Vasily Vereshchagin - Triumph
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In mid-October, 1404, the 13th, Timur threw another of the great celebrations to which Clavijo and the other travellers had become accustomed, one of those gatherings which they had likely grown more than a little weary of since their arrival.
Timur’s grandson was there, the son of his firstborn son, Pir Muhammad who had been highly important in Timur’s invasion of India, had led its advance element. He’d since been governing in Kandahar and had been summoned in by Timur because it had been seven years since he’d seen him, a long time to not see your family, particularly if you were considering them as heir to your empire.
When Clavijo saw Pir Muhammad that day, he found him to be dark, beardless, and held in reverence by all those present. He was richly dressed in blue satin embroidered with golden designs, and his head was crowned by a hat set with pearls, gems, and rubies. Clavijo bowed before him in the same manner as before Timur himself, on one knee, hand to chest, and with men’s arms under his, holding him tight. There were two leather clad wrestlers there, performing before this royal governor, we might say before this prince, and at first, neither could throw the other, but finally one did, pinning him and ending their combat.
A woman the text identifies as Cano was there, first wife I said in a previous episode, though that would not be first chronologically, for there were other consorts and wives before her. First in importance though, that could be argued for, for she was held to be a favourite and a wielder of considerable influence. She was the descendent of Chagatai Khan, a descendent of Genghis Khan and a woman whose connection to Timur, after he had defeated her first husband, connected him to that lineage, with all of its power and significance.
Saray Mulk Khanum, for that was her name, arrived that day in a flowing, sleeveless gown of gold embroidered red silk, its skirts held aloft by 15 attendants to allow her to walk. Her face was framed with black hair and peering out from behind a veil. It looked like paper, so coated was it with white lead to protect it from the sun. Above it, mounded a high-crested red headdress, picked out in precious stones and topped by a little castle set with rubies and white feathers. Armed eunuchs went before her, and 300 women waited upon her. Over her was carried a large umbrella of white silk.
And of course Timur was there. He was giving the Castilian master of theology a drink from his own hand. He was watching the tumblers and acrobats with their poles and ropes. He was being entertained by the 14 elephants which were made to run and perform tricks, their heavy movements causing the earth itself to shake.
The gathering drank and feasted, the usual meats, rice, and sugared bread, and as it grew darker, they feasted again by the light of the lanterns. Eventually, Clavijo and the others saw that this would not soon end, and they took their leave.
The good times were coming to a close.
Hello and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the history podcast that traces that medieval world through the stories of its travellers. And this history podcast has a Patreon, a Patreon where you can listen ad-free, early, and with extras on the end on a pay what you want/can basis. So for as little as $1 a month, a classic vending machine purchase per month, you can do so at patreon.com/humancircus, or you can find that via my website at humancircuspodcast.com. This episode, I want in particular to thank Grammar Tucker and Mark Muoio. Thank you very much!
And now, back to the story. Back to the story of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo and his embassy from Enrique of Castile to Timur of Samarkand.
Last episode, we reached Samarkand, and we witnessed feasts and celebrations. We settled in among Timur and his people as they enjoyed his return from military triumphs abroad. We saw a little of the business he’d returned to, family weddings and a reimposing of order and authority. And we had a hint of his affairs with the Yongle Emperor of Ming China, a sense that the relationship was less than entirely friendly. We’ll have more than a hint of that here as we turn towards the final period of Clavijo’s embassy and of Timur’s reign.
This episode, there will be quite a bit less feasting than we had last time. This will be the final episode of the Clavijo series, and we’re moving into the last legs of that story. It’s the story of two final journeys.
The ambassadors’ time with Timur wasn’t entirely over yet, as late October rolled into November. They spent time among the 14 or 15 thousand tents of Timur’s people, tents painted blue and gold and used as mosques, tents of silk lined with sable furs, tents lined with rows and rows of great wine jars. They weren’t quite done with the wine yet either, but things were starting to take a turn.
They gathered now in Samarkand itself. Little larger than Seville, the visiting Castilian deemed it, but with a great number of houses outside its earthen walls, and with gardens and vineyards extending on all sides. The surrounding lands were rich, plentiful, abundant in birds and sheep, and watered by many rivers. The green of its gardens such that as you approached the city, you felt as though you were nearing a thick forest. The number of melons entering the city every day by camel was enough to amaze the visitors, and food more generally is reported as being amply enough available to be inexpensive, even as the land and city played host to Timur’s substantial army.
