The Marzocco and the Shir o Khorshid : * The Origin and Decline of Medici Persian Diplomacy ( 1599 – 1721 )

The Mediterranean and Levantine vicissitudes of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany have, in recent years, attracted increased interest from scholars of the Early Modern period, particularly in the light of historiographical trends that place their focus on connected histories and global history. Although given its regional dimension the history of Tuscany can in actual fact be approached (at least in some respects) with a microhistorical lens, it should always be borne in mind that the extremely active policy conducted by the Grand Dukes, at least in the first 20 years of the seventeenth century, is a unicum in the Italian scenario of the time. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was indeed the only one of the pre-unitary states of the peninsula to adopt a global foreign policy on a par with that of major states such as, for instance, England or Spain. This means that the Grand Dukes were the only sovereigns of a pre-unitary state to seek to enter the nascent global trade circuits (dominated by the Iberian countries and later by the English and Dutch), to try to establish colonies in the Americas and Africa, and to establish and maintain relations with distant states, such as Persia, not only for the sake of prestige.


Introduction
The Mediterranean and Levantine vicissitudes of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany have, in recent years, attracted increased interest from scholars of the Early Modern period, particularly in the light of historiographical trends that place their focus on connected histories and global history. Although given its regional dimension the history of Tuscany can in actual fact be approached (at least in some respects) with a microhistorical lens, it should always be borne in mind that the extremely active policy conducted by the Grand Dukes, at least in the first 20 years of the seventeenth century, is a unicum in the Italian scenario of the time. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was indeed the only one of the pre-unitary states of the peninsula to adopt a global foreign policy on a par with that of major states such as, for instance, England or Spain. This means that the Grand Dukes were the only sovereigns of a pre-unitary state to seek to enter the nascent global trade circuits (dominated by the Iberian countries and later by the English and Dutch), to try to establish colonies in the Americas and Africa, and to establish and maintain relations with distant states, such as Persia, not only for the sake of prestige. 1 * Although generally associated with the lily, one of the most meaningful symbols of the city of Florence was the Marzocco lion, whose best-known image is undoubtedly Donatello's sculpture of a mighty lion with one paw resting on a lily shield. Born in the Republican era, and maintained during the Grand Duchy period, it symbolised the power and independence of Florence, and was such an important symbol of Florentine identity that for the duration of the Medici rule, the Grand Dukes kept a seraglio with lions near Palazzo Vecchio. The Shir o Khorshid is the Persian symbol of the lion and the sun which was used in Persia from the time of the Achaemenid Empire. It was revived under the Safavid dynasty and used as an emblem on banners, armour and even on coins. There is no need to list all the attempts that Tuscany made to go beyond the bounds of the Mediterranean frontiers (such as the attempt to establish colonies in America or Africa, or to create long-range relations with distant states) but it is necessary to remark that of all the roads that the Grand Dukes tried to follow, the only one that brought some concrete results was the one directed towards Persia. The 'Persian path' was taken, almost by chance, by Ferdinando I (r. 1587-1609) who came into contact with Shāh ʿAbbās I (r. 1587-1629) in the early seventeenth century, and was continued in part by his successor Cosimo II (r. . Despite the fact that, after the deaths of Cosimo II and Shāh ʿAbbās, relations between Tuscany and Persia became rarer and more occasional, they lasted until the end of the Safavid dynasty in 1722, that is, until the reign of Cosimo III (r. 1670-1723).
Although we are generally aware, at least in broad outline, of the development of these relations during the first two decades of the seventeenth century, namely the period when Persian diplomacy towards Europe was most active, thanks to the bold and resolute Shāh ʿAbbās I, scholars have never really dealt with their beginning. The same can be said about what happened after Shāh ʿAbbās's death in 1629 and how relations between Tuscany and Persia evolved following the peace between Persia and the Ottoman Empire in 1639. 2 There are several reasons for this: first of all, the dearth of sources, which, regarding Tuscan-Persian relations, became increasingly rare in Florence precisely from the end of the reign of Shāh ʿAbbās I (a reign whose duration also included those of the two most active Grand Dukes, namely Ferdinando I and Cosimo II). 3 Secondly, because of their scarcity, the sources have been studied with a more 'Orientalist' approach by scholars more interested in the documents themselves, their cataloguing and publication. This has meant that the documents have only been analysed in the light of the events closest to them, without placing them in the wider context of Mediterranean relations between Italy, Europe and the non-European world. 4 Thirdly, relations between Tuscany and Persia have usually only been analysed as mere bilateral relations aiming to create an alliance against the Ottomans, without other aspects being taken into account. 5 Finally, it must be remembered that the history of both Tuscany and Persia from the 1630s onwards has generally been considered the history of two states in slow but progressive decline, less and less able to act, and react, in a decisive and effective way and unable to maintain important long-distance connections. This reading is only partially true as historians in recent years have tended to reconsider the extent of the decline of both Tuscany and Persia, at least from an economic point of view since it was undeniable in military and political terms. 6 However, in truth, both states were able not only to maintain relations between themselves and with other states, but in some cases also managed to expand their connections. 7 This article is not intended to show the whole evolution of relations between Medici Tuscany and Safavid Persia during the seventeenth century but rather to focus on the earlier and later parts of these relations. In this way, it will be possible to identify the moment when these relations arose, clarifying the historical context, and the moment when they ended, thus showing how long they actually lasted.
