Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689)[1][2] was a 17th-century French gem merchant and traveler.[3] Tavernier, a private individual and merchant traveling at his own expense, covered, by his own account, 60,000 leagues in making six voyages to Persia and India between the years 1630 and 1668. In 1675, Tavernier, at the behest of his patron Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, published Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (Six Voyages, 1676).[4][5]
Tavernier is best known for his 1666 discovery or purchase of the 116-carat Tavernier Blue diamond that he subsequently sold to Louis XIV of France in 1668 for 120,000 livres, the equivalent of 172,000 ounces of pure gold, and a letter of ennoblement.[2][6]
In 1669, Tavernier purchased for 60,000 livres the Seigneury (fief) of Aubonne, located in the Duchy of Savoy near the city of Geneva, and became Baron of Aubonne.
Tavernier's writings show that he was a keen observer, as well as a remarkable cultural anthropologist. His Six Voyages became a best seller and was translated into German, Dutch, Italian, and English during his lifetime. The work is frequently quoted by modern scholars writing about the period.
Early life[edit]
Tavernier was born in Paris of a French or Flemish Huguenot family that had emigrated to Antwerp to escape persecution; they subsequently returned to Paris after the publication of the Edict of Nantes, which promised protection for French Protestants. Both his father Gabriel and his brother Melchior Tavernier were cartographers, and it is clear from the accuracy of his drawings that Tavernier received some instruction in the art of cartography and engraving.
The conversations he heard in his father's house inspired Tavernier with an early desire to travel, and by his sixteenth year he had already visited England, the Low Countries and Germany.[7]
In 1624, at eighteen, Tavernier took service with the Viceroy of Hungary. By 1629, after four and a half years, he had grown restless. At the invitation of the young Duke of Rethel, to whom he had previously been briefly attached as a guide and translator, Tavernier traveled to Mantua and took service as an ensign of artillery under the duke's father, the Duke of Nevers, who was besieging the city. In the following year Tavernier traveled, as a translator, with an Irish mercenary in the service of the emperor, Colonel Walter Butler (afterwards notorious for killing Albrecht von Wallenstein).[8]
In the Six Voyages, Tavernier states that he departed from Butler's company, in 1630, with the intention of traveling to Ratisbon (Regensburg), to attend the investiture of the son of Emperor Ferdinand II as King of the Romans. However, as the investiture did not take place until 1636, it is probable that he attended the ceremony between his first and second voyages. By his own account, he had seen Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, and Hungary, as well as France, England and the Low Countries, and spoke the principal languages of these countries.[8]
First journey[edit]
Tavernier was now eager to visit the East. At Ratisbon – with the help of Pere Joseph, Cardinal Richelieu's agent and éminence grise –Tavernier was able to join the retinue of a pair of French travellers, M. de Chapes and M. de St. Liebau, who had received a mission to go to the Levant. In their company he reached Constantinople early in 1631, where he spent eleven months, and then proceeded by Tokat, Erzerum, and Erivan to Safavid Persia. His farthest point in this first journey was the Persian city of Isfahan. He returned by Baghdad, Aleppo, Alexandretta, Malta, and Italy, and was again in Paris in 1633.[1][8]
Of the next five years of Tavernier's life, nothing is known with certainty. However, Joret, his French biographer, claims that during this period he may have become controller of the household of Gaston, Duke of Orléans.[8] We do know that twice during his Six Voyages he claimed the Duke's patronage.
Attribution: