Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration 9004324895, 9789004324893

Table of contents :
Mythology and Diplomacy in the
Age of Exploration
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
General Editor’s Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1: Prester John (1122–1222)
2: Allies and Mythologies in Central Asia (1240–1405)
3: Contacts with Ethiopia – Prester John Found (to 1559)
4: Saint Thomas in India and the Americas (to c. 1600)
5: Columbus’ Plans for the New World and the Spanish Conversion of the Americas (1492–c. 1560)
6: “Christianized” Muslims in the Middle East (1400–1635)
7: Jews and the Search for the Ten Lost Tribes
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration

European Expansion and Indigenous Response Editor-in-Chief George Bryan Souza (University of Texas, San Antonio) Editorial Board Cátia Antunes (Leiden University) João Paulo Oliveira e Costa (cham, Universidade Nova de Lisboa) Frank Dutra (University of California, Santa Barbara) Kris Lane (Tulane University) Pedro Machado (Indiana University, Bloomington) Malyn Newitt (King’s College, London) Michael Pearson (University of New South Wales)

VOLUME 23

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/euro

Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration By

Adam Knobler

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: “Carta Juan de la Cosa,” 1500. A world map drawn by the Spanish explorer and cartographer Juan de la Cosa. It is the first known representation of the newly discovered territories in the New World and includes information of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India. Reproduced with kind permission by the Museo Naval de Madrid. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016044604

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1873-8974 isbn 978-90-04-32489-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-32490-9 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Dedicated to Alexandra, who has been there from the beginning and to Nathan and Lois Jean Knobler, who were not able to see the end.

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Contents General Editor’s Foreword ix Acknowledgements xii Introduction 1 1 Prester John (1122–1222) 5 2 Allies and Mythologies in Central Asia (1240–1405) 9 3 Contacts with Ethiopia – Prester John Found (to 1559) 30 4 Saint Thomas in India and the Americas (to c. 1600) 57 5 Columbus’ Plans for the New World and the Spanish Conversion of the Americas (1492–c. 1560) 70 6 “Christianized” Muslims in the Middle East (1400–1635) 80 7 Jews and the Search for the Ten Lost Tribes 96 Conclusions 105 Bibliography 109 Index 150

General Editor’s Foreword Over the past half millennium, from ca. 1450 until the last third or so of the 20th century, much of the world’s history has been influenced in great part by one general dynamic and complex historical process known as European expansion. Defined as the opening up, unfolding or increasing the extent, number, volume or scope of the space, size or participants belonging to a certain people or group, location or geographical region, Europe’s expansion initially emerged and emanated physically, intellectually and politically from southern Europe – specifically from the Iberian peninsula – during the 15th century, expanding rapidly from that locus to include, first, all of Europe’s maritime, and later, most of its continental states and peoples. Most commonly associated with events described as the discovery of America and of a passage to the East Indies (Asia) by rounding the Cape of Good Hope (Africa) during the early modern and modern periods, European expansion and encounters with the rest of the world multiplied and morphed into several ancillary historical processes, including colonization, imperialism, capitalism and globalization, encompassing themes, amongst others, relating to contacts and – to quote the euro series’ original mission statement –, “connections and exchanges; peoples, ideas and products, especially through the medium of trading companies; the exchange of religions and traditions; the transfer of technologies; and the development of new forms of political, social and economic policy, as well as identity formation.” Because of its intrinsic importance, extensive research has been performed and much has been written about the entire period of European expansion. With the first volume published in 2009, Brill launched the European Expansion and Indigenous Response book series at the initiative of a well-known scholar and respected historian, Glenn J. Ames, who prior to his untimely passing was the founding editor and guided the first seven volumes of the series to publication. George Bryan Souza, who was one of the early members of the series’ editorial board, was appointed the series’ second General Editor. The series’ founding objectives are to focus on publications “that understand and deal with the process of European expansion, interchange and connectivity in a global context in the early modern and modern period” and to “provide a forum for a variety of types of scholarly work with a wider disciplinary approach that moves beyond the traditional isolated and nation bound historiographical emphases of this field, encouraging whenever possible non-European perspectives … that seek to understand this indigenous transformative process and period in autonomous as well as inter-related cultural, economic, social, and ideological terms.”

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The history of European expansion is a challenging field in which interest is likely to grow, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its polemical nature. Controversy has centered on tropes conceived and written in the past by Europeans, primarily concerning their early reflections and claims regarding the transcendental historical nature of this process and its emergence and importance in the creation of an early modern global economy and society. One of the most persistent objections is that the field has been “Eurocentric.” This complaint arises because of the difficulty in introducing and balancing different historical perspectives, when one of the actors in the process is to some degree neither European nor Europeanized – a conundrum alluded to in the African proverb: “Until the lion tells his tale the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Another, and perhaps even more important and growing historiographical issue, is that with the re-emergence of historical millennial societies (China and India, for example) and the emergence of other non-Western European societies successfully competing politically, economically and intellectually on the global scene vis-à-vis Europe, the seminal nature of European expansion is being subjected to greater scrutiny, debate, and comparison with other historical alternatives. Despite, or perhaps because, of these new directions and stimulating sources of existing and emerging lines of dispute regarding the history of European expansion, Souza and the editorial board of the series will continue with the original objectives and mission statement of the series and vigorously “… seek out studies that employ diverse forms of analysis from all scholarly disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, art history, history, (including the history of science), linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, and religious studies.” In addition, we shall seek to stimulate, locate, incorporate, and publish the most important and exciting scholarship in the field. Towards that purpose, I am pleased to introduce volume 23 of Brill’s euro series, entitled: Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration by Adam Knobler. In this volume, Knobler traces the global scope of early modern European expansion based upon the mythologies surrounding Prester John and Saint Thomas and an examination of their medieval roots and the development of these stories and the repercussions of their dissemination. By focusing upon the two themes of mythology and diplomacy, he has refreshingly chosen to discuss this process as a scholarly whole and not as a single or individual product of the ambition of just one early modern state. Discussing in detail and with verve and clarity two well-known medieval European mythologies, he contends and engages the intriguing argument of how they were possibly connected to Christianity and built around similar ideologies that were in circulation in a series of Western Asian polities and amongst distant Jewish

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coreligionists from the 15th-to 17th-centuries. He concludes by discussing how medieval mythologies merged and emerged to construct European and nonEuropean views of the world. Knobler’s volume has a broad premise and has taken two fields of inquiry that are usually divorced and married them into work that encompasses a wide geographical and historical panorama. He uses a novel approach to pose and answer an important and rarely discussed question: To what extent did medieval and early modern ideas about mythology affect and inter-act in the practice of diplomacy between Europeans and non-Europeans? The conception and execution of a project of this scope is both audacious and ambitious. Knobler, in my opinion, is to be congratulated for his vision and effort in elaborating such a work. Readers, in the end, will be the final arbiters as to whether, Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration, has delivered. George Bryan Souza

Acknowledgements This book has gone through many incarnations. From doctoral dissertation through a number of wild, and often unwise, revisions, to the final product you see before you. In the 25+ years it has taken to see the light, many people have contributed to its completion and have read it in various forms. From the dissertation stage, I first must thank my dissertation supervisor (or as the Germans say, my “doctor-father”) Peter Jackson, whose calm, guiding hand and often profound advice provided me with all the support I could have possibly wanted during my first years with this project. I would also like to thank David Morgan and the late G.V. Scammell who gave me great encouragement as examiners. In the background, there has always been my general mentor, James Muldoon, whose good humor and sound judgment has helped me in untold ways personally and professionally. Two of my former colleagues at The College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State College) were kind enough to read the manuscript in an earlier form, and enjoined me in several significant conversations on the material: John Karras and Thomas Allsen. I also was able to tax the patience of five friends who provided me with a number of suggestions on how to make the manuscript a better book: Penelope Johnson, George Conyne, Verena Krebs, Zara Pogossian and Ana EchevarriaArsuaga. I also wish to thank a discussion group in the Käte Hamburger Kolleg in Bochum, Germany which included Zara Pogossian, Dorothea Weltecke, Nikolas Jaspert, Ana Echevarria and Stephen Berkwitz, who read some of my material and gave many useful ideas. At Brill, I should like to thank series editor George Souza and editorial assistant Jennifer Obdam, who were willing to shepherd the book through its final stages. In the series European Expansion and Indigenous Response, my book has found a comfortable home. I also wish to thank the anonymous peer readers of this volume for their suggestions and good will. My parents, who gave me boundless support and optimistic care did not, alas, live to see the publication of this volume. I wish to dedicate this book, in part, to their memory. The other dedication goes to my lady wife, Alexandra Cuffel, who has witnessed this book, and me, through all the ups and downs, sickness and health requisite to the production of a monograph. I have enjoyed every minute we have spent and will continue to spend together. Adam Knobler Bochum, Germany April 2016

Introduction “Mythology” and “Diplomacy” are two words which rarely collide in the same sentence.1 “Myth” for the sake of this volume, is a sacred religious narrative involving extraordinary events, upon which cultures base their behavior and their understanding of aspects of the world.2 Yet much of medieval and early modern political and diplomatic contact between Europe and the non-­European world was predicated on the belief in a variety of medieval and late antique mythologies. This volume is intended to unpack this connection, and to demonstrate the types of myths which underpinned the beginning of what we could call the “Age of Discovery” in Europe. This will be accomplished through the analysis of very diverse though connected topics: variations on the broader theme of European “mythologizing.” The book covers a wide geographical and temporal spectrum, necessary to follow the development of a variety of mythologies into the actual, programmatic development of overseas empire building. The book begins with an examination of the myth of Prester John, the all powerful eastern king who was not only supposed to govern a Christian kingdom of untold wealth and power, but was to come to the assistance of his coreligionists locked in a struggle for political and religious supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. Prester John slowly metamorphosed into the Mongol khans and then into the Ethiopian nägäst, both diplomatic and cultural correspondents of the Latins in the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 look at these contacts in some detail, as Prester John’s kingdom becomes more illusory and genuine diplomacy becomes the order of the day. Yet the story of Prester John comes to influence the attitudes of the Western world towards Asia (and eventually the Americas) well into the 16th and 17th centuries, even though he becomes clearly identified with the kings of Ethiopia. Chapter 4 concerns the mythologies surrounding the apostle Thomas, who had been chosen by Jesus to spread the Gospel to the furthest reaches of the known world. Stories of the Thomasite origins of Indian Christianity and of 1 Though “travels and rumor” did appear in the subtitle of Francis Millet Rogers, The quest for Eastern Christians: travels and rumor in the age of discovery (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962). 2 This definition is in part from Robert L. Winzeler, Anthopology and religion: what we know, think and question (Lanham: AltaMira, 2008), 120. The definition of “myth” is a vast and complicated topic. See, for example, Alan Dundes, Sacred narrative: readings in the theory of myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

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Christianity in the New World expanded as the definition of the “known world” expanded. Thomas is the obverse of the Prester John “coin,” having believed to established Christianity in Asia, and thus was the forerunner of the coreligionist communities of potential allies the Latins hoped to find. Without Saint Thomas, Prester John would have been impossible. Chapter 5 looks at the mythologies and crusading ambitions of Columbus, who proposed in his letters and journals certain “ground rules” for colonization of the lands he came upon, their use and their place in a larger, more mystical scheme for Spanish domination of the world. Chapter 6 looks at those mythologies that were built around a series of Western Asian polities in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and their possible connections to Christianity. In some way, these polities were approached in a manner similar to the Mongols in the 13th and 14th centuries – as potential converts, until rumors established their actual “conversion” to or descent from Christianity. Chapter 7 looks at how the Christian mythology of distant coreligionists, including Prester John, was echoed in Jewish thought during the same period. The stories of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were meant to assure Jews in the west that they were not alone in the world, and that coreligionists existed who would eventually come to liberate Jews living under Christian and/or Muslim rule. The Prester John mythology has largely been treated through literary and textual analysis of the Prester John letter, but little has been ventured regarding the actual political fallout of the Prester John episode as a whole.3 Mongol relations with the west have been admirably covered in Peter Jackson’s The Mongols and the West (2005), though Timūr’s subsequent western forays have remained relatively elusive for scholars.4 Studies on Ethiopia’s relations with

3 An exception has been Wilhelm Baum, Die Verwandlungen des Mythos vom Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes: Rom, Byzanz und die Christen des Orients im Mittelalter (Klagenfurt: Kitab, 1999). See also Christopher Taylor, “Prester John, Christian Enclosure, and the Spatial Transmission of Islamic Alterity in the twelfth-century West.” in Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse, ed. Jerold C. Frakes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 39–63. For analysis of the letter, see, Manuel João Ramos, Essays in Christian Mythology: the metamorphosis of Prester John (Lanham: University Presses of America, 2006) and most recently Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compil./transl. Keagan Brewer (Farnham/ Burlington: Ashgate, 2015). 4 See Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow/New York: Pearson Longman, 2005); Adam Knobler, “The Rise of Timur and Western Diplomatic Response, 1390–1405.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1995), 341–350.

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the west have relied heavily on Tadesse Tamrat’s Church and state in Ethiopia, based on a nearly 50 year old doctoral dissertation.5 More modern studies in French have attempted to fill some of the most glaring lacunae.6 Much of the textual analysis from the Ethiopian side is based on Italian work, some over a century old.7 A new and thorough history which, to my mind, supersedes Tadesse’s work, is Verena Krebs’ English-language doctoral dissertation, at the University of Konstanz which has yet to be published.8 The Thomas Christians of India have been woefully underserved by contemporary scholarship. While the Portuguese sources have been thoroughly examined, scholarship on indigenous sources about the encounter is only in its infancy.9 There remains an enormous gap in any reliable sources regarding the Thomas Christian community prior to the Portuguese arrival, which has given some pause to wonder if the actual Saint Thomas connection with south India was not largely of Portuguese fashioning. A recent monograph by the anthropologist Peter Gose, Invaders as ancestors, has shed some light on the uses of Saint Thomas in Peru, but his “presence” in Mexico has been largely ignored.10 Western relations with the Aq Quyunlu, the Safavids and the Druze in the late medieval and early modern periods have also been relatively thin on the ground. The definitive study of the Aq Quyunlu remains John Woods’ 1976 monograph.11 A more recent survey on the Safavids, by Andrew Newman (2008) mentions contact with the west, but is not primarily concerned with

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Taddesse Tamrat, Church and state in Ethiopia 1270–1527 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). Esp. Marie-Laure Derat, Le domaine des rois éthiopiens, 1270–1527: espace, pouvoir et monarchisme. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2003). See, for example, works of Enrico Cerulli (1898–1988); Carlo Conti Rossini (1872–1949); Ignazio Guidi (1844–1935). Verena Krebs, “Windows onto the World: Culture Contact and Western Christian Art in Ethiopia, 1400–c. 1550.” (PhD dissertation, University of Konstanz, 2014). See the work of István Perczel, notably “Some new documents on the struggle of the Saint Thomas Christians to maintain the Chaldean rite and jurisdiction” in Orientalia Christiana: Festschrift für Hubert Kaufhold zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Bruns and Heinz Otto Luthe (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 415–436. Peter Gose, Invaders as ancestors: on the intercultural making and unmaking of Spanish colonialism in the Andes (Toronto/Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2008); LouisAndré Vigneras. “Saint Thomas, Apostle of America.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 57 (1977), 82–90. John E. Woods, The Aqquyunlu: clan confederation, empire: a study in 15th/9th century Turko-Iranian politics. (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976).

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the subject.12 The most recent study of the west and the Druze comes in the form of Ted Gorton’s 2014 study of Fakhr-al-Din, Renaissance Emir.13 The Ten Lost Tribes have been the subject of two recent, comprehensive studies, by Zvi Ben Dor Benite (2009) and Tudor Parfitt (2003), but neither pays much attention to Jewish sources about the tribes or their meaning to early modern Jews.14 This gap, for the early modern period, is being filled by the research of Israeli scholar Moti Benmelech, but much of his work has yet to appear in English.15 I have hopefully begun to fill this lacuna with a monographic project with Alexandra Cuffel, Jewish Warriors in Distant Lands, which should see the light of day in the next three to five years. Much of European expansion historiography tends to divide along national lines. Fewer scholars are writing about this phenomenon in a comparative manner, choosing instead to write detailed monographs on single episodes of the European/non-European encounter.16 I hope to have avoided this pitfall in the current volume. This volume is about two things, in truth: the relationship between mythology and Europe’s growing awareness of the non-European world, and the search for distant allies in the context of anti-Islamic crusading. This exploration of distance brought with it a variety of scenarios designed to place what was discovered into a pre-existing cosmology of fantastical people and places. How such mythological worlds were transformed into reality is at the heart of this work. 12 13 14

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Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: rebirth of a Persian empire (London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006). T.J. Gorton, Renaissance emir: a Druze warlord at the court of the Medici (London: Quartet, 2013). Zvi Ben Dor Benite, The ten lost tribes: a world history (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Tudor Parfitt, The lost tribes of Israel (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2002). Moti Benmelech, “History, Politics, and Messianism: David ha-Reuveni’s Origin and Mission.” ajs Review 35/1 (2011), 35–60, among others. Excellent cross-cultural studies include Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus: exploration and colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987); Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: from Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); J.R.S. Phillips, The medieval expansion of Europe (Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press, 1998). See, too, the general surveys by G.V. Scammell, The first imperial age: European overseas expansion c.1400–1715 (London/Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989) and G.V. Scammell, The world encompassed: the first European maritime empires, c.800–1650 (London/New York: Methuen, 1981).

chapter 1

Prester John (1122–1222) The arrival of a man at the Papal court in 1122, who claimed to be a Christian patriarch from the Indies, caused something of a stir.1 His appearance, and the fantastical stories he related about his realm and the Thomas Christian community in the Indies, were chronicled anonymously in a tract which still exists in ten manuscripts.2 Visitors from such great distances were rare enough in twelfth-century Italy, and those speaking of Christians living on the other side of the Muslim world were even rarer. The crusades to the Holy Land had been an ongoing venture for the Latin church for about 25 years, and a traveller who told of a powerful Christian polity to the East must have been quite welcome. His appearance and his claims were to have great impact on the future of the world. The stories he told, subsequently conflated, expanded, transposed and transformed, proved significant to the development of European overseas empires. They accelerated and substantiated the contacts made between the west and the non-western world, serving as the basis for the long-range diplomacy which was conducted for the following four centuries. Such consequences were not foreseen by Pope Calixtus ii or his courtiers in 1122. Yet, there was clearly a strong willingness to believe the visitor’s stories, fanciful as they might have seemed. Why was the visitor believed, and what were the immediate results of his arrival? As Beckingham has pointed out, the fabulous nature of the stories related by the chronicler could be dismissed as a later fantasist’s tale, were it not for the corroboration of Odo of Rheims, the abbot of St. Remy.3 In a letter to Count Thomas I Marle, sire de Coucy (post 1045–1130) Abbot Odo stated how he was present at the prelate’s arrival, and related the circumstances which brought 1 On the view of what were, in fact, the “Indies,” see Marianne O’Doherty, The Indies and the medieval west (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); Nicolás Wey Gómez, The Tropics of empire: why Columbus sailed south to the Indies (Cambridge, Massachusetts: mit Press, 2008), Chapter 3. 2 For the text, see Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compil./transl. Keagan Brewer (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2015): 30–38; Friedrich Zarncke “Der Priester Johannes.” Berichte über die Verhandlungen der könglich Sachsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 7 (1879), 837–843; Since two of these manuscripts date from the twelfth century, it is clear that interest in the stranger’s arrival must have been fairly widespread. 3 C.F. Beckingham, The achievements of Prester John: an inaugural lecture delivered on 17 May 1966 (London: University of London, 1966).

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this “patriarch” to Rome.4 As the narrator of the anonymous eyewitness account of the “patriarch’s” arrival expressly remarked, the visitor to the Papal court also claimed to have come from the Indies – a land to which no westerner had traveled successfully in the memory of those present in 1122.5 Western preconceptions regarding the East had been well-established before the “patriarch’s” arrival in the West. More than a millennium’s worth of myth-making had ensured the Papal court and its followers that the presence of an eastern Christian leader in their midst was a boon to their war against Islam. An ambassador from the Indies was an ambassador who per force represented a land of wealth. Similarly, it was assumed in Latin circles that a Christian, of whatever stripe, was sure to have a great animosity for Islam simply because of the animosity felt in the West. The stories he related, which spoke of miracles associated with the shrine of the Apostle Thomas, were consistent with miracle tales from earlier generations.6 The wealth and power of which he spoke was likewise extraordinary, but not outside the bounds of credibility. “We have … gold, silver, precious stones … we have under our sway forty-two kings who are all mighty and good Christians …”7 Such confirmations were glad tidings to a Papal court mired in an ongoing struggle with Islam for supremacy in the Mediterranean. A further bishop’s story only would lead to more speculation and hope. Shortly after the fall of the Latin outpost at Edessa (in modern Syria) in 1144, Pope Eugenius iii (r. 1145–1153) was subsequently told by Hugh, bishop of Jabala,­from the crusader kingdom of Antioch, of a certain “Prester John,” a wealthy and powerful Christian king of the East, descended from one of the magi (and thus, by association, connected directly to the nativity), who intended to come to the aid of his coreligionists at Jerusalem. His military prowess was reported by the German Cistercian historian Otto of Freising (1114–1158), who described the defeat of the Persians by Prester John’s armies, “with dreadful carnage,” and noted how “he enjoys such great glory that he uses no scepter save one of emerald.”8 4 Text of the letter, see Prester John, 39–42; Zarncke, “Priester,” 7: 845–846. 5 See De adventu patriarchae Indorum ad Urbam sub Calisto papa iio in Prester John, 30, 34; Zarncke, “Priester,” 7: 837. On geographical knowledge of India in the 12th century, see O’Doherty, Indies, Chapter 1. 6 Prester John, 31–33, 36–37; Zarncke, 7: 837–843. 7 From the Old French edition of the letter, Vsevolod Slessarev, Prester John: the letter and the legend (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959), 67–68. 8 Otto, bishop of Freising. [Ottonis episcopi frisingensis Chronica sive, Historia de duabus civitatibus. ed. Adolf Hofmeister. (Hannover/Leipzig: Hahn, 1912) 7.33] is the first to use the name

Prester John (1122–1222)

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Soon thereafter (c. 1165) a letter began to circulate in Europe, purportedly from this same Prester John to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–1180), describing his kingdom in the most fantastic terms.9 The letter attributes to Prester John powers unlike those of any other monarch on earth. “I, Prester John, am lord of lords and exceed all kings of the entire earth in virtue, power, and all the riches which are under heaven.”10 The letter also claims that the wise Brahmins of India were Prester John’s subjects; that his land was a land of jewels and gold; and that the Christians of his realms were of an untold piety.11 In short, the “Letter,” which came to appear in Hebrew and Slavonic, among other languages, as well as in Latin versions, presented a kingdom which embodied for the west all of the virtues, strengths and material wealth ever associated with distant lands.12 Indeed in 1177, Pope Alexander iii (r. 1159–1181) wrote what some scholars consider a reply to the letter.13 In it, the Pope referred to Prester John as the “illustrious and magnificent king of the Indies.” While the coming of Prester John was anticipated throughout the twelfth century, the greatest sense of expectation of his imminent appearance occurred during the Fifth Crusade.14 Rumors circulated at the siege of Damietta, near Cairo, (1221) that a Christian king of the Indies, one King David, who was alternately identified as Prester John or one of his descendants, had been attacking Muslims in the East, and was en route to help the crusading armies of Latin Christendom.15

“Prester John.” See Martin Gosman, “Otton de Freising et le Prêtre Jean.” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 61(1983), 270–285. 9 For editions of the versions of the letter, see Bettina Wagner, Die “Epistola presbiteri ­Johannis” lateinisch und deutsch: Überlieferung, Textgeschichte, Rezeption und Übertragungen im Mittelalter: mit bisher unedierten Texten. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), 345–466. She has identified 200 medieval manuscripts of the text; Keagan Brewer in Prester John, ­appendix 2, has identified 228. 10 See Prester John, 46, 68. 11 For a similar rendering of India, see “The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle,” contained within the Beowulf ms. See Andy Orchard, Pride and prodigies: studies in the monsters of the Beowulf-manuscript (Cambridge/Rochester: D.S. Brewer, 1995), appendix iia, b, c. 12 The earliest Hebrew ms dates from 1271. It is possible that the earliest Slavonic version is also from the thirteenth century. On the many translations of the Letter, see Prester John: the Legend and its Sources, appendix 2. 13 Prester John, 92–96; Zarncke, “Priester,” 7: 941–944. 14 On Prester John, King David and the Fifth Crusade, see Prester John, Section 2. 15 The deeds and rumors regarding David appeared in several sources, most notably a letter addressed to Pope Honorius iii (r. 1216–1227) by Jacques de Vitry and the Historia Damiatina of Oliver of Paderborn. See Jacques, de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 1160/1170–1240,

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Prester John’s anticipated arrival was broadcast in letters from the crusaders to the political and religious leaders of Europe, but his failure to arrive and the coeval failure of the Latin armies to leave Damietta during the dry season, hastened Muslim victory. Reports of Prester John/King David’s imminence reflected actual political events in the East, notably the conflicts arising in Central Asia between the Kara Khitai and the Chinggizid Mongols.16 The nature of the forthcoming encounter between the Latins and the Mongols relied upon both the expectations and desires that had already been established through the Prester John stories. The reality would be something altogether different.

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évêque de Saint-Jean de Acre, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1960), 141–153; Zarncke, “Priester,” 8: 5–59; See also, Jean Richard, “La Relatio de Davide: une source de l’histoire des Mongols.” In Proceedings of the 35th permanent international Altaistic Conference, Sept. 12–17 1992. Taipei, China ed. Chieh-hsien Ch’en. (Taipei: Center for Chinese Studies Materials, United Daily News Cultural Foundation, 1993), 417–429. Oliver, of Paderborn, The capture of Damietta, transl. by John J. Gavignan. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948), Chapter 55. On this, see Martin Gosman, “La Legende du Prêtre Jean et la Propagande auprès des Croisés devant Damiette (1218–1221),” in La Croisade, réalités et fictions: actes du colloque d’Amiens, 18–22 mars 1987, ed. Danielle Buschinger, (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1989), 133–142. Also see Carlo Conti Rossini, “Il libro dello Pseudo-Clemente e la Crociata di Damietta,” Rivisti degli Studi Orientali, 9/i–ii (1921), 33; and Directorium ad passagium faciendum, ed. Charles Kohler in Receuil des historiens des croisades. Documents arméniens 2. (Paris: Imprimerie royale 1906), 388 – which reports this Muslim fear still appearing in the 14th century. On the relationship between Oliver of Paderborn and Jacques de Vitry, see Jessalyn Bird, “Crusade and Conversion after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215): Oliver of Paderborn’s and James of Vitry’s Missions to Muslims Reconsidered,” Essays in Medieval Studies 21 (2005), 23–47. The victories of the Chingizzid Mongols over the Kara Khitai in Central Asia, as relayed to the West via, it appears, a Nestorian redaction, seem to have been the source of the King David stories.

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Allies and Mythologies in Central Asia (1240–1405) The significance of the European encounter with Turco-Mongol courts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is several-fold. Both the Mongols and Timur fit into the preexisting mythologies, established at the time of the Patriarch John episode of western hopes for an alliance with a strong, distant and, reportedly, Christian, polity. Even when Turco-Mongol Christianity proved to be false, the West displayed willingness to convert the rulers of such states to Christianity to complete the fantasy. The belief in their conversion when they had not was a continuing theme. And, in truth, the Mongols and Timur were distant, powerful and willing to ally, though perhaps not as pliably as the West had wished. The Prester John story, in many ways, led directly to the contact between the Latin West and the Mongols, and a number of the attributes granted the mythological eastern ruler were attached to the expectations afforded the Mongols. King András ii of Hungary (r. 1205–1235), through his mediator Richard of San Germano, equated these new soldiers with those of King David and Prester John.1 Were the Mongols as powerful and wealthy as the Prester John stories led the West to believe? More importantly, perhaps, were they Christians?2 The Prester John paradigm, without his name being invoked, was clearly the impetus for the diplomacy that was to follow. Mongol power was beyond dispute. The earliest Christian reports of the Mongols were from Russia and Georgia. “For our sins,” wrote the Novgorod Chronicler of the Mongol invasions of the Caucasus, “unknown tribes came, none knows who they are or whence they came … God alone knows.”3 Yet, 1 See Riccardus de Sancto Germano, Chronica, ed. Carlo Alberto Garufi (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1938): 110f. 2 On the earliest contacts with the Mongols, see Gian Andri Bezzola, Die Mongolen in abendländischer Sicht (1220–1270): ein Beitrag zur Frage der Völkerbegegnungen (Bern/Munich: Francke, 1974). 3 See [Novgorodskaia letopis’]. Die erste Novgoroder Chronik nach ihrer altesten Redaktio (Synodalhandschrift) 1016–1333/1352: Edition des altrussischen Textes und Faksimile der Handschrift in Nachdruck, ed./transl. Joachim Dietze (Munich: O. Sagner, 1971), 95v–96r. [For an English translation, see The chronicle of Novgorod, 1016–1471, transl. Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes (London: Office of the [Camden] Society, 1914 reprinted New York: ams Press, 1970), 64]. See also the letter of 1221 of Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Raoul de Mérencourt to Pope Honorius iii, which, while not mentioning the Mongols by name, seems to be speaking of them.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004324909_004

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Queen Rusudan of Georgia (r. 1223–1245) also wrote to Pope Honorius iii stating that the invaders, while fierce, seemed to be Christians because of the cruciforms on their shields.4 This new power was something with which the western world needed to come to terms, even to the point of admitting Mongol supremacy in military and political (if not spiritual) power. King Béla iv of Hungary (r. 1235–1270) sent an investigator to collect reliable intelligence, who ventured in 1236–1237 to the Mongol court. His chronicle, combining accurate detail with flights of fancy, revealed a picture that would form the initial basis for the western conception of the Mongol court. Here was a distant polity of great wealth and great military skill. Their religion, apparently monotheistic, was neither Christian nor Muslim. Their king held great power and great respect from his subjects, which included many other kings, princes and rulers.5 Such news was not sufficient to prepare the Hungarians and their subjects for the Mongol invasions of 1240–1241, which swept through East-Central and Southeastern Europe with extraordinary ferocity. The initial Latin reaction to the Mongol invasion of Europe was a combination of shock and outrage.6 Pope Gregory ix (r. 1227–1241) even wrote in 1241 of his willingness to grant papal indulgences to those willing to fight the invaders.7 Initial assumptions that this was Prester John were quickly dispelled. Nevertheless, the earlier false expectation had already set into motion exploration to Central Asia and the hope for alliance. See Pierre-Vincent Claverie, “L’apparition des Mongols sur le scène politique occidentale (1220–1223).” Le Moyen Age 105 (1999), 612–613. 4 See Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae saeculi xiii e regestis pontificum Romanorum selectae, eds. Georg Heinrich Pertz and Carl Rodenberg, 3 volumes (Berlin: Weidmann, 1883– 1894), 1, no. 251. On Georgian-Western relations, see Peter Halfter, “Von den Kreuzfahrerstaaten in das Königreich Georgien.” Le Muséon 121/3–4 (2008), 403–436. 5 Julian, Epistola de vita Tartarorum, 3, in Heinrich Dörrie, “Drei Texte zur Geschichte der Ungarn und Mongolen: Die Missionsreisen des fr. Julianus O.P. ins Uralgebit (1234/35) und nach Rußland (1237) und der Bericht des Erzbischofs Peter über die Tartaren …,” Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen 1, phil.-hist. Klasse (1956), 6: 176–77. 6 Thomas, Spalatensis, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, eds. Damir Karbic, Mirjana Matijevic Sokol and James Ross Sweeney (Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2006). See, too, James Ross Sweeney, “Thomas of Spalato and the Mongols: a thirteenth-century Dalmatian view of Mongol customs.” Florilegium 4 (1982), 156–183. For an excellent discussion of the historiographic issues regarding the Mongol invasion of Hungary, see Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims, and “pagans” in medieval Hungary, c.1000–c.1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 34–38, 163–171. 7 [Gregory ix to King Bela of Hungary, dated 16 June 1241, (Les registres de Grégoire ix, ed. Lucien Henri Louis Auvray, 4 volumes (Paris: A. Fontemoing, 1907), no. 6057).] See Peter Jackson, “The crusade against the Mongols (1241),” Journal of ecclesiastical history 42/1 (1991), 1–18.

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The embassies sent eastward shortly after the initial Mongol invasion of Europe in the 1240s, are the first substantive example of a serious western attempt to investigate cultural distance. By sending ambasadors eastward, western rulers not only hoped to undertake reconnaissance, but also hoped to acquire some of the power (whether it be material wealth or strength of arms) which made the khans’ Eurasian conquests possible, and following the fall of Jerusalem in 1244, there could be no more opportune time for doing so. Pope Innocent iv (r. 1243–1254) initiated the West’s first systematic and reasoned response to the Mongol appearance. Having convened a general church council in Lyons in 1245 in part to discuss the matter, Innocent appointed ambassadors to make their way across Asia to discover more of these invaders and to “carefully examine the whole and to see everything.” which lay between the Latin Christian world and these powerful strangers.8 The envoys moved unhindered across the steppe to the Mongol camp outside Karakorum, where they were to witness the enthronement of Grand Khan Güyük on August 24, 1246. Their findings revealed several unexpected aspects of this new polity. The presence of subjects from Europe, Central Asia and China at the enthronement and the elaborate ceremonies with their pan-Eurasian audience and participants was sufficient proof of their wealth, resources and broad political strength.9 The ambassadors marveled at the strength of a ruler who could, it seemed, move grand armies across such a vast distance with such ease; a distance that clearly surpassed coeval Latin logistical ability.10 Yet, several initial assumptions held by the Latins were quickly dispelled. The Mongol khan was not a compliant ally, who would enter into a “partnership of equals” as the Pope and his envoys had hoped. Latin assumption of spiritual superiority, as expressed in early papal letters, requesting Mongol conversion was met with an abrupt response. The Mongol reply, from the Grand Khan to the Pope, expressed amazement that anyone would dare question God’s will as expressed through his duly

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Giovanni, da Pian del Carpine The story of the Mongols whom we call the Tartars = Historia Mongalorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus: Friar Giovanni di Plano Carpini’s account of his embassy to the Mongol khan, transl. Erik Hildinger. (Boston: Branden Pub. Co., 1996), Prologue. Ibid., 2.8. Note his long list of the countries through which he and his companions traveled, Ibid., 9; see, too, the geographical chronology provided by Jackson and Morgan in their edition of Willem van Ruysbroeck, The mission of Friar William of Rubruck: his journey to the court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253–1255, eds. Peter Jackson and David Morgan, transl. Peter Jackson. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1990), xi–xv.

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appointed agents, the Mongols.11 Despite these rebuffs, however, the prominent place of Christianity in the Mongolian Empire convinced the Western powers that, in time, conversion to the True Faith would accompany alliance.12 Nestorianism had been present in Central Asia since the Early Middle Ages.13 Aspects of the Prester John mythology persistently shaped Western observations and diplomatic relations with the Mongols: the assumption of military power, the possibility of Christian identity and the ruling over many different peoples. For the twenty years following the initial invasion of 1240/1 and the embassies of 1245/6, the tenor of western views of the Mongols shifted from fear to great expectation.14 Hope that the future would foretell an alliance, or at least fruitful diplomacy, was bolstered in 1248, when Louis ix of France received Mongol ambassadors from the general Eljigidei who brought with them stories, created for Latin consumption, that the Great Khan Güyük (c. 1206–1248) had 11

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The text and its variants can be found in Karl-Ernst Lupprian, Die Beziehungen der Päpste zu islamischen und mongolischen Herrschen im 13. Jahrhundert anhand ihres Briefwechsels, (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1981), 182–189. A similar response was subsequently given to two more of Innocent’s ambassadors. See Simon de Saint-Quentin, Histoire des Tartares, ed. Jean Richard (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1965), 32.47–52. See Eric Voegelin, “The Mongol orders of submission to European powers, 1245–1255,” Byzantion 15(1940–1941), 378–413. Giovanni, [Historia Mongolorum], Chapter 9.43. See also Jean Richard, “La lettre du Connétable Smbat et les rapports entre Chrétiens et Mongols au millieu du xiiie siècle, in Armenian studies/Études arméniennes: in memoriam Haig Berberian, ed. Diekran Kouymjian. (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1986), 683–696. [Reprinted in Jean Richard, Croisades et états latins d’Orient: points de vue et documents. (Aldershot: Variorum, 1992).]. See Ian Gillman and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), Chapters 9–10; Samuel H. Moffett, History of Christianity in Asia. Volume 1: Beginnings to 1500 (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), Chapter 15. The voyagers: Julian of Hungary [see Denis Sinor, “Un voyageur du treizième siècle: le Dominicain Julien de Hongrie.” soas Bulletin 14/3 (1952), 589–602]; Ascelinus & Simon of Saint-Quentin [Simon de Saint-Quentin, Histoire]; Andrew of Longjumeau in Au-delà de la Perse et de l’Arménie; l’Orient latin et la découverte de l’Asie intérieure: quelques textes inégalement connus aux origines de l’alliance entre Francs et Mongols, 1145–1262, ed. Jean Richard (Turnholt: Brepols, 2005); Giovanni, da Pian del Carpine [Historia Mongolorum]; Willem van Ruysbroeck [Itinerarium]; Letters of John de Montecorvino [in The Mongol mission: narratives and letters of the Franciscan missionaries in Mongolia and China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, ed. Christopher Dawson (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955)]; Odoric of Pordenone and Giovanni de Marignolli [in Cathay and the way thither: being a collection of medieval notices of China, ed./transl. Henry Yule, 4 vols., (London: Hakluyt Society, 1913–1916)]. On this shift, see Felicitas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden: die Mongolen im Urteil des Abenlandes vom 13. Bis in das 15. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke, 1994).