The twofold aim of this article is therefore to propose both a more precise reframing of the relations between Medici Tuscany and Safavid Persia within the Mediterranean and global framework, and a new chronology, all in the light of new archival evidence. To be clear: when I speak of a 'global context', I mean events that took place outside the Mediterranean region, of which Tuscany was part (geographically, politically, diplomatically and economically), but which could have had consequences for the foreign policy of the Grand Duchy. 8 This analysis will also make it possible to outline new research perspectives, especially with regard to Tuscany's foreign policy and its relations with the East.

Historical background
Relations between Tuscany and Persia are traditionally traced back to the period when Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572-85) appointed Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici (brother 6 Until recently, historiography tended to regard the seventeenth century as a period of crisis in all sectors. However, the Tuscan situation has been re-evaluated, particularly with regard to its economic situation, underlining how actually in seventeenth-century Tuscany there was still a fair amount of wealth and the possibility of economic expansion (perhaps, however, slightly overestimating the role of the port of Livorno Although we should not ignore these first contacts between Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici and Safavid Persia during the 1580s, we should not give them undue importance either. In fact, it was only an indirect connection for Tuscany, since it was actually a contact between Persia and the papacy: Vecchietti was an agent of Ferdinando, who at that stage was a cardinal, rather than the later Grand Duke. Indeed, Ferdinando ascended the throne during Giovanni Battista Vecchietti's return journey to Europe, namely after his mission had already been completed. Moreover, the same can be said of the accession to power of Shāh ʿAbbās, the most 'pro-European' of the Safavid rulers, who replaced his predecessor after Vecchietti had already left the Persian court and was probably in Hormuz waiting to leave Persia. This is clearly not a secondary aspect of the question since, as already mentioned, it was during the reign of Shāh ʿAbbās that relations between Persia and Europe reached their zenith. Furthermore, as far as relations with Tuscany were concerned, everything is usually reduced to the relationship between ʿAbbās and Ferdinando I, as if ascending the throne at the same time had created a sort of 'privileged relation' between the two and there had been no other relations apart from those between these two sovereigns. 14 Actually, as we shall see, there was no 'privileged relation' between Tuscany and Persia in the 1580s but only a convergence of interests that gradually led to the first 'encounter' of the two sovereigns between 1599 and 1601, and not before. 15

Converging interests: The origin of Tuscan-Persian diplomacy (1599-1601)
The origin of direct diplomatic relations between Tuscany and Persia is to be found in the geopolitical context of the late 1590s, which saw the Tuscan Grand Duchy heavily involved in the Mediterranean area while Persia was engaged in defending its own both western and eastern borders. Indeed, before the end of the last decade of the sixteenth century, Grand Duke Ferdinando intervened in the civil war in France, supporting Henry IV (r. 1594-1610) both militarily and financially. 16 For his part, Shāh ʿAbbās had inherited such a desperate military situation from his predecessor that the only thing he could do was to try to minimise the losses: with the ongoing war against the 13 On this issue, see BREGE, Tuscany in the Age of Empire, 299-301. 14 I am referring here in particular to the article of Mahnaz Yousefzadeh which refers several times to a 'privileged relation' between Ferdinando I and Shāh ʿAbbās. See MAHNAZ YOUSEFZADEH, 'The Sea of Oman: Ferdinand I, G. B. Vecchietti, and the Armour of Shah ʽAbbās I,' Rivista degli Studi Orientali XC, 1-4 (2017): 51-74, see 51, 57, 59, 61, 71. 15 Although the presence of a couple of undated letters, whose seals bear dates much earlier than 1599, suggests that there may have been contact between Ferdinando I and Shāh ʿAbbās at least ten years earlier, there is actually no concrete evidence that this took place. Mahnaz Yousefzadeh writes that Virgilio Pontecorvo dates both letters to 1590-91; YOUSEFZADEH, 'The Sea of Oman,' 61 n. 37. However, in his article Pontecorvo states very clearly that despite bearing seals with earlier dates, these two letters definitely arrived in Florence after 1601, that is, after Ferdinando I received the embassy led by Sir Anthony Sherley; PONTECORVO, 'Relazioni,' 159-63. 16 On relations with Henry IV and Tuscan participation in the civil war in France, see FURIO DIAZ, Il Granducato di Toscana -I Medici (Turin: UTET, 1987), 285-87.
