File:Plate 1. Entrée de l'ambassade de Perse à Saint-Pétersbourg (1851 reprint).jpg

English: Plate 1. Entrance of the Persian Embassy in Saint Petersburg, in 1815, witnessed by the young Soltykov and published later in Voyage en Persee. L. Curmer & V. Lecou, Paris (1851).

The visit of Persian ambassador Abdul Hasan Khan to St. Petersburg in 1815; Russian painter and traveler Alexey Saltykov, watched the majestic guards moving accompanied by elephants, a magnificent horse carriage and the ambassador's dazzling costume made of white cashmere fabric decorated with diamonds, was very impressed by this transition ceremony.
L. Curmer & Victor Lecou, noted as editors.
Mirza Abdul Hassan Khan Ilci (1776-1845), Persian Ambassador
In 1815 Mīrzā Abu’l-Ḥasan was sent to the court of St. Petersburg as special envoy. This trip? Saltykov) was born in St. Petersburg in 1806.

reference
Ecerpt follows:

Page n302, 303 In my childhood I had known Mr. Orlofski, one of our best genre painters, who mainly dealt with oriental subjects. I believe that this circumstance was partly the cause of my taste for drawing and also of my taste for the Orient. Around the same time, he was the host of a large embassy which was to arrive from Persia to Saint Petersburg, and during all the time it took to make the journey, I cannot say with what impatience I counted the moments. Finally he arrived. It was a day of rain and mist. Around three o'clock in the afternoon, as dusk began, after a long and feverish wait at a window of our house on the embankment of the Neva, I heard a warlike march from the horse guards, - it still resonates to my ears, - and I saw from a distance two strange masses which were advancing with a swaying movement. culier. They were booted elephants, fantastically painted and draped, which opened with slow steps the procession. I thought I saw an apparition from the other world. Two Abyssinians, magnificently dressed in braided velvet, followed them on stallions covered with foam. Then came twelve fiery horses, almost all gray, a present from Feth-Ali-Schah to the Emperor Alexander. They were kept on a leash by Persians dressed in black who walked on foot, and to whom the cold from which they suffered gave a singularly fierce appearance. A troop of Persian horsemen, all resplendent in cloth of gold and cashmeres, then appeared, preceding the golden carriage of the court. In this carriage, drawn by eight horses and surrounded by runners and pages, was the ambassador Mirza-Aboul-Hassan-Khan, in a white cashmere dress, with the diamond star and the green cord of the Order of the Sun. Nine horses, strangely harnessed and led on leashes by Persian riders dressed in red, passed again, and the march ended with Cossacks and cuirassiers. This singular scene, expected for a very long time, made a deep impression on my imagination and gave me an extreme desire to go to Asia, and especially to Persia, a desire that I did not satisfy until a long time later, in 1838.