Álvaro da Costa’s journey to Persia and Turkey (1611), the ruins of Babylon, and the riddles of globalization

A RETURN VOYAGE IN CONTEXT

The decades immediately before and after Costa’s trip were unique as concerned the intense contact between the Hispano-Luso and Safavid monarchs. Philip II and Philip III sent letters and messengers to the shah, who for his part had European informants and sent ambassadors to points throughout Europe (Rubiés, 2011Rubiés, J. P. (2011) “A dysfunctional empire? the European context to don García de Silva y Figueroa’s embassy to Shah Abbas.” In: R. M. Loureiro, and M. Resende, eds., Estudos sobre Don García de Silva y Figueroa e os Comentarios da embaixada à Pérsia. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar, pp. 85-134.; Gulbenkian, 1972Gulbenkian, R. (1972) L’ambassade en Perse de Luis Pereira de Lacerda. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. ). Together with other memoranda, and the minutes from the Council of State, one fruit of these diplomatic efforts was the publication in 1604 of Relaciones de don Juan de Persia, by Uruch Bech (or Beg), in which the shah’s emissary wrote about relations between the two kingdoms.

The first of the three most characteristic features of this period was a sensation that a strategic and diplomatic window in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire was opening up, a feeling exemplified by the comment by Father António Gouveia, one of the emissaries, that the Turks were “the common enemy of everyone” (Gouveia, 1611, fos. 48b-49r, and 50rGouveia, A. (1611) Relaçam em que se tratam as guerras e grandes victorias que alcanço o grande rey da Persia Xá Abbas do grão Turco. Lisbon: Pedro Crasbeeck.). Second, evangelization was a constant presence. The papacy and the Spanish monarchy both spoke in messianic terms, inspired in part by their hopes for conversion of inhabitants of the territory and even of Abbas I. And third, the health of trade with Asia, both overland and with Persian Gulf ports, was of prime concern, with special attention being paid to rivalries with the Dutch and English companies operating in the area. This growing and fascinating exchange of information, however, did not give rise to lasting reciprocal influence, and there are few traces of Portugal’s influence in Persia (Cunha, 2018Cunha, J. T. e (2018) “Portugal. Relations with Persia in the Early Modern Age (1500-1750).” In: Encyclopaedia Iranica. Available at: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/portugal-i [Accessed 26 May 2018]). Although military tensions vis-à-vis the Ottoman Empire and the Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean never disappeared, and although Abbas I’s policies toward Western travelers and Christian missionaries underwent important changes toward the end of his reign, generally it was the contacts, not the subsequent cooling-off, that have most drawn historians’ attention. As is often the case with global history, more attention is paid to integration and harmony than to discord and disintegration (Adelman, 2017Adelman, J. (2017) “What is global history now?” Aeon [Digital magazine]. Available at: https://aeon.co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment [Accessed: 14 Dec. 2018].).

Two individuals stand out in this context of increasing communications. Firsts, the very peculiar English traveler Anthony Sherley (or Shirley). Recent studies rightly point to the global nature of his geopolitical view in the seventeenth century (Subrahmanyam 2011, pp. 116-132Subrahmanyam, S. (2011) Three Ways to be an Alien. Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press.; Alloza, Bunes and Martínez Torres, 2010Alloza, A., de Bunes, M. A. and Martínez Torres, J. A., eds. (2010) Anthony Sherley, Peso de todo el mundo (1622). Discurso sobre el aumento de esta monarquía (1625). Madrid: Polifemo.). Sherley’s main work, El peso de todo el mundo, which he wrote for the Count-Duke of Olivares, in fact described Persia as being part of a world complex of the monarchy’s friends and enemies (Sherley, 1622, fos. 80r-85vSherley, A. (1622) Peso de todo el mundo: esto es, el estado presente y gobierno político que hay en distintas partes. Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE], Mss. 999.). Second, García de Silva y Figueroa, whose writings during his period as ambassador (1614-24) not only include minute details about Abbas I’s government but also give the impression that Europeans were absolutely familiar with the kingdom’s political and cultural vicissitudes. Of course, these two men were not of the same caliber as Costa. Sherley and Silva y Figueroa spent years in Persia while Costa was there for barely two months. Costa’s account was far less incisive, but we should not let Costa’s motivation and interpretative logic be eclipsed by the growing attention to these other figures and global history.

In sum, Costa’s route through Persia and Turkey was not completely unknown but nor was it all that familiar in the early modern age. Although before 1500 knowledge obviously was quite limited, it is difficult to refer to the “discovery” of Persia in the early modern age. Rather, the matter should make us think carefully about the notion of “encounter” along the lines recently proposed by Nandini Das concerning contacts between England and Japan. The goal would be to combine the traditional definition of encounter -or journey -as an isolated event with the study of other more expansive processes of the creation and circulation of knowledge (Das, 2016, pp. 1344-1345Das, N. (2016) “Encounter as Process: England and Japan in the Late Sixteenth Century.” Renaissance Quarterly, 69, 4, 2016, pp. 1343-1368. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/690315 ). Persia and Mesopotamia moreover were peculiar travel scenarios. Due to particular political and military conditions, Europeans were not able to penetrate equally throughout the region, which remained an area partially mapped and semi-discovered. But far from being an unknown terra australis, and even further away from the unexpected apparition of the American continent, the past of the region was especially prone to the use of previous interpretative frameworks. The attempts to locate ancient monuments and cities and to recover biblical toponymy were very common but did seldom convey a notion of discovery. Instead, authors sought to establish their authority as eyewitness in face of previous accounts and to defend the validity and accuracy of their observations and identifications. As the examples of Babylon and the tower of Babel show, Europeans produced contrasting or overlapping theories, and struggled to collate local information with textual traditions.

Like many travel accounts of this period, Costa’s text contains all sorts of varied information and can be classified in many different ways. Since early descriptions of Persia include a range of data that goes from botany and information about ancient Mesopotamian civilizations to ethnographic and historical commentary, the interpretative challenge lies in understanding the general logic with which travelers grouped together all these elements. The first page of Costa’s treatise states, “the Portuguese nation was the first to undertake long-distance navigation on the ocean” echoing other discovery narratives and clearly similar to the foundational words of Luis de Camões (in Lusiadas, 1572, Canto 1, I, 3), “where sail was never spread before.” But Costa’s object was not to narrate the glories of the Portuguese nation; rather, he had more concrete personal motivations, and it is worthwhile looking into these circumstances in order to understand the personal meaning of his voyage.

What little we know about Costa -one of several figures with the same name, who must not be confused- (Rosa, 2013Rosa, M. L., ed. (2013) D. Álvaro da Costa e a sua descendência, séculos XV-XVII: poder, arte e devoção. Lisbon: Instituto de Estudos Medievais.) comes from his Tratado da viagem. He was born in Lisbon, had traveled to Ormuz in 1601 to serve his king as “soldier, captain, and captain major,” and went on to Goa when the new viceroy, Ruy Lourenço de Tavora, arrived in 1609. This last move coincided with the appointment of his brother-in-law Gaspar de Sousa as governor of the Malaca fortress. Once in Goa, Costa learned that in fact someone else had been appointed, but he decided to stay until a lawsuit he filed was resolved. After that took place, in 1610, his “old wish to return to Portugal by land” took hold of him once again (Costa, fo. 17). Costa had managed to integrate himself well in the relatively unknown world of India, but still he longed to return to his home country.

