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Don Juan of Persia: A Shi'ah Catholic, 1560–1604
1926 · 330 pages
Don Juan of Persia: A Shi'ah Catholic, 1560–1604
by Oruj Beg Bayat (Don Juan of Persia)
The 1604 memoir of Oruj Beg Bayat, a Persian Muslim nobleman and secretary to Shah Abbas's embassy to Europe, who was baptized a Catholic at Valladolid with King Philip III as his godfather. Most of the book recounts Persia, Safavid history, and the long overland journey from Isfahan to Spain, with the conversion at its close. It is the rarest item in the genre — a Muslim's own published account of his conversion, printed three centuries before the missionary-era testimonies.
The changed life
A courtier and secretary to Shah Abbas's 1599 embassy, he converted to Catholicism in 1602 knowing apostasy meant death and that he could never return home; baptized at Valladolid in 1604, he was murdered in a street brawl there in 1605, a year after publishing.
Summary
Don Juan of Persia is the account of Oruj Beg Bayat, a Persian Muslim nobleman who traveled to Europe as a secretary to the embassy Shah Abbas dispatched in 1599. The journey carried him from Isfahan across Russia and central Europe — Moscow, Prague, Rome — to the Spanish court at Valladolid, and it is that route, together with a survey of Persia and its Safavid history, that fills most of the book.
The conversion narrative comes at the end. In 1602 Oruj Beg embraced Catholicism, and in 1604 he was baptized in the royal chapel at Valladolid with King Philip III standing as his godfather. He took the name Don Juan of Persia. He made the choice knowing what it cost: apostasy from Islam carried a death sentence, and it meant he could never return to Persia.
The book was published in Spanish in 1604 as the Relaciones de Don Juan de Persia, produced with heavy assistance from his friend Alfonso Remón — so it reads as autobiography by way of a collaborator, framed to please a Spanish and Catholic readership. Oruj Beg did not live to see its influence: he was killed in a street brawl in Valladolid in 1605, a year after it appeared.
Who was Oruj Beg Bayat (Don Juan of Persia)?
Oruj Beg Bayat (c. 1560–1605) was a nobleman of the Bayat, a Turkic tribe long settled in Safavid Persia, and served as one of the secretaries of the embassy Shah Abbas I sent to the courts of Europe in 1599 to seek allies against the Ottomans. He was a courtier and a soldier's son, not an evangelist, and his book is far more the report of a well-traveled diplomat than a work of religious persuasion.
In Spain he broke with Islam and was received into the Catholic Church, taking the name Don Juan of Persia under the patronage of Philip III. His memoir survives as a singular document — the earliest published first-person conversion account by a Muslim-born author — but its subject died young and violently, and it is his one book that keeps his name.
Common questions
- Is this book mostly about his conversion?
- No. Most of it describes Persia, Safavid history, and the embassy's overland journey from Isfahan to Spain; the conversion narrative comes at the end. Oruj Beg was a courtier and diplomat rather than an evangelist.
- Did Oruj Beg write it entirely himself?
- The Spanish text of 1604 was produced with heavy help from his friend Alfonso Remón, so it is best read as autobiography by way of a collaborator, with a pro-Spanish and pro-Catholic frame. The events and the first-person account of his life and conversion, however, are his own.
A note on the text. Don Juan of Persia: A Shi'ah Catholic, 1560–1604is in the public domain. What you're buying is our edition — the careful typesetting and design. The original text is also available free here.