François Pidou de Saint Olon

François Pidou de Saint Olon (1640, Touraine - 1720, Paris) was a French diplomat under Louis XIV.

Ismaïl Ibn Sharif receiving Ambassador François Pidou de Saint Olon from Louis XIV of France, by Pierre-Denis Martin (1693).

Embassy to Genoa and Spain

In 1682, he was nominated as the first French resident envoy to the Republic of Genoa.[1] He was then sent as an envoy to Madrid.

Embassy to Morocco
Relation de l'Empire du Maroc, by François Pidou de Saint Olon, 1695.
Moroccan woman in Estat présent de l'empire de Maroc, 1694.

in 1689, Pidou de Saint Olon was then nominated as ambassador to the court of the Moroccan ruler Mulay Ismail, in view of the signature of a commercial treaty.[2][3] This responded to the Embassy of Mohammad Temim to Louis XIV in 1682. In 1690, Pidou de Saint Olon was in the city of Salé, where he visited the French Consul Jean-Baptiste Estelle.[4]

His mission did not succeed however, and he only remained 2–3 weeks in Morocco.[3] He wrote an account of his visit to Morocco, Relation de l'empire de Maroc ("The present state of the Empire of Morocco").[5]

Another Moroccan ambassador Abdallah bin Aisha would visit France in 1699-1700.[6]

François Pidou de Saint Olon died in Paris on 27 September 1720.

See also

Works
  • Estat présent de l'empire de Maroc, 1694
  • Relation de l'empire de Maroc, 1695

Notes
  1. Europa triumphans: court and civic festivals in early modern Europe J. R. Mulryne p.240 Note 14
  2. The Works of John Dryden, Volume XV H.T. Swedenberg Jr. p.390 Note 27
  3. A second catalogue of manuscripts, in different languages John Cochran p.111
  4. A History of the Jews in North Africa Haim Zeev Hirschberg, Eliezer Bashan, Robert Attal p.267
  5. New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature by George Watson p.1969
  6. In the lands of the Christians: Arabic travel writing in the seventeenth century by Nabil I. Matar p.197
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