He believed that his work had come to an end and wished to request that his service papers be finalized, “as everyone else did,” but his account is not the usual recitation of military accomplishments. He barely refers to clashes in Ormuz in 1608, “in a war when the Persian Moors took action against the Portuguese” (Costa, fo. 17). This might refer to Shah Abbas I’s advance on Ormuz and the taking of Queshm or perhaps a battle in Lar/Lara in which the Portuguese backed a rebellion against the shah, in response to which Persia blocked traffic of goods from the island of Ormuz.⁴Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo [ANTT], MMCG, cx. 6-2ªE, fos. 651-655, cit. in Cunha 2007, p. 224. Archivo General de Simancas [AGS], Estdo, 2864, fo. 89v, cit. in Couto and Loureiro 2009, p. 185. Some of Costa’s descriptions are implicitly based on a military vision of world history, but if his goal had been to win some sort of favor or grant, he surely would have provided more detail, along with the expense and dangers of his military career.

The reasons why Costa chose the land route “through Persia and Turkey” are quite clear: he wanted to “visit the holy city of Jerusalem and then go to Portugal, visiting kingdoms and provinces that I could not see if I returned by sea” (Costa, fo. 17-18). As Nunes Carreira (2003, p. 65)Carreira, J. N. (2003) “A terra santa em relatos portugueses de viagem: séc. XVI-XVII.” Cadmo, 13, pp. 55-78. has said, his desire to visit the Holy Land weighed heavily in the written account of his journey. His wish to be in Jerusalem for Easter in 1611 explains, among other things, why he left Baghdad and Aleppo so quickly. The full title of Costa’s manuscript emphasizes the centrality of his objective; it announces not only a “particular account” of the entire Holy Land but also refers explicitly to Jerusalem among all the other “cities, lands, towns, kingdoms and provinces” of his journeys. His goals were similar to those of other travelers, for example António Tenreiro (1560)Tenreiro, A. (1560) Itinerário de António Tenrreyro Cavaleyro da Ordem de Cristo, em que se contem como da India veio por terra a estes reinos de Portugal. Coimbra: Antonio Mariz., who also made explicit his “desire to go to Jerusalem.” And his many references to his efforts to visit holy sites despite being ill make his account similar to others in the pilgrimage genre. Costa wrote at far greater length to establish his image as a good Christian than as the protagonist of military adventures in India.

Costa therefore did not share the usual objectives of travelers in Persia, as described by Rudi Matthee; he was not an official envoy, nor did he publish his work for personal gain, nor did he have any particular humanist or erudite expertise (Matthee, 2009, p. 142Matthee, R. (2009) “The Safavids Under Western Eyes: Seventeenth-Century European Travelers to Iran.” Journal of Early Modern History, 13, 2, pp. 137-171. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/138537809X12498721974624 ; 2012, p. 13Matthee, R. (2012) “Safavid Iran Through the Eyes of European Travelers.” Harvard Library Bulletin, 23, 1-2, pp. 10-24.). Neither does his work describe the growth of Christianity in far-flung corners of the world, as in the correspondence of Augustinians and Carmelites in Persia (Gil Fernández, 2006, pp. 255-265; 2009, pp. 37-119Gil Férnandez, L. (2006-2009) El imperio luso-español y la Persia safavida, 2 vols. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española.; Ortega García, 2012, p. 168Ortega García, P. (2012) “Juan Tadeo de san Eliseo (1574-1634).” Kalakorikos, 17, pp. 161-183.). In contrast to Pietro della Valle’s “enormous wish” to travel east “because of the various curiosities I wished to see and observe,” (Valle, ed. 1661, p. 556Valle, P. della (1661) Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle il pellegrino. Venice: Paolo Baglioni.) most of the kingdoms and provinces Costa visited were actually in Europe. Chapters 27-38, nearly one-third of the account, take place in France and Italy, most notably in Rome, to which Costa traveled as soon as he disembarked in Marseille. Rome was doubly attractive to him; not only was it a pilgrimage site, it also preserved its ancient imperial spirit. In his case, the curiositas associated with the secularization of travel in the modern age gave way to pietas, and in this regard he was similar to other Christian pilgrims drawn to holy places (Groves, 2012, p. 683Groves, B. (2012) “‘Those Sanctified Places Where our Sauiours Feete had Trode’: Jerusalem in Early Modern English Travel Narratives.” Sixteenth Century Journal, 43, 3, pp. 681-700.). In short, his was a return trip to key sites in a known world.

Return trips to Europe during the “age of discoveries” have drawn much less attention from historians, and we know very little about the reasons for returning or the lives of those who returned. But Costa’s route, as already mentioned, is not entirely unique or unprecedented; it has similarities to other Portuguese works of the time. Tenreiro presented himself as a pioneer in these return trips, saying “it was a new and strange thing in this kingdom to see a man coming from India to Portugal by land” (1560, sign. ATenreiro, A. (1560) Itinerário de António Tenrreyro Cavaleyro da Ordem de Cristo, em que se contem como da India veio por terra a estes reinos de Portugal. Coimbra: Antonio Mariz.). Portuguese studies of this subgenre have shown that in the following decades returnees included the surgeon Mestre Affonso, Gaspar de São Bernardino, Nicolau da Orta Rebelo, Pedro Teixeira (the translator of a Persian history), Sebastião Manrique, and Manuel Godinho (Fuente del Pilar, 2005, pp. 629-630Fuente del Pilar, J. J. (2005) “Pedro Teixeira y su viaje por Mesopotamia.” Arbor, 180, 711-712, pp. 627-643. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2005.i711/712.463 ).

Copies and appropriations (whether acknowledged or not) among the various authors were common to all early modern travel literature, and Iberian accounts of Persia were no exception (Matthee, 2012, p. 14Matthee, R. (2012) “Safavid Iran Through the Eyes of European Travelers.” Harvard Library Bulletin, 23, 1-2, pp. 10-24.). Mestre Affonso took part of Tenreiro’s Itinerario in his own account, and there have been detailed analyses of the similarities of the texts by São Bernardino and Orta Rebelo (Resende, 2014, p. 377Resende, V. (2014) “Ytinerario de Mestre Affonso, solurgiao mor que foi da India.” In: D. Thomas, and J. A. Chesworth, ed., Christian-Muslim relations 1500-1900. Volume 6, Western Europe (1500-1600). Leiden: Brill, pp. 377-394. ; Carreira, 2011Carreira, J. N. (2011) “Relação da Jornada e Itinerario da Índia: contactos e dependencias.” Anais de História de Além-Mar, 12, pp. 139-152.; Serrão, 1972Serrão, J. V. (1972) Un voyageur portugais en Perse au début du XVIIe siècle, Nicolau de Orta Rebelo. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.). On occasion we find references and commentary regarding previous texts. Describing how he had been attacked by thieves, for example, Orta Rebelo said they were the same dangerous thieves described earlier by Fray Pantaleão de Aveiro in his Itinerario da Terra Sancta. Orta Rebelo also referred to a previous “Castilian itinerary” which should not be confounded with the works of the Spanish ambassador García de Silva y Figueroa.⁵Nicolau de Orta Rebelo, Do caminho que fés da India vido por terra Nicolao dorta natural de Sanctos, 1607. BNP COD. 341, fos. 81 and 94. Cit. in Nunes Carreira 1985a, p. 85n. All these accounts have a certain standardized approach to narrative, and certain tropes appear again and again, even if we do not take into account the copies. Costa’s work lies squarely within this body of work and shares its itinerary with many previous accounts, but it stands out for its interpretation of the Mesopotamian past.

