Persian embassy to Europe (1609–15)

The Persian embassy to Europe (1609–1615) was dispatched by the Persian Shah Abbas I in 1609 to obtain an alliance with Europe against the Ottoman Empire. The embassy was led by the Englishman Robert Shirley.

The Safavid Persians had then been at war with their arch rivals, the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, for more than a century, and so decided to try to obtain European help against the Ottomans. Besides the territorial antagonism of the Ottoman and Persian realms, there was also strong religious antagonism, as the Persians proclaimed Shiism against the Ottoman Empire's Sunnism. These Persian efforts at rapprochement with Catholic Europe (the Habsburg Empire, Italy and Spain), attempted to counterbalance the Franco-Ottoman alliance (between France and the Ottoman Empire), and came at a time when Persia was in direct conflict against the Ottoman Empire in the Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–1618). This embassy followed the 1599-1602 Persian embassy to Europe.

The embassy went to Cracow, Prague, Florence, Rome, Madrid, London, and returned to Persia through the Great Mogul's India. Shirley was extremely well received in these countries, which were in regular conflict with the Ottoman Empire. The reception in Cracow was excellent and in Prague, where Shirley was knighted. He was also made a Count Palatine of the Holy Roman Empire by Rudolf II in 1609. He then continued to Florence, Milan and Rome, where he was received by Pope Paul V. He then continued to Spain.

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