Marie Petit

Marie Petit (born c. 1673) was a Frenchwoman who ran a successful gambling house in Paris. When the new French ambassador to Safavid Persia needed funds, Petit funded his journey and traveled with him to Persia. Following the ambassador's sudden death, Petit conducted diplomatic meetings with leaders in the Safavid domains as a self-proclaimed ambassadress. She was later imprisoned and accused of prostitution, apostasy, and attempted murder.

Life in Paris Marie Petit was born in Moulins, France, in 1673 to a cobbler and laundress.

When Petit was in her twenties she moved to Paris, where she ran a gambling house, a maison de jeu, located between Mazarine and Rue Dauphine. Scholars have suggested that they may have been neighbors or that Fabre was a frequent visitor at the gambling house. Fabre was thirty years her senior. Scholars have also suggested that Petit may have also seen it as a business opportunity. They faced more troubles as they tried to leave Aleppo when officials would not allow them to leave. They contacted Fabre’s wife, Anne Cataro in Constantinople, to obtain transit permission from the French ambassador there, Charles de Ferriol.

Ambassadress (1706–1709)

When Fabre died, Petit took over the diplomatic tasks in the region. thumb Her two major opponents in the political realm were Charles de Ferriol, the ambassador to France in Constantinople, and his secretary Pierre Victor Michel. Petit experienced health problems such as kidney stones while imprisoned.

Legacy For centuries Marie Petit’s story was told but treated as a story for novels rather than historical analysis. Novels included:

Clarétie, L. Marie Petit. Roman d'aventures, 1705 (Paris: Librairie Molière, 1904). L. Aurenche and H. Coquet, La Brelandière ambassadrice du roi soleil. Roman historique (Paris: Nouvelles editions latines, 1945). Grès, Y. La Belle Brelandière: ambassadeur en Perse (Paris: Société continentale d'éditions modernes illustrées, 1973). Schoeller, G. Marie d'Ispahan (Paris: Laffont, 1992).

Petit wrote of her experiences in Persia and sent them to the novelist Alain-René Lesage. However, when Pontchartain heard of this he wrote to Lesage, asking him to reject Petit's request for him to rewrite and publish her memoir. Petit's original manuscript was lost.