EARLY MODERN TRAVELS THROUGH PERSIA AND THE LIMITS OF OBSERVATION

The study of travel in the early modern age generally assumes its free and individual nature, praising, for example, travelers’ “restless, brave, and individualist spirits” (Córdoba, 2005, p. xvCórdoba, J. M. (2005) “Presentación: las huellas borradas.” Arbor, 180, 711-712, pp. xiii-xxiii.). This is so in part because their accounts tend to minimize the role of companions and highlight individual protagonists who seemingly triumphed over all circumstances. But most travelers in Persia were in fact traveling with servants, interpreters, and companions of varying types. Costa embarked in Goa for Ormuz on September 9, 1610, along with two men and other servants, among whom only Joseph da Cunha (possibly in charge of writing the text, or parts of it) was identified. Furthermore, adventurers’ alleged freedom of movement is questionable given that many of them could not move about freely in Persia but rather were subject to the needs of larger groups such as the caravans of camels that periodically were driven toward the Near East.⁶See map in Graça, A visão do Oriente, pp. 315-16.

The practical conditions of travel in Persia also favored a linear vision of space. Distances between the points along the way were measured in days and from east to west; travelers were unable to capture changes in longitude despite the fact that the trip also went from south to north. This way of comprehending space is similar to the linear conception of the first “spatial imagination” of sixteenth-century colonial powers, which did not exactly correspond to the geometric cartography developed after 1492 (Padrón, 2002, pp. 31-35Padrón, R. (2002) “Mapping Plus Ultra: Cartography, Space, and Hispanic Modernity.” Representations, 79, 1, pp. 28-60. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2002.79.1.28 : Cosgrove, 2001, pp. 99-101Cosgrove, D. (2001) Apollo’s Eye. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.). Inland Persia and Turkey were very different cartographic challenges han the coastline. For Portuguese cartographers during this era, the inland movement, which meant leaving behind their world of technical expertise, was an “epistemological leap” (Biedermann, 2011, p. 369Biedermann, Z. (2011) “Um viajante sem mapas? Figueroa e a cartografia da Pérsia.” In: R. M. Loureiro and M. Resende, eds., Estudos sobre Don García de Silva y Figueroa e os Comentarios da embaixada à Pérsia. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar, pp. 367-393.). Their subsequent caution explains why cartographic “leadership” concerning the Persian interior lay in maps published in Venice or even in Amsterdam, based on commercial and diplomatic information. As Zoltan Biedermann suggested (2011, pp. 385 and 390Biedermann, Z. (2011) “Um viajante sem mapas? Figueroa e a cartografia da Pérsia.” In: R. M. Loureiro and M. Resende, eds., Estudos sobre Don García de Silva y Figueroa e os Comentarios da embaixada à Pérsia. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar, pp. 367-393.) regarding Silva y Figueroa’s travels, this “textual cartography” was able to provide strategic knowledge despite being tied to the land and lacking a bird’s eye view of the territory. Terrestrial maps were not only less precise, but they also employed different explanatory methods. The ways in which Costa and his contemporaries used a variety of sources of information (including local guides) illustrate the persistence of literary and even oral cartography.

Costa’s trip through Persia was quick, and his speed was probably dictated by the rhythm of the expedition he joined. He left Shiraz on January 2, arriving in Baghdad on February 21. On March 12 he was in Aleppo, on the 23^rd he was in Damascus, and on April 1 he was in Jerusalem. This affected how Costa interpreted the signs of the past he encountered en route, particularly how he described ruins in ancient cities. Between Hoveyzeh and Baghdad, for example, he and his caravan companions could see the remains of a “large city, with no other trace than the tiles and bricks scattered about the ground” (Costa, fo. 62). The Portuguese traveler Pedro de Teixeira similarly wrote that he remembered having seen, “from a half-league away, a large house with a high tower where the tomb and body of the holy prophet Ezekiel lies” (Teixeira, 1610, p. 102Teixeira, P. (1610) “Relación del camino que hize dende la India hasta Italia” In: Relaciones de Pedro Teixeira, Antwerp: Hyeronimo Verdussen.). Orta Rebelo had a very similar experience, as will be noted below, when he tried to approach the Tower of Babel. This sort of observation from a distance of barely identifiable remains was relatively normal along the Persian route. Costa’s testimony makes it clear he did not always have the time or ability to examine the ruins that travelers were so interested in. But his personal interpretation of the remains he encountered during his trip shows that it was possible to discover very different things according to the particular theoretical organization of one’s observations.

The dynamics between the practical limits of observation and the theoretical frameworks that Costa used in his interpretations are apparent at the point where he reached some architectural remains “that the Moors commonly call the arch of Nebuchadnezzar.” This marks the only time Costa managed to get close to the structure he was describing, and furthermore is a good example of his methods of analysis of reality. His view of what is today known as the Archway of Ctesiphon (in Taq Kasra, some 30 km southwest of Baghdad) is also interesting because it predates that of Pietro de la Valle and because many other contemporary travelers had to settle for seeing the ruins from a distance. For Costa, this time the usual conditions of travel played in his favor given that “many people in the caravan left the road and went there,” and he simply followed (Costa, fo. 71).

Both when they were part of expeditions with fixed destinations and when they had more leeway with their visits to Persia, Europeans still depended enormously on local sources and interpreters. Costa did at first, but he was sure of himself and he tried to complement and supplement the information they gave him. In the case of Ctesiphon’s Archway, first, he said he had seen the “sumptuous” building “close up” and admired its size and the quality of construction. The “age” of the building was another important cause of surprise, and he believed they were the oldest ruins he had ever seen. Next, Costa stated that it was not an arch, “as they call it,” but rather part of a vault that had once formed part of a temple nave, whose largest section “had fallen and was in ruins” (Costa, fo. 71). But Costa had no doubt that the place was linked to Nebuchadnezzar, and, relying on the Bible’s superior cultural authority, he used the Book of Daniel to propose that this was the temple that had housed the golden image (Costa, fo. 70). Yet Costa ignored an important detail, as Daniel 3:1 clearly states that the statue was in the plain of Dura, which does not make sense if there was a temple built to house the image. So he combined his first-person observations, which correctly told him there had been a complete building there, with an erroneous interpretation based on textual sources and local informants.