Ottomans and the constant Uzbek threat to the eastern provinces, he was forced to make a costly peace with the Sultan in which he officially ceded all the provinces that Persia had already lost. Peace was concluded in 1590 with the Treaty of Constantinople, after which Shāh ʿAbbās devoted himself to restoring order in the East and reorganising the state. 17 In this situation, the Shah does not seem to have been very keen on contacting any Western state, and certainly not the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, whose contribution to the Persian cause, at a time when Persia was in great crisis, would have been negligible. 18 Something changed in 1599, however, when simultaneously the Shah began to plan a Persian 'resurgence' and the Grand Duke decided to change his strategy in the Mediterranean: the ambitions of the two sovereigns met and coincided, albeit for different reasons and, one might say, almost by chance.
Aware of the economic damage that the lack of trade with the Ottoman East represented for Tuscany, Ferdinando tried to re-establish trade relations with the Ottoman Sultan (as his predecessors had already done in the late 1570s) by sending a diplomatic mission to Constantinople in 1598. However, it failed miserably in its purpose and confirmed the Ottoman Empire's refusal to collaborate with Tuscany. 19 Officially, the main reason for the Ottoman resolution was that the Grand Duke was not inclined to stop the raids against the Ottomans by the ships of the Knights of St Stephen who, despite supposedly constituting an autonomous chivalric order, depended directly on the Grand Duke of Tuscany (the St Stephen Grand Master) and were an integral part of the Grand Duchy's maritime forces. 20 So, the Ottoman Empire could not be the commercial partner that Ferdinando had hoped for up to that moment and thus became the Grand Duke's number one enemy. This obviously does not mean that before the failure of the Grand Duchy's diplomatic mission relations between Tuscany and the Ottoman Empire had been good: in fact, the Sultan was always regarded as the greatest threat to Catholic Europe, but it was still possible to trade with him, as the Venetians did. However, up to this stage the anti-Ottoman military activities of the Medici Grand Duchy had been limited to piracy, both because the Grand Duke hoped to reopen trade with the Ottomans and because of his military involvement in France.
The Ottoman refusal convinced the Grand Duke that the only way to achieve what he wanted in the East (i.e., to at least succeed in undermining the Venetian monopoly in trade with the Levant) was to try by force. To do so, Ferdinando would present himself as the model of the crusading prince, committed to the front line against the infidel, thereby giving his ambitions a noble end. Thus, on 1 May 1599 the Tuscan fleet attacked the Greek island of Chios, an Ottoman possession since 1566. However, it was a somewhat different attack to usual, because instead of merely looting, the Grand Duke's forces attempted to occupy some strategic points, perhaps with the aim of conquering the island. Although the Tuscans were eventually repelled, the attack was a sort of message to the Sultan: the Grand Duke was warning him that he had gone from being a potential trading partner to his worst enemy. 21 While Ferdinando was waging his 'permanent war' against the Ottomans in the Mediterranean Sea, Shāh ʿAbbās was beginning to plan his war of revenge against the Ottoman Empire. The peace he had to make with the Sultan in 1590 gave him the opportunity to reform the state, restore his power and repel the Uzbek threat to the East. 22 It seems that in the spring of 1599, the Shah was planning to send an ambassador to Hormuz, a Portuguese territory controlled by the Spanish, from where he would then travel to Spain with the probable aim of negotiating a military alliance against the Ottomans before starting hostilities. 23 Right at that moment, some European adventurers led by the English brothers Anthony and Robert Sherley reached the Shah in Persia. 24 Anthony Sherley managed to gain the favour of the Shah, who changed his mind about sending an ambassador to Spain via the Portuguese routes and decided to appoint the Englishman as his ambassador and send him to Europe through Muscovy.
So, while the Persian mission was on its way to Europe, the Grand Duke was looking for a way to strike the Ottoman Empire as hard as possible and, in so doing, achieve something concrete for himself other than military glory. In December 1599, a Syrian dragoman named Michelangelo Corai (Italianised name of Fathullah Qurray) arrived in Florence, claiming to have been sent to Europe by Shāh ʿAbbās with the task of preparing the terrain for the arrival of a wider diplomatic mission. 25 Ferdinando, who, as already mentioned, was embarking on a particularly aggressive and ambitious Mediterranean policy, immediately took an interest in the dragoman's words: the Shah had sent his ambassadors in the hope of establishing an anti-Ottoman alliance with the Catholic states; in return he offered free access to European merchants who were the subjects of his allies, religious freedom for Catholics and protection for Europeans who came to his dominions. Considering that he was already waging his own personal war against the Ottomans, the Grand Duke immediately acted and instructed his agents in Venice (where the embassy was expected to arrive soon) to secretly contact the ambassadors upon their arrival. One of the things Corai told Ferdinando was that his name was well known in Persia, and this was probably due to the mission Vecchietti had carried out at the time of his cardinalate. 27 This should not make us think that Ferdinando was a name familiar to the Shah since, as already mentioned, Giovanni Battista Vecchietti dealt with Shāh Mohammad Khodābande and left before Shāh ʿAbbās took power. Instead, it means that there was a memory in Persia of the diplomatic missions sent from Rome more than a decade earlier and nothing more. Moreover, considering that Corai later entered the service of the Grand Duke, we can imagine that when he arrived in Florence he 'embellished' the truth to win Ferdinando's sympathy.
