Pietro Della Valle

Pietro Della Valle (; 2 April 1586 – 21 April 1652), also written Pietro della Valle, was an Italian composer, musicologist, and author who travelled throughout Asia during the 17th century. His travels took him to the Holy Land, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and as far as India.

Life Pietro Della Valle was born in Rome on 2 April 1586, to a wealthy and noble family. His early life was spent in the pursuit of literature and arms. He was a cultivated man, who knew Latin, Greek, classical mythology, and the Bible. He also became a member of the Roman Accademia degli Umoristi, and acquired some reputation as a versifier and rhetorician. In 1611 he took part in a Spanish naval expedition against the Barbary States.

When Pietro was disappointed in love and began to consider suicide, Mario Schipano, a professor of medicine in Naples, suggested the idea of travelling in the East. It was Schipano who received a sort of diary in letters from Pietro's travels.

Before leaving Naples, Pietro took a vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. So, at age 28, he left Venice by boat on 8 June 1614 and reached Constantinople; he remained there for more than a year and acquired a good knowledge of Turkish and a little Arabic. On 25 September 1615, he went to Alexandria. Because he was a nobleman of distinction, he travelled with a suite of nine persons, and with every advantage due to his rank. From Alexandria he went on to Cairo. After traveling south to Saqqara, he was guided by a local man to a necropolis where he discovered mummy portraits, the first modern westerner to see these realistic Greek painted portraits from ancient Roman Egypt. After an excursion to Mount Sinai, left Cairo for the Holy Land. He arrived there on 8 March 1616, in time to take part in the Easter celebrations at Jerusalem.

After visiting the holy sites, Pietro travelled from Damascus to Aleppo. After seeing a portrait of the beautiful Assyrian Christian Sitti Maani Gioerida, daughter of a Nestorian Catholic father and an Armenian mother, he went to Baghdad and married her a month later. While in the Middle East, he made one of the first modern records of the location of ancient Babylon and provided "remarkable descriptions" of the site. He also brought back to Europe inscribed bricks from Nineveh and Ur, some of the first examples of cuneiform available to modern Europeans. At that time Baghdad was being contested between Turkey and Iran during the frequent Ottoman-Persian Wars, so he had to leave Baghdad on 4 January 1617. Accompanied by his wife Maani, he proceeded to Persia, and visited Hamadan and Isfahan. In the summer of 1618, he joined Shah Abbas in a campaign in northern Persia. Here he was well received at court and treated as the Shah's guest.

When Shah ʿAbbās returned to winter quarters at Faraḥābād, Della Valle, who was unwell, went to Isfahan, where he hoped the Augustinians and Carmelites would restore him to health.

On 4 November 2016, an official commemorating ceremony of Della Valle's travelogue was held by Bukhara magazine in Tehran, attended by Italian ambassador Mauro Conciatori.

Book collector Pietro Della Valle was also a famous book collector. "In a letter written in Damascus and Aleppo, dated June 15, 1616, Della Valle described his delight at finding some rare Samaritan manuscripts, some of them with glosses in Arabic, for sale."