Tarikh Islam

In this study, European travel books, especially those of Italian tourists including Peter Della Valle, have been studied. Besides, reviewing the factors of a rise in tourism in the second half of the 15th century and the early years of the 16th century - leading to writing travel books - is another topic of discussion in this paper. Geographical explorations with its two important consequences, one in the field of politics in the form of colonialism, and the other in the field of economics in the form of capitalism, were two important factors attracting westerners' attention to the East. In these conditions, the strategic importance of Iran and the Persian Gulf and the Iranians' interest in acquiring the martial knowledge of the West, along with other political-religious factors, drew the westerners' attention to Iran in the advent of Safavid State.