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Pair of decorative views showing the Royal Palace at Ispahan (Esfahan) and the Royal Mosque of Abas the Great.
The Golden Age of Esfahan arrived in the 16th century under Shah Abbas the Great (1587-1629), who conquered it and made it the new capital of the Safavid dynasty. During the reign of Shah Abbas I, who unified Persia, Esfahan reached its pinnacle. Esfahan had parks, libraries and mosques that amazed Europeans, who had not seen their like on their continent.
The view appeared in Chatelain's monumental 7 volume Atlas Historique.
Henri Abraham Chatelain (1684-1743) was a Huguenot pastor of Parisian origins. Chatelain proved a successful businessman, creating lucrative networks in London, The Hague, and then Amsterdam. He is most well known for the Atlas Historique, published in seven volumes between 1705 and 1720. This encyclopedic work was devoted to the history and genealogy of the continents, discussing such topics as geography, cosmography, topography, heraldry, and ethnography. Published thanks to a partnership between Henri, his father, Zacharie, and his younger brother, also Zacharie, the text was contributed to by Nicolas Gueudeville, a French geographer. The maps were by Henri, largely after the work of Guillaume Delisle, and they offered the general reader a window into the emerging world of the eighteenth century.
