author
Ambrogio Contarini
1429–1499
A Venetian envoy who crossed eastern Europe, Russia, and the Caucasus on a dangerous mission to the court of Uzun Hasan, he left behind one of the most vivid European travel accounts of 15th-century Persia. His journey blends diplomacy, hardship, and sharp-eyed curiosity about the wider world.
1 Audiobook
Travels to Tana and Persia : A narrative of Italian travels in Persia, in the 15th and 16th centuries
by Giosofat Barbaro, Ambrogio Contarini
About the author
Born in Venice in 1429 into the patrician Contarini family, he spent part of his early life in Constantinople as a merchant. After the Ottoman-Venetian war began in 1463, he returned to Venetian service and later took part in diplomacy and war at a time when Venice was searching for allies against the Ottoman Empire.
He is best remembered for the embassy that sent him to Persia in the 1470s to the court of Uzun Hasan of the Aq Qoyunlu. The route was long and difficult, taking him across central and eastern Europe, through lands around the Black Sea and the Caucasus, before he finally reached his destination.
His lasting fame comes from the travel narrative he wrote about that mission, often known as Viaggio al signor Usun Hassan re di Persia. The book is valued not just as a record of diplomacy, but as a lively firsthand account of landscapes, courts, customs, and the risks of travel between Europe and Iran in the late medieval world.