Robert Shirley

Sir Robert Shirley (also Sherley; * to 1581, † July 13, 1628 in Qazvin ) was an English traveler and adventurer; He was the younger brother of Anthony and Thomas Shirley.

Diplomatic activities

Robert went with his brother Anthony in 1598 to Persia. Anthony Shirley was sent with 5,000 horses there to train the Persian army under the rules of the English militia; so he stayed from December 1599 to May 1600 in Safavid Persia. He was also commissioned to reform the artillery and retrain. When he left Persia, he let his brother Robert back with 14 Englishmen who ended up staying for years in Persia.

After her marriage with Teresa ( Teresa ), a Circassian woman he remained until 1608, in Persia, when Shah Abbas I. him on a diplomatic errand to James I and sent to other European princes; he was like his brother used to travel as ambassador to several Christian monarchs to this one to form an alliance against the Ottoman Empire.

With this job, he first went to Poland - Lithuania, where he. Sigismund III Wasa was received. In June of the same year he traveled to Germany, where he received the title of Count Palatine and was appointed by Rudolf II as Knight of the Holy Roman Empire. Even Pope Paul V granted him the title of Count. From Germany, he went to Florence and Rome, where he arrived on Sunday, September 27, 1609, accompanied by an entourage of 18 people. He attended Milan and Genoa, from where he traveled by ship to Spain; Barcelona he reached in December 1609. He let his Persian wife meet and remained in Spain, mostly in Madrid, until the summer of 1611.

In 1613 he returned to Persia back, but went back to Europe in 1615 and went to live in Madrid. Coincidentally met Shirley caravan 1615 in the Persian desert on Thomas Coryate, a force to be eccentric travel writer. Shirley's third trip to Persia he undertook in 1627, but shortly after he reached the land he died in Qazvin.