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converted to Christianity.15 The khan had not in actuality converted, but likely said so as a means of insuring Latin compliance with larger imperial schemes. Louis, naively and prematurely took the news of the khan’s Christianity at face value, as a sign of Mongolian willingness to enter into some form of alliance, and he sent his own ambassador to negotiate the details. Despite his envoy’s subsequent hostile reception, Louis ix continued to harbor interest in some form of contact with the Mongolian court, still looking upon them as “equals” and in 1253 supported the visit to the East of the Franciscan, William of ­Rubruck (c. 1220–c. 1293) who journeyed to Karakorum in the company of a Mongol nobleman and remained at the court for seven months.16 The Mongols viewed their relationship with distant kingdoms in a very different light than the West. Spurred by a notion of their own, divinely ordained global destiny, the Mongols conceived of their power in terms of acquisition. Acquiring land, finery, cattle and artisans from subject peoples was seen as proof of their own superiority.17 William of Rubruck was astonished to have encountered a Hungarian, a Frenchman, a Greek, a Nestorian, Chinese, Uighurs, Koreans and Armenians all living and working for the Mongols during his travels.18 The further and more distant the conquest, the greater the glory of the khan. In this context, the Mongols viewed the tone of the early Latin requests for conversion as inappropriate and arrogant. The matter was simple: as Güyük wrote to Innocent iv, and conveyed by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine in 1247: In the power of God, all lands, from the rising of the sun to its setting, have been made subject to us … You in person, at the head of the kinglets, should in a body, with one accord, come and do obeisance to us.19 15 Jean, sire de Joinville, [La vie de Saint Louis, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Dunod, 1995)], 133–135; 471. 16 Willem van Ruysbroeck, Itinerarium. 17 See the comment of a Chinese servitor of the Mongol empire of how the khans collected “talented men from a multitude of places and myriad countries” as proof of his power and majesty. See Cheng Jufu, Cheng Xuelou wen ji, 8 vols. [n.p. 1910–1925, reprinted Beijing, 1987), 5.5a, cited and translated by Thomas T. Allsen, “Spiritual geography and political legitimacy in the eastern steppe,” in Ideology and the formation of early states, eds. Henri J.M. Claessen and Jarich G. Oosten (New York: e.j. Brill, 1996), 129. See also Idem, “Ever closer encounters: the appropriation of culture and the apportionment of peoples in the Mongol Empire.” Journal of early modern history 1/1 (1997), 2–23. 18 Willem van Ruysbroeck, Itinerarium, 172–183. See, for example, Jean Dauvillier, “Guillaume de Rubrouck et les communautés chaldéennes d’Asie centrale au Moyen Age.” L’Orient syrien 2(1957), 223–242 [reprinted in Histoire et institutions des églises orientales au Moyen Age (London: Variorum Reprints, 1983).] 19 In Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow/New York: Pearson Longman, 2005), 47; Paul Pelliot, « Les Mongols et la papauté, » Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 23,

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The West was relevant only inasmuch as it could supply the khan and his empire with needed human or material resources. Political alliance was unlikely as long as the Mongols believed they had little to gain. Western optimism regarding a potential Mongol alliance continued throughout the 1250s and into the 1260s. The West received news of the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 coupled with stories of the apparent mercy shown to the Christians of the city, as a highly encouraging sign of Mongol sympathies.20 It was, however, the subsequent Mongol defeat, their first, by the Mamluks, the ruling dynasty of Egypt, at the battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, which opened up the practical possibility of military alliance between the West and the Mongol rulers of Iran, known as the Il-khans. The Il-khans realized that the Mamluks were formidable opponents whose defeat could not easily be orchestrated without some change in military and logistical tactics.21 Alliance with the Latins, with their naval technology and knowledge of eastern Mediterranean siege warfare, was clearly a practical solution if the Mamluks were to be defeated and Mongolian political supremacy extended. The Latin goal of the return of Jerusalem, which had no doubt been explained in earlier embassies and through Mongolian intelligence, was an insignificant price to pay for the possible military expertise and technology the West might be able to supply in the service of the khan’s ultimate plan of conquest. Indeed, both the khans Hülegü (c. 1217–1265) and Arghun (c. 1258–1291) had already intended to return Jerusalem.22 The Latins, of course, saw in the Mongol-Mamluk conflict an exploitable situation through which the Holy Land could be recovered from the hands of Islam. From the first, the Il-khans were careful to lay the necessary groundwork to foster a politically advantageous alliance with the West. The reigning Ilkhan, Hülegü had related himself through morganatic marriage to the Byzantine royal house, thus granting him credible Christian credentials in western eyes. His first embassy to the West, in 1262/3, explicitly promised the return

24, 28 (1922–1924, 1931–1932), 15–16, 21; Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal envoys to the great khans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 214. 20 Most notably, see the role of khan Hülegü’s Christian wife, Dokuz Khatun, in saving the Nestorians of the city. See Het’um Korikos’ci. La Flor des estoires de la Terre d’Orient, ed. Charles Kohler in Receuil des historiens des croisades: documents arméniens 2 (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1906), 169–170. 21 Reuven Amitai [−Preiss], Mongols and Mamlûks: the Mamlûk-Îlkhânid war, 1260–1281. (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 22 Jackson, Mongols and the West, 174; Lupprian, Beziehungen, 229 (no. 44), 246 (no. 49); Antoine Mostaert and Francis Woodman Cleaves, Les Lettres de 1289 et 1305 des ilkhan Argun et Öljeitü a Philippe le Bel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 18.

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of Jerusalem in exchange for assistance in defeating the Mamluks.23 Hülegü’s intent was made clear in his letter: a joint land and naval attack against Egypt by the Il-khans and the Europeans respectively.24 Pope Urban iv, impressed by the Mongolian initiative and with the earlier travelers reports clearly in mind, issued the bull Exultavit cor nostrum accepting the khan’s offer on behalf of Christendom.25 This kind of operation was the subject of a series of letters sent back and forth between the courts of Europe, the Papacy and Iran throughout the latter half of the thirteenth and the first few decades of the fourteenth centuries.26 The diplomatic tactic employed by the Il-khans was to use western informers and envoys to communicate with Latin courts, often recruited from Italian merchants attracted to Iran by the lure of a lucrative trade in silk and other distant luxury commodities from Asia.27 The use of westerners to conduct diplomacy was both practically and symbolically significant. Unlike the courts of the West, who were unable to avail themselves of Persian or Mongolian informants, the presence of Italian merchants in the employ of the khans enhanced communication, but also demonstrated the supremacy of the Il-khans over western as well as Asian subjects. In addition, the absence of ethnically Mongol envoys added to the continuing mystique of the distant power, yet at the same time, grant a Christian complexion to Mongol dealings with the West. Much of the western speculation regarding Mongol intentions was still based on earlier romantic notions of the power of eastern princes who would gladly acquiesce to western requests for conversion and alliance.28 The broad 23

Paul Meyvaert, “An unknown letter of Hulagu, Il-Khan of Persia, to King Louis ix of France.” Viator 11 (1980), 245–259. 24 Ibid., 249, 259. 25 Jackson, Mongols and the West, 166. 26 The Il-khan Abaqa corresponded with Pope Clement iv in 1267–1268 in this vein. See Eugène Tisserant, “Une lettre de l’Ilkhan de Perse Abaga adressée au Pape Clement iv,” Le Muséon 59 (1946), 547–556; John Andrew Boyle, “The Il-khans of Persia and the Princes of Europe,” Central Asiatic journal 20/1–2 (1976), 29–30. 27 We should recall that Marco Polo, perhaps the most famous of all western informants regarding the Mongolian Empire, was in China on mercantile rather than religious or political business. See Luciano Petech, “Les marchands italiens dans l’empire mongol.” Journal asiatique 250(1962), 549–574. 28 On this, see Adam Knobler, “Missions, Mythologies and the Search for non-European allies in anti-Islamic Holy War, 1291–c. 1540” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1990), 51–72; Antony Leopold, How to recover the Holy Land: the crusade proposals of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, 2000); Charles Samaran, “Projets français de Croisades de Philippe le Bel à Philippe de Valois.” Histoire litteraire de France 41 (1981), 33–74; Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden, 109–128.

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picture that develops from these contacts, and from the correspondence remaining to us, is that the Il-khans were accepted in western courts as potential agents by whom European secular kings could derive their own glory through the defeat of the Muslims. Little concern for the state of religious affairs in the Il-Khanate appeared in western secular letters. What interested the kings of The following are the major tracts which suggest alliance with the Mongols in an ­anti-Islamic holy war. Some, like Het’um are well-grounded in political reality. Others are mere pipe-dreams. Fidenzio de Padova, Liber recuperationis Terre Sancte, in Bibliotheca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente francescano, ed. Girolamo Golubovich, 5 voumes (Quaracchi: Collegio di S. Bonaventura, 1906–1927), 2: 9–60; Via ad Terram Sanctam in Charles Kohler, “Deux Projects de Croisade (xiiie–xiv siècle).” Revue de l’Orient latin 10 (1904), 406–457; Ramon Llull, Quomodo Terra Sancta recuperari potest. Tractatus de modo convertendi infidels, ed. Jacqueline Rambaud-Buhot in Opera Latina beati magistri Raimundi Lulli a magistris et professoribus edita, Maioricensis scholae Lullisticae, Fasc. 3. (Palma de Mallorca: Miramar, 1954), 96–98; Idem, Liber Tartari et Christiani, seu Liber super psalmum Quicumque, in Bibliotheca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente francescano, ed. Girolamo Golubovich, 5 volumes (Quaracchi: Collegio di S. Bonaventura, 1906–1927), 1, 378–80; Idem, Petitio Raimundi pro conversione infidelium ad Coelestinum V Papam, ed. Viola Tenge-Wolf, in Raimundi Lulli opera Latina. 54–60, Annis 1294–1296 composita. (Turnholt: Brepols, 2014); Idem, Petitio Raimundi pro conversione infidelium, ed. Jacqueline Rambaud-Buhot, in Opera latina beati magistri Raimundi Lulli 3. (Palma de Mallorca: Miramar, 1954), 99–112; Idem, Liber de Concilio, ed. Louis Sala-Molins, in Raimundi Lulli Opera Latina 10 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1982), 101–244; Idem, “Contra Tartaros,” in his De Fine, ed. Aloisius Madre, in Raimundi Lulli Opera Latina 9 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1981), 266–69; Idem, Liber Disputatio Petri et Ramundi, sive Phantastitus, eds. Antoni Oliver and Michel Senellart, in Raimundi Lulli Opera Latina, 16 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1988); Guillaume de Nogaret, Qui sunt advertenda pro passagio ultramarino et que sunt petenda a papa pro persecutione negocii, ed. Edgar P. Boutaric, Notices et extraits des manuscripts de la Bibliothèque Impériale 20/2 (1862), 199–205; Informatio ex parte nuntiorum Regis Cypri, in Louis de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’Ile de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie impèriale, 1852–1861), 2: 123–124; an anonymous Hospitaller tract in Benjamin Z. Kedar and Sylvia Schein, “Un projet de ‘passage particulier’ proposé par l’Ordre de l’Hôpital,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 137 (1979), 211–226; Het’um Korikos’ci, La Flor; Guillelmus Adae, De modo Sarracenos extirpandi, ed. Charles Kohler, in Receuil des historiens des croisades: documents arméniens 2 (Paris, 1906), 521–555; Marino Sanudo, torsello, Liber secretorum fidelium crucis super Terrae Sanctae recuperatione et conservatione, quo et Terrae Sanctae historia ab origine & eiusdem vicinarumque provinciarum geographica descriptio continetur … ed. Jacques Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos (Hanover: typis Wechelianis, apud heredes I. Aubrii, 1611; reprinted Toronto/Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1972); Diligences que le roy a faites pour le Saint Voyage, ed. Jules Maubon d’Arbaumont, Revue des sociétés savants des departments, 4th ser., 5 (1867), 434–436; Garcias de Ayerve in ms. Paris. Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds latins 7470, fos. 123v–129v.

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France, Aragon and England was the ability of the Il-khans to coordinate their forces in conjunction with potential crusades they themselves would chose to lead, rather than their desire to convert to Latin Christianity, even though much of this martial posturing on the part of the west belied their own lack of logistical abilities. For example, Jaume i of Aragon’s (r. 1213–1276) 1269 expedition to Acre was poorly timed to meet any Mongol allies. A similar plan for coordinated attack by Prince Edward (later Edward i) of England in 1271 also proved ill-planned.29 The Church also attempted to take the Mongolian offers of alliance and friendship seriously, if somewhat cautiously, and numerous overtures were made attempting to insure Mongol conversion. The Second General Church Council of Lyons (1274), raised the issue of a Mongolian alliance, but Jaume i of Aragon was the only prince in attendance who might have been able to undertake any substantive crusade.30 Jaume was, however, present for the arrival at Lyons of a delegation from the Il-khan under David of Ashby, a Dominican who had spent nearly fifteen years in Iran, whose delivery of a most friendly missive from the Il-khan Abaqa (r. 1265–1282), encouraged the Pope to declare that any future crusading army would seek active assistance of the Il-khans.31 The Council of Lyons produced few practical results regarding the Mongols. While continuing to look upon the distant Il-khans as potential allies, there was no substantive change in Latin diplomatic coordination, on any front. News which came from the now growing merchant community in the east continued to tempt princes and commoners alike with tales of wealth and riches; of Christian princesses and armies of great strength.32 The Church, for its part, sent scores of Dominican and Franciscan missionaries to Asia to work for the eventual conversion of the Il-khan and his people.33 Instead, they spent 29

See James i, king of Aragon, Llibre dels fets dei Rei en Jaume, ed. Jordi Bruguera, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Barcino, 1991), Chapters 486ff. See Jacques Paviot, “England and the Mongols (c. 1260–1330)” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 10/3 (2000), 309–310. 30 James i, Llibre dels fets, Chapters 476, 482. 31 Concurrently, Abaqa was exchanging embassies with Charles i of Anjou, the king of Sicily (1266–1282). See I registri della Cancellaria angioina ricostruiti da Ricardo Filangieri, 38 vols (Naples: presso l’Accademia, 1950–1964), nos. 173, 185, 456. 32 See, for example, the episode of Naian in Marco Polo, The description of the world, transls. A.C. Moule and Paul Pelliot, 2 vols. (London: G. Routledge, 1938; reprinted New York: ams Press, 1976), Chapter 80; Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, 3 vols. (Paris: Impr. nationale, 1959–1973), 2: 788–789. 33 On missions to the Mongols, see James D. Ryan, “Conversion vs baptism? European missionaries in Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,” in Varieties of religious conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. James Muldoon (Gainesville, fl: University Press of

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far more time ministering to the spiritual needs of the increasingly large community of Italian expatriate merchants and traders along the silk route than in successfully converting the Mongols. The tone of Mongol letters and appeals, while cordial, was clearly modulated and one can imagine an increasing sense of frustration at the Il-khanid court at Tabriz with continued western inability to coordinate any serious martial effort. The failure of western courts to coordinate their efforts belied the encouraging words and posturing of Latin princes. That enthusiasm overcame logistical practicality is clearly evident from the optimism expressed by a number of western observers who were profoundly affected by the overtures from the East. The Mallorcan polymath, Ramon Llull (c. 1232–c. 1315), who would have been serving as a courtier to Jaume i when the king returned from Lyons in 1274, is an excellent case in point. More than any other theologian of his time, Llull took Gregory’s admonitions regarding the Ilkhans and their place in the recovery of the Holy Land to heart. While clearly desirous of their conversion to the True Faith, Llull wrote extensively about the way in which a converted Il-khanate would provide the linchpin upon which any further Latin success in the eastern Mediterranean would depend.34 In May 1291, the city of Acre, fell. In its aftermath a change in tone, and a developing sense of crisis became immediately apparent. Witness, for example, the two letters, written only days apart, by Pope Nicholas iv in 1291, and dispatched by the same embassy to the Il-khanid court. The first of Nicholas’ letters was largely filled with the friendly and vague platitudes common in many papal letters to the Il-khans throughout the latter half of the thirteenth century. The second, which seems to have been written after receipt of news about Acre’s fate, was a call to arms, noting the need for a united Latin front to launch a crusade, with the Il-khan’s praiseworthy might as an integral ingredient.35 As a consequence, the image of the Mongols that came to dominate western perceptions from 1291 onwards was one of strength, order and goodwill, in contrast to Latin disarray. The pope, in essence, came to believe that any concerns regarding Mongolian barbarity needed to be sublimated in response to an immediate crisis. Western disunity, and not Mongolian paganism,

34

35

Florida, 1997), 146–167; Idem, “To baptize khans or to convert peoples? Missionary aims in Central Asia in the fourteenth century,” in Christianizing peoples and converting individuals, eds. Gyulaa Armstrong and Ian N. Wood (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 247–257. For his 1292 writings, see Ramon Llull, Quomodo Terra Sancta, 96. He writes in this vein again in 1294 see, Petitio Raimundi, pro conversion infidelium. See also Girolamo Golubovich’s notes on Llull’s Liber Tartari et Christiani in Bibliotheca bio-bibliografica, 1: 378–380. See Archivio Segreto Vaticano 46, fol. 178v–179r, in Lupprian, Beziehungen, 275.

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imperiled Christendom in the East.36 The pope was joined in this view by the Franciscan Fidenzio of Padua, who had traveled extensively in the Middle East and had composed a tract shortly after Acre’s fall entitled Liber Recuperationis Terre Sancte, in which Fidenzio laid the blame for Acre’s fall on the moral laxity of the city’s Christian inhabitants and the disunity of the Latin world. He expressly noted how the Il-khan had offered to help crusader armies in the past, urging that the offer be accepted in order to facilitate a passagium of recovery. Without any hint of reservation, he placed the Mongols in league with the Armenians and Georgians—the Christian polities of the region.37 The distance between the courts of the West and those of the Il-khan made contact difficult, but not impossible and, as we have demonstrated, embassies made their way between the two with surprising regularity. The next twenty-five years of Il-khanid-Latin diplomacy were marked by a gradual acceptance in Western courts of eastern ambassadors as a commonplace. No less than seven embassies from the Il-khanate traveled between Iran and western Europe, notably England, France and Aragon, in the name of diplomatic alliance.38 A planned invasion of Mamluk-held Syria by the Mongol Il-khan Ghazan in 1299 collapsed when, despite repeated attempts to coordinate actions with 36

37

38

Indeed, despite papal admonitions to the contrary, Latin princes were unable to maintain any semblance of peaceable order in the own lands. The Scottish succession crisis and the wars in Gascony occupied both the English and French monarchs for much of the 1290s. The Aragonese, for their part, were clearly willing to maintain contact, but were without any clear logistical or practical suggestions as to how this was to be achieved, as a rather vague letter of Jaume i of late 1293 attests. See Jaume to “Olvecacu,” 10 November 1293, in Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, “Disertacion histórica sobre la parte que tuviéron los españoles en las guerras de ultramar ó de las cruzadas, y como influyéron estas expediciones desde el siglo xi hasta el xv en la extension del comercio marítimo y en los progresos del arte de navegar,” Memorias de la Real Academia de la Historia 5 (1817), 175–176. See Fidenzio de Padova, Liber recuperationis, Chapters 85–86. See, also, Jacques, de Vitry, The Historia occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry: a critical edition, ed. John Frederick Hinnebusch (Fribourg: The University Press, 1972), Chapters 1–5; William, of Tyre, Willelmus Tyrensis, Archiepiscopus, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Turnholt: Brepols, 1986), 21.7. On these embassies in general, see Boyle, “The Il-Khans of Persia”; Knobler, “Missions, Mythologies,” 32–50. On specific embassies, see, as brief examples, Cornelio Desimoni, “I Conti dell’Ambasciata al Chan di Persia nel mccxcii,” Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria 13 (1877–1884), 591–643; Histoire de Mar Jabalaha iii, patriarche des Nestoriens 1281–1317 et du moine Rabban Çauma, ambassadeur du roi Argoun en occident 1287, ed./ transl. Jean-Baptiste Chabot (Paris: Ernest Leoux, 1895); Antoine Mostaert and Francis Woodman Cleaves, “Trois Documents Mongols des Archives Secrètes Vaticanes,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 15 (1952), 419–506.