As this incident shows, travelers’ most frequent intellectual strategy for dealing with often partial or insufficient information was to combine local information with textual sources. Fray Gaspar de São Bernardino, for example, relied upon many allusions and quotations from classical and ecclesiastical sources to round out his work (Carreira, 1985b, p. 346Carreira, J. N. (1985b) “Frei Gaspar de S. Bernardino: um exegeta ‘itinerante’.” Didaskalia, 15, 2.). But using other written sources did not entirely solve the problem of veracity, given that among the sources used was Beroso’s false chronicle, nor did it eliminate travelers’ problems of imagination. Unlike Costa, São Bernardino could not visit the remains of the “arch like a main chapel” situated three leagues to the south of Baghdad, the one that “the Turks call Selmon [sic.] Pac.” So, given the lack of direct information, he explained its construction with an anecdote he invented. According to that account, Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad and the wife of Ali, “ordered that it be built so God would give her sons” (São Bernardino, 1611, fo. 108rSão Bernardino, G. de (1611) Itinerario da India por terra a este reino de Portugal com a discripçam de Hierusalem. Lisbon: Vicente Alvares.). The solution transformed the usual practices of European Christian rulers into generic Islamic history and illustrates how the mix of local information with travelers’ knowledge could be entirely idiosyncratic.

The Italian Pietro della Valle stands out both for his use of texts as interpretive resources and for the transparency with which he spoke of his method. According to him, every day he diligently wrote “a Diary, precisely noting down whatever I see and encounter, with thousands of circumstances and details” (Valle, 1661, p. 552Valle, P. della (1661) Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle il pellegrino. Venice: Paolo Baglioni.). But he held onto these notes and contrasted them in Italy with other books and “knowledgeable people” so as to resolve any questions that observation had not allowed him to answer (Valle, 1661, p. 592Valle, P. della (1661) Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle il pellegrino. Venice: Paolo Baglioni.). This approach is typical of a specific type of antiquarian trip, which is especially marked by seeing and reconstructing the past in relation to ancient explanatory texts (Vine, 2010, pp. 141-143Vine, A. (2010) In Defiance of Time. Antiquarian Writing in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.). It also confirms that observation and description were relatively independent actions in the early modern era (Rubiés, 1991, pp. 243-244Rubiés, J. P. (1991) “Hugo Grotius’s Dissertation On the Origin of the American Peoples and the Use of Comparative Methods.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 52, 2, pp. 221-244. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2709526 ). Della Valle visited the so-called arch of Nebuchadnezzar, ordered that a drawing of the remains be done in 1616, and in the manuscript version of his diary he stated they dated back to the Bible. Nevertheless, the published version of his letters vehemently rejected that option, saying some “present-day Hebrew idiots” had told him it was Nebuchadnezzar’s temple while he was more prone to believe the information provided by some Muslim inhabitants of Baghdad (Valle, 1650, pp. 731-733Valle, P. della (1650) Viaggi di Pietro della Valle il pellegrino. Rome: Vitale Mascardi.; Buroni, 2012, p. 1426Buroni, M. (2012) “Displaced Buildings. Pietro della Valle, the Tower of Babel, and the Biography of Archeological Objects.” In: The Challenge of the Object: 33^rd Congress of the ICHA, Nuremberg 15-20 July 2012, pp. 1425-1428.). His rigorous approach must be applauded, though not at the cost of overlooking the internal logic behind other contemporary explanations. Indeed, the surprising assurance with which Costa interpreted his journey through Persia is quite different from the uncertainty of many of his contemporaries.

If Costa did not entertain the doubts that plagued Della Valle, nor was he entirely removed from the textual culture of his day. His account from his time in the Mediterranean includes several references to the Aeneid, a good dose of Biblical knowledge, and two references to “many histories” about Babylon and the “many authors” who had written about Carthage. So he had previous knowledge about the cities he visited. Although his reading had not enabled him to make empirical determinations nor was it always direct, it did allow him to understand the historical importance of the places he saw. It is likely, given his imprecision when it came to the golden image, that he had not brought a Bible with him nor had he read it along the way and that he was not especially concerned about testing his initial interpretation, based on his memory, against textual authority. Costa’s story reveals someone who was sure of himself and relied upon old clichés and direct experience. The stories from Della Valle and São Bernardino, on the contrary, show that there often was a considerable time gap between the voyage and the written chronicle, which allowed for the addition of new interpretations based on readings, which might entirely modify the experience of the journey.

Costa’s itinerary, as is clear, was characterized by observations of the present and reflections on the past. Until chapter 11 he provides information about present-day political organizations and uses contemporary toponyms; thus, for example, he referred to the kingdom of Bombareca, as it was known in Portuguese, and the cities of Dorequa (also Portuguese) and Hoveyzeh. But once he enters into what he geographically identifies as the “lands of Babylon” he calls the area “the land of Abraham, and Chaldea, by another name.”⁷Costa, Tratado da Viagem, chap. XI: “Do rei e reino de Bombareca e das cidades de Dorequa e Aviza em que se prosegue a Viagem te as terras de Babilonia.” Another reference to Abraham’s fatherland in fo. 76. As Janet Grogan has said, “one result of the dominance of classical accounts of the ancient Persian empire is the persistence of ancient names in maps, itineraries, histories, and travel accounts of Persia, as well as romances” (Grogan, 2014, p. 15Grogan, J. (2014) The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549-1622. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.). This blend of present information and the reconstruction of a classical past can be found in many accounts, as the heritage was one of the principal elements that made the Safavid empire a “serious empire” in the eyes of Europeans (Matthee, 2016, p. 9Matthee, R. (2016) “From Splendour and Admiration to Ruin and Condescension: Western Travelers to Iran from the Safavids to the Qajars.” Iran. Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 54, 1, pp. 3-22. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/05786967.2016.11882297 ). But this dual gaze is difficult to interpret, because at times Costa’s story suddenly breaks its perspective and the Portuguese traveler displays less interest in a region’s present than in visiting places where ancient events affecting the course of human history took place. As we shall see with the example of Babylon, his trip was less one of discovery than of confirmation.

THE MULTIPLE “DISCOVERIES” OF BABYLON

All visitors to Persia and the Mesopotamian region under the control of the Ottoman Empire provided similar descriptions of landscapes littered with ruined walls, bricks, and remains of ancient cities. Some spent more time describing materials and construction techniques, while others were more interpretive, trying to explain which buildings and walls were hidden beneath the rubble and why they were in this state. Until recently the omnipresence of these ruins had almost entirely been overlooked by historians, but Rudi Matthee has examined the value attributed to them. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, travelers’ contacts with ruins did not significantly affect their observations of Safavid culture and customs, but between 1722 (the end of the Safavid dynasty) and 1800 they represented the destiny of a civilization in decline, and starting in the nineteenth century a metaphor for Iran’s backwardness and Western superiority (Matthee, 2016, p. 3Matthee, R. (2016) “From Splendour and Admiration to Ruin and Condescension: Western Travelers to Iran from the Safavids to the Qajars.” Iran. Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 54, 1, pp. 3-22. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/05786967.2016.11882297 ).

