Giovanni Fontana was a 15th-century Italian engineer and inventor. His designs included everything from systems for retrieving sunken ships and automating the defence of fortifications to measuring time and producing music. He created locks, clocks, and magic lanterns.
Prester John 5: The Mongol Priest-King
Ong Khan, sometimes identified as Prester John, in Marco Polo’s Le Livre des Merveilles - Wikimedia
The Mongols, their conquests, and the travellers who went to see them were all going to necessitate some changes to the Prester John narrative. This episode is all about those changes.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Sir John Mandeville: The Book of Marvels and Travels, translated by Anthony Bale. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Aigle, Denise. The Mongol Empire Between Myth and Reality. Brill, 2014.
Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the West:1221-1410. Routledge, 2018.
Rachewiltz, Igor de. Prester John and Europe's Discovery of East Asia. Australian National University Press, 1972.
Medieval Lives 2: Ramon Llull
Detail from The Life of Ramon Llull - Wikimedia
Ramon Llull sat down one night to write a love song, but instead he experienced a religious vision that would totally change the direction of his life.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Doctor Illuminatus: A Ramon Llull Reader, edited by Anthony Bonner. Princeton University Press, 1993.
Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins of Medieval Society, edited by Michael Goodich. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
Abd-al-Razzaq Samarqandi 1: The Unwilling Envoy
Qāliqūṭ / Calicut as depicted in Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg’s atlas Civitates orbis terrarum, 1572
It's 1442, and Shah Rukh, the son of Timur, is sending an ambassador to Qaliqut / Kozhikode on the Indian coast. That ambassador, Abd-al-Razzāq, sails from Hormuz and experiences delays, sickness, death, and disappointment. Making matters worse, he never actually wanted to go.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
India in the Fifteenth Century: Being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India. Edited by Richard Henry Major. Hakluyt Society, 1857.
Alam, Muzaffar and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Prange, Sebastian R. Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Medieval Lives 1: al-Ghazāl
Abd al-Rahman III Receiving the Ambassador at the Court of Cordoba, Dionisio Baixeras Verdaguer (note that the emir in this story is Abd al-Rahman II)
This is a story about Abū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā ibn Ḥakam al-Bakrī al-Jayyānī, known also as al-Ghazāl (the Gazelle). It's the story of a 9th century poet on an embassy from the Emirate of Córdoba to a Viking ruler.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Allen, W.E.D. "The Poet and the Spae-Wife: An Attempt to Reconstruct Al-Ghazal’s Embassy to the Vikings," Saga Book, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1960).
Hermes, Nizar F. The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture: Ninth-Twelfth Century AD. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Pons-Sanchez, Sara M. "Whom did al-Ghazal meet? An Exchange of Embassies Between the Arabs From al-Andalus and the Vikings," Saga Book, Vol. 28 (2004).
"A Hispano-Muslim Embassy to the Vikings in 845: An Account of al-Ghazal’s Journey to the North" at ballandalus.wordpress.com.
Ibn Fadlan 4: Communal Hygiene and the Viking Funeral
Frank Dicksee - The Funeral of a Viking
In the conclusion the Ahmad ibn Fadlan series, ibn Fadlan encounters the Rusiyyah, recounts the famous Viking funeral, and is disgusted by a communal wash basin. I also talk about the text itself.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here, my Ko-fi is here, and Paypal is here.
Sources:
Ahmad ibn Fadlan. Mission to the Volga, translated by James E. Montgomery. New York University Press, 2017.
Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North, translated and with an introduction by Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone. Penguin, 2012.
Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, edited by Josef W. Meri. Routledge, 2005.
Bukharaev, Ravil. Islam in Russia: The Four Seasons. Routledge, 2014.
Frye, R.N. and Blake, R.P. "Notes on the Risala of Ibn Fadlan," in The Turks in the Early Islamic World, edited by C. Edmund Bosworth. Routledge, 2017.
Hansen, Valerie. The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World and Globalization Began. Simon and Schuster, 2020.
Korpela, Jukka Jari. Slaves from the North: Finns and Karelians in the East European Slave Trade, 900 - 1600. BRILL, 2018.
Kratchkovsky, I.Y. Among Arabic Manuscripts: Memories of Libraries and Men. BRILL, 2016.
Mako, Gerald. The Islamization of the Volga Bulghars: A Question Reconsidered. Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011.
Montgomery, James E. "Ibn Fadlan’s ‘Mission to the Volga’: An Extraordinary Narrative by a Not-so-extraordinary Writer," an interview with ArabLit.
Peacock, A.C.S. The Great Seljuk Empire. Edinburgh University Press, 2015.
Romano, John F. Medieval Travel and Travelers: A Reader. University of Toronto Press, 2020.
Vernadsky, George. Kievan Russia. Yale University Press, 1973.
Wladyslaw, Duczko. Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe. BRILL, 2004.
Wilson, Joe. Black Banner and White Nights: The 10th-Century Travel Account of Ibn Fadlan. James Madison University, 2014.
Marco and the Polos 3: Marco and the Great, Great Khan
Marco Polo was a tremendous admirer of Kublai Khan and of his Genghisid legacy more generally. This episode, we explore that admiration, the character of Kublai, and the anecdote of the treacherous minister. You'll hear about the khan at his summer palace of Shangdu, the rebellion of Nayan (with the support of Kaidu), the role of Liu Bingzhong, and the story of Ahmed. I also posted a written addition to this episode here.
(MP3)
If you like what you hear, my Patreon is here, my Ko-fi is here, and Paypal is here.
Sources:
The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian, translated by William Marsden, edited by Thomas Wright. George Bell & Sons, 1907.
Larner, John. Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World. Yale University Press, 1999.
Man, John. Marco Polo: The Journey that Changed the World. HarperCollins, 2009.
Olschki, Leonardo. Marco Polo's Asia. University of California Press, 1960.
Rossabi, Morris. Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times. University of California Press, 1988.