Charles Raymond Beazley

“ Throughout his reign he followed the policy of friendship and alliance with the overwhelming power of the Mongols. In about 1248 he sent his brother Sempad, who was now constable in his place, on a mission to Kuyuk Khan, the supreme Mongol emperor. Sempad was well received and returned home in 1250, bringing letters from Kuyuk. After Mangu’s accession in 1251, Batu (the most powerful of the Mongol princes and generals, and the conqueror—in name at least—of eastern Europe, now commanding on the line of the Volga) summoned Hayton to the court of the new grand khan. ”

“ Not only Mediterranean seaports, but the lakes of North Italy and central Europe, and the Hanseatic ports, are enumerated as nurseries of crusading mariners and marine skill. Finally, after the conquest of Egypt, Marino designs the establishment of a Christian fleet in the Indian Ocean to dominate and subjugate its coasts and islands. He also gives a sketch of the trade-routes crossing Persia and Egypt, as well as of the course of Indian trade from Coromandel and Gujarat to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf, and to Aden and the Nile. ”

“ NIKITIN, ATHANASIUS, of Tver (fl. 1468–1474) , Russian merchant, traveller and writer, the earliest known Russian visitor to India. He started in 1468 on his “wanderings beyond the Three Seas” (Caspian, Euxine and Indian Ocean) , and descended the Volga, passing by Uglich, Kostroma, Nizhniy Novgorod, Kazan, Sarai and Astrakhan. ”

“ The crusading plans of the Secreta are double: first, Egypt and the Moslem world on the side towards Europe (Syria, Asia Minor, the Barbary States, Granada, &c.) are to be ruined by the absolute stoppage of all Christian trade with the same. By such an interdict Sanuto hopes that Egypt, dependent on its European and other imports of metals, provisions, weapons, timber, pitch and slaves, would be fatally weakened, and the way thus prepared for the second part of the campaign—the armed attack of the crusading fleet and army on the Nile delta. ”

“ On a visit to his native city in 1492, he constructed his famous terrestrial globe, still preserved in Nuremberg, and often reproduced, in which the influence of Ptolemy is strongly apparent, but wherein some attempt is also made to incorporate the discoveries of the later middle ages (Marco Polo, &c.) . The antiquity of this globe and the year of its execution, on the eve of the discovery of America, are noteworthy; but as a scientific work it is unimportant, ranking far below the portolani charts of the 14th century. Its West Africa is marvellously incorrect ”

“ The Turks, by their conquest of Sogdiana in the middle of the 6th century, gained control of the silk trade which then passed through Central Asia into Persia. But the Persian king, Chosroes Nushirvan, dreading the intrusion of Turkish influence, refused to allow the old commerce to continue, and the Turks after many rebuffs consented to a suggestion made by their mercantile subjects of the Soghd, and in 568 sent an embassy to Constantinople to form an alliance with the Byzantines and “transfer the sale of silk to them.” ”

“ In 1554 Mercator published his great map of Europe in six sheets, three or four of which had already been pretty well worked out at Louvain; a copy of this was rediscovered at Breslau in 1889. Herein, though still greatly under Ptolemy’s influence, Mercator begins to emancipate himself; thus Ptolemy’s 62° for the length of the Mediterranean, reduced to 58° in the globe of 1541, he now cuts down to 53°. On the 28th of October 1556 he observed an eclipse at Duisburg; in 1563 he surveyed Lorraine, at the request of Duke Charles, and completed a map of the same (Lotharingiae descriptio) ”

“ In 1442 Nuno Tristam reached the Bay or Bight of Arguim, where the infante erected a fort in 1448, and where for years the Portuguese carried on vigorous slave-raiding. Meantime the prince, who had now, in 1443, been created by Henry VI. a knight of the Garter of England, proceeded with his Sagres buildings, especially the palace, church and observatory (the first in Portugal) which formed the nucleus of the “Infante’s Town,” and which were certainly commenced soon after the Tangier fiasco (1437) , if not earlier. In 1444–1446 there was an immense burst of maritime and exploring activity ”

“ Neckam has preserved to us the earliest European notices of the magnet as a guide to seamen—outside China, indeed, these seem to be the earliest notices of this mystery of nature that have survived in any country or civilization. ”