The Persian ambassadors arrived in Florence in March 1601 and, after two weeks of negotiations, proceeded to Rome to deal with the Pope. Ferdinando gladly accepted the Shah's offers and expressed his willingness to continue the war against the Ottomans and to work to ensure that the other Catholic States also participated. 28 It is necessary to dwell on this point briefly in order to better analyse the diplomatic context: Shāh ʿAbbās was not yet at war with the Ottoman Empire (he would declare war in September 1603), but it is clear that he was preparing to break the peace made in 1590. Although Persia under his leadership had entered a period of modernisation, a century of virtually uninterrupted wars against the Ottomans had taught the Shah that the Ottomans were generally stronger and had more means than the Persians (or at least a better military capacity). As a result, the Shah was prepared to offer a great deal in return for Catholic participation in the war, so that it might relieve Ottoman pressure in the East. From the Grand Duke's point of view, Persia was offering a lot in compensation for something which he was already doing (waging war against the Ottomans) and which he would have done even without Persian friendship. Ferdinando, therefore, could only gain from good relations with Persia: diplomatically, since the alliance with the Shah would sanction the importance of his role in the Mediterranean; economically, because if Persia defeated the Ottomans then he could succeed in carving out his own space in the Levant, which would allow him direct access to trade from the East; politically, since any success in the Levant and the Mediterranean would certainly strengthen the Grand Duke's position within his state, in Italy and in Europe. 29 And if the war was disastrous for the Shah and he was defeated Olschki Editore, 1957), 12-13. 29 Just to give one particularly significant example, the conquest of Cyprus would have brought the Grand Duke not only the possession of a strategic territory in the Levant, but also the title of King of the island (since it was a kingdom) and this would have consequently raised his rank from 'grand ducal' to 'royal.' by the Sultan, then the situation for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany would be the same as before the alliance.
It is no coincidence that in the months immediately following the embassy of March 1601, the Grand Duke and the Pope began to seriously consider the idea of undertaking military action, perhaps together with the Knights of Malta (and anyone else who wished to participate), against the Ottoman territories: in particular, they harboured the idea of attempting to conquer some Greek islands (Cyprus in primis, but also Rhodes or some smaller islands) in order to make them a base for further enterprises. 30 Probably, the belief that he had a powerful ally like Persia behind him made the Grand Duke more audacious in the Levant: the activity of his fleet increased considerably and when the Ottoman Empire was struck by numerous revolts during the first decade of the seventeenth century, the Grand Duke immediately tried to take advantage of the situation by supporting some rebellious pashas and emirs who were supposed to repay his help with commercial privileges and exclusive access for Tuscans to certain ports. 31 In this context, Persia remained an essential element for the success of the Tuscan plans. In 1606, Ferdinando sent one of his agents to Syria to personally assess whether there was a real possibility that the Pasha of Aleppo might be victorious in his confrontation with the Ottomans and that it was therefore worthwhile to help him. When the agent returned to Florence, he produced a report which very clearly stated that without the support of a Christian prince (i.e., the Grand Duke) and above all the King of Persia, there was no hope that the Pasha's revolt would succeed. 32 In the summer of the following year, 1607, encouraged by the military successes that Shāh ʿAbbās was achieving against the Ottomans, Ferdinando attempted the conquest of .. la Soria non si può reggere, né stabilire meglio; che col mezzo delli aiuti del Re di Persia essendo convicino, con numeroso esercito di sua sudditi, et disciplinati soldati; la quale potenzia è sommaria in tali parti à quella del Gran Turcho: sì che con tale mezzo si manterria tali ribelli con potente rigore; al Gran Turcho sarà difficile di ricuperare la Soria per havere a condurre una unita forza competente, o maggiore cominciando a raquistare il perso, dove è necessario che ci sia intervallo di tempo con molto suo disavantaggio per havere a raquistare il tutto, con la lontananza in che si trova; accompangnato dalle molte necessità che à di dovere militare in molte partj.' See ASFi, MdP, 4275, ff. 14-15. These considerations have been erroneously attributed to Michelangelo Corai by Federico Federici, whereas they should be more correctly attributed to Giovanni Altoni, a military engineer and Tuscan captain who carried out the mission to Syria by order of the Grand Duke. The documentation relating to his mission, and showing that the report was written by him, is as follows: ASFi, MdP, 4275, ff. 11-13 (and ff. 14-15). Federici's point can be found in FEDERICI, 'A Servant of Two Masters,' 93-94.
