islamic Middle East has
received considerable attention. Yet the bulk of this attention has been devoted to
relations between the Serenissima and Ottoman lands - witness the contents of the
beautiful catalog, Venice and the Islamic World 828-1797, published in 2002. Con-
tacts between Venice and Iran in early modern times were less intensive and
urgent, to be sure; and the fact that Giovanni Bellini did not visit Isfahan and that
we thus have little visual imagery to illustrate the interaction does not help either.
Nonetheless, these contacts were old, going back to Marco Polo and the Mongols.
And they are important inasmuch as Italian travelers provide valuable and at times
unique information about Iran under the Aq-quyunlu dynasty and in the early

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 Reviews 921

Safavid period. The Venetians thus were the first to offer information about Shah
Isma'il I (r. 1501-24), the adolescent founder of the Safavid state, describing him,
with more than a hint of keen expectation, as a charismatic prophet who had risen
from the East and was ready to deliver Christianity from the Turks - an image
with enormous staying power.
Rotas study on relations between Venice and Iran is therefore to be welcomed as a
contribution to a better understanding of the role Italians played in informing Eur-
opeans about Safavid Iran. Based on a large number of first-hand and secondary
sources - some 250 in all - this little book offers a wealth of densely packed infor-
mation on commercial, diplomatic and cultural contacts from the late Middle Ages
to the early eighteenth century, the time when Venetian interest in Iran waned.
(The book's closing date, 1797, marks the end of the Venetian Republic as an inde-
pendent entity, but contacts had withered long before and are effectively only exam-
ined here until the early 1700s.)
Rota modestly presents his book as a "synthesis and a starting point," adding that it
mostly provides "raw information/' Much of this concerns commercial and diplomatic
relations, especially under Shah ťAbbas I (r. 1587-1629). These went both ways, with
Venetians visiting Iran and Shah 'Abbas dispatching Armenian merchants doubling
up as envoys. The author also offers intriguing new details about the reaction to
the rise of the Safavids to power, amplifying on the sensation Shah Isma'il's emergence
from the misty forests of Gilan created in Christian lands. Such was the frenzy that it
sparked a mythical hope among the Venetian lower classes that the "revolutionary"
Sophi might even come to Italy to liberate them from oppression and poverty,
which in turn made some local aristocrats worry that he might indeed show up on
their shores.
Another aspect of the relationship is that, like other Europeans, the Venetians were
sympathetically inclined toward Iran and its inhabitants. The trope that suffuses
Venetian writing on the East is that of the sophisticated, refined Iranians, heirs to
an ancient civilization, in contradistinction to the barbaric and belligerent Turks,
who were thought to be the descendants of uncultured tribesmen. Similarly, like
their Portuguese counterparts, early Venetian observers of Iran do not yet evince
the self-evident sense of superiority that would mark later European narratives.
Appreciation of Iran and Iranians extended to the Persian language. The Venetians
saw Persian as "more elegant" than Turkish, even if they did not deem the language
as useful as Ottoman Turkish, or Arabic and Greek, for that matter. In keeping
with other European nations until the late eighteenth century, they anyhow never sys-
tematized the learning of Middle Eastern languages.
This last point partly answers the main analytical question posed in this book,
which revolves around the question of why it is that Venice, a main conduit of knowl-
edge about Iran, did not process the information to the point of becoming a center of
a scholarly discourse about the country. In reality, of course, no European nation took
on that task until the nineteenth century, in part because Iran was relatively remote,
and in part because it was neither the birthplace of Islam nor a direct military threat to
Christendom. Still, in France and, to a lesser extent, in the German-speaking world,

