Adam Olearius Research Articles

Globalism avant la lettre from a Late Medieval and Early Modern German Perspective: The Niederrheinische Orientbericht, Adam Olearius, and Jesuit Missionaries Across the Globe

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed a tremendous growth of globalism, at least in terms of European outreach and interest. We can identify this phenomenon particularly well through two different and independent sources, first, the publication of Adam Olearius’s Vermehrte Newe Beschreibung der Muscowitischen vnd Persischen Reyse, 1647, and then the growth of Jesuit reports about their missionary activities all over the world carefully collected and published by Joseph Stoecklein ca. hundred years later in his highly popular Welt-Bott, compiled and published since 1726. Globalism is, of course a complex term, both for today and for the past. Everything depends on the narrator’s perspective, the engagement with the other culture/s, and the reciprocity. Olearius appears to have achieved a major breakthrough with his travels to Russia and then later to Persia, introducing much of Persian culture to Germany. The Jesuits (Eusebio Kino, Ignaz Pfefferkorn, Joseph Och, et al.) provided their German (!) readers with astoundingly precise comments and reports about the New World in northern Mexico and in the province of Sonora (today, partly Arizona), while their many colleagues globally contributed their own reports about all four corners of this world. Combining these two perspectives, we can identify a very early but already very strong effort to learn more about the foreign world, to overcome the otherness (from a Eurocentric perspective), and to create a global platform far beyond what travelogue authors such as Marco Polo or Odorico da Pordenone had achieved in the fourteenth century, irrespective of their extraordinarily extensive travels to China. This paper, however, will begin, after I have reflected on the latest theoretical approaches to Global Studies, with a most unusual eye-witness account from ca. 1350, and then pursue the discourse on globalism as it developed over the following centuries, crossing several periodical barriers and bridging different narrative genres within the Germanlanguage context.

Nemeckij uchenyj Adam Olearij o Dagestane XVII v.

The article is devoted to the historiographical analysis of the information contained in the work of the German scientist Adam Olearius: “Description of the journey to Muscovy and through Muscovy to Persia and back”, which characterize various aspects of the life of the peoples of Dagestan in the 30s of the 17th century. The analysis of the material shows that the information contained in his work needs careful study and interpretation, since many of his postulates do not correspond to reality. The authors come to the conclusion that despite the inaccuracies, the objectivity of many information on various issues of the history of Dagestan, the work of A. Olearius as a whole is of great interest to scientists studying the history of the Dagestan Middle Ages.

An Unknown Work about Boris Godunov from the Post-Petrine Era

This article examines a new early manuscript containing two works by an unknown compiler in the 1730s: the story of the “tyrant Ivan the Terrible” and Boris Godunov “greedy” for autocratic power. The manuscript is kept in the State Archives of Ryazan Region as part of the collection of the Ryazan Provincial Scientific Archival Commission. The study demonstrates that its brief archaeographic description was given in 1892 by Aleksey Vasilyevich Selivanov, one of the founders of the archival commission in Ryazan. Relying on watermarks, he dates the collection to about 1727; in 2001, the manuscript was described anew in a review of the manuscript collection of the State Archives of Ryazan Region. The authors analyse the part of the manuscript collection containing an essay about Boris Godunov; this essay has not been introduced into scholarly circulation previously. The article reveals the compiler’s sources, which turn out to be translations of notes taken by foreigners about Russia between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, more particularly the works of Jerome Horsey, Jacob Ulfeldt, Adam Olearius, and some others. Also, the authors single out a whole series of parallel pieces of news from Jerome Horsey’s notes in a little-known version of the publication in Old German about Tsar Boris’ character. The authors focus on which notes would have been available to the alleged compiler of the collection in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The article contains data revealing the provenance of the work. Additionally, an assumption is made about the possible author of the published source, who was probably related to the circle of victims in the case of Artemy Volynsky. Finally, the appendix to the article contains the previously unpublished text of the manuscript about Boris Godunov.