Cyprus (which failed for a variety of reasons related to Venetian hostility to Tuscan ambitions). 33 Then, in the autumn he established a military alliance with the Pasha of Aleppo, ʿAli Jānbulād, and instructed his ambassador (who incidentally was the dragoman Michelangelo Corai) to endeavour to put the Pasha in touch with the Shah so as to coordinate their actions. 34 Unfortunately for the Grand Duke, less than a month after the alliance was signed, the Pasha of Aleppo was defeated by the Ottomans and forced to flee (maybe to Persia). In this situation, the dragoman Michelangelo Corai thought that instead of returning to Tuscany he would serve the Grand Duke better by going to Persia to attempt to convince the Shah to support the Pasha of Aleppo militarily. 35 Corai then went to Persia where he remained until about 1612/1613, when he was forced to flee because of the growing tension with Shāh ʿAbbās. 36 However, during his time at the Safavid court he did much to keep relations between Tuscany and Persia alive, although the Grand Dukes (first Ferdinando and then Cosimo II) never really appreciated the dragoman's free decision-making and the fact that he had presented himself in Persia as the official Tuscan ambassador when this role had never really been formalised (this is clear from a copy of a letter addressed to him in 1612 by the Secretary of State, Curzio Picchena, in which Corai was literally 'dismissed' by the grand ducal government). 37 It is therefore in this context that we can find the actual moment when the Grand Duchy of Tuscany's Persian diplomacy began. 37 '… l'andare in Persia senza ordine ò commessione fu errore non piccolo. Et se pure ella ci voleva andare per suo particolare commodo, non doveva spacciare il nome del Gran Duca, né presentare al Re la sua lettera, la quale non era scritta se non con intenzione e fine diverso, et il Gran Duca allora l'hebbe molto per male [...]. Vostra Signoria sa che non ha in questa corte il più vero né il più costante amico di me, e può credere ancora che io non habbia mancato di fare ogni buono officio per lei; ma in effetto la materia era troppo repugnante; sì che la prego à scusarmi, e dal Signore Iddio le desidero ogni prosperità.' ASFi, MdP, 4275, f. 308. 38 Robert Sherley arrived in Florence in August 1609 and stayed with Cosimo II for almost a month during which the negotiations were largely conducted by the secretaries of state Belisario Vinta and depiction of the Grand Dukes as great friends of the Shah remained stable throughout the century, even as the Grand Duchy (like much of Mediterranean Europe) entered into a general decline that gradually led it to become less and less important. In this context, Tuscany's attention to the East also gradually dwindled. What is more, in the decades following Robert Sherley's embassy, interest in Persia also decreased until, in 1639, Persia and the Ottoman Empire established lasting peace with the Treaty of Zuhāb. This put an end to the role that Persia had until then played as a potential ally of Catholic Europe (and therefore of Tuscany) against the Ottomans, but it did not put an end to relations with Europe, which continued for commercial reasons in particular and for reasons related to the presence of Catholics in the East. 39 At least from a diplomatic point of view, the Grand Dukes still had some credit to spend at the Persian court: a credit built up during the reigns of Ferdinando I and Cosimo II. 40 Indeed, as we shall see, almost every time some Catholic state needed to contact the Shah, it did so by requesting a letter of credence from the Grand Duke as well: I am thinking, for instance, of the different missions sent by Venice during the war of Candia (1645-69) and the war of Morea (1684-99) to ask for support from Persia. 41

Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: A new chronology for Tuscan-Safavid relations
I concluded the previous section, devoted entirely to the origin of diplomatic relations between Tuscany and Persia, with a brief overview on how the two states continued to interact in one way or another in the decades following the Sherley brothers' embassies, without going into detail. This is essentially for two reasons: first, because after 1610 and until at least the years of the Candian War relations between the two states were negligible. Secondly, because, as specified in the introduction, the aim of the article is not to deal with relations between Tuscany and Persia throughout the seventeenth century but to focus specifically on the beginning and the end. This part is, therefore, devoted to the analysis of the last decades of the seventeenth century and the first two of the next, showing the nature of the relations and especially how long they lasted, thus proposing a new chronology for the diplomatic ties.
A reliable chronology has probably never been proposed for the diplomatic relations between Medici Tuscany and Safavid Persia: indeed, while their origin can generally be traced back to the time of Giovanni Battista Vecchietti's mission, no precise moment has ever been identified for their end. Some letters dating back to the 1660s concerning the situation of Catholic missionaries in Nakhchivan could be considered the last exchange of correspondence between the two courts. These documents are also mentioned in the essay by Virgilio Pontecorvo (1949), who was mainly concerned with the publication and translation of the Persian letters of the time of Shāh ʿAbbās. Nevertheless, he points out in the concluding part of his essay that in addition to these letters there was at least one other, dating from the end of the reign of Ferdinando II (r. 1621-70) and relating to the Dominicans in Armenia. 42 These can also be found in the catalogue of Persian manuscripts compiled by Angelo Michele Piemontese in 1989. 43 However, new documents now make it possible to extend by a few decades the period during which the Medici Grand Dukes maintained correspondence with the Safavid Shahs.
