VALLE, Pietro della (1586-1652), to whom we owe one of the best books of Eastern travel, came of a noble Roman family which had produced two cardinals, and was born, on 11th April 1586, in the family palace built by Cardinal Andrea. His early life was divided between the pursuits of literature and arms. He saw active service against the Moors of Barbary, but also became a member of the Roman Academy of the Umoristi, and acquired some reputation as a versifier and rhetorician. To the latter quality we owe some tedious passages in his Travels; but that book gives also sufficient evidence of solid and useful learning in the classical authors, which served him well, particularly in the first part of his wanderings. The idea of travelling in the East was suggested by a disappointment in love, as an alternative to suicide, and was ripened to a fixed purpose by a visit to the learned Mario Schipano, professor of medicine in Naples, to whom the record of Pietro’s travels was addressed in the form of very elaborate letters, based on a full diary. Before leaving Naples he took a vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, sailing from Venice on 8th June 1614, reached Constantinople, where he remained for more than a year, and acquired a good knowledge of Turkish and a little Arabic. On 25th September 1615 he sailed for Alexandria with a suite of nine persons, for he travelled always as a nobleman of distinction, and with every advantage due to his rank. From Alexandria he went on to Cairo, and, after an excursion to Mount Sinai, left Cairo for the Holy Land on 8th March 1616, in time to assist at the Easter celebrations at Jerusalem. Having sedulously visited the holy sites, he journeyed by Damascus to Aleppo, and thence to Baghdad, where he married a Syrian Christian named Maani, ...a native of Mardin. He now desired to visit Persia; but, as that country was then at war with Turkey, he had to leave Baghdad by stealth (4th January 1617). Accompanied by his wife, who was the courageous and constant companion of his Persian journeys until her death in consequence of a miscarriage (30th December 1621), he proceeded by Hamadan to Ispahan, and joined Shah Abbas in a campaign in northern Persia, in the summer of 1618.
Here he was well received at court and treated as the shah’s guest. On his return to Ispahan he was occupied with political schemes hostile to the Turk, the alliance of Persia with the Cossacks and the king of Poland, and also with a project for the foundation of a Catholic colony in Persia; at the same time he diligently continued his Oriental studies and observations. He now began to think of returning by India rather than adventure himself again in Turkey; but the state of his health, and the war between Persia and the Portuguese at Ormuz, created difficulties. In October 1621 he started from Ispahan, and, visiting Persepolis and Shiraz, made his way to the coast; but, after long delay and many troubles—his wife dying at Mina—he was forced to return to Shiraz, after the capture of Ormuz, and it was not till January 1623 that he found passage for Surat on the English ship “Whale.” In India he remained till November 1624, his headquarters being Surat and Goa. He was at Muscat in January 1625, and at Bussorah in March. In May he started by the desert route for Aleppo, and, after a short stay there and a visit to Antioch, took ship at Alexandretta on a French vessel. Touching at Cyprus and doing quarantine at Malta, he reached Rome on 28th March 1626, and he was received with much honour, not only by literary circles, but by Pope Urban VIII., who appointed him a gentleman of his bedchamber. The rest of his life was uneventful; he married as second wife a Georgian orphan of noble family, Mariuccia (Tinatin de Ziba), whom his first wife had adopted as a child, and who had accompanied him in all his journeys. By her he had fourteen sons. He died at Rome on 21st April 1652.
In Pietro della Valle’s lifetime there were printed (1) a Funeral Oration on his Wife Maani, whose remains he brought with him to Rome and buried there (1627); (2) an Account of Shah Abbas, printed at Venice in 1628, but not published; (3) the first part of the letters describing his Travels (Turkey, 1650). The Travels in Persia (2 parts) were published by his sons in 1658, and the third part (India) in 1663. An English translation appeared in 1665 (fol.). Of the Italian text the edition of Brighton, 1843 (2 vols. 8vo), is more esteemed than the other reprints. It contains a sketch of the author’s life by Gio. P. Bellori (1622). Della Valle’s story is often prolix, with a tendency to the rhetorical. He has no turn for incident, an absolute want of humour, and little real literary faculty of any kind; but he is clear and exact, well informed, and very instructive, so that his work still possesses high value.
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