Persia in German Baroque literature—Sa‘dī’s Rose Garden and Adam Olearius’s embassy to Persia

Despite renewed efforts to establish world literature, most of the presently available theoretical models do not provide solid concepts as to the meaning and relevance of this approach. After a critical review of recent publications, this article analyzes a unique and most revealing case, the reception of medieval Persian literature (Sa‘dī) through translations into European languages beginning in the seventeenth century, primarily by the German diplomat, traveler, librarian, philologist, and linguist Adam Olearius. Here we can observe what truly constitutes world literature, with Sa‘dī serving as a major literary inspiration for early modern reflections on virtues and vices, relevant also for Western audiences. He was not a Christian, but the poet’s truly noble ideals were to have a deep impression on his future readers in East and West, especially since the early modern age.

Medieval and Early Modern European Travelers on the Jewish Epigraphy of Southeastern Europe and Caucasus

The author discusses a Jewish inscription published by Adam Olearius (1599–1671), a German traveler, orientalist and a member of the Holstein embassy sent in 1635–39 to Muscovy and Safavid Iran. In December 1635 Olearius had copied this inscription from the wall of a caravanserai located at the foot of the Besh Barmag Mountain (today’s territory of the Siazan’ district of the Republic of Azerbaijan). Later he published it in the first [Schleßwig, 1647] and subsequent lifetime editions of his account on Persian and Muscovite journeys. The author proposes his reconstruction and translation of the text of the above mentioned inscription. He argues that this inscription was a fragment of a text mentioning a certain Faraj, son of Yitzhak. The inscription dates back to 1537 according to the Seleucid era or the years 1224/5 AD. The author considers this inscription to be an epigraphic confirmation of the testimony of another Western European traveler – William (or Guillaume) Rubruck who had visited the Jewish communities of Transcaucasia in 1254. The stone block with a fragment of the text of the inscription was used in the construction of the caravanserai when Jewish communities seen by Rubruck had left this region or disappeared.

German Orientalism and the Persian Literature in the Islamic Period: Josef von Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856) as an Example of Literary Interlacing

The interest in Persian language, culture and literature in the Islamic period in Europe dates back to a very old tradition. From the point of view of the translation activities, it can be said that the textual contact with the Persian literature in the Islamic Europe began in the 17th century. Due to their strong interest in geography and culture, travelers began to concern themselves with language and literature. During this period, many Germans travelled to the lands of the Safavids. They gathered extensive knowledge about history, culture, language and Persian literature in the Islamic period, and transferred it to the West. In 1634, the French orientalist Andre du Ryer (1580-1660) translated into French Sheikh Saadi’s Gulistan/The Rose Garden, which is considered to be one of the classics of Persian literature. In 1636, Friedrich Ochsenbach (1606–1658) translated this work from French into German under the title of Gulistan, das ist, Koniglicher Rosengarten/Gulistan, Royal Rose Garden. Adam Olearius (Olschlager 1600-1671), who learned Persian in the Safavid madrasas, became acquainted with the works of Saadi. After his return to Germany, he enlisted the help of the Persian ambassador, and in the year 1654, translated Gulistan into German under the title Persianisches Rosenthal/Valley of the Persian Roses. During the latter part of the 18th century, the increase of translation activities of literary texts of the Persian poets from the Islamic period, such as Hafez Shirazi and Sheikh Saadi-i Shirazi into Western languages in Europe had an impact on German-speaking orientalists and poets. This period can be considered as a turning point in the relationship between Orient and Occident. The early years of the 19th century, literary Orientalism, which began and developed with the translation of diplomats, travelers, traders and orientalists, left a corpus of Persian poetry to the German-speaking world. The Austrian Orientalist Josef von HammerPurgstall (1774-1856) occupies an important place in the formation of this corpus. Hammer-Purgstall’s translations made Persian poetry available to classical and romantic thinkers, poets and orientalists. This article has two aims; to show that Hammer-Purgstall created a literal network with his translations from Persian poetry in the Islamic period, and to determine how great a role his translations played in the construction and institutionalization of German literary orientalism.