Nineteenth-century commentaries tell us much about the Orientalist gaze, but sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travelers to Persia shared the same attitude of erudite people contemplating ancient buildings and epigraphs throughout Europe. Matthee and others have emphasized that though Europeans’ attitudes imposed categories on reality, this is quite different than the Orientalism of later years and must also be considered an example of “engaged empathy” (Matthee, 2009, p. 140Matthee, R. (2009) “The Safavids Under Western Eyes: Seventeenth-Century European Travelers to Iran.” Journal of Early Modern History, 13, 2, pp. 137-171. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/138537809X12498721974624 ). Archaeological preservation was dealt with in different ways in different parts of Europe, but there were three common features. First, ruins were appreciated for their ability to evoke memories of the past, particularly linked to municipal antiquities and therefore to notions of civic identity. The splendor of the past and the observable ruins had a directly proportional relationship. Pantaleão de Aveiro wrote that the “vestiges and ruins of Troy” showed “how grandiose and populated they were in other times,” so that the Latin maxim distilling the relationship between remains and grandeur, “Roma quanta fuit, ipsa ruina docet” (her ruins teach how great Rome was), can be applied both to a European context as well as to faraway cities (Aveiro, 1593, fo. 12r. and 201r.Aveiro, P. de (1593) Itinerario da Terra Sancta, e suas particularidades, Lisbon: Simão Lopez.). Second, commenters referred to the rhythm and causes of decline, often in reference to the reutilization of building materials. And third, architectural remains inspired a variety of emotions and were the object of philosophical reflection regarding the pleasures of observation, the inexorable passage of time, and how memories and reputations of builders and patrons had vanished (McGowan, 2004, pp. 129-133McGowan, M. M. (2004) The Vision of Rome in Late Renaissance France. New Haven: Yale University Press.; Morán Turina, 2009, pp. 155-166Morán Turina, M. (2009) La memoria de las piedras. Anticuarios, arqueólogos y collecionistas de antigüedades en la España de los Austrias. Madrid: CEEH.). The Jesuit Athanasius Kircher complained, for example, about how information about the past had been lost and how difficult it was to interpret ruins:

His lament referred to Rome, but it appeared at the start of a treatise Kircher had dedicated to Turris Babel (1679Kircher, A. (1679) Turris Babel, sive Archontologia. Amsterdam: ex officina Janssonio-Waesbergiana.), suggesting the connection among all buildings in ruins, all of them symbols of vanity and pride that must not be imitated by those aspiring to true glory. Babylon, as we shall see, was a particularly relevant case in point.

Before entering Baghdad, Costa saw a series of “ruins and signs of ancient cities and pieces of walls lying on the ground” (Costa, fo. 72). The remains covered an area so large that they could be observed for three full days as the caravan filed past. Though the mass of signs was an interpretative challenge, Costa could explain what he had seen by combining his own contemporary perceptions of urban space with information provided through “conversations with natives,” who said that the sites were

This description includes a variety of quasi-urban elements that remind one of Lisbon. The reference to Nebuchadnezzar’s sons’ “pleasure houses,” for example, evokes the aristocratic summer palaces outside Lisbon. By joining the gigantic collection of remains dispersed along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates under one urban logic, Costa facilitated the adjustment between observation and interpretation.

Babylon’s original layout was a tricky question, and many travelers and scholars during the modern age devoted themselves to resolving it. John Elliott has said that “tradition, experience and expectation were the determinants of vision” for Europeans in the New World, but one can also detect similar dynamics in relatively late texts referring to other parts of the world (Elliott, 1970, p. 20Elliott, J. H. (1970) The Old World and the New. 1492-1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). As Peter Mason wrote, travelers were “human observers who cannot but classify before they see” (Mason, 1994, p. 143Mason, P. (1994) “Classical Ethnography and its Influence on the European Perception of the Peoples of the New World.” In: W. Haase and M. Reinhold, eds., The Classical Tradition and the Americas. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 135-172.). The range of proposals illustrates the different ways in which they adapted pre-existing categories and observations. There were nuances among them, but the most traditional approach was to say that Baghdad had been built atop the ruins of ancient Babylon. That theory was included in Juan de Persia’s Relaciones (1604, vol. 1, fo. 38vPersia, J. de (1604) Las relaciones de don Ivan de Persia, 3 vols. Valladolid: Juan de Bostillo.). Though Uruch Bech sometimes used specific local knowledge, his knowledge about ancient Babylon was not necessarily any more precise than that of his European contemporaries, and much of his interpretation was based on three Italian and Spanish works: Fray Juan de Pineda’s Monarquía eclesiástica, Giovanni Botero’s Relaciones universales, and Juan de Minadoy’s Historia de la guerra entre turcos y persianos (Alonso Cortés 1946, p. 13Alonso Cortés, N. (1946) Relaciones de don Juan de Persia. Introduction and notes by D. Narciso Alonso Cortés. Madrid: Ultra. ). Thus the apparently European gaze that identified Baghdad with Babylon was used by Bech to defend the antiquity and prestige of the Persian kingdom.

Costa not only shared the usual identification, but he explained the visible remains near Baghdad without needing to definitely solve the problem of Babylon’s original location. For him, “today nobody knows for certain where first Babylon was founded” (Costa, fo. 72). Some of his contemporaries, however, believed the question was more complex. São Bernardino pointed out that the Euphrates did not cross Babylon, as “many writers” had said, but rather the city was laid out along a broad expanse measuring eight by eight leagues between the Tigris and the Euphrates. São Bernardino (1611, fo. 100r)São Bernardino, G. de (1611) Itinerario da India por terra a este reino de Portugal com a discripçam de Hierusalem. Lisbon: Vicente Alvares. said writers were simply using a manner of speech, just as contemporaries said that the Tagus passed through Lisbon or Toledo and the Douro River through Porto. The “true testimony” that Babylon had been “built between the two rivers” could be found in two sources: “scripture and the ruins which I entered many times” (São Bernardino, 1611, fo. 100vSão Bernardino, G. de (1611) Itinerario da India por terra a este reino de Portugal com a discripçam de Hierusalem. Lisbon: Vicente Alvares.). Greater use of textual authorities did not help him to establish a more correct interpretation of his direct experience, given that he continued identifying the ruins he could observe and visit from Baghdad as those of Babylon.

In contrast to these authors, others such as Della Valle differentiated the two cities. Years earlier, Pedro Teixeira had done so by pointing out that the cause for common confusion was “the proximity of the place where in ancient times it stood, which is not more than a day’s journey away” (Teixeira, 1610, p. 124Teixeira, P. (1610) “Relación del camino que hize dende la India hasta Italia” In: Relaciones de Pedro Teixeira, Antwerp: Hyeronimo Verdussen.). The key point allowing him to make the distinction was simple: Babylon was on the Euphrates and Baghdad was on the Tigris. For Teixeira, therefore, the ruins around Baghdad were simply evidence of that city’s ancient grandeur, “which was such that (as has been said) there are vestiges of its grand and magnificent buildings for five miles around the city” (Teixeira, 1610, p. 125Teixeira, P. (1610) “Relación del camino que hize dende la India hasta Italia” In: Relaciones de Pedro Teixeira, Antwerp: Hyeronimo Verdussen.). Teixeira’s explanation was less ambitious and closer to the truth than that of his contemporaries.

Visual depictions also reflect these contrasting interpretations. The version of Babylon as an enormous city extending along the banks of both rivers was defended by Kircher (1679, p. 96)Kircher, A. (1679) Turris Babel, sive Archontologia. Amsterdam: ex officina Janssonio-Waesbergiana., who used an engraving to schematically locate the most important cities of the Mesopotamian past. This image (Fig. 1) not only corresponds to Costa’s and São Bernardino’s general theses but it suggests an even broader extension. The map in Samuel Bochart’s Geographia sacra (1646Bochart, S. (1646) Geographiae Sacrae Pars Prior: Phaleg. Cadomi [Caen]: typis Petri Cardonelli.) showing “the lands in which the builders of the Tower of Babel were dispersed” is full of inaccuracies but it clearly identifies Babylon as a city along the east bank of the Euphrates (Fig. 2). The two engravings, endorsed by important and erudite figures, show that interpretations regarding Babylonian ruins could happily coexist for many years.

