- published: 06 Jun 2014
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Jean Chardin (16 November 1643 – 5 January 1713), born Jean-Baptiste Chardin, and also known as Sir John Chardin, was a French jeweller and traveller whose ten-volume book The Travels of Sir John Chardin is regarded as one of the finest works of early Western scholarship on Persia and the Near East.
Chardin was born in 1643 into a Protestant family. His father, a wealthy jeweller, gave him a good education and trained him in the jewellery trade. But instead of settling down in the family profession, the young Chardin set out with a Lyon merchant named Antoine Raisin in 1664 for Persia and India, partly on business and partly to gratify his own wanderlust. After a successful journey, during which he had received the patronage of the Safavid monarch Shah Abbas II, who died in 1666 and his son Safi Mirza succeeded him first as Shah Safi II then as Shah Suleiman I. Chardin returned to France in 1670. The following year, he published an account of Le Couronnement de Soleïmaan (English translation: The Coronation of Shah Soleiman).