Ibn Fadlan 1: From Baghdad with Very Cold Beards

Ahmad ibn Fadlan travels from early 10th century Baghdad on a diplomatic mission to the Volga Bulgars. There is a Viking funeral in his future, along with unfamiliar cultures and extremely cold weather. It's not The 13th Warrior, which it loosely inspired, but it is a good story.

Brancacci's Mission 1: From Florence to Cairo

In 1422, Felice Brancacci set out from Florence to establish trading relations with Mamluk Egypt, and to advocate for his city's currency. This is that story, part one of two.

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Sir John Mandeville 5: Mongols, Mountains, and Myths

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Finishing up with Mandeville's travels, we visit the palace of the Mongol khan, the fortress paradise of the Old Man of the Mountain, and a land that never sees the sun.

Sir John Mandeville 4: Of India and Medieval Monsters

Mandeville goes east into Greater India, and we go with him, following, as he follows the path of Odoric of Pordenone, into India, into the sea and its islands, and into a discussion of medieval hybrids and monsters, and what they mean. We'll find Amazons, the hand of St. Thomas, and people with neither noses nor eyes.

Sir John Mandeville 3: Mamluk Egypt

Our traveller reaches Egypt. He writes of wondrous gardens of balsam, of the pyramids and their purpose, of the recent history of the sultanate, and of the Mamluk Sultan's views of Latin Christian life.

Sir John Mandeville 1: To the Holy Land

Sir John Mandeville, a 14th-century figure who travelled/maybe travelled/almost definitely didn't travel from England to Jerusalem and its holy places, to the court of the sultan in Egypt, to the realms of the Mongol khan, and to the long sought lands of Prester John. With this episode, we start the journey.

The Book of the Wonders of India

Today's topic is the Kitāb ʻajāyib Al-Hind, or the Book of the Wonders of India, a 10th-century collection of "wonders" covering east Africa all the way to what might have been Japan. It's something of a sequel to the Abu Zayd episode. I mentioned there that the compiler avoided including the fanciful fables of the sea that sailors were so fond of spreading, but this text is full of them, so this is, for the most part, an episode of those fables.

Abu Zayd and the Ways East

... the Sea of India and China, in whose depths are pearls and ambergris, in whose rocky isles are gems and mines of gold, in the mouths of whose beasts is ivory, in whose forests grow ebony, sapan wood, rattans, and trees that bear aloewood, camphor, nutmeg, cloves, and all manner of fragrant and aromatic spices, whose birds are [parrots] and peacocks, and the creeping things of whose earth are civet cats and musk gazelles, and all the rest that no one could enumerate, so numerous are its blessings.

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Salah ad-Din 4: The Beginning of the End

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This is the end of my Salah ad-Din series, part one. As I mention in the episode, I was aiming to wrap things up here, even aiming to do so with an extra-long episode, but there's just too much left to do that. So, this is the end, part one. In this episode, we follow the Salah ad-Din story after the Battle of Hattin and up to the arrival of King Richard the Lionheart at Acre.

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Salah ad-Din 2: A Syrian Election

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The story of Salah ad-Din's expansion from Egypt back into Syria, his brushes with Rashid ad-Din Sinan's Assassins, his constant lobbying of the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, his struggles with the Zengid remnants and with a cast of enemies among the crusader states including Baldwin the Leper, Reynold de Chatillon, Raymond of Tripoli, and King Amalric of Jerusalem.