If it was nature that provided the city’s advantageous situation, it was Timur himself who had accelerated its growth. Into the city he had poured treasure, taken from such far-flung locations as Anatolia and India, and he had overseen its expansion and embellishment in brick and blue glazed tile.
As those conquests had multiplied, into Samarkand and its surrounding villages went many of the people he’d conquered. They’d brought sheer numbers in population but also knowledge and specialization in construction, arts, crafts, science, and theology, bringing workers in silk, metal, and glass, and bringing a tremendous diversity; of Christians alone one might find Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Syrians, Thomas Christians and, among others, those perhaps misidentified in the text as Christians who, quote, “baptize[d] with fire in the face.”
And those surrounding villages and suburbs reflected his victories in another way too. Many of them were actually named after cities he had taken on campaign, so that truly great cities such as Baghdad, Sultaniya, Shiraz, and Damascus became but minor neighbourhoods on the periphery of this imperial centre to which he had recently returned.
And what would that have been like? What would it have been to be there in Samarkand on its ruler’s arrival after years away, after conquest after conquest. Clavijo was perhaps a little late to have been part of that initial excitement, but then it had happened before. Timur had been away for years before and then made his triumphant reentry after victorious campaigns.
Such had been the case in 1396, and we do have some descriptions of that.
To quote Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi, the 15th century scholar and historian:
“On all sides were to be seen garlands of flowers with crowns .... and musicians performing the newest pieces of music to the honour of his majesty. … The walls of the houses were hung with carpets, the roofs covered with stuffs, and the shops set off with curious pieces. There was a vast multitude of people, and the streets were covered with velvet, satin, silk, and carpets, which the horses trampled underfoot.”
All was made ready to receive Timur, and into this fully decorated city paraded he and his soldiers with the treasures and enslaved which their victories had won. Feasts were ordered, plunder dispersed, and criminals were executed. It all sounds quite familiar, quite like the festivities we’ve seen something of on this most recent return to Samarkand.
There in that city, Timur now held a feast for his grandson who had died in Turkey. He decided that the chapel constructed to honour that grandson was too low and ordered those working on it to tear it down and try again. But he otherwise seems to have been happy. The ambassadors were given yet more robes of honour along with bags of silver, and work on the chapel went quickly. Under Timur’s attention, Clavijo said it came down and went back up in only ten days.
His immediate attention could have that kind of effect, however many days it had been, and especially since he’d killed an architect whose mosque had disappointed him, and also taken away the man’s wealth and children.
Timur was active in the city, and everywhere his demands were exacting, if not always met. A mosque built to honour the mother of Saray Mulk Khanum had, he thought, too low a doorway, and must be done again. The city also lacked a street on which the goods that entered could be displayed in an organized manner, a place for the merchandise of China, India, and elsewhere to be sold, the spices, gems, musk, silks, and skins. He ordered that it be created, running from one end of the city to the other, and the homes in the way to be demolished. Workers set about their cycle of destroy-and-rebuild, labouring day and night with such a noise that Clavijo compared them at their work to teams of devils.
Timur was active, but not particularly mobile, for he was born about on a pallet, able now neither to walk on foot or sit in the saddle. His health was not good, not good and getting worse, and this deterioration really snuck up on the ambassadors.
On Friday 1st of November, Clavijo and the others went to see Timur. They’d stayed long enough. They were expecting to be dismissed then, to receive a letter for their king, perhaps some parting presents, and to be allowed to make ready to go. But while they waited for hours for an audience, it was only for him to come out and tell them he could not speak then. He was too busy with his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who was departing soon. They should come back another time.
On the following Saturday, they did, but again they received no audience. They waited, but the lord of Samarkand would not come out of his tent. He was ill. He did emerge eventually, but again, the ambassadors were sent away, this time by his attendants. Timur would not see them.
On Sunday, they came back again, and again they waited. There was a lot of waiting in their work. They could not go unless Timur dismissed them, and that was exactly what they told his 3 men who now confronted them. The 3 men who not only told them that Timur would not be seeing them but also then summoned the man who was responsible as Castilians’ host and had him beaten. There was confusion all around them and attendants in bewilderment. Timur was sick, very sick, and it seems that no one knew quite what they should do. The ambassadors were seen off to their lodgings and ordered to remain there. They should not, it was made clear, come back until they were sent for.
