Jean-Baptiste Tavernier

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605 – July 1689) was a French traveller and pioneer of trade with India, and travels through Persia (Iran), most known for works in two quarto volumes, Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (Six Voyages, 1676) and diamond merchant for some important diamonds of the century. He was born in Paris, where his father Gabriel and uncle Melchior, Protestants from Antwerp, pursued the profession of cartographers and engravers. Tavernier, a private individual, a merchant traveling at his own expense, covered by his own account, 180,000 miles (290,000 km) over the course of forty years and six voyages. Though he is best known for the discovery and sale of the 118-carat (24 g) blue diamond that he subsequently sold to Louis XIV of France in 1668, (it was stolen in 1792 and re-emerged in London as The Hope Diamond), his writings show that he was a keen observer of his time as well as a remarkable cultural anthropologist. He was the owner of the seigneurery of Aubonne in Switzerland from 1670 to 1685.