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the remaining Christian leaders of the Eastern Mediterranean, any and all attempts at joint military action failed, due in large part to western inability to coordinate among themselves.39 As a consequence, any subsequent reports of Ghazan’s eventual invasion of Syria and Palestine had no credible, Latin eyewitnesses and news of his campaign reached the West in greatly exaggerated form, highlighting even more Mongol strength in the face of Latin failure. No longer were the Mongols simply potential allies: they were the saviors of Christendom, the restorers of the Holy Places, and the mirror for the princes of the west to emulate. The rumors quickly spread that Ghazan had captured Jerusalem, returned it to the Latins and, in some variants, had himself converted to Latin Christianity.40 In essence, chroniclers believed that he had achieved what the princes of the West had failed to do, in almost every respect – doubly so, as 39

40

Francesco Amadi, Chronique, in Chroniques d’Amadi et de Strambaldi, ed. René de Mas Lastrie, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1891–1893), 1: 234; Florio Bustron, Chronique de l’île de Chypre, ed. René de Mas Latrie (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1884), 129. Either or both of these letters seem to have been carried by Zolus de Anestasio, also known as “the Pisan,” an Italian of considerable influence at the court of Ghazan, of whom several studies have been made. [See Paul Pelliot, “Isol le Pisan.” Journal Asiatique 2 (1915), 495– 497]. Karl Jahn, [in Rashīd al-Dīn Fadl lullah Tabib, Histoire Universelle de Rašid al-Din Fadl Allah Abul-Khair I: Histoire des Francs, ed./transl. Karl Jahn. (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1951), 7.] shares Pelliot’s view that much of Rashīd al-Dīn’s data on the Franks was culled from Zolus. He also appears in the Genoese notarial register of Lamberto de Sambuceto (25 May 1301) in Charles Kohler, “Documents inédits concernant l’Orient Latin et les Croisades (xiie–xive siècle).” Revue de l’Orient Latin 7 (1899), 34–37. It should be noted that his notoriety predates Ghazan’s reign, as proven by two letters sent to one Ozolo de Pisis by Pope Nicholas iv on 13 July 1289 and 13 August 1291. See Les registres de Nicolas iv: recueil des bulles de ce pape, publiés ou analysés d’après les manuscrits originaux des archives du Vatican, ed. Ernest Langlois, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Thorin, 1886–1905), nos. 2243, 6820. Latin Cypriot, Armenian and Mongol armies failed to meet at the appointed time and place in late 1299 forcing an abandonment of the mission. See Amadi, Chronique, 237; “Chronique du Templier de Tyr (1242–1309),” in Les Gestes des Chiprois. Recueil de chroniques françaises écrites en Orient au xiiie & xive siècles (Philippe de Navarre & Gérard de Monréal [sic], ed. Gaston Raynaud (Geneva: J.G. Fick, 1887), para. 614 (p. 303); Bustron, Chronique, 131ff. On this, see Sylvia Schein, “Gesta Dei per Mongolos 1300. The genesis of a non-event,” English Historical Review, 94 (1979), 805–819. Venetian merchants in Cyprus and the writing of a Cypriot Franciscan, one Giacomo de Ferrara, provided hearsay accounts to the West of Ghazan’s “conversion,” shortly before his return to Iran in February 1300. Giacomo’s account is preserved in the Hagnaby Chronicle, and spoke of Ghazan’s contacts with the Cypriots and Armenians. See ms. London. British Library. Cotton. Vespasian. B xi, fos. 47–48.

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1300 had been declared a jubilee year by the pope.41 This Gesta Dei per Mongolos which found these conversion stories repeated in chronicles across Europe, fulfilled for many in the West the sense of wonder provided by the Prester John prophecies of the twelfth century. Western princes, reacting almost entirely on the basis of unsubstantiated rumor, prepared for a full crusade of recovery, but, by 1302, no western force or alliance was to appear. A letter from Ghazan requesting the pope to marshal the forces of Christendom for the “great work” that lay ahead is, already, rife with disappointment.42 Promised European assistance had not materialized and the western response was couched in apologetic terms.43 Much of the impetus behind Mongol diplomacy had been driven by promises of Latin unity, and, despite assurances from Edward i of England (r. 1272–1307) that Europe was now at peace, Ghazan’s enthusiasm had clearly waned.44 The West had not lived up to its promises. Throughout the reign of Ghazan’s successor, Öljeitü (r. 1304–1316), the response from Europe continued to be one of embarrassment. The temporal rulers of the West were able to muster little enthusiasm for any alliance plans in the East. The English court entertained one of the khan’s ambassadors in 1307, but while English responses to Öljeitü spoke of his general support of action against the Mamluks, Edward ii (r. 1307–1327) found it necessary to reassure the khân that peace did, in fact, again reign in Europe. Yet, shortly thereafter, Edward wrote to the khan to say that he regretted his inability to participate in any direct action, due to pressing domestic matters.45

41

42 43

44

45

So convinced was Ramon Llull that the stories of Ghâzân’s conversion were genuine, he sailed to Cyprus hoping to meet with Ghazan and personally undertake the conversion of the Il-khanid court and people. See Ramon Llull, Vita Coaetanea, in Raimundi Lulli Opera Latina. 178–189: Parisiis anno mcccxi compósita, ed. Hermogenes Harada (Turnholt: Brepols, 1980), lines 504–510. Mostaert and Cleaves, “Trois Documents,” 470–471. Marie Luise Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Templerordens 1118/19–1314, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1974): 366; Acta Aragonensia. Quellen zur deutschen, italienischen, französischen, spanischen, zur kirchen- und kulturgeschichte aus der diplomatischen Korrespondenz Jaymes ii (1291–1327), comp. Heinrich Finke, 3 vols. (Berlin/Leipzig: W. Rothschild, 1908–1922), 2: 3–4 (no. 3). Foedera, conventiones, litterae, et cujuscunque generis acta publica inter reges Angliae et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates (1101–1654), ed. Thomas Rymer, 20 vols. (London, A&J Churchill, 1707–32), 1/2, 949. Ibid., 2/1, 18.

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Papal interest, too, seemed to have waned. A papal letter (1308) to Öljeitü made only the most vague reference to future collaboration.46 Thereafter, there was very little political intercourse between the West and Iran. In the face of gradual disinterest shown on both sides the Papacy changed tactics, looking toward the Mongolian east merely as a field for the harvesting of new souls, rather than for any concrete diplomacy bent on launching a new crusade against the Mamluks.47 In the Il-khanate during the 1310s and 1320s, there was a sense that the efforts toward diplomatic rapprochement with the west were increasingly impractical and unnecessary. The West no longer functioned suitably to enhance the power of the khan, as proven by their continued inability to muster any type of military support for a war against the Mamluks. Even Ghazan’s plan to create a navy with the help of Genoese sailors and shipwrights had to be abandoned when the Italians who had been sent to the Persian Gulf turned on each other in a internecine political dispute.48 In practical and typically modulated Il-khanid style, an agreement was made with the Mamluks. The formal conversion of the Il-khans to Islam concluded hostilities, and in 1322, a peace treaty was signed at Aleppo between Öljeitü and the Mamluk sultan, an-Nâsir Muhammad (r. 1309–1340).49 In Mongol eyes, the Latins had become politically irrelevant. Following the fall of the descendants of Chinggiz Khân from power in western Asia (1335/6) and despite all evidence to the contrary, the West continued to harbor a certain romantic fantasy about the Mongols’ intentions and willingness to ally. As the fourteenth century progressed, the of the thirteenth century began to reappear, couched now in terms that disguised mythology behind a façade of credible facts.50

46

47 48 49

50

In Évariste Régis Huc, Le christianisme en Chine, en Tartarie et au Thibet, 4 vols. (Paris: Gaume frères, 1857–1858), 419–421; Odorico Rinaldi, Annales ecclesiastici ab anno quo desinit Card. C. Baronius 1198 ad 1534, 8 vols. (Cologne: Johann Wilhelm Friesse, 1692–1694), s.a 1308, nos. 30–31. See, in general, Jean Richard, La papauté et les missions d’Orient au Moyen Age, xiiie–xive siècles (Rome: École française de Rome, 1977). See Virgil Ciocîltan, “Genoa’s challenge to Egypt (1287–1290).” Revue Roumaine d’histoire 32 (1993), 283–307. See Peter Jackson, “The Mongols and the Faith of the Conquered,” in Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World, ed. Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2005), 245–278. For example, Sir John Mandeville, Travels: texts and translations, ed./transl. Malcolm H.I. Letts, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1953).

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The pattern of attempted alliance which the West developed with the Ilkhâns in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, was duplicated almost to the letter in the West’s contacts with Timūr bin Taraghay Barlas (often perjoratively called Timūr-e Leng/Timur the Lame/Tamerlane), the TurkoMongol ruler whose empire stretched from the Mediterranean to India in the early fifteenth century.51 Contrary to modern mythology, Timūr’s actual relationship with the West in the early fifteenth century was cordial.52 His defeat of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid, at the battle of Ankara (1402) was hailed as the saving of Christendom by Latin chroniclers of the time, while his reception by western leaders was that accorded to a trusted and valued ally. That the initial rise to power of a Turco-Mongolian tribesman and his army in the far reaches of Central Asia received no notice in the west is not surprising. News of him likely did not reach the West until the mid 1380s.53 No surviving notices of him exist in western sources before 1394 when the Venetian ­Senate discussed a growing animosity between a Tartar leader and the ­Ottoman sultan Bayezid.54 The Venetians responded with anxiety for their trading trading colony at Tana on the Sea of Azov and for the general state of Venetian trade in the Black Sea region. Missives were immediately sent to Toqtamış, the khân of the G ­ olden Horde (r. 1380–1395), asking for protection.55 With Toqtamış final 51 52 53

54

55

Much of the following, with greater empirical detail, can be found in Knobler, “Rise of Timur.” See also Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden, 180–187. See Adam Knobler, “Timur the (Terrible Tartar) Trope: A Case of Repositioning in English Geography and History,” Medieval Encounters 7 (2001), 101–112. News to the west could have come through several sources. The first might have been through Christian Georgia, which came under attack in 1386/7. Another would have been through Russia itself. The khan of the Golden Horde, Toqtamış, formerly a protégé of Timūr, was a skilled diplomat and had made agreements with Poland, Lithuania and Moscow early during his struggles against his former overlord. It should be noted that it was to Toqtamış the Venetians first turned for protection of Tana against any possible Tartar incursions. (See below). Régistres des délibérations du Sénat de Venise concernant la Romanie, ed. Freddy Thiriet, 3 vols. (Paris: Mouton, 1958–1961), no. 860. I would wager that the Venetians were in error as to the identity of Timūr’s foe. The date of the Venetian reports do not occur in a period of any Timūrid-Ottoman conflict. Rather, I think it likely that these reports came in response to the sack of Baghdad and the flight of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir in the summer of 1393. It is possible that these reports came through Venetian traders/diplomats in Damascus or Egypt, where the sultan fled. Régistres … du sénat, nos. 898, 927, 981; Délibérations des assemblées vénitiennes concernant la Romanie, ed. Freddy Thiriet, 2 vols. (Paris: Mouton, 1966–1971), no. 933.

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defeat at the Battle of the Terek River in 1395, however, there was little the Golden Horde could do to help their western allies. The Ottomans, meanwhile, scored a devastating victory over crusading armies at Nicopolis in 1396.56 As in the twelfth century with the fall of Edessa, because of a crisis of confidence resulting from crusading defeats, western governments again were willing to receive assistance from quarters unknown and distant. The threat posed toward Black Sea trade paled in comparison to the losses on the lower Danube and the Balkans. The Ottomans were a direct threat to the security of western Christendom. As his Komnenid predecessor, Alexios i had done three centuries before, the Byzantine emperor Manuel ii Palaeologos sent to the West for assistance against a new menace.57 By contrast, by 1400, Timūr’s own military advances had become a direct threat to Ottoman power in western Asia. The news of his sacking of Mamlukcontrolled Damascus in March 1401 must have reached the west through the agency of the numerous Latin consuls posted in the region.58 The advancing army’s success bode well for assistance against the Ottoman threat. A Genoese merchant, Giacomo de Orado, reported in September 1401 the arrival in Pera of a Timūrid embassy. The embassy’s intent was to dissuade the Greeks from making a treaty of friendship with Bayezid stating that Timūr was planning to march against the Ottomans during the autumn.59 While Orado claimed to be unaware of the Genoese response to the ambassadors, the chronicler Giorgio Stella, wrote (c. 1409) that the Genoese at Pera raised Timūr’s standard over the city as a sign of respect and support.60 A short period of friendly correspondence between the courts of Timūr, Byzantium and 56

57

58 59

60

Jean Froissart, Chroniques de J. Froissart, eds. Siméon Luce, Gaston Reynaud and Léon Mirot, 13 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1869–1999), Book iv; Norman Housley, Documents on the later Crusades, 1274–1580 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996), doc. 34. On this episode, see John W. Barker, Manuel ii Palaeologos (1391–1425): a study in late Byzantine statesmanship (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1969), Chapter 3; D. M. Nicol, “A Byzantine Emperor in England: Manuel ii’s Visit to London in 1400–1401,” University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 12 (1971), 204–225. Walter J. Fischel, “A New Latin Source on Tamerlane’s Conquest of Damascus (1400/1401).” Oriens 9 (1956), 201–232. See George T. Dennis, “Three Reports from Crete on the Situation in Romania, 1401–1402,” Studi Veneziani, 12 (1970), 243–265. [Reprinted in his Byzantium and the Franks: 1350–1420 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1982)] 245. This visit is confirmed by several entries in the Peran Register of Accounts. See Nicolae Iorga, Notes et extraits pour servir à l’histoire des croisades au xve siècle, 6 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1899–1916), 81–84. Giorgio Stella, Annales Genuenses ab anno 1298 usque ad finem anni 1409, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. Ludovico Muratori (Milan: n.p., 1730), xvii, 1194d.

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Genoa followed. The ultimate culmination of such cordial diplomacy was a set of letters from Timūr and his son Miran Shah to several Latin monarchs stating that Timūr had defeated and captured Bayezid at the Battle of Ankara on 20 July 1402. The letters, almost identical in content, offer the West friendship and open trade through Timūrid territory.61 The Western response was enthusiastic. Charles vi of France and Henry iv of England addressed Timūr as “most serene and victorious” and “our friend” respectively. Henry went on to thank Timūr for his help of and friendship towards Christian merchants in his territories, as well as guaranteeing merchants from Timūrid lands safety in England. He then expressed his joy at Timūr’s defeat of Bayezid.62 Charles’ letter is very much in the same vein.63 Apart from purely official written responses to the arrival of Timūr’s ambassadors and their news, the enthusiasm over the defeat of Bayezid was echoed in contemporary chronicles. The reports of Timūr’s victories which appeared in England were certainly the most ebullient. Thomas Walsingham, in both his Historia Anglicana and in the Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti written at Saint Albans, relates a story wherein Timūr and his forces recaptured Jerusalem, and, with sixty thousand of his followers converted, en masse, to Christianity, and began to wear red crosses on their clothing.64 These reports could be discounted as mere redactions of the Gesta Dei per Mongolos stories of 1300, which also appear in Saint Albans chronicles, where the conversion of the Mongol Îlkhân Ghazan was described in near-identical terms, were it not for similar claims in other contemporary texts.65 The renewal of the distant 61

Antoine Isaac Sylvestre de Sacy, “Mémoire sur une Correspondance Inédite de Tamerlan avec Charles vi.” Mémoires de l’Institut Royal de France, Académie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres, 6 (1822), 473–474, 478–480. 62 Henry iv to Tîmûr, (Westminster, c.1403) in Original letters illustrative of English history, including numerous royal letters from autographs in the British Museum, the State Paper Office and one or two other collections, ed. Henry Ellis (London: R. Bentley, 1846; reprinted London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969), 54–58. 63 Original letters, 57. 64 Sylvestre De Sacy, “Mémoire,” 521–522. 65 See pp. 16–17 above. Thomas Walsingham, Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti regum Angliae, in Johannis de Trokelowe, et Henrici de Blaneforde, monachorum S. Albani, necnon quorundam anonymorum Chronica et annales, regnantibus Henrico Tertio, Edwardo Primo, Edwardo Secundo, Ricardo Secundo, et Henrico Quarto, ed. Henry T. Riley. (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1866), sub anno 1401. See also, Idem, Thomae Walsingham quondam monachi S. Albani, historia anglicana, ed. Henry T. Riley, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863), sub anno 1401. The same story was repeated in English by John Capgrave, [The chronicle of England, ed. Francis C. Hingeston. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1858), sa 1401]. The Welsh

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alliance trope, particularly in a possible crusading context, revived the view of the east that had been lost for a half-century: Christians existed behind Islam who would assist the West in its hour of need. French chronicles of the same period, while not including the conversion trope, did report the arrival of Timūr’s embassy, and often included a fair amount of material on Timūr’s earlier campaigns. The news of Bayezid’s defeat, if we are to believe the Chronicler(s) of St. Denis, first arrived with returning soldiers: former prisoners of war, held by the Ottomans since Nicopolis.66 France’s interest in Bayezid’s defeat stemmed from a remembrance of Nicopolis: Enguerrand de Monstrelet, who was a chronicler in the court of Philippe le Bon, duke of Burgundy (r. 1419–1467) and would have thus been at Nicopolis himself noted this connection and desire for revenge in his Chronique.67 The Chronographia Regum Francorum, contains a lengthy history of Timūr’s exploits.68 The compiler of the Chronographia was far from being complimentary to Timūr: his supposed bloodthirstiness and cruelty was duly noted.69 However, Timūr’s victory at Ankara over Bayezid, and the subsequent embassy were seen as significant enough to his French audience to warrant a sizable biography embedded in the body of a largely parochial text. Iberian reaction to Timūr was initially cautious. News of his invasion of Syria and sack of Damascus in 1401 arrived in Aragon before his victory at Ankara, through the agency Antonio Ametller, who had served as Aragonese consul in Damascus (1390–1396) and Alexandria (1398–1402).70 Such news of the growing power of Timūr spurred Enrique iii of Castile to send Pelayo Gomez

66 67

68

69 70

c­ anonist Adam of Usk, in exile in Rome at the time, confirmed Walsingham’s news. See Adam of Usk, Chronicon Adae de Usk, a.d. 1377–1421, ed./transl. Edward Maunde Thompson, 2d ed. (London: H. Frowde, 1904), sa 1402. Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le règne de Charles vi., de 1380 à 1422, ed. L. Bellaguet, 6 vols. (Paris: Crapelet, 1839–1852), 3: 46–47. Enguerrand de Monstrelet, La chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, en deux livres, avec pièces justificatives 1400–1444, ed. Louis Douët-d’Arcq, 6 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1857–1862), 1: 85. The text in the Chronographia is in Latin. Chronographia regum Francorum, ed. Henri Moranvillé, 3 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1891–1897): 3: 191–233. A French version of the same text appeared independently. See Henri Moranvillé, “Mémoire sur Tamerlan et sa Cour par un Dominicain, en 1403,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 55 (1894), 433–464. Ibid., 454. Diplomatari de l’Orient català (1301–1409), colleció de documents per a la història de l’expedició catalana a Orient i dels ducats d’Atenes i Neopàtria, ed. Antoni Rubió i Lluch (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1947), no. 668; Amada Lopez de Meneses, “Los consuldados catalanes de Alejandría y Damasco en el reinado de Pedro el Ceremonioso,” Estudios de la Edad Media de la Corona de Aragon 6 (1956), 83–183.