Seen together, the various theories call into question the notion of “discovery” as a singular and unrepeatable act, particularly if we consider that by around 1610 it was still possible to come across such singular accounts as that of the Portuguese chronicler Duarte Nunes de Leão, who was entirely unaware of the “discovery” of Babylon and stated in no uncertain terms that no one could “swear that they had seen vestiges of that Babylon that had been one of the wonders of the world” (Leão, 1610, fo. 13rLeão, D. N. do (1610) Descrição do Reino de Portugal. Lisbon: Jorge Rodriguez.). Though it was in his interest to prove the existence of vanished cities so as to justify the antiquity of the Portuguese kingdom, his commentary on Babylon also shows that information did not necessarily circulate with the same speed as travelers and that not all authors used available published sources in the same manner.

The discovery of Babylon was not a cumulative series of observations in which one progressively tested and refined information. Rather, it was a process of de-identification, a succession of rejection, in which traditional interpretations were tossed out, giving way to a new search. Numerous early modern discoveries share this unstable nature. Juan Pimentel (2001, pp. 28-29 and 36-37)Pimentel, J. (2001) “Viajes, experimento y metáfora. Quirós, Cook y el doble descubrimiento de la quarta pars incógnita.” In: M. D. Elizalde Pérez-Grueso, J. M. Fradera Barcelo, and L. Alonso Álvarez, eds., Imperios y naciones en el Pacífico, vol. 1 (La formación de una colonia: Filipinas). Madrid: CSIC, pp. 27-38., for example, has looked into the existence of a “double discovery” in Australia by Pedro Fernandes de Queirós and James Cook at different times by different people and in accordance with completely different frames of reference. Jorge Flores (2015, p. 191)Flores, J. (2015) “Between Madrid and Ophir: Erédia, a Deceitful Discoverer?” In: M. Eliav-Feldon and T. Herzig, eds., Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 184-210. has shown that the desire to discover unknown lands produced not just new knowledge of geographic reality but also a proliferation of fantastic and marvelous elements such as appointing captains to govern imaginary islands in the Azores and the existence of false discoverers of the Island of Gold and lands south of India. From a different angle, Frederick Bohrer (1998, p. 336)Bohrer, F. N. (1998) “Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France.” Art Bulletin, 80, 2, pp. 336-356. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3051236 expressed his disagreement with positivist archaeological narratives of continual progress and discovery of the Assyrian civilization. Costa’s description of Babylon reminds us that the various processes that we associate with the first globalization thus did not take place in a fully discovered world. His unusual manner of seeing the Tower of Babel, which I describe below, reveals that the growing amount of information being gathered around the planet was being interpreted in accordance with a wide variety of paradigms.

THE TOWER OF BABEL, OR HOW TO MAKE SENSE OF RUINS

Given the Tower of Babel’s fame among Christians it is no surprise that many travelers came looking for its remains. Most travel accounts repeatedly come up against two impediments to identification, both as concerned with observation and interpretation. First, the visible remains of the Etemenanki ziggurat, dedicated to the god Marduk, today considered a possible remainder of the tower, could hardly be seen as a tower at all. But there are two preserved ziggurats that do look more like towers: Aqar Quf (Dur-Kurigalzu, some 20 km west of Baghdad) and Borsippa (Birs Nimrud, 100 km to the south) (Marzahn, 2008, pp. 168-169Marzahn, J. (2008) “Le santuaire et le culte du dieu Marduk.” In: B. André-Salvini, Babylone. À Babylone, d›hier et d›aujourd›hui. Paris: Musée du Louvre, pp. 168-171.). If indeed it is difficult to observe a nonexistent tower, it was also difficult to correctly interpret written sources and test them against local information.

Costa once again stands out in offering a simple explanation for a complex problem based on limited information. He simply says that there were two towers near Baghdad and that he “does not know which of them is Nimrod’s.” Today we know that neither could be Babel, but that only makes his account more interesting. As for the closer tower, situated three or four leagues to the west, that was most probably Aqar Quf. It is more difficult to identify the second tower, which Costa (fo. 73) placed eighteen leagues to the city’s east. One hypothesis is that Costa was talking about the Borsippa ziggurat, which had been identified as the Tower of Babel ever since Benjamin of Tudela visited in the twelfth century (Montero Fenollós, 2011, p. 33Montero Fenollós, J. L. (2011) “The Tower of Babel Before Archaeology. The Ziggurat of Babylon According to European Travellers (XII-XVII Centuries).” Res Antiquitatis, 2, pp. 31-49. ).

At first Costa’s solution seems like a poor one, a simple reflection of his lack of information, but his doubts have considerable interest. Unlike sixteenth-century predecessors such as Cesare Federici, Leonhardt Rauwolff, and John Elred, Costa did not confuse Aqar Quf with the Tower of Babel (Montero Fenollós, 2011, p. 34-37Montero Fenollós, J. L. (2011) “The Tower of Babel Before Archaeology. The Ziggurat of Babylon According to European Travellers (XII-XVII Centuries).” Res Antiquitatis, 2, pp. 31-49. ). Because he left the matter hanging, Costa managed to preserve his main interpretive approach intact. It continued being possible to think about Babylon as a huge place, its outskirts lying between the two rivers and containing both the nearest tower and “the other one that survives today” (Costa, fo. 73). For Costa, Baghdad was merely “the city that remains today, guarding the name and the memory of ancient Babylon” (Costa, fo. 74). The word “memory,” as used by Costa, could refer both to recollections of an idea and to institutions such as sumptuous buildings and hospitals built or paid for to ensure they would last. Holding on to this general vision allowed him to continue interpreting all the ruins, the ones he saw and the ones he didn’t, as monuments to the ancient city’s grandeur.

Costa’s distinctive position is best understood when compared to that of three close contemporaries. Five years earlier, Gaspar de São Bernardino had strongly argued that the tower closest to Baghdad was not Nimrod’s tower. Contradicting the usual information offered by the Jews of Baghdad and relying instead on first-hand observation of construction materials, the Portuguese Franciscan concluded that “Corcosa [Aqar Quf] is made of adobe dried in the sun, and the other [Babel] of bricks baked in fire.” His deduction was also based on the Bible, as indicated by a printed comment on the book’s margin: “Literes coctos igni, Gene. C. 11” (São Bernardino, 1611, fo. 108vSão Bernardino, G. de (1611) Itinerario da India por terra a este reino de Portugal com a discripçam de Hierusalem. Lisbon: Vicente Alvares.). Clever use of evidence and observation allowed São Bernardino to correct the mistaken identification of the tower, but this left him with a bigger problem to solve, since it was easier to dismiss a tower than admit to the fact that there were few archeological remains of the Tower of Babel.

