Jean baptiste tavernier biography

Arnauld Tavernier made no reply to Jurieu. This work is much prized by historians and geographers for its detailed accounts of the places visited by Tavernier, from toand his dealings with politically important persons at a time when reliable reports from the Near East and the Orient were scanty or lacking altogether. Doubt has been cast on Tavernier's accuracy, but The closing years of Tavernier's life are not well documented; the times were not favorable for a Protestant in France.

He awarded Tavernier the honorary posts of Chamberlain and Counselor of Marine. He established the Bureau of Conversion to reward Catholic converts. Louis then instituted the Verification of Nobility which deprived those Protestant noblemen who refused to convert to Catholicism of their titles. Tavernier was technically a subject of the Duke of Savoy, but Louis threatened to invade the duchy, if the duke, his son-in-law, did not follow his lead.

Indespite an edict prohibiting Protestants from leaving France, Tavernier left Paris and traveled to Switzerland. Inhe passed through Berlin and Copenhagen and entered Russia on a passport issued by the king of Sweden, and a visa signed by the Czar's First Minister, Prince Andrea Gallatin, perhaps with the intent of traveling overland to India.

Jean baptiste tavernier biography

It is not known if he met with Czar Peter who was just 17 years old at that time. What is known is that Tavernier, as with all foreigners resident in Moscowwould have been required, by imperial decree, to take up residence in the foreign quarter, known as the German Suburb Nemetskaya Sloboda. Peter was very interested in all things foreign, had many friends in the suburb, and spent a great deal of time there, beginning in mid-March Tavernier arrived in Moscow in late February or early March of that year.

Tavernier was a famous man. Given Peter's obsession with all things European, it would be surprising if they did not meet. Tavernier died in Moscow inat the age of eighty-four. Tavernier was the model of the inveterate traveler, as well as the most consequential diamond dealer of his age. His remarkable three-hundred-year-old book Le Six Voyages Tavernier's biographer Charles Joret, produced a fragment of an article published in a Danish journal by Frederick Rostgaard, who states that he interviewed the aging adventurer and was told of his intention to travel to Persia via Moscow.

Tavernier was not, however, able to complete this last journey. Tavernier's travels, though often reprinted and translated, have a defect for his biographer: the chronology is much confused by his plan of combining notes from various journeys about certain routes, for he sought mainly to furnish a guide to other merchants. See also the second English translation of Tavernier's account of his travels, so far as relating to India, by Valentine Ball, 2 vols.

Some consider Tavernier's accounts unreliable. The In Search of For the th anniversary of Tavernier's birth inthe Swiss filmmaker Philippe Nicolet made a full-length film about him called Les voyages en Orient du Baron d'Aubonne. Another Swiss, the sculptor Jacques Basler, made a life-sized bronze effigy of the great 17th-century traveller which looks out over Lake Geneva at the Hotel Baron Tavernier, where there is also a permanent exhibition of all his drawings and archives in Chexbres.

The book's website includes a detailed timeline of Tavernier's life and voyages. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Tavernor, Robert William. Tavernor, Robert William Taverns and Saloons. Taves, Ernest H enry Taviani, Paolo and Vittorio. Tavistock Clinic. Tavoulareas, William Peter. In he was able to join the entourage of two French travelers who were making the journey to the Middle East.

He went to Constantinople and then parted ways with the other travelers, staying there for 11 months. He visited other countries in the area and returned to Paris in His next journey started in and lasted until It was on this trip that Tavernier first went to India and visited the famed Golconda diamond mines. He started making numerous contacts and connections with nobility in the area and he began selling them gems, building up a stellar clientele of princes and emperors.

Allegedly, Tavernier traveled with body guards because he liked to carry his diamonds and gems on his person in a leather belt. Between and Tavernier returned to the East four more times and in between travels, inhe found time to meet and marry Madeline Goisse, the daughter of a Parisian jeweler. When he left Butler to view the diet of Ratisbon inhe had seen Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Hungary, as jean baptiste tavernier biography as France, England and the Low Countries, and spoke the principal languages of these countries.

He was now eager to visit the East; and at Ratisbon he found the opportunity to join two French fathers, M. In their company he reached Constantinople early inwhere he spent eleven months, and then proceeded by Tokat, Erzerum and Erivan to Persia. His farthest point in this first journey was Ispahan; he returned by Bagdad, Aleppo, Alexandretta, Malta and Italy, and was again in Paris in Of the next five years of his life nothing is known with certainty, but it was probably during this period that he became controller of the household of the duke of Orleans.

In September he began a second journey by Aleppo to Persia, and thence to India as far as Agra and Golconda. His visit to the court of the Great Mogul and to the diamond mines was connected with the plans realized more fully in his later voyages, in which Tavernier travelled as a merchant of the highest rank, trading in costly jewels and other precious wares, and finding his chief customers among the greatest princes of the East.

The second journey was followed by four others.