FORT 4 OF THE MOUNTAIN WALL “DAGH BARY”

The article focuses on the results of the archeological study, conducted on the ruins of the Fort 4, located in the territory of the medieval settlement Pirmeshki. The work was carried out in the context of the research of the fortification system Dag-bary, which had been a part of the Derbent defensive complex, erected during the reign of shahanshah Khosrov II Anushirvan (531-579) in the late 560s’. Judging by the remains of the walls, the fort had the internal dimensions of around 13,9 by 22,5 m with a wall thickness of 2 m. These parameters are very similar to the fort dimensions of the Mountain wall, which have better preserved. The revealed remains of the walls have the same constructive features as other fortifications of the Derbent defensive complex – double-shelled masonry of slabs of the same type, laid on wide and narrow sides without mortar, with backfilling of lime mortar. The complex of ceramic ware, presented in the cultural layers of the dig, belongs to the X – early XIII c. It can be assumed that the settlement and the forts in it ceased to exist in the period of the Mongol invasion to Dagestan, namely during the campaign of Jebe and Subutai in 1222, following the campaign of Bukdai in 1239. The data from written sources, and, mainly, Adam Olearius’ information, who visited Derbent in 1638, testifies to the destruction of numerous strongholds of the Mountain wall by the XVII c.

Prospecting Archaeological Works at the Northern Defensive Wall in the Seaside Part of Derbent

The article presents some results of an archaeological researches conducted at the northern city wall in the seaside part of Derbent outside the medieval shakhristan. The soundings (No. 26–29) revealed layers of various geneses and provided new data on the historical topography of the medieval town. The obtained data point at some cultural layers of Pre-Mongol period (X – early XIII century) outside the shakhristan (soundings No. 26–28). It was period of flourishing for the medieval Derbent when the city occupied the territory of architecturally allocated shakhristan and when the near and far agricultural areas was actively used. These materials also confirm the earlier obtained data that the active life of the city ceased in the second quarter of the XIII century due to Mongol invasions. At the same time, excavations revealed some layers related to the late Sasanian period and connected with the large-scale construction of a stone defensive wall in the middle of the VI century (soundings No. 26, 27) and an adobe defensive wall built in the middle of the V century (sounding No. 27), which completely closed the Derbent pass.On the western border of the surveyed site, six Muslim stone sarcophagus-shaped sepulchral monuments of the XI–XII centuries were found in the modern ditch, as well as some stone plates from the destroyed cists. The sarcophagi are the most extreme east monuments within the medieval necropolis of Derbent, and they act as evident confirmation to Adam Olearius’ engraving (1637 AD) that depicted Derbent and its extensive northern cemetery with such monuments.

Persian Words of Wisdom Travel to the West

This essay considers the seventeenth-century translations of the celebrated Persian poet Saʿdi’s Gulistan (1258 ad) into European languages: André du Ryer’s French version (1634), the Latin translation of Georgius Gentius (1651) and the German editions of Friedrich Ochsenbach (1636) and Adam Olearius (1654). The Gulistan – which consists of short, moralistic tales, aphorisms, proverbs, and Sufic lore – helped introduce Persian thought to the early modern European public (and later influenced Goethe’s West-östlicher Diwan as well as Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes).

Elio Brancaforte, Visions of Persia. Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius. 2003

In five chapters Brancaforte maps out new territory concerning the German Baroque polymath, Adam Olearius, and his travels to Persia and concomitant publications. Olearius, a leading intellectual figure at the court of Gottorf, was the first to provide an accurate, eye-witness account of the geography and ethnography of Persia to seventeenth-century Europe, and Brancaforte reads Olearius's texts and images in fresh, new ways. His careful readings provide innovative models for studying Olearius and his oeuvre, demonstrating a particularly fruitful employment of Anglo-American interdisciplinarity when analyzing the images and words of these publications.