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de Sotomayor and Hernan Sanchez de Palazuelos as ambassadors to Anatolia in late 1401/early 1402, to meet with both Bayezid and with Timūr.71 Little is known of this embassy other than it was present at the battle of Ankara (1402), and returned with a Timūrid ambassador, Muhammad el-Hajji.72 The Castilian monarch, who had already begun an expansionist policy in the Mediterranean, must have been curious regarding this new eastern power. That Timūr sent his own ambassador back to Castile, bearing a letter similar to that sent to the monarchs of France and England, is testimony to the positive response they must have received.73 Initially, news of Timūr’s siege of the Hospitallers’ outpost at Smyrna ­(December 1402) also reached the Aragonese court before news of his earlier victory at Ankara.74 There was a Byzantine embassy under Constantine Rhallis Palaeologos present in Aragon in the autumn of 1402, but King Martin of Aragon initially wrote in only the most despising tones of the Central Asian leader, his tone clearly influenced by news of Smyrna which had reached him, via Byzantine sources, by 28 February 1403.75 Writing to Enrique iii, Martin described Timūr as “malvado,” a sentiment echoed in a letter to Benedict xiii, in which the Aragonese requested funds for launching an anti-Timūrid crusade.76 Four months later, however, in a letter dated 27 June 1403, Martin sent a letter of congratulations to the Byzantine emperor Manuel ii Palaeologos upon the defeat of the enemy of Christendom (Bayezid).77 With the arrival in Valencia 71 72

73 74

75

76 77

See Pedro Lopez de Ayala, Coronica de Enrique iii, eds. Constance L. Wilkins and Heanon M. Wilkins (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1992), 3.24. Ruy González de Clavijo, Embajada a Tamorlán. Estudio y edicón de un manuscrito del siglo xv, ed. Francisco López-Estrada (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, Instituto Nicolás Antonio, 1943), xlix–lxiv. The bulk of López-Estrada’s introduction concerning Gomez de Sotomayor and Sanchez de Palazuelos stems from the writings of Argote de Molina about the ambassadors rather than about the embassy itself. See Ruy González de Clavijo, Historia del Gran Tamorlán, ed. Gonzalo Argote de Molina (Madrid: Sancha, 1782), 1–3ff. González de Clavijo, Embajada, lii–liv. On the battle of Ankara, see Maria Matilda Alexandrescu-Dersca [Bulgaru], Le campagne de Timur en Anatolie, 1402 (Bucharest: Monitorul Oficial si Imprimeriile Statului, Imperimeria Nationala, 1942; reprinted London: Variorum reprints, 1977). C[onstantin] Marinescu, “Du nouveau sur les relations de Manuel ii Paléologue (1391– 1425) avec l’Espagne,” in Atti dello viii Congresso Internazionale di Studi Bizantini, Palermo 3–10 Aprile 1951, 2 vols. (Rome: Associazione nazionale per gli studi bizantini, 1953), 1: 430–431. Ibid., 431. Diplomatari, nos. 672, 676–677; It is unclear as to exactly how Martin came to obtain the news of Timūr’s victory at Ankara. John of Sultaniya had not yet, by this point in time,

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in April 1404 of Timūr’s ambassador, John of Sultaniya while on his tour of the courts of western Europe, Martin reversed his earlier opinion and joined the other western monarchs in sending congratulations on to the Timūrid court.78 Enrique iii, for his part, responded by sending another embassy to the East, led by the court chamberlain, Ruy González de Clavijo.79 Accompanied by a friar and a soldier in the royal guard, and guided by Muhammad el-Hajji, Clavijo’s mission was to seek out Timūr at Samarqand in Central Asia, and attempt to induce him to join the forces of Christendom to, once again, attack the Turks. The chronicle of his three-year journey to and from Timūr’s court (1403–1406) remains as the most significant and detailed western account of the Timūrid domains during Timūr’s lifetime, demonstrating the continuing interest in the West of pursuing an alliance. Clavijo and his compatriots were welcomed warmly and feted regally. Timūr’s biographer, Sharaf ad-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī, in his Zafar (d. 1454) nama, mentions the Spaniards, testifying to the generally positive attitude with which they were received.80 But Timūr made no formal response to Enrique iii through Clavijo, and his military interests had drifted way from the eastern Mediterranean. His earlier letters were, in effect, modulated attempts to be recognized by the Western powers for his victories, rather than to suggest any joint military alliance which would have been, in point of fact, unnecessary. His actions following his return to Samarqand demonstrate a clear intention to move eastward to China. Timūr died shortly after beginning the march to China, in 1405. Western enthusiasm for Timūr was a revival of the same trope which had been established with the Il-khâns a century before, and which was, finally, answered with the same cordial but aloof response. Timūr’s exclusive use, for example, of western clergymen to conduct his diplomacy kept him distant from the courts of France and England. Unfavorable news of his general martial come to Spain. It could be that he received news from the Castilian court, through the return of Enrique’s two ambassadors, but there is no proof of this. The Byzantine emperor used two separate ambassadors in his missions to Spain: Constantine Rhallis Palaeologos and Alexios Vranas. It was Vranas who carried Martin’s letter of congratulations back to Manuel in June 1403. It is therefore possible that Vranas was the bearer of the good tidings. 78 The most recent study of John is Anthony Luttrell, “Timur’s Dominican Envoy,” in Studies in Ottoman history in honour of Professor V.L. Ménage, eds. Colin Heywood and Colin Imber. (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1994), 209–229. Letters to Tîmûr (Valencia, 1 April 1404) and Miranshah (Valencia, 1 April 1404) in Diplomatari, nos. 679–680. 79 On Timūr’s correspondence with Enrique, see González de Clavijo, Embajada, lii–liv. 80 See Sharaf ad-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī Zafar-nama, ed. Muhammad Ilahdad, 2 vols. (Calcutta: n.p. 1885–1888), 2: 598.

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b­ rutality was recorded by those western observers, such as Antonio Ametller, who were actually present at Ankara and elsewhere. Timūr’s own view of the west was similar to that of the Il-khâns and other Mongols who saw Western eagerness and friendship as tantamount to an admission of his greatness. Timūr’s death went unnoticed and unchronicled in the West, which is not to say that he was forgotten entirely. On the contrary, Timūr’s exploits became the subject of political writing (notably as a mirror for western kings) and drama (Marlowe among many) well into the nineteenth century.81 The brevity of his appearance on the real stage of diplomacy gave no opportunity for disillusion in the west. As a consequence, he was an archetype without flaws, despite desultory reports to the contrary, and it was not until the translation of anti-Timur polemical works in the 18th century that we find his character altered from being a model and ally for the princes of the west. Timūr served as a changing archetype for western observers for the unknown east. His eventual shift from the status of ally to that of enemy closely parallels western views during the age of colonialism, where the uncivilized “other” came to be looked upon with suspicion: a far cry from being the savior of Christendom, who defeated the dreaded enemies of the west in 1402, and gave new hope to the Latin world. 81

On Timūr’s “theatrical” legacy, see Knobler, “Timur the (Terrible Tartar) Trope”; On his political legacy, see Beatrice Forbes Manz, “Tamerlane’s Career and Its Uses.” Journal of World History 13/1 (2002), 1–25. On the desire to claim Timurid lineage, see Lisa Balabanlilar, “Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction: Turco-Mongol Imperial Identity on the Subcontinent.” Journal of World History 18/1 (2007), 1–39.

chapter 3

Contacts with Ethiopia – Prester John Found (to 1559) Following the failure of Western-Mongol diplomacy to achieve any fruition, the geographical locus of Latin anti-Muslim alliance and the search for Prester John shifted from Central Asia to Northeast Africa.1 Ethiopia had been regarded as an equal and an ally since Roman times, and its supposed acceptance of Christianity during the apostolic era only served to emphasize the fraternal bonds between the two cultures. Thus the eagerness of the Latin courts to make an alliance with Ethiopia against the Mamluks of Egypt might have rested on the fact that the Christian Bible speaks of the Christianization of Ethiopia.2 Yet, this explanation is too facile. Ethiopian Christianity was, even by the most lax standards, far removed from the practices demanded by Rome. Ethiopian Christianity varied as much from Latin rite as the practices of Greeks, Slavs, Armenians and Georgians, each of whom were criticized and reprimanded by Latin clerics for holding their own variations on apostolic admonition.3 Yet the West not only saw the kings of Ethiopia as brothers in Christ, but consequentially as assured allies in the fight against Islam. Both Western and Muslim writers also wrote that the source of the Nile, Egypt’s lifeblood, was in Ethiopia and could be controlled by Ethiopian monarchs.4 Muslim rulers of Egypt harbored 1 On the location of Prester John in Africa, see Francesc Relaño, The Shaping of Africa: cosmographic discourse and cartographic science in late medieval and early modern Europe (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, 2002), 54–55; on the transition of Prester John from Central Asia to Ethiopia, see Ulrich Knefelkamp, Die Suche nach dem Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes: Dargestellt anhand von Reiseberichten und anderen ethnographischen Quellen des 12. bis 17. Jahrhunderts (Gelsenkirchen: Müller, 1986), 69–77. 2 Acts 8: 26–38. 3 Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, Die Nationes Christianorum Orientalium im Verständnis der lateinischen Historiographie von der Mitte des 12. bis in die zweite Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Böhlau, 1973); Christopher Hatch MacEvitt, The crusades and the Christian world of the east: rough tolerance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Peter Halfter, Das Papsttum und die Armenier im frühen und hohen Mittelalter: von den ersten Kontakten bis zur Fixierung der Kirchenunion im Jahre 1198 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996). 4 Ahmad ibn Yahya Ibn Fadl Allâh al-ʿUmari, Masâlik al-absâr fî mamâlik al-amsâr: I: L’Afrique, moins l’Égypte, ed./transl. Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1927), 30 and n.1, which notes al-Maqrizi’s citation of Ahmad ibn ʿAli al-Qalqashandî’s (1355/6–1418) Subh

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004324909_005

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fears about the same type of alliance about which the Latins dreamed. Muslim princes of Egypt and the Levant for their part, had no trouble in identifying Christian Ethiopians, their faith and the possible difficulties that might ensue, if the Latin crusaders were able to ally with their coreligionists in the Horn of Africa.5 Traditions regarding Christian, and most specifically Ethiopian, attacks on Mecca, date from the earliest years of Muslim apocalyptic writing, as well as in earlier Christian apocalyptic traditions.6 The same passages and traditions regarding the fall of Mecca to a Black prince from the south that had been part of Bukhārī’s hadith collection did nothing to allay such fears.7 al-aʿshâ fî sinâʿat al-inshâ’ quotation of the writings of the Coptic historian Jirjis ibn al-ʿAmid Makîn’s (1205–1273) Akhbar al-Ayyubin all of which speak of this power of the sultan of Habasha/Ethiopia. Letter from negus Zär’a-Ya’iqob to al-Zâhir Jaqmaq, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt in the 1440s, quoted by Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman Sakhawi (1427/8–1497) in his Kitab al-tibr al-masbuk fi dhayl al-suluk, ed. Ahmed Zaki (Bulaq: al-Mabu’at al-Mairyah, 1897): 70; negus Dâwit’s power over the Nile noted in the Gädlä Märqorêwos, see Vitae sanctorum indigenarum [Gadla Marqorewos, seu Acta Sancti Mercurii], ed./transl. Carlo Conti Rossini, 2 vols. (Paris: E Typographeo Reipublicae, 1904), 42–44, (text): 55–57; Ignazio Guidi, “Due nuovi manoscritti della ‘Cronaca Abbreviata’ di Abissinia,” Rendiconti della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Classe di scienze morali, stroiche e filologiche (1926), 360–361; other Ethiopian mss, noted in Taddesse, Church and state, 256, n.3. Latin sources: Philippe de Mézières, “Neuf chapitres du ‘Songe du viel pelerin’ de Philippe de Mézières relatifs a l’orient,” ed. Edgar Blochet, Revue de l’Orient chrétien 4 (1899), Chapter 9 (pp. 737–734); the claim of “Pietro di Napoli” to Bertrandon de La Brocquière, see Bertrandon de La Brocquière, Voyage d’outremer, ed. Charles Henri Auguste Schefer (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1892), 146; the fact is even noted by Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso secondo l’edizione del 1532 con le varianti delle edizioni del 1516 e del 1521, eds. Santorre Debenedetti and Cesare Segre. (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1960). 5 For example, a note of panic was expressed by Saladin when the renegade crusader, Renaud de Châtillon sacked the Red Sea port of ʿAydhâb in 1182. For a contemporary account of these actions, see Peter, of Blois, Passio Raginaldi principis Antiochiae, in Petrus Blesensis, Tractatus duo. (Turnholt: Brepols, 2003); ʿIzz al-Dîn Ibn al-Athîr Extrait de la chronique intitulée KamelAltevarykh, ed./transl. Joseph Toussaint Reinaud and Charles Defrémery in Recueil des historiens des Croisades. Historiens orientaux, 1–2/1 (Paris: Imprimerie royale 1872–1877), 658; ʿAbd al-Rahmān ibn ʾIsmāʿīl; Abu Shamah Le livre des deux jardins. Histoire des deux régnes, celui de Nour ed-Dîn et celui de Salah ed-Dîn, ed./transl. Charles Adrien Casimir Barbier de Maenard, in Receuil des historiens des Croisades. Historiens orientaux, 4–5 (Paris: Imprimereie royale, 1896–1898), 232–233. 6 David Cook, Studies in Muslim apocalyptic (Princeton: Darwin Press, 2002), 78–79; George Hatke, “Africans in Arabia Felix: Aksumite relations with Himyar in the sixth century C.E” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2010). 7 Muḥammad ibn ʾIsmāʿīl; Bukhārī, [Ṣaḥīh al-Bukhārī] = The translation of the meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari: Arabic-English, ed./transl. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, 4th ed., 9 vols. (Chicago:

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This belief in Ethiopian strength came to be significant, both for western perceptions of Ethiopian Christians and for Ethiopian presentation of their own power to the outside world. The Muslim world clearly held great fear of this pseudo-phenomenon. Ethiopia’s relative isolation from the Muslim world allowed such rumors and mythologies to persist. Latins attributed crusading to the Ethiopians for their conflicts with Egypt, including the desire to reconquer Jerusalem. The key to understanding this perception of Ethiopia lay not merely in their faith, but in the state’s inaccessibility. Ethiopia’s prolonged isolation from contact with the West made it the perfect object for projecting western crusading hopes and aspirations. Long after active diplomacy with the Il-khans proved fruitless, Ethiopia remained aloof and exotic. The goal of this chapter is to outline the attempts of the West to make a diplomatic connection with the kings of Ethiopia, whom they thought might, in fact, be Prester John. The Ethiopians, for their part, were interested in obtaining the power associated with the crafting skills of distant states to enhance their own power at home. As stated above, stories of Ethiopia’s special qualities date back to Classical antiquity. The Iliad, speaks of how Zeus and the other gods went to visit the Ethiopians whom the text calls “blameless” and whom the Odyssey refers to as “the remotest of men.” Strabo (64/63 bce–c. 24ce) likewise, wrote of them as notable for their piety and justice.8 Augustan texts demonstrate a pronounced admiration for Ethiopian military skills, whether faced as enemies or allies.9 Ethiopians, in particular, were also noted for their extraordinary physical speed.10

Kazi Publications, 1976–1979); on the pre-Islamic legend surrounding this idea, see The adventures of Sayf ben Dhi Yazan: an Arab folk epic, transl. Lena Jayyusi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 8 Homer, Iliad, eds./transls. A.T. Murray and William F. Wyatt, 2 vols., 2d ed. (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1.423; Homer, The Odyssey, eds./transls. A.T. Murray and George Dimock, 2 vols., 2d ed., (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1. Strabo, The geography of Strabo, ed./transl. Horace Leonard Jones, 8 vols. (London: W. Heinemann/New York: G.P. Putnam’s, 1917), 44.25. 9 On battles against Ethiopia during the reign of Augustus, see Shelagh Jameson, “Chronology of the Campaigns of Aelius Gallus and C. Petronius.” Journal of Roman studies 58 (1968), 71–84; R.R.R. Smith, “Simualcra Gentium: The Ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias.” Journal of Roman studies 78 (1988), 55. 10 Herodotus, Herodotus, ed./transl. A.D. Godley, 4 vols. (London: W. Heinemann/New York: G.P. Putnam’s, 1921–1924) 2.29–32; 3.17–24; 4.81, 183; Scylax, of Carynda, Pseudo-Skylax: le périple du Pont-Euxin: texte, traduction, commentaire philologique et historique, ed./transl. Patrick Counillon (Bordeaux: Ausonius/Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 2004), 1.94.

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Apart from virtue and military prowess, the Ethiopians were also reputed to possess great material wealth. The Hebrew Bible notes the chysolite and other merchandise of Ethiopia as a euphemism for their significant wealth.11 Such tales no doubt enhanced Western mythology regarding the true extent of Ethiopia’s power. While Christian canon (Acts 8: 26–40) presented Ethiopia as one of the first of the evangelized nations, the truth of Ethiopia’s conversion was more intimately connected with the political ambitions of the Byzantine Empire. During Constantine’s reign (306–337) two Christians, made their way to Aksum in the Ethiopian highlands. Shortly after their arrival, we find that cross-adorned gold coins were issued under the fourth century Aksumite king, Ezana, who allowed the ambassadors to return to Constantinople for a bishop, followed shortly thereafter by an official embassy. Ethiopian tradition still holds that by the reign of negus Ella-Asbeha in the 520s, Aksum and Byzantium had agreed to partition the entire Christianized oikoumene between them as equals.12 As far as Byzantium was concerned, Aksum would serve as an important ally at the mouth of the Red Sea, protecting the empire’s southern flank. The Byzantine Empire came to view Ethiopia as a wealthy ally, and Emperor Justin requested the Aksumite king Kaleb to aid their Christian coreligionists in Yemen, after the massacre of Christians by the Jewish convert Dhū Nuwās in 523.13 Ethiopian chroniclers wrote that the negus had invaded Yemen to support the 11 12

Job 28:19; Is. 45:14. The Queen of Sheba and her only son Menyelek (I) being the “Book of the glory of kings” (Kebra nagast) a work which is alike the traditional history of the establishment of the religion of the Hebrews in Ethiopia, and the patent of sovereignty which is now universally accepted in Abyssinia as the symbol of the divine authority to rule which the kings of the Solomonic line claimed to have received through their descent from the house of David, transl. E.A. Wallis Budge (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 19–20, 117; Garth Fowden, Empire to commonwealth: consequences of monotheism in late antiquity (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1993), 114. See also Timothy Power, The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: ad 500–1000 (Cairo/New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2012): Chapter 2. 13 Procopius, De bello persico, in Procopius, transl. H.B. Dewing, 7 vols. (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press/London: W. Heinemann, 1914–1940), 1.20.1–13; Cosmas, Indicopleustes, Topographie chrétienne, ed./transl. Wanda Wolska-Conus, 3 vols. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968–1973): 2.101c; Acta Martyrii Arethae, ed. E. Carpentier (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1861), 743, 747, 761–762. See also Irfan Shahid, The martyrs of Najran: new documents (Brussels: Soc. des Bollandistes, 1971); G.W. Bowersock, The throne of Adulis: Red Sea wars on the eve of Islam (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Hatke, “­Africans in Arabia Felix,” 5; Fred M. Donner. Muhammad and the Believers at the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2010), 34.