Assuming that real official relations between Tuscany and Persia began at the end of 1599 with the arrival in Florence of Michelangelo Corai (although we could move this moment to the arrival of Anthony Sherley's embassy in 1601), we can now focus on the latter part of the seventeenth century and the first two decades of the eighteenth.
As already mentioned, starting from the period following the deaths of Cosimo II (d. 1621) and Shāh ʿAbbās I (d. 1629), relations between the two courts became less intense, or at least so it would seem from the available documentation. With the help of material in other archives (some of which was published in the second half of the nineteenth century) it is possible, even in the absence of Tuscan documentation, to trace some of the Grand Duchy's relations with Persia after 1639 (the 1630s are very poorly documented from a diplomatic point of view). This is precisely the case of some missions sent jointly during the Candian War which I have already mentioned. The first one left Venice immediately after the outbreak of the war and was entrusted to a certain Domenico De Santis, who carried letters from the Pope, the King of Poland, the Republic of Venice, the Emperor and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. the Florence State Archives, 45 and De Santis himself is ambiguous about it: while in a letter he sent to the Venetian Senate he wrote that he also had a letter from the Grand Duke with him, when he found himself journeying to Persia with the well-known traveller Jean Baptiste Tavernier and the Capuchin father Raphaël du Mans, he did not mention the Tuscan letter, but instead listed the names of the other senders. 46 About 20 years later, another mission was sent, this time apparently on the initiative of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had also advocated the appointment of the envoy, the Dominican father Antonio Tani, as Vicar of the East. 47 While there are not many traces left of this diplomatic mission, unlike the case of De Santis, something has remained. The State Archive of Florence has a copy of a credential letter produced by the Venetian Senate for the envoy Tani, who appears to have been a Tuscan and papal envoy: 48 in fact, the mission did not only concern the Candian War (which was still going on) but, above all, some religious issues related to the Catholic missions in Nakhchivan. The envoy was very well received, in 1665, by Shāh ʿAbbās II (r. 1642-66), as can be seen from the report in the National Central Library of Florence. 49 Most of the report concerns the reception of Tani and his companions in Isfahan and specifies that although the Shah had been asked for a private audience, he instead decided to welcome the European delegation with the most possible pomp. 50 In this regard, Tani writes that the Shah expressed to him his much greater appreciation of the European delegation, composed of a few people with a few gifts, to that of the ambassador of the Mughal Emperor, also present in Isfahan at that time, who had instead arrived with an enormous entourage and rich gifts. 51 This leads one to think that the pompous welcome reserved by the Shah for the Europeans was almost a way of humiliating the ambassador from India, with which Persia, at that time, was in dispute over certain Afghan cities. Concerning the subjects to be negotiated, Tani wrote that, in his opinion, the Shah would certainly accept the demands concerning the Catholic missions, but that he would definitely refuse to join the war against the Ottomans. 52 From this time onwards, Tuscan diplomacy towards Persia was increasingly linked to issues related to the protection and recommendation of Catholic missionaries, as suggested by the copies of Italian translations of some Persian letters addressed from the Shah to Pope Clement IX (r.1667-69) held in Florence. 53 These letters were probably brought to Rome in 1673 by some Dominican friars and received by Clement X (r. . 54 Together with the letters to the Pope, the friars also brought a reply from the Shah to a letter sent earlier by Grand Duke Ferdinando II (which has not yet been found). The Grand Duke had died in 1670 and was succeeded by his son Cosimo III (r. 1670-1723), who immediately prepared a very courteous reply for the Shah confirming Tuscany's friendship with Persia. 55 Cosimo III was very active diplomatically towards Persia and maintained fairly regular correspondence with the last Safavid Shahs. While little is known of this aspect of his foreign policy, his great interest in the East and the world, more generally, is well documented. 56 However, unlike his predecessors, the complicated domestic and international situation he inherited in Tuscany meant that he was unable to achieve much concrete action, unlike Ferdinando I, Cosimo II and, to a certain extent, Ferdinando II. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from being very active in relations with the East, presenting himself as one of the protectors of Eastern Christians and imagining great military and commercial ventures with Persia. 57 Still in the 1680s, the Grand Duke had two other letters prepared for the Shah: one thanking him for the protection granted to all foreigners and Christians who travelled to and settled in Persia, 58 and another referring to the envoy of the Dominican magistro Guglielmo Felle to Persia to negotiate stronger protection for the Christians and Dominicans in the Shah's territories. 59 Previously, as reported in an avviso to the Grand Duke, Felle had only been allowed to travel to Persia because of the Grand Duke's recommendations. 60 At the outbreak of the Morean War (1684-99), Cosimo III was willing to send military aid to the Venetians, who were fighting against the Ottoman Empire. In addition, he tried to find out whether Persia still had the capacity to fight against the Ottomans. The clearest answer to this issue came from the French traveller Jean Chardin (1643-1713), his great friend and correspondent for many years, who wrote to him that the Persians were no longer able to fight because of the idleness and luxuries to which they had fallen prey in recent decades. 61 Indeed, between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, like Tuscany, Persia experienced a gradual decline, which may have been more limited economically than previously thought, but was certainly significant from a political and military point of view.