“ The story of the rediscovery of Madeira by the Englishman Robert Machim or Machin, eloping from Bristol with his lady-love, Anne d’Arfet, in the reign of Edward III. (about 1370) , has been the subject of much controversy; in any case it does not affect the original Italian discovery, nor the first sighting of Porto Santo by Zarco, who, while exploring the west African mainland coast, was driven by storms to this island. In 1424–1425 Prince Henry attempted to purchase the Canaries, and began the colonization of the Madeira group, both in Madeira itself and in Porto Santo ”

“ But when Dom Pedro rose in revolt (1447) , Henry stood by the king and allowed his brother to be crushed. In the Morocco campaigns of his last years, especially at the capture of Alcazar the Little (1458) , he restored the military fame which he had founded at Ceuta and compromised at Tangier, and which brought him invitations from the pope, the emperor and the kings of Castile and England, to take command of their armies. ”

“ Africa, away from the Mediterranean, is conventional, with its south-east projected, after the manner of Idrisi, so as to face Indian Asia, and with a western Nile traversing the continent to the Atlantic. ”

“ Old Man of the Sea," in the Fifth Voyage, we may also refer to Al Kazwini, Ibn Al Wardi and the romance of Seyf Zu-l Yezen; Sindbad's tyrannical rider has usually been explained as one of the huge apes of Borneo or Sumatra, improved to make a better story. The account of pepper, somewhat later in this Voyage, has a good deal in common with Idrisi's; Sindbad's pearl-fishing is probably to be located in the famous beds off Ceylon, of which Marco Polo has an excellent description. The romance of Seyf Zu-l Yezen has a voyage along a subterranean river similar to that of Sindbad on his Sixth Voyage ”

“ His allusions to the Catholic missions still persisting in Armenia and in other regions beyond the Euxine, and to (non-Roman ?) Christian communities even in the Great Tatary of the steppes are also remarkable. Schiltberger is perhaps the first writer of Western Christendom to give the true burial place of Mahomet at Medina: his sketches of Islam and of Eastern Christendom, with all their shortcomings, are of remarkable merit for their time: and he may fairly be reckoned among the authors who contributed to fix Prester John, at the close of the middle ages, in Abyssinia. ”

“ The chief exception is perhaps in the delineation of Africa in the world-maps of Marino Sanuto (q.v.) and Pietro Vesconte. His account of the voyage of the Maghrurin or “Deceived Men” of Lisbon in the Atlantic (a voyage on which they seem to have visited Madeira and one of the Canaries) may have had some effect in stimulating the later ocean enterprise of Christian mariners; but we have no direct evidence of this. Idrisi’s Ptolemaic leanings give a distinctly retrograde character to certain parts of his work, such as east Africa and south Asia ”

“ The general map was published by Dr Vincent in his Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. A copy of Idrisi’s work in the Escorial was destroyed by the fire of 1671.
An epitome of Idrisi’s geography, in the original Arabic, was printed, with many errors, in 1592 at the Medicean press in Rome, from a MS. preserved in the Grand Ducal library at Florence (De geographia universali. Hortulus cultissimus . . . ) . ”

“ In Portugal the king received him cordially, kept him some days at court "to learn about India," and confirmed the knighthood conferred by d'Almeida. His narrative finally brings him to Rome, where he takes leave of the reader. As Richard Burton says {Pilgrimage to . . . Meccah, 1855, vol. ii. p. 352) : "For correctness of observation and readiness of wit " Varthema " stands in the foremost rank of the old Oriental travellers." In Arabia and in the Indian archipelago east of Java he is (for Europe and Christendom) a real discoverer. ”

“ In 1538 appeared Mercator’s map of the world in (north and south) hemispheres, which was rediscovered in 1878 in New York; this work shows Ptolemy’s influence still dominant over Mercatorian cartography. In 1541 he issued the celebrated terrestrial globe, which he dedicated to Nicolas Perrenot, father of Cardinal Granvelle: this was accompanied by his Libellus de usu globi, which is said to have been presented to Charles V. In 1551 a celestial globe followed. Mercator early began to incline towards Protestantism ”

“ At the same time his breadth of view, his clear recognition of scientific truths (such as the roundness of the world) and his wide knowledge and intelligent application of preceding work (such as that of Ptolemy, Masudi and Al Jayhani) must not be forgotten. ”

