Pope Alexander III and the Ambassador - Spinello Aretino
A shorter episode, on a letter from Pope Alexander III to Prester John.
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.
Pope Alexander III (1159–81): The Art of Survival. Taylor & Francis, 2016.
Rachewiltz, Igor de. Papal Envoys to the Great Khans. Stanford University Press, 1971.
Prester John comfortably enthroned in East Africa - Detail from the Queen Mary Atlas, MS 5415 A British Library
On the many fantastic additions to the Letter of Prester John (Dragons! Strange Bakeries! Etc!), and on the theories around it.
Sources:
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Nowell, Charles E. "The Historical Prester John." Speculum 28, no. 3 (1953).
Romm, James S. The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought Geography, Exploration, and Fiction. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Wang, I-Chun. "Alexander the Great, Prester John, Strabo of Amasia, and Wonders of the East." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.5 (2012).
From "Le Livre des Merveilles", 15th century. From the Gallica Digital Library. (Wikimedia)
The legend in its early forms: the arrival in Rome of a patriarch from the east, the chronicles of Otto of Freising, and that famous "letter."
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Otto of Freising, Chronicon, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SSRG (Hanover: Hahn, 1867), VII, 33, (pp. 334-35), translated by James Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary History, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1962). Accessed at Fordham University Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Baring-Gould, Sabine. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. Roberts Brothers, 1867.
Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
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.
1550 map of the Arabian Sea and surrounding lands - Wikimedia
The Timurid ambassador's time in India comes to an end, and he heads for home.
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.
Chariot and Temple at Hampi - Wikimedia
Shah Rukh's ambassador to the Indian city of Qaliqut arrives at the heart of the Vijayanagara Empire, finding much to admire but also war, a usurper, and uncertainties about his own status. We visit Hampi, the centre of that late-medieval power, and we talk about elephants.
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.
Caine, William Sproston. Picturesque India: A Handbook for European Travellers. G. Routledge, 1891.
Prange, Sebastian R. Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Ray, Aniruddha. "The Rise and Fall of Vijayanagar – an Alternative Hypothesis to "Hindu Nationalism" Thesis," in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 64, 2003.
Sewell, Robert. A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1900.
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.
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.
Vasily Vereshchagin - The Apotheosis of War
The Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo story reaches its conclusion, and so does that of Timur aka Tamerlane.
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:
Narrative of the embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the court of Timour at Samarcand, A.D. 1403-6, translated by Clements R. Markham. Hakluyt Society, 1859.
Embassy to Tamerlane: 1403-1406, translated by Guy le Strange. Routledge, 2005.
Ahmad ibn 'Arabshah. Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir, translated by J. H. Sanders. Luzac & Co., 1936.
Manz, Beatrice Forbes. The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Manz, Beatrice Forbes. Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Marozzi, Justin. Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilization. Penguin, 2019.
Rubiés, Joan-Pau. "Late Medieval Ambassadors And The Practice Of Cross-Cultural Encounters 1250–1450," in The ‘Book’ of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250-1700, edited by Palmira Brummett.
Stanisław Chlebowski - Timur and his captive Bayezid
Our travellers from early 15th century Spain arrive at the outskirts of Samarkand and meet with their host Timur.
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:
Narrative of the embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the court of Timour at Samarcand, A.D. 1403-6, translated by Clements R. Markham. Hakluyt Society, 1859.
Embassy to Tamerlane: 1403-1406, translated by Guy le Strange. Routledge, 2005.
Manz, Beatrice Forbes. The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Manz, Beatrice Forbes. Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Rubiés, Joan-Pau. "Late Medieval Ambassadors And The Practice Of Cross-Cultural Encounters 1250–1450," in The ‘Book’ of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250-1700, edited by Palmira Brummett.
