Our ambassadors leave the city of Schamachie on March 30, 1638, keeping an eye out for highway robbers, and a week later arrive in Derbent.

The coastline of Derbent is pure rock, and serves as the foundation of the city wall, which is so broad that a wagon easily be driven on top of it. The city is sometimes called the Gate of Persia, since it lies on the extreme northwestern edge of the empire, and its walls extends from the sea to the top of a nearby mountain.

This long defensive wall is known as Dagh Bary, which literally means “Mountain Wall” from the Turkish word for mountain and the Persian word for wall. According to the Encyclopedia Iranica, it stretched “many kilometers” into the mountains and had numerous fortresses and towers of its own.

It is also called Alexander’s Wall because legend has it that Alexander the Great built the wall to defend against the tribes of Gog and Magog to the north.

An order comes down from the ambassadors that no one should tempt any citizen of Derbent to quarrel with them, lest the locals fall upon the whole company and murder them.

Before leaving, the ambassadors take stock of their weapons, counting 52 muskets and firelocks, 19 cases of pistols, two brass cannons, and four murdering-pieces (the stone-firing cannons), all fit for service.

“Having travell’d two leagues, we were got to the Caspian Sea-side, whence we saw the Countrey, which is all cover’d with Trees and Forests towards the North and South, spreading itself like a Crescent a great way into the Sea, on the right hand, from about Mesanderan and Ferahath, and on the left, from about Astara. We travell’d about a league along the Caspian Sea-side, and lodg’d at night upon the Torrent Nasseru, in a house call’d Ruasseru-kura, which had but two Chambers in all, so that being streightned for room, most of our people were forc’d to lie abroad, at the sign of the Seven-Stars.”

The date is February 1, 1638, and our ambassadors are roughing it on the coastal road of the Caspian Sea. That is, Secretary Olearius and the other gentlemen are sleeping in a two-room roadhouse while everyone else sleeps under the stars.

Our ambassadors are in the northern Persian city of Caswin, about 50 miles from the Caspian Sea, and near their lodgings is a tree full of nails and ribbons. A saint who once performed miracles is buried under the tree, and a holy man at the site collects alms and offerings from people who come for healing from toothaches, fevers, and other diseases.

The healing is not free, of course, and the alms collected by the holy man encourage impostors to set up shop at other trees where no saints are buried.

The Germans leave Caswin on January 20, 1638. Fifteen miles to the west, they spend the night in the small town of Achibaba, which, we are told, was named after an old man who lived there in the time of Sheikh Sefi, the mystic Sufi master whose name was taken by the Safavid dynasty.

Allah performed a miracle for the old man and his wife – who were then near 100 years old – by reviving what Olearius calls “the heat of younger years” and giving them a son.

The modern name of the town is Aghababa, but some sources refer to it as Aqbaba. Aside from census data and weather reports, there is very little information about the town, but one nugget makes up for all that is missing. To find it, we have to travel forward in time to the year 1921. For in 1921, the little town of Aqbaba served as the launchpad for a mostly-bloodless coup by Col. Reza Shah Pahlavi and the Persian Cossack Brigade that ended the reign of the Qajar dynasty, which had ruled the country since 1785.

Achibaba, Olearius tells us, is at “the foot of the mountain” – the mountain being part of the Alborz range between Caswin and the Caspian Sea – and the road passes through fruitful country where the people of Caswin graze their cows on plentiful, excellent good grass.

On January 23, the road leads through a forest of olive trees to a narrow passage, anciently called the Fauces Hyrcaniae, that leads to Kilan province and thence to the Caspian.

On the last day of January, the khan of Kurab greets the Germans with 100 horsemen, accompanies them to their lodgings, and sends them a gift of four wild boars.