Teresia Sampsonia Khan

Teresia Sampsonia

Lady Teresia Sampsonia Shirley as painted by Anthony van Dyck in 1622
Born Sampsonia Khan
1579/1580
Safavid Empire
Died 1688
Rome
Ethnicity Circassian

Teresia Sampsonia Khan (1579/1580–1688)[1] (full name after married to Robert Shirley; Lady Teresia Sampsonia Shirley)[2] was a Safavid Iranian noblewoman and later also the wife of noted English adventurer Robert Shirley.

Biography

Double portrait of Robert Shirley and his wife Teresia Sampsonia, c.1624–1627. Shirley is wearing Persian clothing which so impressed his European hosts during his travels in Europe on behalf of the Persian king, whilst she wears her native style of dress but also holds a flintlock pistol and a pocket watch.

Teresia was born in either 1579 or 1580 into a Christian Circassian noble family in the Safavid empire,[3][4] ruled at that time by shah Abbas the Great. She was the daughter of Ismail Khan, a Circassian noble who was said to be related to one of the shah's wifes.[5]

In February 1608 she married Sir Robert Shirley in Safavid Iran, an English adventurer who was sent to the Safavids after a Persian embassy several years earlier had been sent to Europe in order to create an alliance against the arch rivals of the Safavids (and also known by Abbas to be an enemy of several European empires), namely the neighbouring Ottoman Empire.[6] She acquired her husbands surname Shirley from this time and on and being baptized by the Carmelites around the same time as her marriage, she adopted the name Teresia as well.[7]

She accompanied Robert on his several embassies to England for Abbas as Robbert had given up his military career after their marriage, becoming part of English culture through a spate of treatises, stage plays, and possibly even the first prose romance by an Englishwoman.[8][9] In the autumn of 1611, their first born (they had two children in total) and only son Henry was born, named after Prince Henry of Wales, who became their son's godfather, and the Queen his godmother.[10]

During the embassies of Robert she accompanied him with, she was painted several times as a pendant to portraits of her husband, but, interestingly, while he cultivated the air of the Near East she chose to be presented in the European fashion of the day, albeit in a modest form. Having noted that, she retained the practise of retaining a symbolic item familiar in Perso-Georgian painting as she was shown (image on the right) carrying a pistol. This is said to be a link between the unverified story that she saved her husbands life on the road from bandits, or just to show her descent from a noble family.[11]

After the death of her husband Robert, she retired to a convent in Rome attached to Santa Maria della Scala, where she died in 1688.[12][13] In 1658 she had Roberts remains transported from Qazvin to Rome, where he was buried in the same convent as where she lived.[14] In one of the reasons noted why she left her empire of birth, namely Safavid Iran, following her husbands death was due to Abbas' (he died several months after Robert) successor to the throne, shah Safi, who lacked Abbas' relative tolerance of other religions.

Teresia died at the age of seventy-nine.[15]

Cast in literature

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Teresia Khan (1579/1580–1668), Lady Shirley". Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  2. ↑ "Workshop 20. Faith Journeys: The Early Seventeenth-Century Travels of Teresa Sampsonia Sherley and Begum Mariam Khan from the Islamic Empires of the East to England". Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  3. ↑ William Bayne Fisher, Peter Jackson, Lawrence Lockhart. The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 6 pp 390. Cambridge University Press, 6 feb. 1986 ISBN 0521200946
  4. ↑ Ann Rosalind Jones, Peter Stallybrass Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory pp. 55 Cambridge University Press, 2000 ISBN 0521786630
  5. ↑ William Bayne Fisher, Peter Jackson, Lawrence Lockhart. The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 6 pp 390. Cambridge University Press, 6 feb. 1986 ISBN 0521200946
  6. ↑ William Bayne Fisher, Peter Jackson, Lawrence Lockhart. The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 6 pp 390. Cambridge University Press, 6 feb. 1986 ISBN 0521200946
  7. ↑ Karen Hearn Van Dyck and Britain pp 54 Tate Pub., 2009 ISBN 1854378589
  8. ↑ "Workshop 20. Faith Journeys: The Early Seventeenth-Century Travels of Teresa Sampsonia Sherley and Begum Mariam Khan from the Islamic Empires of the East to England". Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  9. ↑ William Bayne Fisher, Peter Jackson, Lawrence Lockhart. The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 6 pp 390. Cambridge University Press, 6 feb. 1986 ISBN 0521200946
  10. ↑ William Shakespeare,Samuel Johnson,George Steevens The Plays of William Shakespeare: In Twenty-one Volumes, with the ..., Volume 2 pp 369 J. Nichols and Son Digitalised in July 2013
  11. ↑ Lin Foxhall, Gabriele Neher. Gender and the City Before Modernity John Wiley & Sons, 29 mei 2012 ISBN 111823443X
  12. ↑ Christopher Brown, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Hans Vlieghe, Frans Baudouin, Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain), Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Belgium) Van Dyck, 1599-1641 Rizzoli, 16 jul. 1999 ISBN 084782196X
  13. ↑ Alexander V. Globe Peter Stent, London Printsellerpp.84 UBC Press, 1 nov. 2011 ISBN 0774841419
  14. ↑ Thomas Christensen 1616: The World in Motion pp 323. Counterpoint Press, 2012 ISBN 1582437742
  15. ↑ Thomas Christensen 1616: The World in Motion pp 323. Counterpoint Press, 2012 ISBN 1582437742