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922 Reviews

Iran did generate a debate - which after the sudden fall of Isfahan in 1722 came to
focus on the foundations, meaning and fragility of civilization. The answer is that
information gathered by the Venetians served practical ends involving trade and poli-
tics. Iran, Rota submits, was mostly interesting to Venetians as a trading partner and as
a potential ally in the anti-Ottoman struggle. This, inter alia , is also the reason why
most of the writings originating in Venice consist of reports to the Doge and the
Senate and were never meant for public consumption. By the same token, Venetian
interest in Iran waned from the moment the Iranians signed the Accord of Zuhab
with the Ottomans in 1639. Ending more than a century of hostilities, this accord
closed the door to any prospect that the Safavids might assist the Europeans in
their anti-Ottoman struggle.
As Rota observes, we have very few travelogues written by Venetian travelers to the
Middle East. A rare one - only mentioned in passing in Under Two Lions - is from the
hand of Ambrosio Bembo, who visited Iran in 1674 as part of a larger journey that also
took him to the Levant and all the way to India. Bembo stands out, not because he is
the only Venetian known to have traveled in Iran in the seventeenth century, but
rather because he is the only one who left a significant written record that was not
meant for the eyes of the Venetian Senate. Bembo's account has long languished in
manuscript form in the Library of the University of Minnesota, which holds the
only extant hand-written copy. It has now emerged, in the original Italian and in a
fluent English translation. We should be thankful to both the author and the
editors and translators, as Bembo's travelogue is not just a pleasure to read but also
a source of interesting information on the regions he visited. About one-fourth of
his observations concern the time he spent in Iran.
Bembo's travelogue represents a minor contribution to the corpus of early modern
travel literature. He offers little that is really new and, as a good Venetian, nothing on
the natural world. His account is also short on political, economic and social data.
Since Bembo was only twenty-two when he set out on his peregrinations, it is not sur-
prising that he ranks as second-best among the seventeenth-century travelers. Yet his
tender age carries advantages as well. Presented in direct, unadorned language, the
information he offers is unmediated by the classics, the Strabos and the Plinys, who
are so often invoked by contemporary travelers keen to show off their erudition
and to present the lands they visited as latter-day versions of antiquity. Bembo is simi-
larly sparing in his references to his immediate predecessors. An exception is the
famous Italian traveler Pietro della Valle, whose Viaggi had been published in 1656.
Bembo borrowed quite a bit from Della Valle, even if he quotes him but rarely.
Like almost all European travelers visiting Iran in the second half of the seventeenth
century, it is likely that Bembo got at least some of his information from long-term
resident Raphael du Mans, the French Capuchin who gathered a deep knowledge
of Safavid society during his nearly fifty years of residence in Isfahan. An example is
his estimate of the presence of 12,000 courtesans in the capital, which seems to
have originated with Du Mans (and which shows up in Jean Chardin's writings as
well).

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 Reviews 923

The result is the account of an intrepid young man with a keen eye to the world and
its different ways, eager to learn and remarkably reluctant to judge. Bembo is modest;
he does not make claims. He prefaces his observations on weddings by saying that he
had not been able to see one. He offers no theories about Muslim backwardness or
Oriental opulence and laziness. He does not treat Iran or India as a stage or a
theater, as some of his contemporaries did. His travelogue is filled with charming
details. Examples are his observation about Iranian Muslims purchasing images of
Christian saints; or his description of buying in India, where you pay before you
try something on, and cannot return it; as opposed to Iran, where everything can
be returned by the buyer, even days after the purchase.
Nor is there much religious prejudice in Bembo's account; in fact, true to the secular
republic he hailed from and similar to his compatriot Michele Membré, who had
visited the court of Shah Tahmasb in 1539, he hardly makes any references to religion,
in spite of the abundant information he offers on missionaries and their residences,
where he stayed for much of the time that he spent in cities. While in India, he delivers
even the most outlandish rituals of the Sadhus, Brahmin priests, with a great deal of
anthropological dispassion. Only occasionally does Bembo tip his hand. He shows his
prejudice when he talks about the Jews of Iran. Most other examples are innocuous: he
calls the food he is served tasty because it is "close to our food" (p. 216). And he
reserves his most disparaging remarks for Europeans, in casu the Portuguese, who
all "profess nobility" as soon as they pass the Cape of Good Hope even "if laborers"
(p. 233), and think it beneath them to do hard work (p. 272), and whose women
live in constant laziness since they have nothing to do, not even for entertainment
(p. 235).
The Italian edition is beautifully executed, printed on glossy paper, with immacu-
lately reproduced plates - the drawings made by Guillaume-Joseph Grelot, a French
artist of minor talent who, stranded in Isfahan, left his former employer, the stingy
Jean Chardin, to work for Bembo. One of these, a drawing of the building that
housed the mint of Isfahan, located along the maydan-e naqsh-e jahan , is unique in
being the only extant image of a building that no longer exists. The English edition
is not just distinctly less eye-catching but also fails to live up to the scholarly standards
of its Italian counterpart. The translation is preceded by a fine introduction in which
the reader learns about Bembo's life before and after his travels and which also pro-
vides interesting details about his relationship with Grelot (misspelled Grélot here).
The actual translation is smooth but the explanatory footnotes leave much to be
desired. Whereas Invernizzi uses an array of contemporary travelers (although very
little secondary literature) to elucidate terms, geographical names, most notably
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Jean de Thevenot and Jean Chardin, the notes in the
English translations are summary and mostly unsupported by evidence. They are
also marked by sloppiness. An example of this is the word causin (p. 293), obviously
an erroneous rendering of khamsin , a dry hot wind mostly associated with Egypt,
which is left uncorrected and unexplained. Whereas Invernizzi, basing himself on
source material, plausibly surmises that the town or caravanserai called "Deadumbac"
must stand for Deh Donbeh, Welch states that he was not able to identify the place.