In the last decade of the seventeenth century, Cosimo III sent several more missives to Persia, again in favour of the Catholic missions and the religious travellers who had to journey through or to those lands. Shāh Sultān Hosein (r. 1694-1722), the last Safavid sovereign, usually replied gladly to the Tuscan letters, once again demonstrating how, even in a historical moment considered to be one of general crisis, Tuscany and Persia maintained diplomatic ties.
The almost perpetual state of war between Catholic Europe and the Ottoman Empire, however, did not prevent the Church from continuing to send missionaries to the East. For their journeys, the missionaries needed many credentials. These credentials were an integral part of diplomatic practices in the modern era: the issue of being able to identify with certainty the person one was dealing with or who claimed to be the envoy of some sovereign was of primary importance. The secretariats of the various states were extremely concerned about this issue and credentials were essential. 62 Moreover, besides proving that the person carrying them was an official representative of a ruler, they were the main feature of the ceremonies in which the ruler, in this case the Shah, would welcome the ambassador. 63 This kind of letter was regularly provided by all Catholic rulers, but those of the Grand Duke of Tuscany were in great demand, particularly for those journeying to Persia. For instance, already in 1684, the French monk Louis Marie Pidou de Saint-Olon (Bishop of Baghdad from 1687 to 1717) had travelled to Persia thanks to a grand ducal recommendation, 64 and in 1691 (c.) the same Saint-Olon requested a letter from Cosimo III allowing him to travel to Isfahan to deal with some matters with Shāh Sultān Hosein, saying that grand ducal letters were always well received at the Persian court. 65 In 1693, the above-mentioned Guglielmo Felle was again authorised by the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide to go to the East, 66 and once again he asked for the support of the Grand Duke, who had a new letter of recommendation drawn up for him. 67 As with Pidou de Saint-Olon's request, it was emphasised that grand ducal credentials were particularly appreciated in Persia. 68 In 1694, Cosimo III wrote a letter to the Shah requesting that the Discalced Carmelites be allowed to return to their houses in New Julfa, from which they had been expelled. In this message, the Grand Duke emphasised that he appreciated the fact that his 'intercessions' were always welcomed by the Persian court and that he hoped that this request would also be granted. 69 Other documents relating to Persia prove the diplomatic support the Grand Duke continued to give the missionaries, also through foreign ambassadors: in a missive written by the Discalced Carmelite Friar Elia of St Albert we find thanks for a letter that the Grand Duke had written to the Shah in favour of the Catholics, which had been presented to the Persian ruler by the Portuguese ambassador Gregorio Pereira Fidalgo on his mission between 1696 and 1697. 70 In 1697 Pietro Paolo Palma, Archbishop of Ankara, asked the Grand Duke to write letters in favour of the Catholic missions throughout the East. For this, Cosimo provided him with a letter for the Shah and the Mughal emperor. 71 One of the last contacts between Medici Tuscany and Safavid Persia concerned the mission of the Capuchin Felice Maria da Sellano (1656-1720), who was sent as Another letter, dated 1698, arrived in Florence from the Shah assuring that the Grand Duke's request for permission for the Discalced Carmelites' return to New Julfa to restore their church had been granted. 79 It is probably a reply to the letter sent in 1694, perhaps through Elia of St Albert or the Portuguese ambassador Pereira Fidalgo. Indeed, according to the Latin translation provided to the Grand Duke, the Shah had ordered the text to be drafted in 1698, a date that would coincide with the years of the aforementioned Portuguese mission. 80 Cosimo's reply was prepared on 15 August 1705, which confirms the hypothesis that the Persian letter, albeit dated 1698, reached Florence in the early years of the following century. It is interesting to see how Cosimo III both expressed his satisfaction with the Shah's decision and reminded him of his devotion to his friendship with Persia, which had endured since the time of the heroic Shāh ʿAbbās the Great ('[...] da tempi antichi, nominatamente dal di eroica memoria CIAH ABBAS MAGNO'). 81 A draft of a letter to the Shah dated 19 September 1714 contains a very curious request from the Grand Duke: Cosimo III asked Shāh Sultān Hosein to send a young boy of about 12 years old from one of the most remote regions of the empire to Tuscany, and as a gift he sent the Shah a white handkerchief made of a fireproof material ('un fazzoletto bianco composto di tali materie, che a porlo sulla fiamma del fuoco non brucia, ma resiste'). 82 This request was joined by another in which Cosimo asked the Persian ruler to intervene in favour of the Catholic missionaries in Georgia. 83 A few years later, in 1718, another letter was written requesting protection for the Catholic missionaries in Georgia: 84 both this and the earlier letters from the start of the eighteenth century have no Persian replies (or at least they have not yet been found).
