“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.

The date is December 21, 1637, and we have made our way to Book 7 of the travel journal of Adam Olearius, the last of the series. Our trade ambassadors have survived the dangerous journey from Germany to the capital city of Persia, but, as we will see, Ambassador Otto Bruggeman’s actions have made the return trip even more dangerous.

On New Year’s Day they fire their cannons three times in celebration, listen to a sermon, make what Olearius calls “the ordinary prayers,” and then travel another five leagues to the village of Sensen.

As they leave Kom early on the morning of January 5, Olearius reports a near-total solar eclipse. The sun was “not quite three degrees above the horizon when the moon deprived us almost of all sight of it,” he writes, “and so overshadowed it, that, to my judgement, in the greatest obscurity, the eclipse was three parts of four.”

Sometime on January 6, Adam Olearius’ horse falls down dead in the harsh winter weather of the Persian plateau, and they slog through six inches of snow for the next 150 miles until they pass through the coastal mountains on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea.

Ambassador Bruggeman’s horse falls down under him, too, and not only is his right arm put out of joint, but he hits his head on the ground and his brains are so disordered that they fear he might never recover. They reach Saba that night, some 180 miles from Isfahan, and stay there all the next day in the hope that Bruggeman will recover his senses.

They reach the city of Caswin on January 11, and stay more than a week waiting for fresh horses and mules.

Welcome to The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors, the epic story of a 17th century trade expedition from Germany to Persia that failed so completely its leader was publicly executed upon his return. This is Episode 25: Dogs, Pigs, Camels and Silk.

Last time we heard about the suburbs and agriculture of Isfahan, and now we will learn why, according to Persian lore, certain animals hate each other.

The best silk is white, but yellow silk could also be quite good as long as it is clean and of good quality. Production estimates vary widely. At the turn of the 17th century, Robert Sherley said Persia’s total yield of silk was 34,000 bales. In 1635 the Dutch East India Company said a “normal” year’s production was 4,000 bales. Olearius claimed an annual harvest of 20,000 bales, but it is not clear where he obtained that figure.

Silk production in Persia was a local affair but a national business, and much of the trade was conducted door to door, bale by bale. Although transportation costs could have been minimized by going overland, Holstein was starting from scratch and paying significant tariffs to both Russia and Persia.

Some caravans traveled west to Aleppo, in modern day Syria, or northwest through Anatolia to Istanbul. Others west south, crossing mountains and deserts on the way to the Persian Gulf. The journeys typically took two to four months.

If the Holstein mission had succeeded, their caravans would have traveled north to the Caspian, up the Volga, and thence to the Baltic. The Caspian shipping season extended from April to October, and Russian winters dictated that the last ship had to leave Persia by late August. The cargo vessels typically used by the Russians each had a capacity of 250 bales and followed the coastline to Astrakhan, where the silk was reloaded onto smaller riverboats and sent upstream to Saratov. From Saratov, which our ambassadors saw in episode 6, merchandise was loaded onto wagons for the trip to Moscow.

The entire return trip on this new Silk Road envisioned by Duke Frederick would have taken about six months. But it never did happen, and as we reach the end of Book 6 and the end of 1637, our ambassadors are preparing for a discouraging trek back to Holstein.

We continue our exploration of Isfahan, which is the most commodious of any Persian city, Olearius writes, and is just as good in winter or summer because the mountains are nearby and there is always some wind stirring, which cools the air in all the homes of the city.

Surrounding Isfahan there are nearly 1500 villages, many of them engaged in manufacturing textiles. Every province in the country produces cotton, and the fields around Isfahan are intentionally flooded when the river rises with melting snow. If not for this, Olearius writes, the region would not be habitable because of the “excessive heats which reign there.”

In winter, although it does freeze, the ice is not even as thick as a man’s finger, and it thaws as soon as the sun appears over the horizon.

The city also has many large suburbs, and the fairest of all is New Julfa, which we have seen in several previous episodes and is occupied primarily by the Armenian Christians. No Christians live within the walls of the city, but Olearius says this is because they like it that way, preferring to “settle themselves in a place, where they might live quietly and enjoy the freedom of their conscience.”

In Kasan, the air is unwholesome and the pox is common even though that city is geographically “excellently well seated.” They also have tarantulas and the most dangerous scorpions in all of Persia.

The ordinary money of Persia is of silver and copper. Gold is rare, and available only in foreign coins. Olearius describes the different minting marks, and tells us that every Persian city has its own money that is changed every year, and that such money can be spent only in the place it was minted.

Centralized government control of economies is a history of failure, and inflation ravaged the entire region of Turkey, Persia, and India beginning in the late 1500s. Arriving from Europe, it was exacerbated by the Ottoman-Safavid wars and other factors.

By 1677, French traveler Jean Chardin said, “The money itself has been altered. One no longer encounters good coins.” He also called the Indian moneylenders in Isfahan “true bloodsuckers [who] draw all the gold and silver out of the country and send it to their own."

By 1684, most of the coins remaining in circulation were seriously debased, the bazaars at Isfahan were closed, and the shah ordered new money to be minted. By 1694, the population was suffering from heavy increases in taxation, a sharp decline in wealth, and a severe lack of gold and silver coin.

