Juan de Persia [Uruch (or Ulugh) Beg Bayat]

first edition, 4to (188 x 126mm.), woodcut arms on title, nineteenth-century mottled calf, small portion of upper corner of title restored in pen facsimile, a few quires lightly browned, Y2 torn just affecting catchword, a few other minor tears or repairs, binding a trifle rubbed

Victoria Avila Perez, bookplate; Edward Faridany, book label

Ghani p.379; Palau 223840; not in Diba cf.p.190 (1946 Madrid edition); not traced in Wilson

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rare. When Sir Anthony Sherley returned to Europe after his mission in 1598 to Persia, he was accompanied as joint ambassador, by a Persian named Husain 'Ali Beg Bayat, who had two secretaries, one his nephew 'Ali Quli Beg and the other Uruch Beg Bayat (1560-1604). In Rome in April 1601 (by way of Prague and Russia), several members of Husain's suite became Christians (including his cook). Proceeding to Valladolid, where Philip III received him, Husain was even more chagrined when his nephew and Uruch Beg Bayat also converted: he even went so far as to try and have Uruch Beg, now Juan de Persia, murdered. (Don Juan was in fact murdered in Valladolid in 1604, having become involved in a street fight).

In this book he gives first an account of the history of the caliphate, and of Persia, and finally (Book III) of his mission. The history of the Safavid period (Book II) is quite detailed and corrects some of the statements made in Giovanni Minadoi's Historia della guerra fra Turchi et Persiani (1588).