"the Swedes in 1679 decided to establish diplomatic relations with Iran. The man chosen to lead the delegation dispatched for that purpose, Ludvig Fabritius, was a Brazilian-born Dutchman who had made a career in the Russian military. Captured during the Sten' ka Razin rebellion in 1670, he had managed to escape to Iran, spending some time in Isfahan."

"[In Humanities] the enterprise is one, the specialties many — but all are part and parcel of a common intellectual endeavor: to further our understanding of ourselves."

"The primary method for the study of humans through the investigation of their cultural products is interpretation."

"the understanding of humans by humans is as important an endeavor as understanding the physics of distant star systems. I don't think that studying the humanities necessarily improves people; in fact, it manifestly doesn't (just think about all those cultured and educated slave-holders and Nazis). But I am sure that aggregating knowledge about ourselves and all of our possible ways of living is vital for our continued future as a global species."

James I was the first person to try seriously to establish a silk industry in England. Mulberries had been known at the English Court for over four hundred years before James ascended the throne in 1603, so one part of the silk technology - the mulberry tree introduced from the Continent - was already present in England . But what of the little 'worms'? 
James I had a logistical problem at the beginning of the seventeenth century: what to do with the huge influx of refugees from the Low Countries and France. Religious strife in Europe, especially following the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572 instigated by Catherine de Medici, resulted in a mass exodus of protestants from France. Some sought refuge in the Low Countries before joining ships to England. Tens of thousands arrived by boat in London and at places like Sandwich and Rye in Kent and other locations around the coast of south east England. 
James I's enthusiasm for silk was thus born out of his immediate concern to find employment for the immigrant weavers, and of course to produce English silk for the first time. His wife liked silks too, and this may have influenced him considerably . James also saw the establishment of an English silk industry as a source of income, for he must have envied the way in which the French had already established a well-organized silk industry.

The Crusader Bible was originally a picture book. Subsequent owners, however, felt a need to have the subjects identified. After the death of Louis IX (1270), the manuscript went to Italy, where the Latin inscriptions were added in the fourteenth century. Fourteen of the scenes were incorrectly identified. After Shah ‘Abbas received the book in Isfahan as a diplomatic gift in 1608, he had the Persian inscriptions added. After Afghans sacked Isfahan and its Royal Library in 1722, the book fell into the hands of a Persian-speaking Jew, who added the Judeo-Persian inscriptions. These inscriptions did not depend upon each other, and only the Judeo-Persian inscription correctly identified the episode in which Jephthah agreed to sacrifice the first person who met him on his victorious return to Maspha, who was his only daughter (fol. 13). The Latin inscription connected the episode with Gideon, and the Persian inscription mistakenly said it was Gideon’s daughter. English translations of all the inscriptions can be found in this online exhibition.