Shahs and Grand Dukes: Medici–Safavid Diplomatic Relations in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Author: Davide Trentacoste, Routlege, 2026

The book uncovers a forgotten century-long conversation between Christian Tuscany and Shiʿi Persia —one that reshaped power, politics, and diplomacy in the early modern world. 

Moving beyond the familiar story of Europe versus the Ottoman Empire, this book places the Safavids at the center of Mediterranean geopolitics, revealing how alliances were forged across confessional lines when strategy mattered more than theology.

Drawing on an extraordinary body of archival sources—many of them previously unused—Trentacoste reconstructs more than a hundred years of correspondence, embassies, negotiations, and failed dreams linking the Medici court in Florence to the Safavid shahs. 

These encounters expose diplomacy in its formative stage: pragmatic, improvisational, and deeply political. Catholic grand dukes courted Shiʿi rulers not out of curiosity, but necessity, seeking military coordination, commercial advantage, and leverage against a shared Ottoman rival.

What emerges is a striking portrait of early modern realpolitik, where religious difference was not erased but strategically sidelined. Shahs and Grand Dukes reframes the Mediterranean as a connected diplomatic ecosystem stretching from Italy to Iran, and shows how global politics were already being negotiated long before the modern nation-state.