So that didn’t leave them much choice. It was back to the lodgings for them, there to wait. They waited for that last invitation, but it never came. Only a visit from a man who told them they should go. They should not wait. There was to be no exit interview, no official parting from the ruler they had spent more than a year of their lives coming to see. They should leave now, and go to Tabriz. Timur’s grandson there would dismiss them.
Clavijo and his colleagues were, to say the least, startled by all of this. They did not know what to make of it at all, but they certainly weren’t taking their sudden visitor’s word that they should go.
In the chaos of imperial Samarkand, with Timur seriously ill and his attendants unsure of what to do, Clavijo and the others found the men who’d earlier sent them away from their lord’s side and tried to talk their way back into his presence.
Timur had told them to come just the previous Thursday. He had told them, and they had come. They could not, would not, now leave without a letter for their lord, without Timur’s compliments to their king and audience. They could not, but they were going to have to. Timur’s men were unyielding. The Castilians were absolutely not going to be seeing him before they left. They were going to be leaving without delay, and that was very much that.
On the 18th of November, their time was up, and a man was at their lodgings who would guide them on their way. Again, they protested that they could not leave, not without seeing Timur or at least having a letter from him, but again, it was made clear that they would have neither. They could go now, Timur’s man told them, now with “all the supplies due to their rank,” or they could go later without them. Evidently the prospect of heading home diplomatically empty handed sat easier with them than did the prospect of unsupported travel, and so they left.
They left the city and with that ambassador from Mamluk Egypt, waited at a site nearby for other diplomats heading back for Turkey and other destinations. Everyone was leaving Samarkand. There was talk that Timur had lost the power of speech and was dying. It was said that his people wanted everyone out before it happened, before the news could be spread that Timur had died.
On November 21st, the travellers were on the road, with those supplies and in the company of diplomats and dignitaries from across the ways west, those like them who had been ejected from Samarkand.
Behind them, Timur’s people made ready. Plans were doubtless already afoot for succession, with messengers going out and meetings held, both secret and not so secret. Was Pir Muhammad, who would have been back by now in his own domains, yet aware? Were Shah Rukh, Miran Shah, and Khalil Sultan? If not just yet, then soon the players would all be poised for the moment when the old ruler died and the opportunity at last came to replace him.
That was the way one imagines things playing out behind the travellers - Clavijo, the Castilians, and the rest - as they travelled away from the imperial city and its dying master. But that was not quite yet where events were leading. Not yet.
We’re going to get to where this was all going, after this quick break, and after a quick word from another history podcast.
…
In the final weeks of 1404, Clavijo was heading home. Everyone was heading home, and Timur, Timur was dying.
Except he wasn’t.
Timur had recovered before from periods of apparently devastating ill health, and he did so again now, not only recovering, but almost immediately departing on yet another incredibly ambitious campaign, perhaps, given his age and condition, even his most ambitious.
So even as Clavijo was making his way west to the city of Bukhara and on the 10th of December crossed the Amu Darya, Timur was going the other way. Timur was heading for China.
There had been those recent confrontations with the Yongle emperor’s representative. We saw through Clavijo’s eyes that the exchange was not entirely friendly, what with Timur having the envoy’s seat bumped back in importance and then referring to his emperor as a thief and a bad man. However, Timur’s invasion here in late 1404 was not a sudden move, was not precipitated by any particular diplomatic disagreement during this encounter. It had been in the offing for quite some time.
As the Yongle emperor saw it, Timur ruled over these lands only as his superior to the east allowed it. For this honour, he owed tribute, and there had been a time when Timur had paid it, but not now in years, and not now when the Chinese envoy made clear that he should.
Timur had been preparing for this conflict for some time. He had directed his follower Allahdad to map the lands east in exacting detail. According to Bavarian traveller Johann Schiltberger, he had, back in 1401, also ordered Allahdad to prepare the way for the movement of a great host, for such large armies could not simply go wherever they wished and expect to eat off the land. A path had been chosen, fortresses constructed, and agricultural lands prepared to feed the army and its horses. People taken from whatever they’d been working at and given over entirely to labour in the fields at raising cattle and crops.
