Born in Paris in a Hugenot (Protestant) family, Jean Chardin (1643-1713) spent much of his life traveling to the East because of his father's position as a jeweler and shareholder in the French East India Company. In 1664, the twenty year old Chardin set out on a long journey to Persia, traveling through the Ottoman Empire, Georgia and Armenia before arriving to Persia, where he served at the courts of Shah Abbas II and Shah Safi. After a trip to India, Chardin returned to France in 1670. In 1671, he published an account of the coronation of Shah Safi and in the same year set off for Persia, traveling through Georgia once more before arriving in Isfahan in 1673. He remained in Persia for several years before visiting India and returning home in 1677.
With the start of the persecution of the Hugenots in France, Chardin moved to England in 1680. The first edition of his Travels appeared in London in 1686 - entitled "Journal du voyage du chevalier Chardin en Perse & aux Indes Orientales, par la Mer Noire & la Colchide..." - and was followed over the next decades by several expanded editions. Chardin's travelogue provides precious insights into the regions and societies that he had encountered on his journeys. He remains one of the best-informed European observers of Georgia and Safavid Persia.
This translation is based on the original 1686 edition, with original French text provided at the end of the post.
The complexion of the Georgians is the most beautiful in all the East; and I can safely say, that I never saw an uncomely countenance in all that country, either of male or female sex; yet I have seen many that have had Angelic faces, nature having bestowed upon the women of that country graces and features that can hardly be found elsewhere. So that it is impossible to behold them without falling in love....
The Georgians are innately very capable. They could be great savants [learned men] and masters if only they increase their knowledge of arts and sciences: but their education is so mean and paltry, that having nothing but bad examples before their eyes, they are altogether drowned in vice and ignorance. [Thus] they are generally cheats [fourbes] and rogues [fripons], perfidious, treacherous, ungrateful and proud [superbes]. They are impudent beyond imagination as to deny their own words and their very deeds; to put forth and maintain falsehoods; to demand more than is their due; to counterfeit deeds and forge lies. They are irreconcilable in their enmities, and never forgive. True it is, they are not easily provoked, nor do they readily admit those hatreds which they preserve inviolably when once conceived.
And besides these vices of the spirit, no men are more addicted to their sensual pleasures, that is to say, to drunkenness and luxury. They plunge themselves into these filthy divertissements with so much more freedom because they are so common and not looked upon as scandalous in Georgia. The clergymen are as drunk as others, and keep beautiful female slaves [belles esclaves] as concubines, at which no body is offended, as being no more than what is generally practiced, and as it were authorized by custom. Furthermore the Superiour of the Capuchins assured me that he had heard the Catholicos or Patriarch of Georgia say that he who was not absolutely drunk could not be a good Christian, and deserved to be excommunicated. Besides this, the Georgians are likewise very great usurers: they never lend any Money without a pawn, and the lowest interest which they take is two in the hundred for a month. Neither are the women less vicious and wicked than the men. They have an extraordinary weakness [foible] for males, and certainly contribute more than they, to that torrent of uncleanness which overflows all the country.
On the other side, the Georgians are civil and courteous, and more than that, they are serious [graves] and moderate. Their manners and customs are a mixture of various customs of the peoples that reside round about them. This is the result, I believe, of their commerce and dealings with variety of people, and the liberty allowed in Georgia to observe their own religion and customs, and to defend them in their discourse. You shall meet here in this country with Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Turks, Persians, Indians, Tartars, Muscovites and Europeans. The Armenians are so numerous that they exceed the Georgians. They are also more wealthy, and for the most part supply all the small offices and mean employments. But the Georgians are far stronger, more haughty, more vain, and more pompous. The difference between their spirits, manners and beliefs has caused a very great enmity between them. They mutually hate one another, and never marry into one anothers families. The Georgians are particularly disdainful towards the Armenians who are looked upon much about the same way as the Jews are in Europe.
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