“ MONTE CORVINO, GIOVANNI DI (c. 1247–1328) , Franciscan missionary, traveller and statesman, founder of the earliest Roman Catholic missions in India and China, and archbishop of Peking. In 1272 he was commissioned by the emperor Michael Palaeologus, to Pope Gregory X., to negotiate for the reunion of Greek and Latin churches. From 1275 to 1289 he laboured incessantly as a missionary in the Nearer and Middle East. ”

“ Thanks to his powerful friends, Hayton’s journey was unusually rapid. Eight months after quitting Mangu’s horde, he was back in Great Armenia. The narrative of this journey, which was written by a member of the king’s suite, one Kirakos of Gandsak (the modern Elizavetpol) , concludes with some interesting references to Buddhist tenets, to Chinese habits, to various monstrous races and to certain “women endowed with reason” dwelling “beyond Cathay.” ”

“ Soon after this, however, he paid a visit to Charles V. at Brussels, and presented the emperor with a cosmos, a celestial sphere enclosing a terrestrial, together with an explanatory Declaratio: this work marks an era in the observation of longitude by magnetic declination, perfected by Halley. ”

“ On this voyage Tasman and Quast visited the Philippines and improved Dutch knowledge of he east coast of Luzon; they also discovered and mapped various islands to the north, apparently the Bonin archipelago. Sailing on to N. and E. in search of the isles of precious metals, they ranged about fruitlessly in the northern Pacific, at one time believing themselves to be 600 Dutch miles east of Japan. After this the voyage was continued almost constantly westward, but in varying latitudes, reaching as high as 42° N, always without success. ”

“ Each climate is then divided by perpendicular lines into eleven equal parts, beginning with the western coast of Africa and ending with the eastern coast of Asia. The whole world is thus formed into seventy-seven equal square compartments. ”

“ Marino himself tells us that he had spent the best part of his life in Romania, the lands of the Eastern empire; of the Morea he had especially intimate knowledge; he had also visited Cyprus, Rhodes, parts of the Syrian, Cilician and Egyptian coasts, France, Flanders and north Germany, both west and east of Denmark. ”

“ In 1572 Mercator issued a second edition of his map of Europe; in 1578 appeared his Tabulae geographicae ad mentem Ptolemaei restitutae et emendatae; and in 1585 the first part (containing Germany, France and Belgium) of the Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi, in which he planned to crown his work by uniting in one volume his various detailed maps, so as to form a general description of the globe In 1585 he adapted his Europe to the Atlas ”

“ That Cam, on his second voyage of 1485–1486, was accompanied by Martin Behaim (as alleged on the latter’s Nuremberg globe of 1492) is very doubtful; but we know that the explorer revisited the Congo and erected two more pillars beyond the furthest of his previous voyage, the first at another “Monte Negro” in 15° 41′ S., the second at Cape Cross in 21° 50′, this last probably marking the end of his progress southward. According to one authority (a legend on the 1489 map of Henricus Martellus Germanus) , Cam died off Cape Cross ”

“ There he set up a post on which he hoisted the Dutch flag. Quitting Van Diemen's Land on the 5th of December, Tasman steered E. for the Solomon Islands, and on the 13th of December discovered (in 42° 10′ S., as he reckoned) a " high mountainous country," which he called Staten landt ("Land of the States," i.e., of Holland, now New Zealand) . Tasman and his company believed the newly discovered land to form part of the same great antarctic continent as the other Staten landt which Schouten and Lemaire had sighted and named to the east of Tierra del Fuego. ”

“ Andrew, who was now with St Louis, interpreted to the king David’s message, a real or pretended offer of alliance from the Mongol general Ilchikdai (Ilchikadai) , and a proposal of a joint attack upon the Islamic powers for the conquest of Syria. In reply to this the French sovereign despatched Andrew as his ambassador to the great Khan Kuyuk; with Longjumeau went his brother (a monk) and several others—John Goderiche, John of Carcassonne, Herbert “le sommelier,” Gerbert of Sens, Robert a clerk, a certain William, and an unnamed clerk of Poissy. ”

“ His outward route now took him to Sumatra, where he stayed a year, and of whose cruel, brutal, cannibal natives he gained a pretty full knowledge, as of the camphor, pepper and gold of this “Taprobana.” From Sumatra a stormy voyage of sixteen days brought him to Tenasserim, near the head of the Malay Peninsula. ”