She was the wife of Elizabethan English adventurer Robert Shirley, whom she accompanied on his travels and embassies across Europe in the name of the Safavid King (Shah) Abbas the Great (r. 1588–1629).

Teresa was received by many of the royal houses of Europe, such as English prince Henry Frederick and Queen Anne (her child's godparents) and contemporary writers and artists such as Thomas Herbert and Anthony van Dyck.

Following the death of her husband from dysentery in 1628, and due to impediments from grandees at the court, and the authorities, during the reign of Abbas's successor and grandson Safi (r. 1629–1642), Teresa decided to leave Iran.

As a pious Christian, and because of her love for her husband, Teresa had Shirley's remains transported to Rome from Isfahan and reburied; on the headstone of their mutual grave she mentions their travels and refers to her noble Circassian origins.

The travels of Teresa and Robert Shirley were recorded in many contemporaneous English, Italian, Latin and Spanish sources,[2] including eyewitness accounts.

[3] According to Penelope Tuson, the main sources that deal with Teresa's life are the "predictably semi-hagiographic" accounts stored in the archives of the Vatican and the Carmelite order.

[b][6] Though the Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia evidently portrays a positive image of Teresa, Tuson notes that the accounts are "patchy" and "contradictory" on some occasions.

[3] Teresa was born in 1589 into a noble Orthodox Christian[d] Circassian family in the Safavid Empire,[11] ruled at the time by Shah Abbas the Great.

The daughter of Ismail Khan, a brother-in-law of the King,[12] she grew up in Isfahan in the Iranian royal court as a reportedly beautiful, accomplished horsewoman who enjoyed embroidery and painting.

There was no such thing as ladies-in-waiting in the Western sense of the word, and there was no possibility for her to have met Robert Shirley and fall in love with him prior to marriage.

The Carmelite records describe how Robert Shirley: "purchased a slave [i.e., Terese Sampsonia] from Circassia, a province situated between Muscovy and Persia, who belonged to the Muhammadan faith, kept her as his wife [sua donna] and, because it was made a point of religious scruple and duty, he had her baptized by Fr [Friar] Paul Simon, the Discalced Carmelite, and married her...".

[25] It was a common custom for a ruler in the Islamic world to give a woman raised in his harem in marriage to a man he wished to favor, and it is likely that the Shah arranged for Robert Shirley to marry Teresa Sampsonia as a reward in this manner.

[29][h] Teresa and Shirley visited the Grand Duke of Muscovy Vasili IV, Pope Paul V in Rome and King Sigismund III of Poland.

In Poland, Teresa lived in a convent in Kraków for some time while her husband visited Prague, where Emperor Rudolph II (r. 1576–1612) bestowed on him the title of Count Palatine.

[43] They sailed for the Safavid Empire in 1627 on an East India Company ship with Dodmore Cotton, an envoy from the King of England to Persia and other courts.

She remained silent to protect them; according to contemporaneous accounts, the Shah advised her not to be afraid, "because it would be harder for him to put one woman to death than a hundred men".

The priests denied knowing her whereabouts, and advised her to take refuge in the Church of Saint Augustine in New Julfa (the Armenian quarter in Isfahan).

Since he favoured the Carmelite Fathers, and did not want to insult the mullah, he said that the matter concerned Isfahan prefect (darugha) Khosrow Mirza.

In these parts, she has been an apostle and a martyr confessed and professed ...Three years after returning from her last trip, Teresa left her country of birth forever.

She lived in Constantinople for three years, receiving a certificate from the commissary general of the Dominicans in the East on 21 June 1634 reportedly attesting to her pious conduct.

She had the headstone inscribed:Deo Optimo Maximo Roberto Sherleyo Anglo Nobilissimo Comiti Cesareo Equiti Aurato Rodulfi II Imperatori Legato Ad Scia Abbam Regem Persarum et Eiusdeum Regis Secundo Ad Romanos Pontifices Imperatores Reges Hispaniae Angliae Poloniae Moscoviae Mogorri Aliosque Europae Principes Inclito Oratori.

Theresia Sampsonia Amazonites Samphuffi Circassiae Principes Filia Viro Amatissimo et Sibi Posuit Illius Ossibus Suisque Laribus In Urbem E Perside Pietatis Ergo Translatis Annos Nata LXXIX MDCLXVIII(Translated as "To God, the Best and Greatest.

Theresia Sampsonia, native of the land of the Amazons, daughter of Samphuffus, prince of Circassia, set up [this monument] for her most beloved husband and for herself, as a resting place for his bones—brought to Rome from Persia for dutiful devotion's sake—and for her own, aged seventy-nine.

")[61][l] According to Bernadette Andrea (2017), the text demonstrates that Teresa subverted the patriarchal gender roles common to the Muslim and Christian cultures of her time.

[69] Tuson argues that Teresa's story has been overshadowed by "the partly self-created myth of the Shirley's", who became the main subject of many of the contemporary "biographies as well as subsequent historical studies".