It was a daunting task, and we see something of it in the account of Timur’s chronicler ibn Arabshah, then a teenager living in Samarkand. In his account, the responsibility is received by Allahdad as very near to a death sentence, a monumental undertaking with huge expectations that, quote, “routed his rest and made sleep fly like a bird from the nest of his eyelids.” The example of that executed architect was fresh in Allahdad’s mind, and he saw in Timur’s commands his own ruinous future, his children orphaned and holdings swallowed up. However, it does not appear to have been shortcomings on his part that hindered the Timurid march east.
By Christmas day, 1404, the Castilians were moving west through the mountains of northeastern Iran, their journey passing without any great detail. There were long days and nights in the desert, days on snowy mountains that were but thinly populated, a night in a large deserted building, near a ruined castle. There was a hilltop city where when something unclean fell into the fountain, a cold wind would blow. At some point they’d rejoined their earlier route, roughly following it now in the other direction.
On the 26th of January, they dined with a son in law of Timur, the man who had taken charge of their servants who’d needed to stay behind because of illness, servants who rejoined them now, save for the two who’d since died. They travelled on toward Soltaniyeh, the snow at times so bad that they could go no further, that they could not see the way before them, that when they did go on, it was with 30 men ahead, clearing the path.
Meanwhile, Timur was having his own issues with the weather. It was winter time, maybe not the best season to start this kind of thing, but then maybe he didn’t think he had much time left and it had to happen now.
“Now,” ibn Arabshah wrote, in apparent reference to the sickness our travellers had seen, “when he had recovered from his drunkenness, he attacked his plan of going to the ends of the earth and seeking its coasts and borders that he might despoil kingdoms and countries.”
But that was not going tremendously well.
Ibn Arabshah shows us Timur having prepared himself and his armies against the “broad swords of ice and sharp spears of cold,” with extra covering for the tents and for themselves, cloaks and blankets, but it does not seem to have been enough.
Snow fell upon them, such that their surroundings, we read, “appeared like the plain of the last judgement or a sea which God forged out of silver,” and “when the breath of the wind blew on the breath of man, it quenched his spirit and froze him on his horse.”
Neither man, nor horse, nor camel were safe from these harsh conditions.
“...many perished of his army, noble and base alike, and winter destroyed great and small among them and their noses and ears fell off scorched by cold … and winter ceased not to attack and poured against them wind and seas, until it had submerged them, while they wandered in weakness.”
“Yet,” ibn Arabshah continued, “Timur cared not for the dying and grieved not for those that perished.” He pressed on, on his last, doomed venture.
Clavijo reached Soltaniyeh on the 13th of February and left on the 21st. By the end of the month, he was in Tabriz, and in early March given fresh horses and directions to go speak to Umar Mirza, grandson of Timur. There was a false start when a messenger from Umar sent them back to Tabriz to wait, but later in the month, they were again on the way, travelling in the company of ambassadors from Egypt and Turkey, for they had all been told they must go.
Closer to Umar Mirza’s camp, they were nearly sent back again. They were warned that they should go back. There had been a clash between Umar and another man, a nephew of Timur’s. The nephew was dead, and now his followers fought with Umar’s in the camp. They should go back. But they pressed on, and the next day, they entered a camp in chaos, found an army divided and in much confusion, found, after some time, a man who would speak to them and give them answers. He told them to go back to Tabriz.
It was either there in that camp or later that the travellers heard a story of what had happened between Umar and the nephew, how at least the pretext for the trouble had been personal, an argument, essentially, over the fate of a woman and what she ought to do, but the timing for that to have been the case was suspect. Something broader in scale was likely at work behind this discord, for word was spreading that Timur was dead.
It was not the first time it had happened, not the dying exactly, but not the first time that messengers had gone out announcing the death of Timur. At least twice before he had ordered it done just to see what came next and crush accordingly those who misstepped in his perceived absence, and indeed, as the ambassadors waited in Tabriz, word reached the city that Timur was both alive and actually marching against the Mamluks in Egypt. But this was not the case.
Timur had made it as far east as Otrar in southern Kazakhstan, struggling against the climate and against his own ill health. He was drinking arrack brewed with drugs and spices to keep him warm from within, but perhaps that was not the most helpful thing to be taking. He was, according to ibn Arabshah, vomiting blood, and the doctors’ treatment of ice applied to his belly and chest did little to help. None of them could alter his fate, not once the, quote, “hand of death gave him the cup to drink,” and I’ll continue here with ibn Arabshah’s description.