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persecuted Christians.14 Byzantine descriptions or admission of the Byzantine search for outside assistance suggests that the Empire saw non-Mediterranean Christians as necessary political allies, particularly as they had never been part of the Roman empire and could thus be approached as equals. For chliastic writers, the reign of a good king from Ethiopia would be one of the necessary stages for the heralding of the eschaton.15 Apocalyptic texts, both western and Muslim, identify Nubia and Ethiopia as the source of those who would destroy the Muslim holy city of Mecca. The popular Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (c. 690), which comes to the West in a Greek recension, and the Bahira (which exists in a Latin version from the early thirteenth century, but which originates from the seventh), base their arguments on an interpretation of the Psittic (Syriac Bible) passage “kush tashlem ʿida l-ʿalaha” from Psalms 68:31, meaning “Ethiopia/Kush will yield the power of God.” This text and its translations and recensions are the first, therefore, to explicitly call for the use of a distant Christian ally to help overthrow Islam.16 These predictions which coincided with several Muslim prophecies concerning the sack of Mecca by a Nubian Christian, lead to a great sense of expectation.17 14 15 16

17

On this episode, complete with citations from Ge’ez sources, see Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and medieval Ethiopian history to 1270 (Addis Ababa: s/p., 1972), 132–137. “The Andreas Salos Apocalypse. Greek Text, Translation and Commentary,” ed./transl. Lennart Rydén. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 28 (1974), 860B-C, 217–218. An edition of the Syriac version can be found in Francisco Javier Martinez, “Eastern Christian apocalyptic in the early Muslim period: Pseudo-Methodius and Pseudo-­Athanasius,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1985); pseudo-Methodius, Die Syrische Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius, ed. G.J. Reinink, 2 vols. (Louvain: E. Peeters, 1993), 13.11–13; Francisco Javier Martinez, “The King of Rum and the King of Ethiopia in Medieval Apocalyptic Texts from Egypt,” in Coptic studies: acts of the Third International Congress of Coptic Studies, Warsaw, 20–25 August, 1984, ed. Wlodzimierz Godlewski (Warsaw: pwn-Editions scientifiques de Pologne, 1990), 247–259; Richard Gottheil, “A Christian Bahira Legend.” Zeitschrift für Assyrologie 13 (1898), 236–237/229 and 14 (1899): 248; Jeanne Bignami-­Odier and Giorgio Levi Della Vida, “Une version latine de l’apocalypse syro-arabe de Serge-Bahira.” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 62 (1950), 145; Barbara Hjördis Roggema, The legend of Sergius Bahira: Eastern Christian apologetics and apocalyptic in response to Islam (Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2007). Oliver, of Paderborn, The capture of Damietta, transl. John J. Gavignan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948), Chapter 35; La Prophétie de Haman and Prophetia filii Agap, in Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores sumptibus Societatis illustrandis Orientis latini monumentis, ed. Reinhold Röhricht. (Geneva: J.G. Fick, 1879), 213, 221; Paul Pelliot, “Deux passages de la prophétie de Hannan, fils d’Isaac,” Mémoires de l’Institut national de France. Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 44 (1951), 73–97. Bukhārī’s hadith

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Ethiopia’s isolation was not a matter of choice. Following battles in southern Arabia, and its subsequent defeat by Persia, Aksum began a period of gradual decline. The rise of Islam in the eighth century and the concomitant replacement of Ethiopian shipping and merchants from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean effectively shut off Ethiopia from direct mercantile contact with the Mediterranean. As a consequence, coastal centers of commerce declined as did state revenues to support any large military contingents. The center of authority moved southward, away from the coast but a state of near constant warfare between Christian and local pagan rulers in the tenth century decimated the old order.18 The old Axumite dynasty was able to survive only with the assistance of mercenaries from the region of Agew (near Lake Tana). Soon these soldiers were absorbed into the Axumite world in the 10th century under Mara Tekla Haymanot, and established a new dynasty, the Zagwe. In order to solidify their primacy and legitimacy, the Zagwe emperor Gebre Mesqel Lalibela (r. c. 1185–1225) ordered the building of twelve rock-hewn churches, which both served as a means of shifting geographical power away from the older capitol at Aksum, but did so in a way that would benefit the Church.19 The Zagwes were unable to unite the country, despite Lalibela’s efforts, and by the end of the thirteenth century, claimants to the old Axumite rule were returned to the throne. Trade had been maintained with Aden and Egypt, but isolation from the Mediterranean was still largely complete. Therefore we should be surprised to read, in a late 15th century rescension of a late 14th century

18 19

collection noted three hadith regarding the destruction of the Ka’ba by a black man or Ethiopian. See Bukhārī, Sahih, 2.26.48. The picture of the Ethiopian negus among the frescos portraying the world’s great kings at the 8th century Ummayyad castle of Qasr Amra (in modern Jordan) attested to the political importance of Ethiopia to Muslim leadership. On this, see Fowden, From empire, 143–149; Idem, Qusayr ʿAmra: art and the Umayyad elite in late antique Syria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Oleg Grabar, “The painting of the six kings at Qusayr ʿAmrah.” Ars orientalis 1 (1954), 185–187; Qusayr’ Amra, residencia y baños omeyas en el desierto de Jordania, ed. Martín Almagro Basch (Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Dirección General de Relaciones Culturales, 1975). On the decline of Axum in the 10th century, see Sergew, Ancient and medieval, Chapter x. The rock-hewn churches at Lalibäla, which were modeled as an attempt to recreate Jerusalem in the Ethiopian highlands, are the most famous structures built in this regard. On the churches, see David W. Phillipson, Ancient churches of Ethiopia: fourth-fourteenth centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), Chapters 5–6; Irmgard Bidder, Lalibela: the monolithic churches of Ethiopia, transl. Rita Grabham-Hortmann. (New York: Praeger, 1959).

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document, of an Ethiopian embassy arriving in Europe in 1310.20 Ethiopia was isolated and distant from the West by this time, they became a likely candidate for being viewed as a “distant power.” Considering the faltering state of Latin-Îl-khânid diplomacy at the time, and the concomitant demystification of the Mongols, the elements of the earlier Prester John mythology began to coalesce around the Ethiopians and their rulers in what Henri Baudet has called an “Ethiopianization of paradise.”21 From the late 14th century, well into the seventeenth century, the Ethiopian ruler was referred to as “Prester John” in European commentaries and diplomatic correspondence.22 This identification eventually had less to do with any specific relationship with the 12th century mythology than a shorthand designation for the specific, Ethiopian, king. While a fifteenth-century chronicler wrote that this embassy came to request help from Pope Clement v (r. 1305–1314) at Avignon and from Jaume ii of Aragon (r. 1291–1327) against the Infidels, it is far more likely that the purpose of the embassy, if it existed at all, was to obtain artists from the cultural centers of Italy for use at the royal Ethiopian court.23 As in the West, new Ethiopian monarchs and dynasties often used the building of churches as a means of establishing their political legitimacy and 20 See Lettera inedita del Presto Giovanni all’Imperatore Carlo iv., ed altra di Lentulo ai Senatori Romani sopra Gesù Cristo, secondo il volgarizzamento citato dagli accademici della Crusca diverso da quello già stampato, ed. Leone del Prete (Lucca: n.p., 1857). On this embassy and its disputed dating, see P. Lachat, “Une ambassade éthiopienne auprès de Clement v, à Avignon, en 1310,” Annali del Pontificio Museo Missionario Etnologico 31 (1967), 21; C.F. Beckingham, “An Ethiopian embassy to Europe, c. 1310.” Journal of Semitic Studies 34/2(1989), 337–346; Krebs, “Windows onto the World.” While its prolonged stay in Genoa has been claimed to be the source of the map which first equates Ethiopia with the land of Prester John, there is no evidence for its appearance in any contemporary Latin or Ethiopic sources. It is well possible that no such embassy appeared and that such later reports had been either conflations of later embassies or, indeed, pure fabrications. 21 E Henri P. Baudet, Paradise on earth: some thoughts on European images of non-European man, transl. Elizabeth Wenholt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 15–19; the Biblical River Gihon, which has been identified with the Nile, supposedly flows from the Terrestrial Paradise, Gen 2: 10–14; Relaño, Shaping, 82. 22 On the Ethiopanizationn of Prester John, see Relaño, Shaping, Chapter 3. 23 In Yûsuf Kamal, prince, Monumenta cartographica Africae et Aegypti in 6 Bänden, ed. Fuat Sezgin, 6 vols. (Frankfurt: Institutes für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 1926–1952), 116–119. Giacomo Foresti (1434–1520) in his Supplementum chronicarum (1483) derived much of his information on Ethiopia from Carignano. The sources do not, in truth, give us any specific answer, but we might be entitled to draw some speculative conclusions based on the scant artistic and textual evidence we have regarding the function of artisans and artists in Ethiopian royal employ.

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solidifying their standing with Church leaders. If Widim-Räʾad (r. 1299–1314) indeed sent an embassy to the West in 1310, it was following a period of great dynastic struggle and uncertainty in Ethiopia, but not at a time of any Ethiopian conflict with Islam.24 With the dynasty less than thirty years old, the negus needed to establish himself as a figure of authority, with broad support from both secular and religious spheres. The building of churches, for the Ethiopian kings, was a symbol that directly connected the polity with divine sanction.25 Ethiopian embassies to the West embarked at times when both temporal and spiritual opponents challenged royal legitimacy to rule. To stave off internal conflict, therefore, the endowment of religious buildings was a matter of political necessity.26 Likewise, the later years of Widim-Räʾad’s reign also marked the rise of Ethiopian monasticism, especially around the establishment of the monastic center at Däbrä Asbo, under the saint-monk Täklä-Haymanot. Considering that most-if-not-all Ethiopian embassies to the West discuss requests for artists, it is possible that the earliest embassy was prompted by such expansionist activities and the desire for sculptors, painters and builders.27 The importation of skilled artists, also served to connect the king and Church with a “center-out-there,” as it did with the Mongols, as part of a 24

Indeed, Widim-Rä’ad would have been at peace with the Muslims for more than a decade in 1310. 25 On royal Ethiopian building projects, especially monasteries, see Derat, Domaine, C ­ hapter 6. 26 In her discussion of craft and polity, anthropologist Mary Helms makes the point that the products of kingly “crafting,” whether in the form of a church or a city, established kingly power on two axes: a vertical axis (relating the king to God) but also a horizontal axis (demonstrating the king’s temporal power to those who encounter him or his kingdom). See her Craft and the kingly ideal: art, trade, and power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 80–81. 27 Taddesse, Church and state, 170–172; Il “Gadla Takla Haymanot” secondo la redazione waldebbana, ed./transl. Carlo Conti Rossini, (Rome, n.p. 1896), 97–143; The life of Takla Hâymânôt in the version of Dabra Lîbanôs, and the Miracles of Takla Hâymânôt in the version of Dabra Lîbânôs, and the Book of the riches of kings. The Ethiopic texts, from the British museum ms. Oriental 723, edited with English translations, to which is added an English translation of the Waldebbân version, ed./transl. E.A. Wallis Budge, 2 vols. (London: private print for Lady Meux, 1906); for a contemporary chronicler’s attention to architectural interest and detail, see [Gädlä Aragawi. Italian], 54–96. The indigenous and the foreign in Christian Ethiopian art on Portuguese-Ethiopian contacts in the 16th-17th centuries: papers from the Fifth International Conference on the History of Ethiopian Art (Arrabida, 26–30 November 1999, eds. Manuel João Ramos and Isabel Boavida. (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation: Fundação Oriente/Burlington, Vt: Ashgate Pub. Co., 2004); Marilyn E. Heldman, “St. Luke as Painter: Post-Byzantine Icons in Early Sixteenth-Century Ethiopia.” Gesta 44/2 (2005), 125–148.

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paradigm where a distant focal point comes to be associated in a particular society’s culture or history with power.28 In the Ethiopian case, it appears that Italy served such a function. By bringing artists from a powerful “center-outthere,” the Ethiopians were attempting to link their society and their rule with their own perception of Western Christian power. The literature which appeared in the West in the fourteenth century following this first embassy, spoke of the Ethiopian king as a willing accomplice in any attack upon Islam.29 But, despite such Latin desire for alliance, they remained mere fancies, and official Latin ambassadors made no substantive contact. Rumors of Ethiopian-Mamluk tensions and hostilities, both genuine and fabricated, continued to inspire western hopes of an alliance with their as yet unseen coreligionists. On occasion, tensions between Ethiopia and Egypt were quite high. From the 1360s, into the beginning of the reign of negus Dāwīt (1380–1412), Ethiopian policy towards the Mamluks became increasingly aggressive. Some sources even go so far as to note his supposed desire to liberate 28

See Thomas T. Allsen, Commodity and exchange in the Mongol Empire: a cultural history of Islamic textiles (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 29 Het’um’s Flor spoke of the Ethiopians as potential crusaders. His section on Ethiopia suggested some familiarity with northeast African religion and politics, deriving, as it must have done, from the long-standing bonds of religious and cultural contact between Ethiopia and his native Armenia. Het’um’s Ethiopian contemporary, Abba Ewostatewos, established a major monastic order and then left for Armenia in 1338 after a religious dispute. Ewostatewos’ followers returned to Ethiopia after his death in 1352, establishing monasteries, on which see Vitae sanctorum indigenarum [Gadla Ewostatewos, sive Acta Sancti Eustathii], transl. Boris Turaev. (Rome: K. de Luigi, 1906). [Note the existence of several medieval Ethiopian manuscript fragments (some from the fourteenth century) in the Echmiadzin Cathedral library, reported by Boris Alexandrovich Turaev, “Iz armiano-­abissinskikh snoshenii,” Zapiski vostochnago otdeleniia imperatorskago russkago arkheologicheskago obshchestva 21 (1911–1912), 3–15; as recently as 1999, Pankhurst reported the existence of 30 Ethiopian mss in Armenian archives: Richard Pankhurst, “A Serious Question of Ethiopian Studies – Five Thousand Ethiopian Manuscripts Abroad.” (http://theblacklistpub.ning.com/group/theblacklistview/forum/topics/a-serious -question-of)]. Ever the pragmatist, Het’um noted that it would be necessary for the West to exploit Mamluk fear of the Ethiopians and Nubians. [Hetʿum, La Flor des estoires, 4.23]. He also recommended that Armenian intermediaries could most effectively serve as diplomatic intermediaries between the two distant worlds. William Adam, likewise, wrote in the fourteenth century of the likely sympathy the Ethiopians would hold for any crusade against Islam. [Guillelmus Adae, 551.] The fourteenth-century Venetian Marino Sanudo, referring to the Damietta prophecies regarding the Muslim fear of a black king from the south, also spoke of the Ethiopians as potential allies. [Sanudo, Liber secretorum, 32.].

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Jerusalem.30 By the mid 1380s, however, peaceful relations between Egypt and Ethiopia seem to have been resumed.31 Ethiopian envoys repeatedly made their way from the Horn of Africa to Europe. The ambassadors who did arrive from Ethiopia were, themselves, mostly Italian-born craftsmen who, like the Italian merchants who had served the Ilkhâns in a similar capacity, conducted long range diplomacy for the Ethiopian nägäst. The reaction to such embassies was a continuing Western desire for military and diplomatic alliance. The actual state of peace existing in the Horn of Africa was, to the Latins, unknown and irrelevant. The tensions between Ethiopia and Egypt of the 1360s–1380s, which included an attempted invasion of Egypt by Sayfa Arʾed and the imprisonment of Egyptian merchants in Ethiopia, sparked new interest in seeing the Ethiopians as allies in holy war.32 The Mamluks clearly continued to be concerned over the possibility of political and military alliance, and the direct danger such an alliance would pose to Mamluk territory. The chronicler al-Maqrizi is most vehement in his accusations against negus Yishaq (r. 1413–1430), for sending embassies to Europe in order to form a grand alliance against Islam.33 Alfonso v of Aragon and Sicily 30

31 32

33

(‘Mar Yishaq’ and ‘Gädlä Särsä-Pétros’) See Jules Perruchon, “Légendes relatives a Dawit ii (Lebna-Dengel), roi d’Éthiopie,” Revue sémitique 6 (1898), 14, 170–171, who incorrectly attributes these motives to Libnä-Dingil/Dawît ii, as opposed to Dawît i. al-Maqrizi noted how Dawit i sent 22 camels laden with gifts to the Mamluk sultan Barquq (r. 1382–1389). The first evidence of this comes in the form of a letter addressed to the ‘king of Abyssinia, Prester John’ from Henry iv of England. Letter (1400) in Royal and historical letters during the reign of Henry the Fourth, king of England and of France, and Lord of Ireland, ed. F.C. Hingeston, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1860–1864), 1: 419–420. The letter refers to reports of Dawît’s supposed Jerusalem ambitions, and mentions Henry’s own connections with the Holy Land. Taddesse [Church and state, 257] states that Henry first heard of Dāwīt exploits while in the Holy Land in 1392–1393. It is unlikely that the embassy actually ever found Ethiopia. Iorga, “Notes et extraits …, I” 120. In 1402, an Ethiopian embassy arrived in Europe, led by a Florentine, Antonio Bartoli. For an itinerary, reportedly of this embassy, see Idem “Cenni sulle relazioni tra l’Abissinia e l’Europa cattolica nei secoli xiv e xv,” in Centenario della nascita di Michele Amari, ed. Giuseppe Salvo Cozzo, 2 vols. (Palermo: Società siciliana per la storia patria, 1910), 142, 144–150. Ahmad ibn ʿAli Maqrîzî Maqrizi, Macrizi Historia regvm Islamiticorvm in Abyssinia. Interpretatvs est et vna cvm Abvlfedae Descriptione regionvm nigritarvm e codd, ed./transl. Friedrich Theodor Rink (Leiden: Sam. Et Joh. Luchtmans, 1790), [8], (7) sic. A Cairene edition from 1895 also exists: Kitab al-ilmam bi-akhbar man bi-ard al-Habashah min muluk al-Islam. Ibn Taghrîbirdî noted how Yishaq sent envoys to Europe immediately following the Mamluk raid on Cyprus in 1426. See Ibn Taghrîbirdî, History of Egypt, 1382–1469 a.d., transl. William Popper, 8 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954–1963), 4: 60.

