Consider these situations. You travel to an unknown foreign land without any plan, meet people of varied cultures who speak unfamiliar tongue, stay with them for many years, tolerate extreme conditions, suffer hardships but still you enjoy to the core. Sounds crazy?! But if you are a highly sociable geek with an interest in each and everything, you will never mind taking such risks.
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| Political map of Italy during Renaissance: (source Internet) |
Here is a thrilling story of an unusual traveller. He was adventurous who plodded through the deserts, crossed seas on ships, sailed on rivers by boats, rode on camels and bullock carts, observed each action of men and women with x-ray eyes, questioned curiously but reported honestly, collected books, plants, spoke native tongue and recorded the smallest of the smallest details of his experiences in his diary.
The Italian pilgrim, linguist and avid correspondent, Pietro Della Valle (1586-1652), is one of the most remarkable travellers of Renaissance. The Renaissance (14th - 17th century) dawned a new era of the spirit of inquiry, curiosity in learning and discovering new things. Beginning in Florence in Italy, it spread all over Europe with an emphasis on intellectual inquiry. Renaissance is sometimes called The Age of Explorers whose discoveries helped expand horizons and shape the geopolitical world as we know it. Italian traveller Pietro Della Valle is one of the most important, yet least known travellers of 17th century who travelled to the Middle East and India. His contribution to the western knowledge of the societies of Middle East and west coast of India and his romantic personal life have been ignored mainly because of the non-availability of his voluminous letters in standard English for a long time.
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| Portrait of the exceptionally adventurous traveller Pietro Della Valle |
Born on 2nd April, 1586 to a wealthy, aristocratic Roman family, Pietro received excellent education. His younger days were very eventful. He penned poetry, gave speeches, served as a soldier in the papal service, served as a member of the Roman Academy of Science and Literature (Academy of Amoristie) and loved his beloved girl for twelve long years! Unfortunately his girl disappointed him by marrying another man. Dejected Pietro moved to Naples and was depressed to the point of considering suicide. He was advised by his close friend and physician, Mario Schipano, to travel and visit holy places as an alternative to suicide.
Pietro Della Valle decided to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Jerusalem. How can an adventurous Pietro make his voyage so simple as visiting only Jerusalem? Hardly did he know that he would stay for months and years together in places of his interest! He began his voyage from Venice on 8th June, 1614 and reached Istanbul, where he spent a year learning Turkish, Arabic, Persian and Hebrew .He left for Jerusalem via Alexandria by sea and later to Cairo, Mount Sinai and Gaza by land eventually reaching Jerusalem at the time of Easter celebrations.
For Pietro, the visit to Cairo was a blast from the past! While at Cairo, he visited the pyramids at Giza in 1615 and organised a primitive archaeological dig. He went down through the passage to reach the mummies, pulled out two mummies, ripped open one and inspected its bones!! He was thrilled to see the Fayum portraits (The Fayum portraits are a type of realistic painted portraits on wooden boards attached to Egyptian mummies). He transported two well packed Fayum mummies to Rome which now form a part of Egyptian collection in Dresden Art Gallery at Rome. Thus, Pietro was the first European to discover and describe mummy portraits.
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| Fascinating journey of Pietro: Unexpected , but exciting twists and turns!! |
On his return journey, this crazy sailor completely changed his direction and scope of his travels! He decided to join a caravan proceeding towards Bagdad. How can he not change his destination when he was destined to meet his beloved? He fell in love with a Syrian Christian girl, Manni Giorida (In Arabic Manni means 'intelligent'), and married her and resumed his journey with her. After exploring Persia for four years, he started for Persepolis. He was prevented from continuing his journey due to the war. Pietro had to face lot of hardships and Manni died in 1621.He wished to take her body to Rome to perform funerals as per Christian custom and bury her alongside of his ancestors. His experience of Egyptian mummies came to his help. He requested some local women to remove her inner body parts and embalm with camphor so that he could preserve the body till he reached Rome. He requested them to take special care of her heart. The women brought the embalmed heart and showed him!! What an emotional moment to see his beloved's heart!
None of the English ships was ready to carry a dead body. Pietro reached Ormus via Lar and Shiraz on a camel. He hid the dead body of Manni under clothes in a big box, spread the rumour that he had sent the body to Rome and boarded a British ship going towards Surat, India. He visited Ahmedabad, Surat, Goa, Honavar, Gerusoppa, Ikkeri, Calicut and Mangalore. Throughout his journey Della Valle maintained the secret of the dead body!! Finally he reached Rome on 4th April 1626 via Muscat.
After reaching Rome, with his usual sense of humour he wrote that he entered his house through the back door 'as is fitting for a widower'. Pietro fulfilled his wish by burying the remains of his beloved wife in the Church of Ara Coeli at Rome. His long absence of 12 years from Rome made people believe that he was dead. Pietro Della Valle had to produce a 'living' certificate to prove that he was alive! He lived in Rome for the rest of his life, engaged in intellectual activities, music compositions and married Maria, a Georgian girl who accompanied him throughout his journey. He had 14 sons from her. Pietro Della Valle breathed his last in 1652.
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| Bust of Pietro Della Valle erected at a park in Rome |
From the beginning of his travels, Della Valle wrote letters regularly to his learned Doctor friend Schipano (the one who advised him to go on a pilgrimage). Della Valle's writings were unsystematic verbose outpourings written and sometimes scribbled, at a great speed and were unusually lengthy. He expected Schpano to edit them into a understandable form which he hardly did. There were fifty four letters in total. Della Valle wrote his last letter from Goa, India, on 4th November, 1624. The accounts of his travels 'Viaggi'(which means travelogue) were published under three heads: Turkey, Persia and India. It was only two years before his death that the first volume of letters was published, slightly edited with the excision of a few personal details; after Della Valle's death the second and third volumes, edited by four of his sons were published in 1658. They were translated into French, Dutch, English and German. In 1664 the 'Viaggi' of India was translated to English and was republished by Hakluyt Society in 1892 in two volumes. Eight letters of Della Valle, written from India, contain his travel experiences in India: 1st from Surat, 2nd & 3rd from Goa, 4th from Honavar, 5th from Ikkeri, 6th from Mangalore, 7th & 8th from Goa.
Pietro Della Valle was a unique traveler and his undertakings were unusual for travelers of his period. The wide geographical range of his travels, his vivid description of topography, customs, languages, peoples, his accurate graphic presentation of personal experiences are all responsible for the editorial success of his 'Viaggi'. In his preface to the reader, he states that his 'letters were not intended for a single reader, nor for a single place, nor just for men now living, but for the whole world and for the centuries to come'. His travel accounts of the Middle East and India created interest among Europeans to take to Arabic and other oriental studies. His accounts are trustworthy because he was very honest in recording what he saw with his own eyes and what he heard from others. He notes,'I was told but no way of establishing.....' or ' I tried to find out more about this'. He refused to comment on what he had not witnessed.
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| A sculpture of Pietro Dalla Valle in a museum at Milan, Italy. |
