ABSTRACT
The group of Muslim and non-Muslim rulers who, motivated by reports of the shah’s “just and beneficent rule,” sent their ambassadors to Persia included the Pope, “the greatest of the Christian rulers, the caliph of the Christians. The consolidation of monarchical power over a socioculturally and religiously heterogeneous empire through the development of institutions and a mercenary army, as well as the integration of various sections of the population into the networks of the court, on the one hand, and the quest for allies against the Ottomans, on the other. Tilhac criticized the violations of the vow of poverty of the religious orders which were the inevitable result of the instructions missionaries had received from European courts. In cultivating their ties to the court, missionaries to Persia embraced local role models who promised social recognition and seemed more or less equivalent to their position as clerics.
