Jean Chardin

Biography

Wire of a Jeweller Protesting, it goes to Persia and India in 1665 to make the trade of diamonds there. Likes it king de Perse, Shah Abbas II, which appoints it its merchant. Of return in France in 1670, it publishes the crowning of Soleïmaan third, roy of Persia . Then it sets out again for Persia in August 1671, while making this time a long tour which leads it to Smyrna, with Constantinople, in the Crimea, in the the Caucasus and in Georgia. There arrive at Isfahan in June 1673, remain four years in Persia and turn over to India before returning to Europe in 1680 while passing by the Cape of Good Hope.

Noting on its return that the Protestants are persecuted in France, it goes in 1681 in England, where Charles II the fact knight and appoints it jeweller of the court. It there Marie and becomes member of the Royal Society in 1682.

Chardin then goes in Holland as a representative of the English Compagnie of the Eastern Indies and it is with Amsterdam that it publishes in 1686 the first part of the Voyages of Mister the Chardin knight in Persia and other places of the East . This work, which it supplements only in 1711, perhaps with the assistance of François Charpentier, is greeted by the philosophers and receives the praises of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire and Gibbon. In 1811, Louis-Mathieu Langlès publishes of it a more complete edition in 10 volumes. Impressed of an acute sense of the observation and considered by the specialists an important historical source on the culture and civilization Persians in the time, the Voyages of Chardin keep a considerable interest still today.

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