Pietro della Valle

Pietro della Valle, (April 11, 1586, Rome—April 21, 1652, Rome) was an Italian traveler to Persia and India. Valle took a vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and on June 8, 1614, he sailed from Venice for Istanbul, where he stayed a year, learning Turkish and Ara-bic. On Sept. 25, 1615, he left for Jerusalem by way of Alexandria, Cairo, and Mount Sinai. After visiting the holy sites, he travelled to Damascus and Baghdad, where he married a Syri-an Christian woman, and to Eṣfahān, Persia (now in Iran), which he reached early in 1617. He attended the court of Shāh ʿAbbās I and then resumed his journey with his wife who dead at Persepolis, Persia (1621). After arriving at Surat in northwestern India in 1623, he continued southward along the coast to Calicut (Kozhikode) for about a year. By way of Bas-ra, in southern Mesopotamia, and the desert route to Aleppo, Syria, Valle eventually reached Rome on March 28, 1626.
In Rome he was appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber by Pope Urban VIII. He recorded his travels in a series of letters published in three volumes: Turkey (1650), Persia (1658), and India (1663).