Quote:
“...[Timur] coughed like a camel which is strangled, his colour was nigh quenched and his cheeks foamed like a camel dragged backwards with the rein; and if one saw the angels that tormented him, they showed their joy, with which they threaten the wicked to lay waste their houses and utterly destroy the whole memory of them.
…they brought garments of hair from Hell and drew forth his soul like a spit from a soaked fleece and he was carried to the cursing and punishment of God, remaining in torment and God’s infernal punishment.”
Timur was dead.
I should note that ibn Arabshah had been taken from the city of his birth, taken after it had been violently sacked by Timur, but even if his colourful depiction, considerably lengthier than I’ve included here, filled in a few details, it was still the case that Timur was not marching on Mamluk Egypt. Instead, his body was being borne back to Samarkand, no more to march on Egypt, China, or anywhere else for that matter. Across his empire and among the large family he left behind, the race to replace him had already begun.
And Clavijo was perhaps at risk of being swallowed up by that race.
In the region where the Castilians now travelled, Umar Mirza maneuvered against his own father and imprisoned his own brother. More importantly, so far as our travellers were concerned, he’d seemingly abandoned them there in Tabriz after having informed them by letter that they should go nowhere; they were not dismissed. It was not until April the 29th that they received any further word, but that was no more welcome than the wait. It was men at their lodgings with orders from their lord to take everything the ambassadors had, their gifts, money, and horses, and according to Clavijo, leaving only the clothes they wore. They protested, of course, but all that earned them was the reminder that they still needed to present themselves to Umar Mirza in order to leave. And that, in this suddenly post-Timur world, proved harder than it should have been.
Umar Mirza was not in one settled place, not in the place where his men had said they should find him. He was off hunting for his father and then rushing back to his imprisoned brother who he’d ordered should be poisoned, who had not waited around to be poisoned, who had instead been freed in a violent armed escape and even plundered the treasury on his way out. Then the Georgian king had rebelled and was invading. There was a lot going on, and the foreign ambassadors were fairly low down the list of priorities as the second year of their journey ticked away.
They were so low down the list, that it wasn’t until mid-August they’d get that audience. By then, their belongings had been returned to them, allowing for a civil parting exchange of gifts - a sword here, a robe there - but still there was confusion, a sense that not all was right with how this was proceeding. The embassies from Egypt and Turkey were imprisoned, and though those from Turkey were quickly released, mace-wielding men came to Clavijo’s lodgings to seize cloths, robes, and other items. The order of things in Timurid lands no longer held, and it was well past time to be leaving.
On the 22nd of August, they did, heading out before dawn with the Turkish contingent for mutual security. They moved fast, motivated by understandable fear as to the uncertainty of the situation. Just two days later, at the city of Khoy, they heard that Qara Yusuf, leader of the Black Sheep Turkomans, was in the field with 10,000 cavalry, robbing and plundering. They left the direct road and continued on, picking up rumours as they went, of Qara Yusuf and the violence of his men, turning ever more out of their way in an effort to avoid them, and receiving help at times. They had split from the other ambassadors, but the Timurid lord of an Armenian castle arranged for them to be taken by safe paths. This guide would see them through to Ispir in northeastern Turkey, and another from there would direct them toward Trebizond.
They were in that rugged mountainous territory south of the Black Sea now, as early September passed. Rugged enough that wooden bridges stretched at times from one rock to another and pack animals were not always usable, and made more dangerous by the locals who would not let them pass without parting with some of their goods. I’m sure the Castilians did not wait around to negotiate, would not have wanted to let storm season find them on the Black Sea again.
On the 17th of September, they reached Trebizond, finding a Genoese captained ship with a cargo of nuts bound for Pera, arriving in that city on the 22nd of October. Clavijo’s observations were not so full now as they got closer to home, the sparsity of detail making the text seem to accelerate towards its conclusion.
On the 4th of November, they sailed from Pera with two Genoese carracks that had come from Caffa. They stopped in Gallipoli to take on a shipment of cotton, reached Chios and left it on the 17th, and on the last day of November, they anchored off of Sicily.
There were storms on the way to Gaeta, and more that forced them to return and stay there after a false start. They left on the 22nd of December but were again beset by foul weather and forced to take refuge in Corsica, where they spent their second Christmas abroad.
