A reading of the views of European travel writers of the Safavid era on the history of ancient Iran

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, History Department, Faculty of Letters and Human Science, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Ph.D Student of Iranian history after Islam, Shiraz University

10.22103/jic.2025.25650.1459

Abstract

The Safavid period is very important because of the first official contact between Iran and Europe.Travelers, world travelers, religious missionaries and political envoys in the Safavid period entered Iran with different motives due to favorable political, commercial and cultural conditions,but the common point of all of them was the issue of understanding Iran from different angles.The purpose of the present study is to examine the views of European travel writers of the Safavid era about the history of ancient Iran. The achievements of this study show that travel writers were influenced by their views because they cited Greek and Roman classical sources about the history of ancient Iran and repeated the same mistakes. They also obtained some of their information from hearsay and in conversations with people. Most of their views about ancient Iran from the mythological era to the end of the Sasanian period are weak and incomplete, but the important point is that they all acknowledged the power and glory of ancient Iran as one of the world empires and imagined Persepolis as a symbol of the history of ancient Iran. Some travel writers have attempted to consider the Safavid period as a continuation of the rule of ancient Iran by comparing and citing similar examples of governance between the kings of ancient Iran and the Safavids, as well as slight similarities in coverage and chronology. The research method is descriptive-analytical with an emphasis citing the writings of travel writers, and the method of collecting information is library-based.

Keywords

References

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