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[Alfonso i of Naples] received an Ethiopian delegation in 1427/8. A marital alliance between Aragon and Ethiopia was proposed: Alfonso’s niece, the Infanta Doña Juana of Barcelona, was to marry Yishaq while his brother, Infante Don Pedro, duke of Noto, was to marry an Ethiopian princess. Some of the information on this embassy comes from a Neapolitan, Pietro, who reported his adventures in the service of the Ethiopian negus to Bertrandon de la Brocquière in 1432 in the Genoese district of Pera, where he had gone to recruit further craftsmen for service in Ethiopia.34 The tensions between the Mamluks and Ethiopia abated for a time at the beginning of the reign of negus Zärʾa Yaʾiqob (r. 1434–1468). In 1437/8, Zärʾa Yaʾiqob wrote to Mamluk sultan Barsbây(r. 1422–1438), speaking of friendship and asking for protection of the Coptic Christians in Egypt.35 However, relations soon turned hostile over the treatment of those same Copts in Egypt, and a pointed letter from Zärʾa Yaʾiqob to the new sultan Jaqmaq, reminds the Egyptian of the negus’ power over the Nile.36 Rumors of this increasing conflict reached Europe, most likely through the medium of Ethiopians in the Holy Land. A rather fanciful-yet-hopeful letter, written by Jean de Lastic, the Grand Master of the Hospitallers at Rhodes, to Charles vii of France (dated 3 July 1448) describes the Ethiopian ruler’s victories over his Muslim opponents (whether domestic or foreign, he does not specify), and states in no uncertain terms that the negus intended to destroy Egypt, Arabia and Syria in due course.37 This type of fabricated news of holy war paved the way for an official Ethiopian embassy which was sent to the Aragonese court in 1450, and led by a Sicilian, Pietro Rombulo. The mission’s first destination was the court of Pope Nicholas v. The motive for an audience with the Pope is unclear. Theologically, the Ethiopians and Rome were on very different grounds: The Council of Florence (1438–1445) and Nicholas’s predecessor Pope Eugenius iv (1431– 1447), had been intent on bringing the Ethiopians under the control of Rome. 34 Bertrandon, Voyage, 142–148. 35 Ahmad ibn ʿAli Maqrizi Mémoires géographiques et historiques sur l’Égypte, et sur quelques contrées voisines. Recueils et extrait des manuscrits Coptes, Arabes, etc., de la Bibliothèque Impériale, ed. Étienne Marc Quatremère, 2 vols. (Paris: F. Schoell, 1811), 2: 278–279. 36 Sakhawî, Kitab, 67–72. 37 François-Joseph-Jean, Mis de Lastic, Chronique de la maison de Lastic, d’après les archives du château de Parentignat et quelques autres documents, 3 vols. (Montpellier: Firmin et Montane, 1919–1921), 329–330; this same news was reported four years later by Jean Germain, the bishop of Chalon-sur-Sâone. See Jean Germain, Le discour du voyage d’Oultremer au trés victorieux roi Charles vii, in “Le Discours du Voyage d’Oultremer au trés victorieux roi Charles vii, prononcé, en 1452, par Jean Germain, évêque de Chalon,” ed. Charles Schefer, Revue de l’Orient latin 3 (1895), 326.

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Alberto da Sarteano was sent to bring Copts to the council, which he did in 1441.38 The Council also declared that Zär’a Yaʾiqob was, in fact, Prester John— a name which the negus’ representatives rejected as insufferable and stupid. Again, it is likely, that Rombulo was sent to the Pope to ask for the same type of craftsmen who were requested from temporal rulers. Nicholas v, for his part, was no doubt aware of the writings of Eugenius iv regarding the general belief that the Ethiopians were ready and eager to attack Islam.39 From Rome, the embassy proceeded (with an escort provided by the Pope) to Naples and the court of King Alfonso.40 Alfonso, as was the case during his previous reception of Ethiopian envoys in Valencia in 1428 furnished a number of craftsmen, as the negus had requested.41 This appearance of Ethiopians both in Rome and in Naples triggered a flurry of diplomatic excitement in both courts. Alfonso’s initial letter to the Ethiopians (September 1450) not only spoke of the labor he was sending, but also requested Zärʾa Yaʾiqob to divert the Nile (as was in his power) and that he join the Aragonese in an attack against Egypt.42 The Pope, on the other hand, apparently sent an embassy of his own, consisting mostly of adventurers, following Rombulo’s departure from Rome.43 38

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C.F. Beckingham, “Ethiopia and Europe, 1200–1650,” in The European Outthrust and Encounter: the First Phase c.1400–c.1700: Essays in Tribute to David Beers Quinn on his 85th Birthday, eds. Cecil H. Clough and P.E.H. Hair (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), 81. Annales minorum, seu Trium ordinum a S. Francisco institutorum, ed. Luke Wadding, 25 vols. (Rome: Typis Rochi Bernabò, 1731–1886), s.a. 1439, no. xv. See the letter of passage and a letter providing for the payment of the “serviens armorum” in Charles-Martial de Witte, “Une ambassade éthiopienne á Rome en 1450.” Orientalia Christiana periodica 22 (1956), 295–297. Other craftsmen were acquired en route. There was a report of an ambassador from Prester John at the court of Afonso v of Portugal (1438–1481), see Charles Germain Marie Bourel La Roncière, La découverte de l’Afrique au moyen âge, cartographes et explorateurs, 3 vols. (Cairo: Société royale de géographie d’Égypte, 1924–1927), 2: 121. Francesco Suriano, Il trattato di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente, ed. Girolamo Golubovich. ­(Milano: Artigianelli, 1900), 86. He followed this with two additional embassies, led by Michele Desiderio (in early 1452) and the second by Antonio Martinez (in mid 1453). See letters of introduction (18 January 1452 and 3 July 1453 respectively) in Francesco Cerone, “La Politica Orientale di Alfonso di Aragon,” Archivo storico per la province Napoletane pubblicato a cura della Società di storia patria 27 (1902), 76–77, 79. While nothing is known of these embassies following their departure from Alfonso’s court, it can be safely assumed that they included further consignments of craftsmen. Giovanni Battista da Imola, a Bologna-based bronze artist, noted that, upon his arrival in Ethiopia in 1482, he encountered some Italians who had apparently been there for a quarter of a century. See Suriano, Trattato, 86.

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Despite the western emphasis on crusade and military alliance, the Ethiopians held very different expectations for these new diplomatic contacts than did their western coreligionists. Repeatedly, the Ethiopian desire was not for arms or marital alliance, but for the services of skilled western craftsmen, and it was these craftsmen who came to represent the Ethiopians in their dealings with western courts as chief among their requests were more artisans. An ambassador’s 1402 appearance before the Venetian sapientes, for example, resulted in a select list of Venetian crafters to be sent to Africa.44 Not surprising, therefore, some Mediterranean style buildings which are, by tradition, held to date from the early fifteenth century, can be found in Shoa, near Addis Ababa.45 While there is a passage in the Chronicle of negus Baʾeda Maryam (r. 1468–1478) which speaks of popular dissatisfaction with the work of a particular European painter, Europeans continued to be imported and employed by Ethiopian nägäst, and it is clear from any inspection of the 17th century royal complex at Gondar, for example, that European as well as Gujarati artisans continued to be employed by the royal court.46 By the time Portuguese emissaries reached the Ethiopian court in the late 1490s, their expectations of what they would find had largely been conditioned by the false hopes that Prester John would be discovered and that the final crusade was at hand. The Ethiopians, for their part, expected the Westerners to continue to assist in supplying their kings with artisans, technology and its concomitant prestige. Ethiopia had come to the forefront of European diplomatic expectations in “the Indies.” The court of Aragon, in particular, saw 44

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Many Venetian painters of the early fourteenth century would have still employed a Byzantinesque style, familiar to the Ethiopian Church. See Carlo Conti Rossini, “Un codice illustrato eritreo del secolo xv (Ms. Abb. N. 105 della Bibl. Nat. di Parigi),” Africa italiana 1(1927), 86–88. Little is known of a 1407/8 embassy sent by negus Dāwīt i (r. 1380–1412) during a time of Church crisis and battles with Muslim forces. See Carmelo Trasselli, “Un Italiano in Etiopia nel xv secolo. Pietro Rombulo da Messina,” Rassegna di studi etiopici 1 (1941), 173–202. Thirteen, presumably Italian, craftsmen, as requested, were also sent by Alfonso v of Aragon in the embassy that brought with it the proposal of marital union. On what we know of the envoys from the Duke de Berry, see Bertrandon, Voyage, 142–148. Little was known of the fate of most of the artisans. On European artists in Ethiopia, see Krebs, “Windows on the World.” René Basset, Études sur l’histoire d’Éthiopie (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1882): 102; La cronaca abbreviata d’Abissinia: nuova versione dall’Etiopico e commento, ed./transl. Francesco Béguinot (Rome: Casa Edit. Italiana, 1901), 12f. See Shaalini Ranasinghe, “The Castle of Emperor Fasiladas: missionaries, Muslims, and architecture in Gondar, Ethiopia,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2001), Chapter 5. Fasil Giorghia, “Foreign influences and local contribution in Gondarian architecture,” in Indigenous and the foreign, 30–36.

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Ethiopia as a strong and ready military ally, sharing a supposed common antipathy toward Egypt. If the Mamluks were to be stymied and the dream of the recovery of Jerusalem made a reality, Ethiopia was clearly to play a part. However, the 1479 Treaty of Alcaçovas, which ended a three year conflict between Castile and Portugal, also brought an end to any Aragonese diplomacy in northeastern Africa. With the marital union of the Castilian and Aragonese monarchs in 1469, and the treaty’s recognition of Portuguese sovereignty in Africa, Portugal, rather than any of the Spanish kingdoms, would be placed in the position of bringing Latin diplomacy with Ethiopia to fruition. The Portuguese and the Spanish both looked across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco as the initial staging points for continuing crusade across North Africa to the Holy Land, with the eventual goal being the capture of Jerusalem. The Portuguese, for their part, pushed their voyages down the West African coast and into the Indian Ocean basin, searching for states or rulers who could assist them in direct holy war, or economic blockade of Egypt and other Muslim polities.47 The Spanish maintained a stronghold in the Mediterranean itself, and, of course, across the Atlantic. The general inclination of the Portuguese to believe the Prester John stories and to pursue the search for him and his kingdom was an intrinsic part of a broader Portuguese cultural phenomenon. Enshrined at the very core of Portuguese identity was the mythology of the encobierto, the hidden one: a king, blessed by fate and fortune, who would return from a distant exile to liberate his chosen people and reign in glory.48 The Portuguese version is derived from versions of Arthurian myth, which seems to have been a vogue in Aragon from at least the late 12th century, as well as from writings attributed to Isidore of Seville.49 Afonso i (r. 1112–1185) identified himself as the prototype for the Universal, Last Emperor, whose liberation of Lisbon from the Muslims in 1147 was

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See such suggestions for blockade in Sanudo, Liber secretorum. On the search for allies in Africa, see below. João Lúcio de Azevedo, A evolução do Sebastianismo, 2d ed. (Lisbon: A.M. Teixeira, 1947), 18–19; for a later period, see Mark Cooper Emerson, “Messianic Expectation and Collective Myth Formation: Prophecy, Society and Imagination in Early Modern Portugal,” (PhD dissertation. University of California at Santa Barbara, 2005). On the earliest Iberian examples, see Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel, “Arthurian Literature in Spain and Portugal,” in Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages: a collaborative history, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 406–418; See pseudo-Robert de Boron, Demanda do santo graal, ed. Augusto Magne (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa nacional, 1944). Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic (New York: Scribner, 1971), 415–422.

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seen as a gift of God.50 Such millenarian symbolism was afterward adopted by the house of Avis from the reign of João i (r. 1385–1433), who came to be known as the “Messiah of Lisbon, for leading his people to “holy” victory over an aggressive Castile at the battle of Albujarrota (1385).”51 The idea that Portugal’s destiny lay in the hands of one who would come from afar made them ideally suited to become responsible for the search for a distant ally such as Prester John. The Portuguese, who began their own reconquista in the twelfth century, looked upon the defeat of the Muslims with pride equivalent to the Castillians and Aragonese.52 However, almost as significant, was the expansion and development of a distinctly Portuguese state in Iberia at the expense of their Castillian neighbors to the east. Afonso i’s victory at the Battle of São Mamede (near Guimarães) in 1128, the supposed intervention of Santiago against the Almoravids at Ourique (1139) and the defeat of the Castilians by João i at Ajubarrota (1385) assuring Portuguese independence, are all cited by Luis Camões, author of the Lusiads (1572), the national epic poem, as pivotal moments in the history of the Portuguese nation, on par with the later wars against Islam.53 Yet, on the broader scale of Latin holy war against Islam, the Portuguese were marginal. Its ruling dynasty, the House of Avis, had only come to power in the fourteenth century, and thus, to promote crusading among its nobility, the Portuguese crown founded the knightly Order of Christ.54 Consequently we find a papal bull, Eximie devocionis, issued on 20 March 1411, commanding the Order to undertake a crusade against Islam – a command responded to by the Order’s Administrator General, Dom Henrique (1394–1460), the third son of King João i. The subsequent Portuguese move across the Straits of Gibraltar in 1415, attacking the Moroccan port city of Ceuta was a successful military campaign which would be, in later years, couched in the language of holy war. In truth, the action, led by D. Henrique, was also a well calculated move against one of the premier entrepôts for Saharan trade caravans. The economic and prestige benefits for Portugal of such an enterprise 50 51 52 53 54

Hernani Cidade, A literatura autonomista sob os Filipes. (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa, c. 1950–1959), 162–163. Margarida Garcez Ventura, O messias de Lisboa: um estudo de mitologia política, 1383–1415 (Lisbon: Edições Cosmos, 1992). Note Luis de Camões’ view of the Portuguese Reconquista in the Portuguese classic epic, Os Lusiadas, ed. Frank Pierce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), Canto 3. Idem, Cantos 3–4. See Francis A. Dutra, Military orders in the early modern Portuguese world: the Orders of Christ, Santiago, and Avis (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), esp. i, ix, x.

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had great potential.55 Control of the lucrative Saharan gold trade was a prime motivating factor, not only for the obvious assistance it would give in financing direct attacks against Egypt and the Ottomans, but also for the damage that the economies of the Islamic states would suffer as a result. Mamluks and Ottomans alike derived capital wealth from trade in gold, salt and other west African commodities. Without access to such goods, their economies would be severely drained.56 The image of Henrique as the iconic “Henry the Navigator” was a careful panegyric construction. His earliest commentator, Poggio Bracciolini, compared him to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.57 However Henry’s career was, after the conquest of Ceuta, something of a mixed affair. King Duarte, Henrique’s brother, was an unenthusiastic supporter of Henrique’s Moroccan crusading plans, and the prince’s 1437 debacle in launching an attack at Tangier was proof of his general inability. Morocco was moved to the periphery of Portugal’s plans and replaced by an attempt to go directly to West Africa via the Atlantic. Between 1438 and 1457 Henrique’s focus was solely on an African enterprise, and gaining an economic foothold at the source of the gold trade for the benefit of Portuguese coffers.58 It is clear that from the time of the earliest Portuguese voyages to Africa, that the Portuguese had developed an interest in Prester John or of other Christian polities in “the East.” General Latin interest in Prester John at this time can be attested to by the sharp increase in the 15th century of manuscripts of the Prester John letter, though none that we know of have a specifically Portuguese 55

Ivana Elbl, “Prestige considerations and the changing interest of the Portuguese crown in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1441–1580,” Portuguese Studies Review 10/2 (2002–2003), 21. 56 Both the Genoese trader Antonio Malfante (d.1450) and the Venetian slave trader and explorer Alvise Ca da Mosto (c. 1432–1483) had noted that western Africa was also the source for the gold which reached Egypt and the Ottomans by the mid 1440s. See letter of Malfante (Touät, 1447) to Giovanni Mariono of Genoa in Alvise da Ca’ da Mosto, The voyages of Cadamosto and other documents on Western Africa in the second half of the fifteenth century, ed/transl. G.R. Crone (London: Hakluyt Society, 1937), 90; Nehemia Levtzion, “Mamluk Egypt and Takrur (West Africa),” in Studies in Islamic history and civilization in honour of Professor David Ayalon, ed. Moshe Sharon (Jerusalem: Cana/Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1986), 193. 57 In Monumenta Henricina (Coimbra: n.p., 1960–1974), 9: 300–301. 58 See Cadamosto, Voyages, 4–7; Diogo Gomes, Viagens, in The voyages of Cadamosto and other documents on Western Africa in the second half of the fifteenth century, ed./transl. G.R. Crone. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1937), 30, 43. Historians are still debating Henrique’s motives. For an excellent discussion of the debate, see Luís de Albuquerque, “Uma releitura de Azurara.” Studia 47 (1989), 417–438. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto [Before Columbus, 186] rather pithily refers to the prince’s world as one of “shabby swagger.”

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provenance.59 Gomes Eanes de Zurara (c. 1410–1474), whose 1453 Crónica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guiné contained an encomiastic biography of Dom Henrique. Of Henrique, Zurara wrote: during the thirty one years he had fought the Moors, he had never found a Christian king, nor a lord outside this land [Portugal], who, for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ would aid him in the said war. Therefore he sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes, in whom the chastity and the love of Christ was so ingrained that they would aid him against those enemies of the faith.60 We can assume that Zurara had Prester John in mind, as later in the Crónica Zurara also wrote how Henrique specifically wanted to have knowledge of the land of Prester John, which he thought to be in Africa.61 The passage from Zurara demonstrates that Henrique and the Portuguese had been looking for allies against the Muslims for some time (“thirty years”) and that such a pursuit was viewed as a long term project. In addition, the presumptive allies were believed to be imbued with specifically Christian virtues. Following upon Henrique’s desires, we find King João ii (r. 1481–1495) developing an overseas policy with the search for Prester John at its core. Such a search was made easier by the signing of the Treaty of Alcáçovas which was reaffirmed in the papal bull Aeterni Regis, issued by Pope Sixtus iv in 1481. João’s agents took great lengths to find Prester John.62 João’s initial policy regarding 59 See Prester John, 312–313. 60 Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Crónica dos feitos notáveis que se passaram na conquista da Guiné por mandado do infante D. Henrique, ed. Torquato de Sousa Gomes, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa da História, 1978–1981), Chapter 7. English translation in Idem, The chronicle of the discovery and conquest of Guinea, eds. by C. Raymond Beazley and Edgar Prestage, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1896–1899; reprinted New York: B. Franklin, 1963). On Zurara as encomiast, see Albuquerque, “Uma releitura”; Luis Filipe Barreto, “Gomes Eanes de Zurara e o Problema da ‘Cronica da Guine.’” Studia 47 (1989), 311–369; Ivana Elbl, “Man of His Time (and Peers): A New Look at Henry the Navigator,” LusoBrazilian­ Review 28/2 (1991), 84. 61 Zurara, Crónica, Chapter 16. 62 Rui de Pina Crónica de el-rey D. João ii, ed. Alberto Martins de Carvalho, nov. ed. (Coimbra: Atlantida, 1950), Chapter 58; Damião de Gois, Cronica do felicíssimo rei D. Mañoel, new ed., 4 vols. (Coimbra: n.p., 1955): pt. 4, Chapter 54. The same plan of action was noted after the rounding of the Cape: by Bartolomeu Dias at Angra and by Da Gama’s crew at Moçambique Island. [Alvaro Velho], Roteiro da primeira viagem de Vasco da Gama (1497–1499), ed.