They were in Genoa on the 3rd of January, leaving it on the 1st of February. It was the last leg of their journey, but on this crossing, Clavijo says, the weather was worse than any they’d yet encountered in all their crossings. This seems like it would have been an exaggeration - there had been that shipwreck on the Black Sea - but it was not until March 1st that they reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
It had taken a long time. They were a little short of 3 months short of 3 years on the road, but they were so close now, in the south of Spain, travelling first to Seville and then northward, and quote, “on Monday, the 24th of March … the ambassadors reached the court of their lord, the King of Castille, which they found in Alcalá de Henares.”
They had, at last, made it. After dangerous seas, mountains, deserts, snows, and people, after month on month until the months turned to years of travelling from western Europe to central Asia, they were back.
Behind them, the Timurid empire had fallen into disarray. It had fallen apart and not yet been put back together.
It had been about a year and four months since the travellers had left Timur’s Samarkand, just over a year since he’d died, and his empire had not stood still since his death.
There’d been the early rush. It was clear to many that simply having Samarkand itself would be a huge advantage, that the city plus a loyal army could easily outweigh Pir Muhammad’s claim to having been chosen by Timur before he died. One Timurid grandson who’d tried that route to power was, by the time of Clavijo’s return, already a stuffed head, on display to his relatives. And some of the other characters we’ve come across along our story wouldn’t fare too well either.
Pir Muhammad, who Clavijo had met in Samarkand, would die in 1407. He’d battle against the Timurid grandson who’d won that opening race to Samarkand. He’d try to take back what he thought rightfully his, but he would be betrayed and murdered by someone close to him.
Miran Shah, Clavijo’s host in Soltaniyeh of whom there were so many stories, he of falling from horses, tearing down buildings, and/or perhaps trying to nudge his father out of power, he would die in a 1408 battle to the very same Qara Yusuf who Clavijo had been trying to avoid.
His son, Khalil Sultan, actually had won that race to the capital and would rule until 1409, when he would be removed from power, his actual death coming two years later.
And there were other members of Timurid royalty, other deaths, as the struggle for control of the dead man’s empire played itself out. When the dust did settle, it would be Shah Rukh, Timur’s other son, the one who had invited the Castilians to come visit him in Herat, who would hold power. He was actually going to do so for a surprisingly stable period of not just years but decades, the exact date of its beginning perhaps arguable, its eventual conclusion at last coming with his death in 1447.
As for our traveller, he had played his small part in the Timurid history and would not be travelling so extensively again, understandably. He would serve his king in a physically closer capacity, as chamberlain, but not for long, just until Enrique’s death at the end of 1406, after which he would retire to Madrid and apparently live well until his own death in 1412.
His journey had been a success, in that by his own testimony at least, he appears to have pleased Timur, and then he survived to return home. He had not managed to get that letter to bring back with him, but then with Timur’s immediate death, it’s not clear what value such a thing would have had. It’s not clear exactly what Enrique would have really wanted.
Much is made of European rulers’ delight at what Timur had done to strike down the Ottoman threat, but what of the new Timurid one that rose in the immediate aftermath? As Timur slaughtered his way into the eastern Mediterranean, was there not some concern that he might come just a little further the next time, that his men might soon be stacking piles of central European skulls, and so on?
As Edward Gibbon, he of the decline and fall, put it, Timur’s “armies were invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire to conquer and convert the Christian kingdoms of the west, which already trembled at his name.”
Were those letters and gifts then motivated as much by fear as by grateful fascination? Quite possibly, but in any case, neither the highest possible hopes Enrique may have invested in the venture nor the worst of anxieties would be realized. Timurid armies would not return to mop up a recovering Ottoman Empire - the Ottomans had some centuries still to go - but they also wouldn’t carry their blood-soaked work on into the lands of Europe’s Latin Christian rulers.
In the end, it’s hard to say that the multi-year exertions of our traveller had much of any impact at all upon history. Sometimes, it’s like that. But then he saw so much of the world and noted down so much about it, that even if his king had little enough gain from his efforts, we at least can be grateful to Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo.
And that’s where we’ll leave this traveller and this series. If you are listening on Patreon then expect me back in a few days with the bonus ending for this episode, something about ibn ‘Arabshah, but either way, I’ll be back again soon enough with a new episode and a new story.