The volume herewith given to the members of the Hakluyt Society, contains six narratives by Italians, of their travels in Persia about the time of Shah Ismail. Mr. Charles Grey, who has translated and edited four of these travels, having accompanied Sir Bartle Frere to Zanguibar, has been unable to finish the printing of his book, and the correction of his proofs has been entrusted to me. As all these travellers were almost contemporaries, and as they refer to one another, the council have thought it best to give them to members in one single volume. Shah Ismail, or Ismail Sufy, is the chief personage in this volume; he found Persia in disorder, and reunited it; he revived the Persian nationality, and very much increased the division which existed between Persia and the rest of the Mussulman States; a division or schism which has been erroneously called religious, but which originally was national and political, and, as revived and augmented by Shah Ismail, entirely national. The feelings which animated the earlier Persians to reject the first three caliphs, were the national repulsion of the Persians to their Arab conquerors, and a preference for hereditary succession instead of popular election. Shah Ismail took advantage of these national sentiments and dynastic traditions, without which Persia, overrun as it was by Turkish tribes, would have merged into the Ottoman Empire. Shah Ismail did his work so effectually, that Nadir Shah was unable to undo it, and was assassinated for attempting it; and, though the greater part of the Persian population and the reigning dynasty at this day speak Turkish as their own language, yet they are as Persian in feeling as the Persian inhabitants of Shiraz and Isfahan. Of the Italian travellers and envoys, whose narratives are here given, Josafa Barbaro is the most interesting personage: but none of them attract the same interest which attaches to Varthema, or to the Portuguese and Spanish travellers and voyagers of the same period. The travels of Barbaro and Contarini have long been ready for publication, but have been delayed hitherto, for want of an editor. The work was undertaken by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Lord Strangford, but the former had not time to attend to it, and the latter died before he had really commenced it.