| Adam Olearius |
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| olearius, adam | |
| 1603 births | |
| 1671 deaths | |
| german librarians | |
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TRAVELS He was born at Aschersleben , near Magdeburg . After studying at Leipzig he became librarian and court mathematician to Duke Frederick III of Holstein-Gottorp, and in 1633 he was appointed secretary to the ambassadors Philip Crusius , Jurisconsult , and Otto Bruggemann or Brugman, merchant, sent by the duke to Muscovy and Persia in the hope of making arrangements by which his newly-founded city of Friedrichstadt should become the terminus of an overland Silk -trade. This embassy started from Gottorp on the 22 October 1633 , and travelled by Hamburg , Lubeck , Riga , Dorpat (five months' stay), Revel , Narva , Ladoga and Novgorod to Moscow ( August 14 , 1634 ). Here they concluded an advantageous treaty with Michael Romanov , and returned forthwith to Gottorp ( December 14 , 1634 - April 7 , 1635 ) to procure the ratification of this arrangement from the duke, before proceeding to Persia. With this accomplished, they started afresh from Hamburg on the 22nd of October 1635, arrived at Moscow on 29 March 1636 ; and left Moscow on the 30th of June for Balakhna near Nizhniy Novgorod , to where they had already sent agents (in 1634/1635) to prepare a vessel for their descent of the Volga . Their voyage down the great river and over the Caspian Sea was slow and hindered by accidents, especially by grounding, as near Derbent on the 14 November 1636 ; but at last, by way of Shemakha (three months' delay here), Ardebil , Soltaniyeh and Kasvin , they reached the Persian court at Isfahan ( August 3 , 1637 ), and were received by the Shah ( August 16 ). Negotiations here were not as successful as at Moscow, and the embassy left Isfahan on the he purchased, for this purpose, the collection of the Dutch scholar and physician, Bernard Ten Broecke ("Paludanus"). He died at Gottorp on the 22 February 1671 . BOOKS It is by his admirable narrative of the Russian and the Persian legation (''Beschreibung der muscowitischen und persischen Reise'', (Schleswig, 1647, and afterwards in several enlarged editions, 1656, etc.) that Olearius is best known, though he also published a history of Holstein (''Kurtzer Begriff einer holsteinischen Chronic'', Schleswig, 1663), a famous catalogue of the Holstein-Gottorp cabinet (1666), and a translation of the ''Gulistan'' (''Persianisches Rosenthal'', Schleswig, 1654), to which was appended a translation of the fables of Lokman . A French version of the ''Beschreibung'' was published by Abraham De Wicquefort (''Voyages en Moscovie, Tartarie et Perse, par Adam Olearius'', Paris, 1656), an English version was made by John Davies Of Kidwelly (''Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederic, Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy and the King of Persia'', London, 1662; and ed., 1669), and a Dutch translation by Dieterius Van Wageningen (''Beschrijvingh van de nieuwe Parciaensche ofte Orientaelsche Reyse'', Utrecht, 1651); an Italian translation of the Russian sections also appeared (''Viaggi di Moscovia'', Viterbo and Rome, 1658). Paul Flemming the poet and J. A. De Mandelslo , whose travels to the East Indies are usually published with those of Olearius, accompanied the embassy. Under Olearius' direction the celebrated globe of Gottorp and Armillary Sphere were executed between 1654 and 1664 ; the globe was given to Peter The Great of Russia in 1713 by Duke Frederick's grandson, Christian Augustus . Olearius' unpublished works include a ''Lexicon Persicum'' and several other Persian studies. By his lively and well-informed writing he introduced Germany (and the rest of . REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS |
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