Orta Rebelo left Baghdad in 1606 in the same expedition as São Bernardino. But Orta Rebelo’s account is even more interesting because, thanks to his extraordinary use of local informants, he mentions two possible alternative towers. On December 2, 1606, as he passed by “the ruins of an old building,” Orta Rebelo briefly separated from the group to draw close and, accompanied by his translator, he determined that the structure appeared to be the “Tower of Babylon.” After looking around and taking some notes, the two men walked toward a nearby village in search of local information to corroborate their theory. The old Turk with whom they spoke said they were mistaken, and he showed them how to reach the true tower, warning that “there was nothing to see at the Tower, which had fallen and crumbled.” The next day, alongside the Euphrates, a Turkish camel-driver pointed out to Orta Rebelo “a high mountain [called] Babelquelsi” (cit. in Carreira, 1985a, p. 166Carreira, J. N. (1985a) “Nicolau de Orta Rebelo na senda das civilizações pré-clássicas (1606-1607).” Arquipiélago. História e Filosofia, 7, 1, pp. 83-101.).

This document’s details, especially the use of the toponym, are specific enough to allow us to suggest that Orta Rebelo was the first European to record the original site of the Tower of Babel. But he was hardly satisfied. On his second opportunity, the translator who accompanied Orta Rebelo stopped him from making a nocturnal visit, saying the area was too dangerous and was full of thieves. Orta Rebelo wrote with sorrow that “in the end a man must miss many things along the road so as not to wander away from the Company” (cit. in Carreira, 1985a, p. 166Carreira, J. N. (1985a) “Nicolau de Orta Rebelo na senda das civilizações pré-clássicas (1606-1607).” Arquipiélago. História e Filosofia, 7, 1, pp. 83-101.). Despite having managed to see certain remains of the tower and acquire much more precise information, his bitterness was far greater than that of Costa, who was happy to have experienced the fame of old Babylon.

A third interesting case is that of Pietro della Valle, whose method of observation contrasted even more sharply with that of Costa. The Italian was quite certain that “the true Babylon” was Babel, not Baghdad. Based on that, in 1616 he set out to search for the historical city with the hope of finding the “Nembrotto Tower,” given that he “had understood that its ruins were still very large” (Valle, 1650, p. 704Valle, P. della (1650) Viaggi di Pietro della Valle il pellegrino. Rome: Vitale Mascardi.). This information, which he had obtained locally, contradicted his deep knowledge of classical sources that shed considerable doubt that there were any ruins at all. Della Valle knew Strabo had not mentioned the tower because “it had been ruined by Xerxes” and that Alexander the Great had not managed to restore it. Through his expert use of Strabo’s Geography (XVI, 1) and other classical sources, Della Valle managed to find a replacement for his hopes of seeing a true tower. As he was seeking a barely visible construction, and thanks to his deductions regarding the surviving toponym, the Italian managed to free his head of any thought of seeking a tower (Valle, 1650, p. 713-714 and 718Valle, P. della (1650) Viaggi di Pietro della Valle il pellegrino. Rome: Vitale Mascardi.).

The high point of the expedition has Della Valle atop a “hill of ruins,” all that was left of the tower. The Italian saw no indication that any large city had existed there, finding only the foundation of some fallen walls, fifty or sixty paces from the hill. “As for the rest, the surrounding terrain is extremely flat.” Della Valle was more stunned than frustrated, affirming that “as far as I am concerned, I am amazed that one can see what one can see” nearly four thousand years after the city’s founding (Valle, 1650, p. 713-714Valle, P. della (1650) Viaggi di Pietro della Valle il pellegrino. Rome: Vitale Mascardi.). Yet it is still very surprising that while Della Valle missed the remains of a city that had disappeared, Costa found them everywhere.

Comparing Costa and Della Valle’s accounts there can be no doubt that both men discovered very different things. Della Valle was extremely close to the Biblical Tower of Babel (Montero Fenollós, 2011, p. 40Montero Fenollós, J. L. (2011) “The Tower of Babel Before Archaeology. The Ziggurat of Babylon According to European Travellers (XII-XVII Centuries).” Res Antiquitatis, 2, pp. 31-49. ), but he neither saw it nor understood it. Costa never saw the ruins of historic Babylon, but he produced quite satisfactory explanations about its vestiges. From the point of view of twenty-first-century archaeology, it might be fruitful to judge travelers who got closer to what we know is true as having used “greater rigor” in their discovery of the ancient Orient (Montero Fenollós, 2008, p. 32Montero Fenollós, J. L. (2008) “La torre de Babel, Herodoto y los primeros viajeros europeos por tierras mesopotámicas.” Historiae, 5, pp. 27-50.). Yet many of Costa’s “errors” allowed him to understand what he was observing in a coherent fashion and offer a solid interpretation of the ruins of Babylon.

THE RUINS OF THE SUCCESSION OF UNIVERSAL MONARCHIES

How is it possible that Álvaro da Costa, with barely enough time to visit the area surrounding Baghdad and very little knowledge of ancient history, had no doubts about interpreting the confusing ruins he found? To answer that question, we must recapture the political and historical theory with which the Portuguese traveler enveloped all his observations. Relying on the hypothesis of a long list of cities founded and refounded based on the original, Costa beautifully explained the collection of ruins around Babylon as the result of a series of military conquests:

This theory of the “seats of monarchy,” the center of Costa’s interpretative framework, comprises several elements that together emphasize Babylon’s political and historical role. The most personal element of the explanation is the idea of successive constructions of the city in various sites, an idea that appears nowhere in classical sources or prior travel writing. His hedging by saying, “that must be why its ruins lie,” shows that this part of the interpretation is definitely his. Another interesting element is the mysterious reference to “many histories.” Aside from the Bible, the most accessible sources would have been Herodotus’s Histories, Strabo’s Geography, Diodorus Siculus’s Bibliotheca historica, and Quintus Curtius’s Histories of Alexander the Great (Blázquez Martínez, 2003Blázquez Martínez, J. M. (2003) “Babilonia.” Boletín de la Asociación Española de Orientalistas, 39, pp. 15-51.). If we consider that just before this passage Costa wrote that Babylon had first been “won by Darius, king of Persia” and that “Alexander the Great conquered it after destroying the Persian monarchy,” it seems clear that the Portuguese military officer at the very least had generic knowledge of classical sources. Thanks to these basic ideas, Costa could invent the idea of multiple reconstructions of the city in different places.

His description furthermore includes a reference to Aristotle’s Politics with his description of enemies’ entrance into the city. We can reject the hypothesis of direct consultation, since São Bernardino (1611, fo. 100r)São Bernardino, G. de (1611) Itinerario da India por terra a este reino de Portugal com a discripçam de Hierusalem. Lisbon: Vicente Alvares. said he had heard this information in Baghdad, but he also provided a citation saying, “Aristotle agrees with them,” and the marginal printed note “Arist. 2. Politic. C. 4 & 1. 3.c.2.”⁸Relevant passages are found in Aristotle Pol. 2.1265a and Pol. 3. 1276a. But is difficult to know if Costa was citing from memory, basing himself on an anecdote drawn from someone else’s book, or using locally obtained information. In any case, invasions, enormous wars, and destruction were not unfamiliar to any military veteran.

Costa’s interpretive method emphasized the nature of Babylon’s universal royal power. He transmitted the centrality of this sort of power when he called Nebuchadnezzar a “proud and idol-worshiping” ruler, but even so he was a “great Monarch of the world” (Costa, fo. 71). Even more surprising, Babylon “was also conquered by the Romans and their emperors,” an opinion surely born while looking at a pile of ruins (Costa, fos. 72-73). Costa was merely extending Daniel’s prophecy of the four kingdoms to Babylon’s visible ruins, which were considered both the effective point of origin of all empires as well as proof of their later passage to the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.

