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Loading... The bondage and travels of Johann Schiltberger : a native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427by Johannes Schiltberger
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The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This volume contains an English translation of the extraordinary story of Johann Schiltberger (1381-?1440), who was captured in battle as a teenager and enslaved by Bayezid I. On the latter's defeat by Timur (Tamburlane) in 1402, Schiltberger fell into the hands of the legendary Scourge of God, and in his service and that of his sons, he travelled to Armenia, Georgia and other Caucasian territories, down the river Volga, to Siberia and to the Crimea, eventually escaping and returning to his home in 1427. No library descriptions found. |
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But after a while he gets more into describing the various countries and customs he lived among. Little factoids about pelicans; a vivid description of a marble palace as seeming to one who's never been there before as if the stone is all covered in water; a list of all the holy sites in Jerusalem followed (with barely a period for breath) by a description of how to recognise real basalm grown in Egypt; several chapters on Islam, and on the Greek Orthodox church, and the Armenian church; and then abruptly he manages to escape and recites his itinerary on the way home.
Half the book is fulsome notes by a few layers of successive editors, so his account is a quick read.
It's not clear which of the editors it was who translated a particularly "obscene" passage (about one culture's methods of ensuring brides are virgins) into Latin instead of into English, but I look askance at whoever it was. ( )