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924 Reviews

Mistakes are found in the names of the French Jesuit resident of the convent in
Isfahan Jean-Baptiste de la Maze, spelled "Lamasia" (p. 358; Invernizzi, p. 351, does
not do much better here, except that he more accurately spells the name as "Lamas-
sin"), and "Mercé," for Claude-Ignace Mercier, another Frenchman who headed the
Jesuit convent in Isfahan from 1664 until his death in 1674. Also on page 384 we
find a reference to Shaykh ťAli Khan Zanganah, who is known to have served Shah
Sulayman (r. 1666-94) as grand vizier between 1669 and his death in 1689. The
date given in connection with him, 1698, is thus erroneous, and the appellation,
"one of the major officials at the court of Shah Sulayman," unnecessarily generic.

Rudi Matthee
University of Maryland
© 2011, Rudi Matthee
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2011.586817

Géopolitique de l'Iran, Bernard Hourcade. Paris: Armand Colin, 2010, ISBN 978-2-
2002-5722-4; 256pp.

Hourcade's Géopolitique de l'Iran provides an introduction to the history of Iran's

foreign affairs, portraying geopolitical determinants for Tehran's strategy as well as
chosen diplomatic tools and tactics to implement those assets. The book is divided
into eight chapters and a conclusion: "The Closed-In Nation?," "Islam, Shis'm and
the Revolution," "Global Iran," "Iran's Strategic Means," "Iran's Foreign Policy,"
"Iran and its Neighbors," "Iran and the Islamic World" and "Iran and the World
in the 21st Century." It remains unclear why structuring this book in that way
seemed compelling to the author, as there is extensive empirical overlap among the
chapters. Overall, Géopolitique de l'Iran is a textbook for undergraduates and would
constitute a great asset to courses on Comparative Politics, Middle East Politics or
Foreign Policy Analysis. Hourcade clearly succeeds in outlining Iranian strategy and
the internal dynamics informing both domestic and foreign policy. It is very up-to-
date as it analyzes the post-2009 election environment and recent developments con-
cerning negotiations on the nuclear program.
The first chapter introduces the reader to Iran's geography and ethnographic and
linguistic composition. Hourcade clarifies (a first in a textbook) that in French,
Persian ought to be called persan rather than farsi (p. 24) This is rather commendable
when faced with the ubiquity of the falsely used word farsi in European and US media
and governmental outlets.
Chapter 2 recounts the Islamic Revolution and puts it into historical as well as reli-
gious context, putting particular emphasis on the traditional role of the Shia clergy in
public life. It also introduces the Islamic Republic's political system (pp. 55-65), high-
lighting the ongoing effects of the Iran-Iraq war on foreign policy and the role of the
Basij as the hardliners' base and unremitting force in Iranian politics (p. 63). Of Iran's
religious minorities. Hourcade discusses Sunnis, Jews and Zoroastrians, but ignores

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