:Visions of Persia: Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius

This work examines the travel account of a German baroque author who journeyed in search of silk from Northern Germany, through Muscovy, to the court of Shah Safi in Isfahan. Adam Olearius introduced literature, history and arts to the German-speaking public; his frank appraisal of customs foreshadows the enlightened spirit of the eighteenth century (influencing Montesquieu's Persian Letters as well as Goethe's West-Eastern Divan) and prepares the way for German Romanticism's infatuation with poetry. Brancaforte focuses on the visual and discursive nexus uniting Olearius's text with the numerous engravings that supplement the book. The emphasis falls on contextualized readings of Olearius's decorative frontispieces and his new and improved map of Persia and the Caspian Sea, as expressions of early modern subjectivity.

Elio Christoph Brancaforte. Visions of Persia: Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius. Harvard University Press, 2003, xv-238 p., bibliography, index.

This fascinating study of the work of Adam Olearius, the secretary of the Holstein embassy that visited Iran in 1636-37, is primarily concerned with the author as a man of letters and the tradition in which he operated, as well as with the dialogue between text and image in his well-known Vermehrte newe Beschreibung der Moscowitischen und Persischen Reyse. As such it only deals tangentially with Iran or the extent of the work’s veracity and reliability as a source. Olearius is the quintessent...

Adam Olearius's ‘About the Greenlanders’

AbstractThe 17th-century German traveller and writer Adam Olearius is best known for his account of travels in Russia and Persia, first published in 1656. Parts of this work have been translated into English under the title ‘The travels of Olearius in seventeenth-century Russia’. Among hitherto untranslated sections is the chapter ‘Von den Grünländern’, an early and well-researched account of Greenland and its inhabitants, prompted by his examination of a party of three Greenlanders in Gottorp, Schleswig, in 1656. This article is a translation of the chapter, with an introduction to Olearius and his background.

Origins of the Russian Puppet Theater: An Alternative Hypothesis

The Russian puppet theater (kukol'nyi teatr or Petrushka) is not well known in the West. There are passing references to it in general histories of puppetry and the like, but unfortunately these are more often confusing than enlightening. One learns, for example, that the Old Russian version of the Polish marionette theater, the szopka, was the “bertep [sic] meaning Bethlehem,“ or that the first known description of a Russian puppet show appears in “Adam O'Leary's [sic] Travels in Russia and Persia.” Perhaps even more unfortunate, Petrushka has been neglected by native scholars as well. Their failure to deal seriously with the origins of the Russian puppet theater has been particularly glaring, and they have also largely ignored its early history. Most have, in fact, been content to view the entire period before the 1630s, when Adam Olearius appeared with his famous illustrated description of a performing Russian puppeteer, as terra incognita.

The Land and Government of Muscovy: A Sixteenthcentury Account. By Heinrich von Staden. Translated and Edited by Thomas Esper. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967. xxvi, 142 pp. $5.50. - Of the Russe Commonwealth (1591). Facsimile Edition with Variants. By Giles Fletcher. Edited by John V. A. Fine, Jr., and Richard Pipes, with an Introduction by Richard Pipes. Cambridge: Harvard University

The Land and Government of Muscovy: A Sixteenthcentury Account. By Heinrich von Staden. Translated and Edited by Thomas Esper. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967. xxvi, 142 pp. $5.50. - Of the Russe Commonwealth (1591). Facsimile Edition with Variants. By Giles Fletcher. Edited by John V. A. Fine, Jr., and Richard Pipes, with an Introduction by Richard Pipes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. xii, 98, 8, 116 pp. $7.50. - Of the Rus Commonwealth. By Giles Fletcher. Edited by Albert J. Schmidt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966. xliv, 176 pp. $6.00. - The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia. By Adam Olearius. Translated and edited by Samuel H. Baron. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967. xviii, 349 pp. $8.95. - Volume 28 Issue 1