The situation in Georgia did not improve much, as in February 1719 Cosimo III again requested the 'strong patronage' of the Shah, without which the Catholics in the Persian territories could not live in safety. 85 News from the same period informed the Grand Duke that the Orthodox Patriarch of Tiflis, who had persecuted the Catholic mission in Georgia to a considerable extent, had been brought to trial before the governor of Yerevan by order of the Shah. This suggests that, even though no Persian letters have been found on the subject, Shāh Sultān Hosein had agreed to the requests received from the Pope and Cosimo III. 86 requested one of the Grand Duke's convincing letters about Persian matters. 87 The issue this time concerned the appointment of the Dominican Angelo Ferri (or Arcangelo Ferri) as Archbishop of Nakhchivan after the death of his predecessor. 88 It is possible that the Shah never replied to these letters since, exactly one year later, Persia was invaded by an Afghan army which besieged and conquered Isfahan, thus causing the end of the Safavid dynasty and therefore also cutting off relations between the Safavids and the Medicis.

Final remarks and research perspectives
The Medici dynasty ended just over a decade after the Safavid dynasty, during the reign of Gian Gastone (r. 1723-37), putting a definitive stop to the relations between Tuscany and Persia that had begun more than a century before.
It is evident, however, that just as the last Grand Dukes of Tuscany were able to maintain contact with Safavid Persia until the end, the Hapsburg-Lorraine dynasty could have done the same with the dynasties that came to rule Persia thereafter. In this sense, one possible direction of research could be to analyse any relations there may have been between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany after the change of the ruling dynasty and Persia following the fall of the Safavids.
Rereading Tuscan-Persian diplomacy by placing it in the broad context in which Grand Duke Ferdinando I sought to operate has clarified both how and why these relations were born and developed, as well as who the main actors were. The figure of the dragoman Michelangelo Corai in particular, although increasingly the focus of historians' attention, still deserves to be explored in greater depth.
On the other hand, in the light of the new and more extensive chronology proposed from new archival evidence regarding relations between the Medicis and the Safavids, it is certainly useful to rediscover Tuscan foreign policy, particularly from the reign of Cosimo III (but also of Ferdinando II). Cosimo's reign has indeed always been considered a mere period of decline, aggravated by his wasteful expenditure to obtain the royal treaty. Yet, as we have seen, it was also a moment when Tuscany was still extremely vital and 'deeply immersed' in the global world of the time. Cosimo III was a person with many interests and, above all, a ruler with a high conception of his role. These personality characteristics need to be rediscovered since this is what led him to engage in a great deal of diplomacy, maintaining an extensive exchange of correspondence with agents, travellers, missionaries and sovereigns, even from very distant kingdoms such as those of the Shah or the Mughal emperor. Moreover, the continuous diplomatic participation in favour of the religious missions in Armenia and Georgia also opens up prospects for research into the relations between Tuscany, the papacy, the religious representatives in those regions and their rulers.
It is also possible to reassess the diplomacy conducted by the last Shahs like Shāh Soleimān (r. 1666-94) and Shāh Sultān Hosein, whose reigns have always been depicted as mere periods of decline, despite the expansion of their diplomatic networks.
Moreover, I think it is necessary to once again emphasise the great importance of research on Italian sources regarding Safavid matters, as pointed out by Jean Aubin in the past. 89 The Italian documentation demonstrates the importance of the role played by Persia in the global strategy of a small European power like Tuscany, and provides new elements to understand the political and cultural attitude of Safavid Persia towards Europe: information that we would hardly find in Persian sources. A rediscovery of Italian sources, mainly from archival research, is therefore also essential in order to 'correct' the historiographic perception of relations between Safavid Persia and Europe, which is inevitably dominated by the study of relations between the Safavids and the great powers. Indeed, they can show that in the seventeenth century, and even a little beyond, there were still small and medium-sized states capable of pursuing their own more or less ambitious policies.
The time when Ferdinando I came into contact with Persia was particularly favourable for a dynamic ruler like him. The alliance with Persia was only one of the many paths the ambitious Grand Duke tried to take, and perhaps the only one that was not a dead end. In a time when there seemed to be plenty of opportunities to achieve something concrete in the Levant, Persia seemed to be the perfect ally to rely on. However, even after the failure of these ambitions and the beginning of a period of less intense contacts, and right until the brutal end of the Safavid dynasty, relations remained cordial as is also shown by the curious exchange of 'gifts' in 1714 (a fireproof handkerchief in exchange for a Tatar boy). 90 Both the Mediterranean and global contexts of the period remain of fundamental importance in framing the Persian affairs of the Tuscan Grand Duchy. Nevertheless, there is a great difference between the late seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth, which can also be reflected in the way Tuscan-Safavid relations are analysed. With regard to the beginning of the seventeenth century and the development of these relations, it is unthinkable that their nature can be understood without considering the broader framework of international relations. With regard to the reign of Cosimo III, on the other hand, it is perhaps possible to conduct a somewhat more circumscribed and less 'global' analysis, given that between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth these relations were also of more limited.