Jean de Thévenot

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Jean de Thévenot (June 16, 1633 – November 28, 1667) was a French traveller in the East, who wrote extensively about his journeys. He was also a skilled linguist, a natural scientist and a botanist. He was born in Paris and received his education in the Collège de Navarre. He was a nephew of Melchisédech Thévenot.

The perusal of works of travel moved him to go abroad, and his circumstances permitted him to please himself. Leaving France in 1652, he first visited England, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, and at Rome he fell in with D'Herbelot, who invited him to be his companion in a projected voyage to the Levant. D'Herbelot was detained by private affairs, but Thévenot sailed from Rome in May 1655, and, after vainly waiting five months at Malta, took passage for Constantinople alone.

He remained in Constantinople until the end of the following August, and then proceeded to Smyrna, the Greek islands, and finally to Egypt, landing at Alexandria on New Year's Day, 1657. He stayed for a year in Egypt, then visited Sinai, and, upon returning to Cairo, joined the Lent pilgrim caravan to Jerusalem. He visited the chief places of pilgrimage in Palestine, and, after being twice taken by corsairs, got back to Damietta by sea, and was again in Cairo in time to view the opening of the canal on the rise of the Nile (August 14, 1658).

In January 1659 he sailed from Alexandria in an English ship, taking Goletta and Tunis on the way, and, after a sharp engagement with Spanish corsairs, one of which fell a prize to the English merchantman, reached Leghorn on April 12. He now spent four years at home in studies useful to a traveller, and in November 1663 again sailed for the East, calling at Alexandria and landing at Sidon, whence he proceeded by land to Damascus, Aleppo, and then through Mesopotamia to Mosul, Baghdad and Mendeli.

Here he entered Persia (August 27, 1664), proceeding by Kermanshah and Hamadan to Isfahan, where he spent five months (October 1664 - February 1665), and then joining company with the merchant Tavernier, proceeded by Shiraz and Lar to Bander-Abbasi, in the hope of finding a passage to India. This was difficult, because of the opposition of the Dutch, and though Tavernier was able to proceed, Thévenot found it prudent to return to Shiraz, and, having visited the ruins of Persepolis, made his way to Basra and sailed for India on November 6, 1665, in the ship "Hopewell," arriving at the port of Surat on January 10, 1666.

He was in India for thirteen months, and crossed the country by Golconda to Masulipatam, returning overland to Surat, from which he sailed to Bander-Abbasi and went up to Shiraz. He passed the summer of 1667 at Isfahan, disabled by an accidental pistol-shot; and in October started for Tabriz, but died on the way at Miyana on the November 28, 1667.

Thévenot was an accomplished linguist, skilled in Turkish, Arabic and Persian, and a curious and diligent observer. He was also well skilled in the natural sciences, especially in botany, for which he made large collections in India. His personal character was admirable, and his writings are still esteemed, though it has been justly observed that, unlike John Chardin, he saw only the outside of Eastern life.

The account of his first journey was published at Paris in 1665; it forms the first part of his collected Voyages. The licence is dated December 1663, and the preface shows that Thévenot himself arranged it for publication before leaving on his second voyage. The second and third parts were posthumously published from his journals in 1674 and 1684 (all 4to). A collected edition appeared at Paris in 1689, and a second in 12mo at Amsterdam in 1727 (5 vols.). There is an indifferent English translation by A. Lovell (fol., London, 1687).