Trade had been irreparably damaged. Inflation increased even further. The shah was unable to pay the army. And the famed security of Persian roads – enjoyed by our ambassadors from Holstein – disappeared as caravans were attacked even within sight of the capital.

The Safavid Empire fell in 1722.

They say that the City of Isfahan was once called Hecatonopolis, and that 2nd century Roman astronomer Ptolemy referred to it as Aspadana. In old Persian, the city was known as Sipahan, the plural form of a word meaning “the gathering place for armies,” and plural because the original city consisted of seven villages.

Tamerlane conquered the city in 1387 AD and named it Ispahan – with a p – by switching the first two letters of the old Persian name. The Persians call it Isfahan – with an f – from an Arabian word meaning rank or battalion.

The ambassador of Venice to Persia in 1473, Ambrogio Contarini, called the city Spaa, Spaam, and Aspacham. For our story, of course, the year is still 1637, and according to our intrepid author, Adam Olearius, Isfahan’s real name is Ispahan with a p. We will continue to call it Isfahan with an f.

The city lies in the province of Erak, which is ancient Parthia, on a spacious plain with mountains on all sides, making the city look like a geographic amphitheater. Counting all of its suburbs, the city is more than eight German Leagues in circumference, or some 36 miles, which is about as far as a man can travel in one day. There are 12 city gates, of which only nine are open, more than 18,000 houses, and about 500,000 inhabitants, which works out to nearly 25 persons per house.

What contributes most to the greatness of this city are the markets, the bazaar, the public baths, and the palaces, Olearius writes. But even better are the city’s gardens, and many houses have two or three gardens and most have at least one.

Shah Safi I is the grandson of Shah Abbas I, and he had succeeded to the throne only because Abbas had murdered his eldest son and blinded his younger sons. Like the sons, the grandson spent his youth in his grandfather’s harem, where he was regularly given large amounts of opium and alcohol.

Abbas took the throne from his father in 1587 with a military coup. Upon seizing power, he sent his father to die in prison and blinded his two surviving brothers to prevent them from mounting their own coup. His harem consisted of up to 500 women, three or four of whom were wives he had officially married. The rest were concubines – mainly from Georgia, Armenia and Circassia – slaves who had been taken in war, purchased, or received as gifts from local governors.

In the early years of Safi's reign, almost all the royal princes, including some of Safi’s cousins, were systematically blinded or murdered. Between 1630 and 1634, a large number of leading figures in the empire and servants of the court were murdered, including – to name just a few – the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, all the generals of the royal guard, and the Grand Vizier.

Opium most likely originated in Asia minor. It was cultivated in lower Mesopotamia around 3400 BC. In Persia, it is cheap, legal, and – unlike alcohol – carries no negative religious connotations. It also suppresses the appetite, and so makes a good substitute for food.

Following a failed diplomatic mission or defeat in battle, Persian officials seem to have frequently taken their lives to avoid the wrath of the shah and possible execution. Opium is less common as a murder weapon, but on November 24, 1577, Persian Shah Ismail II, after a night of wandering about town with his companion, may have been murdered by enemies who laced his opium with poison.

A eunuch is a castrated male. In ancient China and the Middle East, eunuchs were hired as both harem guards who acted as intermediaries with the male world of the court, and as high-ranking officials. In some jurisdictions, eunuchs required an annual license that could be renewed by producing the jar containing their genitals. Those who had lost their own jar were known to borrow or rent one to avoid losing their license.

Under Islamic law, their status as slaves makes eunuchs the adopted sons of their owner. The shah trusts them implicitly, and by the time Safi takes the throne, these slave eunuchs govern eight of the fourteen biggest provinces in Persia, and 20% of the high administrative posts.

All the eunuchs are slaves, but the white eunuchs from the Caucuses are employed outside the harem, while the black eunuchs – some from Africa, but most from India, Malabar, or the Gulf of Bengal – have exclusive charge of the women inside the harem.

The shah invites the ambassadors to dinner on December 3, and Olearius tells us this is the final time they visit court. After dinner, the shah explains his decision about the trade negotiations. He will send an ambassador back to Holstein with the Germans, at which time he will deliver the shah’s recommendations to Duke Frederick.

They leave Isfahan on the evening of December 21, 1637.

Last time, we heard the tale of watchmaker John Stadler’s execution for murdering a Muslim citizen of Isfahan. This time we will hear the same tale as told in 1678 by French jewel merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who made six voyages to Turkey, Persia, and India over the course of his 40-year career.

Tavernier is perhaps most famous as the man who brought the Hope Diamond from India to Europe, probably during his sixth and final voyage between 1664 and 1668. The stone originally weighed 112 carats, and was known as the Tavernier Blue. He sold the diamond to Louis XIV of France for 220,000 livres, or the equivalent of 16,500 English pounds.

John Stadler arrives in Persia six years before we meet him. He is often seen in the company of our Germans. After killing a Muslim, Stadler is sent to prison, and the shah tries three times to rescue him: the first time offering him two thousand tumans to convert, and the second time offering ten thousand tumans and a woman from his harem with all her jewels. He is executed at the end of October, 1637.