Ebook: Travels through Northern Persia, 1770–1774

In 1770 the young German scientist and explorer Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin embarked on a journey on behalf of the Russian Academy of Sciences and in the service of Catherine the Great. These heretofore little-read accounts of his travels and broad research in Northern Persia, first published in German in St. Petersburg in the 1770’s, have now been translated for the first time into English by renowned scholar Willem Floor.

In the two voyages recounted in this volume, Gmelin kept journals describing the customs, industry, political world, warfare, geography, and plant and animal life of Northern Persia, until his capture and imprisonment in the village of Parakay near the Caspian Sea in 1774—a misfortune that he also was able to record, and which is included here in the final volume of his travelogue.

Includes the third and fourth volumes of Gmelin’s four-part travelogue Travels through Russia to Investigate the Three Natural Realms, as well as the 1784 preface, and an appendix with further accounts by Gmelin’s student. Gmelin’s entries describe, among many things, the political situation and wars in Persia; the temperament and physical characteristics of the Persians; the people’s table manners and hygiene; Persian money, weights and measures; the court of the Khan of Gilan; the Gilani language; Persian monks; Persian medical science; Shi`a Islam; the Jews of Rasht; the Persian attitude toward Christians; treatment of women; the plant and animal life of Persia; the Turkmen tribes of the east Caspian; the mountain peoples of Daghestan; the potential for Russian trade with the peoples of Persia; the Persian Armenians and their mercantile activity; and Persian methods of fishing, farming and preparing various foods. With thirty-eight illustrations.