This interpretative paradigm is consistent throughout his account, as can be seen if we look at his portrait of the Persian empire. There, preceding his description of Babylon, Costa states,

The military register is maintained, for example with the use of “numerous armies.” Tratado da viagem therefore offers an interesting response to Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s question regarding Spanish and Portuguese political theory during the time of the discoveries (2011, p. 75Subrahmanyam, S. (2011) Three Ways to be an Alien. Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press.). The general development of universal history, according to Costa, must be understood as a standardized succession of universal powers known as translatio imperii (Fernández Albaladejo, 1993Fernández Albaladejo, P. (1993) “‘Imperio de por sí’: la reformulación del poder universal en la temprana Edad Moderna.” In: Fragmentos de Monarquía. Madrid: Alianza, 1993, pp. 168-84. ; Bosbach, 1998Bosbach, F. (1998) “The European Debate on Universal Monarchy” In: D. Armitage, ed., Theories of Empire, 1450-1800 (Expanding World). Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 81-98.; Pocock, 2003Pocock, J. G. A. (2003) Barbarism and Religion. The First Decline and Fall, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; Nederman, 2005Nederman, C. J. (2005) “Empire and the Historiography of European Political Thought: Marsiglio of Padua, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Medieval/Modern Divide.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 66, 1, pp. 1-15. doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2005.0029 ). The theory of the four kingdoms, which was widely present in the early modern age and certainly key in Costa’s worldview, “provided a structure for understanding history” (Reid, 1981, p. 123Reid, W. S. (1981), “The Four Monarchies of Daniel in Reformation Historiography.” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 8, 1, pp. 115-23.).

The narrative is also consistent as concerns the many urban ruins that Costa observed directly, as can be seen in his description of a “broken-down large city that seems to be ancient Aleppo,” which repeats the notion of the reconstruction of cities in successive sites that he previously used for Babylon/Baghdad. He says the city formerly known as Allafat was “one of those that King Darius conquered to be a capital” and that “it was not in the place where it is now,” and, having been ruined through time and governments, it was “rebuilt where we see it today” (Costa, fo. 81). The reference to capital cities indicates Costa knew about Darius I’s establishment of satraps, probably from the Bible (Daniel 6:1) and less probably through the list of cities in Herodotus’s Histories (3: 89-97). The description corresponds to the role Costa assigned to cities as centers of political power and it even appears that his experience prior to going through Persia allowed him to further develop his theory.

Similar ideas about cities that had been destroyed and vanished only to be later refounded in different places were relatively common both in the historiography and chorography of his time. Duarte de Leão, for example, devoted a chapter of his work to cities in Lusitania that had disappeared and “through time were undone or moved to other places.” The same sort of historical deduction can be found in the work of António de Gouveia, who explained that though Shiraz was a flourishing city in 1611Gouveia, A. (1611) Relaçam em que se tratam as guerras e grandes victorias que alcanço o grande rey da Persia Xá Abbas do grão Turco. Lisbon: Pedro Crasbeeck., “it was once destroyed by the Tartars, and another time by the Arabs, aside from the ruin brought about in ancient times by Alexander the Great” (Gouveia, fo. 26r). Costa’s explanation, therefore, was coherent both from the perspective of political theory and chorography. Scenes filled with ruins posed no problem for Costa. They allowed him to confirm the existence of successive destructions and conquests, which were typical of the cycle of rise and fall that was part of the political paradigm he was employing.

CONCLUSION

Costa’s trip reveals motivations and intellectual context far distant from those of present-day histories of Mesopotamian archaeology, according to which early modern travelers allow to reconstruct an uninterrupted genealogy of the “rediscovery of the Orient” (Ooghe, 2007Ooghe, B. (2007) “Mesopotamian Archaeology and Travel Literature: Shifting Relationships.” Isimu, 10, pp. 49-63.). Babel and Babylon inspired genuine and specific interest in early modern travelers, and their ruins, whether real or imagined, had a meaning entirely independent of the scientific paradigm of nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeological expeditions. Moreover, Costa’s detailed explanations of Babylon allow us to reflect on the dynamics between the perception of globalization and the resilience of well-stablished identifications, or to dispense with “the idea that global integration was like an electric circuit, bringing light to the connected.” (Adelman, 2017Adelman, J. (2017) “What is global history now?” Aeon [Digital magazine]. Available at: https://aeon.co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment [Accessed: 14 Dec. 2018].; Drayton and Motadel, 2018Drayton, R., and Motadel, D. (2018) “Discussion: The Futures of Global History.” Journal of Global History, 13, 1, pp. 1-21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022817000262 ). Knowledge and observation did not function in that manner in the early modern ages. Biblical authority and well-established theories on the succession of empires in world history proved especially resilient for Álvaro da Costa to interpret the past of the Mesopotamian region. In 1611 Costa saw the remains of the world’s first monarchy and traveled through a series of settings where the most important military confrontations among the other universal monarchies had taken place.

Focusing on one single testimony, a question arises. As in all microhistories, one needs to understand if Costa’s travel is an exceptional case (Trivellato, 2011Trivellato, F. (2011) “Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?” California Italian Studies, 2, 1. doi: https://doi.org/10.5070/C321009025 ). Compared to other travelers who spent more time there and published books with far greater impact (Invernizzi, 2005Invernizzi, A., ed. (2005) Il Genio vagante. Babilonia, Ctesifonte, Persepoli in racconti di viaggio e testimonianze dei secoli XII-XVIII. Turin: Edizioni dell’Orso.; Matthee, 2009Matthee, R. (2009) “The Safavids Under Western Eyes: Seventeenth-Century European Travelers to Iran.” Journal of Early Modern History, 13, 2, pp. 137-171. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/138537809X12498721974624 ), Costa stayed only briefly and was largely ill-informed. However, Costa’s case may offer insight into the experience of many others who travelled through Persia with limited means and limited information and have left no written accounts of their journeys. In his use of the paradigm of the four kingdoms and the translatio imperii, it is clear that Costa was echoing a widely reused and reformulated medieval tradition. Compared to some of his contemporaries or near contemporaries, Costa appears less modern in that he observes and accumulates evidence in a manner that does not challenge traditional interpretations. His perspective confirms that there existed global experiences that fundamentally served to reinforce existing traditional visions.

The Tratado da viagem offers insight into the relationship between biography and global history and shows that Costa was neither a trickster able to cleverly adapt his identity in different cultural contexts nor did he in any way exemplify cosmopolitanism (Subrahmanyam, 2011, pp. 21-22Subrahmanyam, S. (2011) Three Ways to be an Alien. Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press.). Costa’s vision has nothing to do with the sophisticated political image that Sherley proposed of Philip III as a monarch capable of observing the terrestrial globe from afar and calibrating its weight. Compared to Sherley’s appreciation of growing global interconnections and the novel external point of view of the planet, typical of fully modern cartography, Costa’s description was less original, but it worked extremely well for explaining the world. He did not offer a particularly correct explanation for the ruins of Babylon or Babel, but it was a credible and satisfactory one.