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the Kingdom of Kongo is a case in point. Kongo, on the west coast of central Africa was to be the base for establishing a Christian outpost through which Prester John could be reached.63 The search by the Portuguese for Prester John (or a suitable substitute) was a long one, and while it was known that he resided somewhere “to the east,” it was believed that he could be most easily reached via the interior of Africa.64 In the process of their search, the Portuguese made contact was a multitude of polities in West Africa in the first century of their presence there.65 They encountered (or heard tell of) several West African rulers whom they thought might be Prester John.66 The most widely considered of these was the Oghene or Ogané, (whom scholars now identify with the Yoruba ruler of Ife, in modern-day Nigeria).67 In 1480, João Afonso d’Aveiros spoke of a conversation he had held with the chief of Ughoton (also in modern-day Nigeria) who stated that this Ogané was suzerain over Benin. On the death of an Oba of Benin, his successor traditionally sent messengers to this overlord, who then sent back official emblems of office. Among these Abel Fontoura da Costa, 3d ed. (Lisbon: Agência-Geral do Ultramar, 1969), 22 [2 March 1498]. Much of early Portuguese activity in on both African coasts was occupied with this continuing search for the elusive crusading ally, whose presumed military strength and strategic location was believed to hold the key to a successful crusade. Two envoys were dispatched in 1487 and one of them arrived at the court of negus Iskindir (r. 1478–1494) in 1494. See João de Barros, Ásia, eds. Hernâni Cidade and Manuel Múrias, 6th ed., 4 vols. (Lisboa, Divisão de publicações e biblioteca, Agência geral das colónias, 1945–1946), 1.3.5. On this subject in general, see C.F. Beckingham, “The Travels of Pero da Covilha and their Significance,” in Actas do Congresso Internacional de História dos Descobrimentos. Lisbon, 1960, 6 vols. in 7 (Lisboa, Comissão Executiva das comemoracões do V Centenário da Morte do Infante D. Henrique, 1961): 3: 3–16, reprinted in his Between Islam and Christendom: travellers, facts, and legends in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: Variorum Reprints, 1983). 63 Rui de Pina, Cronica, Chapter 58; Damião de Gois, Cronica, pt. 4, Chapter 54. 64 Alan F.C. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 1485–1897. (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), 29. 65 For a detailed examination, see Ivana Elbl, “Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441–1521,” Journal of World History 3/2 (1992), 165–204. 66 The fame in Europe of the Malian ruler, Mansâ Mûsâ (r. 1312–1337), as reported by the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta, was such that many believed him to be Prester John. See Ibn Battuta, The travels of Ibn Battuta, a.d. 1325–1354, eds. C. Defremery and B.R. Sanguinetti, transls. H.A.R. Gibb and C.F. Beckingham. 5 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1958–2000). The ruler of the Zaghawa kingdom of Ngala (now in Darfur), who appeared in the Arabic “Antar” cycle was another candidate. The adventures of Antar, ed./transl. H.T. Norris (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1980), 76–90. 67 Ryder, Benin, 31. For other identifications, see Idem, “A reconstruction of the Ife-Benin relationship,” Journal of African History 6/1 (1965), 25–37.

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emblems was a cross, which the Oba wore on a chain around his neck.68 This cross emblem triggered the Prester John identification among the Portuguese, some of whom assumed that there must have been strands of Christianity in Benin’s history.69 Because of this supposed association with Christianity in its past, Benin remained the centerpiece of Portugal’s Christianizing policy in West Africa until establishment of relations with, and the conversion of, the kingdom of Kongo in the latter half of the sixteenth century.70 Much of the early Portuguese activity in Mozambique and along the East African coast during the beginning years of King Mañoel’s reign (r. 1495–1521) was also based on an attempt to find and establish links with “Prester John.” Following two unsuccessful expeditions in 1500 and 1502/3 from the south, 68 Barros, Ásia, 1.3.4; Ryder, Benin, 31. 69 Barros, Ásia, 1.3.4. 70 Ryder, Benin, 32; on early contacts with Kongo, see Anne Hilton, The kingdom of Kongo (Oxford: Clarendon Press/New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 50–68; Teobaldo Filesi, Le relazioni tra il regno del Congo e la Sede apostolica nel xvi secolo (Como: P. Cairoli, 1968). However important the original motive of military alliance against Islam had been to the Portuguese, this was not the practice they instituted once ensconced in West Africa. Attempts to missionize met with mixed success: one of the kings of Efutu (in modern Ghana) along with six of his ministers apparently were converted in 1503, but his successor was not a Christian. Oba Esigie of Benin agreed to accept Christianity in exchange for arms against his enemies – a request which was politely turned down by King Mañoel of Portugal in 1514. There were, indeed, even murmurings (though unsubstantiated) that the anti-Hausa, anti-Muslim Kwararafa of the Gongola and Benue valley (in what is now northeastern Nigeria), had received arms from the Guinea coast. On the difficulties of Portuguese first encounter in West Africa, see Elbl, “Cross-Cultural Trade.” There is only minimal evidence to suggest that the Ottomans had any political alliances in West Africa. The Songhai, it has been noted, might have had an alliance with the Ottomans, but this was only in the middle of the sixteenth-century, and the connection is dubious at best. See Zakari Dramani-Issifou, L’Afrique noire dans les relations internationales au xvie siècle: analyse de le crise entre Maroc et le Sonrhaï. (Paris: Editions Karthala: Centre de recherches africaines, 1982), 134–135; Lamin O. Sanneh, West African Christianity: the religious impact. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1983), 24–25, 37; Richard Gray, “Christian traces and a Franciscan mission in the central Sudan, 1700–1711.” Journal of African History 8/3 (1967), 387–388. There has been speculation as to whether the Kwararafa were, in fact, Ethiopian Christians. The Kano Chronicle, in Sudanese memoirs: being mainly translations of a number of Arabic manuscripts relating to the Central and Western Sudan, ed./transl. H.R. Palmer, 3 vols. (Lagos: Government Printer, 1928), [106] notes the adamant refusal of their leaders to submit to Islam. Gray, “Christian traces,” (pp. 392–393) posited that it is possible that they had been influenced by the “Kisara” migrations of Christians from Nubia. Their own legends speak of a migration from Yemen as refugees from the first campaigns of Muhammad, but this might well be a later conflation.

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contact was finally made with the Ethiopian court in 1508.71 Diplomatic relations would commence shortly thereafter. By the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese were beginning to create a cohesive and dominant empire in the Indian Ocean Basin. They also began to incur the wrath of Muslim polities in the region. The Islamic principalities that fringed Christian Ethiopia had, since 1507–1508, become increasingly militant in their stand against the Christian empire. In 1508, Imam Mahfuz, governor of Saylac on the Somali coast, had declared a jihâd against Ethiopia, and had received support from the ʿulama in the Hejaz, as well as from a large number of volunteer soldiers from Arabia.72 It was this attack, rather than any overt action by the Mamluks, which prompted Ethiopian Empress Illeni, the regent for the young Emperor Libnä Dingil, to write to the Portuguese stating she will help the Portuguese plea for help.73 Illeni’s ambassador, known as “Matthew the Armenian” (hereafter “Mattʾeos”), met in Goa with Albuquerque. Flattering the Portuguese, referring to their deeds in India as miraculous, Mattʾeos offered Albuquerque a base on the Red Sea in exchange for assistance against the queen’s domestic enemies.74 The ambassador’s offer of a base on the Red Sea was met with enthusiasm for it would provide a locus for an attack on Mecca, as well as furthering the Manueline desire for a reconquest of Jerusalem.75 The leaders of the Ethiopian Church, wary of the Portuguese, convinced the empress Illeni to make a final attempt to strengthen ties with the Mamluks. 71

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Barros, Ásia, 2.3; Gois, Crónica, 1: 77, 164, 2: 123; Miguel de Castanhoso, Historia das cousas que o mui esforcado capitão Dom Christovão da Gama fez nos reinos do Preste João com quatrocentos portugueses que consigo levou, ed. Neves Aguas (Mem Martins: Publicações Europe-América, 1988); Pedro Mota Curto, História dos Portugueses na Etiópia (1490–1640) (Oporto: Campo das Letras, 2008), 96–99. On Mahfuz and his career, see Francisco Alvares, Verdadeira informação das terras do preste João das Indias, ed. Augusto Reis Machado (Lisbon: Divisão de publicações e biblioteca, Agência geral das colónias, 1943), 410. On the dissemination of Illeni’s letter, see Hervé Pennec, Des jésuites au royaume du prêtre Jean, Ethiopie: stratégies, rencontres et tentatives d’implantation, 1495–1633 (Lisbon: Frundação Calouste Gulbenkian/Paris: Centre culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2003), 31–32 ; Goís, Crónica, 3: 221; Albert Kammerer, La Mer Rouge, l’Abyssinie et l’Arabie depuis l’antiquité essai d’histoire et de géographie historique. Tom 2: Les Guerres du poivre. Les Portugais dans l’Océan Indien et la Mer Rouge au xvie siècle. (Cairo: Société royale de géographie d’Égypte, 1935), 1: 254 and n., 2: 247–259, 302. Sergew Hable-Selassie, “The Ge’ez letters of Queen Eleni and Libna Dingil to John, King of Portugal,” in iv Congresso internazionale di studi etiopici (Roma, 10–15 aprile 1972) (Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1974), 1: 556, 558. Matt’eos proceeded to Lisbon, where he remained for nearly eight years.

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An embassy was sent to Egypt in 1516.76 It was a final effort on the part of the clerical faction in the royal court to ward off what they believed would be an onslaught of Latin influence and interference in Ethiopia. The Egyptians, for their part, wished to maintain the status quo in the Red Sea. Having the Portuguese “meddling” in Ethiopian affairs was not desirable. Consequently, any attempt to influence affairs in Ethiopia was worth making, particularly in the light of the Mamluks’ own precarious position.77 While their expulsion from Hormuz (1507) was a serious blow to the Ottomans, they were not hurt as severely as the Mamluks in Egypt. Spices had become so scarce by 1511, due to Portuguese disruption of Egyptian commerce, that Venetian traders did not visit either Beirut or Alexandria.78 In 1517, the Ottomans invaded and annexed Egypt. The Ottomans thus became the direct rivals to the Portuguese trading and political empire in Asia. The Portuguese were intent on defeating the Ottomans (and, indeed, maintaining a crusading attitude toward Islam in general) by keeping control of key ports on the perimeter of the basin, and launching sporadic attacks close to the heartland of Islam in the Red Sea. They unsuccessfully laid siege to Jeddah in 1517 but managed to burn the Somali port of Saylac on their return journey.79 The following year, they sacked the northern Somali port city of Berbera.80 The Ottomans responded to the Portuguese threat by attempting to dislodge the Europeans from their positions at the mouths of the Persian Gulf (Hormuz) and the Red Sea (Socotra and Ethiopia). They also worked to aid in the revitalization of Islamic trade across the Indian Ocean, by assisting other Muslim polities in the Red Sea and across the basin.81 The added presence of the Ottomans in the Red Sea worried both the Portuguese and the Ethiopian Christians, especially because of the increase in the numbers of volunteers for Imam Mahfuz’s jihâd after 1517.82 The supply 76

Ibn Iyâs [Bada’l’ al-zuhur fi waqa’i’ al-duhur] in Etiopi in Palestina. Storia della communità etiopica di Gerusalemme, ed. Enrico Cerulli, 2 vols. (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1943–1947), 1: 381–394; Álvares, Verdadeira, 448–449; Wiet, “Relations,” 136–139. 77 Joseph Cuoq, L’Islam en Éthiopie des origins au xvie siècle. (Paris: Nouvelles éditions latines, 1981), 190–192. 78 K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and civilization in the Indian Ocean: an economic history from the rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 67; K.S. Mathew, Portuguese trade with India in the sixteenth century (New Delhi: Manohar, 1983), 203. 79 Barros, Ásia, 3.i.3–4. 80 J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1965), 77. 81 Michel M. Mazzaoui, “Global policies of Sultan Selim, 1512–1520,” in Essays on Islamic civilization presented to Niyazi Berkes, ed. Donald P. Little (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 242. 82 Taddesse, Church and state, 300–301.

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of new firearms arriving from the Ottomans was an additional concern.83 Mattʾeos “the Armenian” arrived back in Goa with Roderigo da Lima in the midst of such growing tensions.84 Roderigo and Mattʾeos made their way to Ethiopia in 1520 and, while Mattʾeos died before reaching the court, Roderigo remained there for six years, as a court advisor, if not actually a court favorite.85 The presence of a Portuguese adviser at the Ethiopian court, and the presence of Portuguese flotillas arriving periodically at Massawa, at the base of the Red Sea caused the Ottomans and Arabs in and around the Red Sea to increase their suspicion and concern.86 In response to the perceived threat, the Ottomans occupied Sawakin and Mahfuz’s home base of Zailaʾ, establishing firmer relationships with Muslims at Massawa. Aragonese merchants, opposed to the expansion of the Portuguese, were even reported to be assisting the Muslims to construct a fleet at Zailaʾ.87 Libnä Dingil, in turn, requested the Portuguese to station troops on the coast.88 If the Holy Crusade for Jerusalem was to be successful, it would be under far more complicated circumstances than the Portuguese has previously assumed. What should be apparent from all these political machination is that Mañoel’s desire for direct crusade was now not to be a mission undertaken with willing and powerful allies, but an expensive venture without benefit of assistance. By 1520, the situation in the Indian Ocean, therefore was far different than the Portuguese had anticipated in 1500. While Christians existed in the region, they were neither as politically nor economically powerful as had been assumed. The Ethiopian polity had conflicts with the region’s Muslims, but did not seem particularly willing to participate in any expanded global conflict. Ethiopia was still a source of exotic wonder, as chronicled by explorers, but they were not the grand allies of dream and design. Prester John was, with his Portuguese advisers, more of a client than a full partner. Crusading ­aspirations 83

João de Castro, Le routier de Joam de Castro: l’exploration de la Mer Rouge par les Portugais en 1541, ed./transl. Albert Kammerer (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1936), 62–71, 285–287; Shihâb al-Dîn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Qâdir ʿArabfaqih, Histoire de la conquête de l’Abyssinie (xvie siècle), ed./transl. René Basset, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1897–1909), 7–12. 84 Afonso de Albuquerque, Commentarios do grande Afonso de Albuquerque, capitão geral que foi das Indias Orientais em tempo do muito poderoso rey d. Manuel, o primeiro deste nome, ed. António Baião, 4 ed., 4 pt. in 2 vols. (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1922– 1923), 3: 254. 85 Ibid., 1: 56–60, 4: 26–58; Alvares, Verdadeira; Kammerer, La Mer Rouge, 2: 272. 86 Mordechai Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea: the rise and decline of the Solomonic dynasty and Muslim-European rivalry in the region (London: F. Cass, 1980), 88. 87 Barros, Ásia, 3.i.4. 88 Alvares, Verdadeira, 1: 273, 287, 305–306, 2: 451.

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with Prester John were further hindered by internal Portuguese opposition. The idea of crusade was met with horror by those Portuguese merchants, enriched by the newly profitable Indian Ocean trade. The divisions in the Portuguese court, between the king and his crusading idealism on one hand and the growing mercantile party which placed profit over proselytization on the other, came into sharp contrast. The latter first attempted to detain Matteʾos “the Armenian” in Goa, wishing to hinder any entente that might lead to a war with Egypt due to a blockade in trade.89 To further complicate matters, once safely ensconced in Lisbon in 1515, Matteʾos’ accounts of Ethiopian Christianity did not correspond with the long held beliefs regarding Prester John. The practices of Ethiopian Christianity, such as Saturday Sabbaths, seemed uncomfortably akin to the “Judaizing” that the Iberians were trying to combat on their home soil.90 The growth of the Ottoman presence along the East African coast was a great worry to the Portuguese, most notably because of their attempts to assist other Muslim polities in East Africa in recovering some of their trade markets, which had been lost because of Portuguese intervention.91 In addition, within Ethiopia, the Ottomans were able to supply Emir Mahfuz with arms and soldiers for his jihad against the crown. The Ethiopians would be of only marginal assistance in combating this threat to trade and Christendom. Under siege from indigenous Muslims, the Christian rulers of Ethiopia were forced to call upon the Portuguese for assistance, when the initial Latin plans had been for the reverse.92 The tensions between the Portuguese-backed Christians and the Ottomanbacked Muslims in Ethiopia had worsened by 1525, due, in large part, to the rise in Adal of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, known as Ahmad “Graññ” (the “left-handed”) (c. 1506–1543). The son-in-law of Emir Mahfuz, this charismatic personality had become the de facto ruler of Adal, and was receiving arms and support from the Ottoman pasha of Zabid in the Hejaz in an attempt to expand ­Muslim power

89 Gois, Crónica, 3.59; Luis Filipe F.R. Thomaz, “Factions, interests and messianism: the politics of Portuguese expansion in the east, 1500–1521,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 28/1 (1991), 104; Maria Emilia Madeira Santos, “Afonso de Albuquerque e os feitores,” in ii Seminário de historia Indo-portuguesa. Actas, eds. Luis de Albuquerque and Inacio Guerreiro (Lisbon: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, Centro de Estudos de História e Cartografia Antiga, 1985), 210–226. 90 See Leonardo Cohen Shabot, “Los portugueses en Etiopia y la problematica de los ritos ‘judaicos,’” Historia y Grafía 17 (2001), 209–240; Jean Aubin, “Le prêtre Jean devant la censure portugaise,” Bulletin des études portugaises et brésiliennes, 41 (1980), 33. 91 Mazzaoui, “Global policies,” 242. 92 ʿArabfaqîh, [Futûh al-habasha], 67–73; Alvares, Verdadeira, Chapters 105–106.

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throughout the whole of Ethiopia.93 It was at this time (1526) that Roderigo da Lima left Ethiopia in the company of an Ethiopian, Zaga Za Ab, and made his way to Goa and thence on to Portugal.94 The reasons for his departure are not entirely certain, though it is likely that the Portuguese wished him to report on the general situation vis-a-vis the progression of the Christian alliance against the powers of Islam in the Red Sea. Over the next fifteen years, Ahmâd “Graññ” and his forces slowly expanded their power and influence over a large portion of Ethiopia: his so-called Futuh al-Habasha. The course of the campaign is well documented, and it is not within the scope of this work to outline it here.95 Suffice it to say that the Portuguese were aware of neither the success of Ahmad “Graññ’s” campaigns nor of the inability of the Ethiopian Christian forces to stem the Islamic tide: after all, Roderigo da Lima and Zaga Za Ab had departed several months before Ahmad “Grañ” had achieved his first major victory over royal troops.96 By 1535, the situation had deteriorated to such an extent that Libnä Dingil was forced to send another embassy, under João Bermudes (who had come to Ethiopia with Roderigo da Lima), to Portugal, this time with urgent requests for military assistance.97 The Portuguese were slow in responding in Ethiopia. When Bermudes returned to India in 1539, carrying orders from the king to dispatch troops to Ethiopia, the viceroy refused, wishing to wait for a planned attack by the Ottomans on India.98 Bermudes accompanied a flotilla of small boats to Massawa in 1540, which was helpless against the forces of Ahmad “Graññ.”99 In February 1541, however, a Portuguese force arrived, under the command of 93 94

ʿArabfaqih, [Futûh al-habasha], Histoire, 67–73; Alvares, Verdadeira, 1: 287, 305–306. Schurhammer [Der zeitgenössischen Quellen zur Geschichte Portugiesisch-Asiens und seiner Nachbarländer (Ostafrika, Abessinien, Persien, Vorder- und Hinterindien, Malaiischer Archipel, Philippinen, China und Japan) zur Zeit des hl. Franz Xaver 1538–1552. (Leipzig: Verlag Asia Major, 1932), no. 80] dates the negus’s letter to the king of Portugal, April 1521, but I think this is too early; see Merid Wolde Aregay and Girma Beshah, The question of the union of the churches in Luso-Ethiopian relations (1500–1632) (Lisbon: Junta de Investigacões do Ultramar and Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1964), 34; Asa J. Davis, “Background to the Zaga Za Ab Embassy: an Ethiopian diplomatic mission to Portugal (1529–1539).” Studia 32 (1971), 211–302; Pennec, Des Jésuites, 32–35. 95 ʿArabfaqih, Futuh al-Habasha, passim; Cuoq, Islam, 244–253 and notes. 96 Cuoq, Islam, 216. 97 It is reported the negus was so desperate that he even offered to accept Latin Catholicism in exchange for aid. Abir, Ethiopia, 97; Cuoq, Islam, 254. 98 Abir, Ethiopia, 97. 99 Gaspar Corrêa, Lendas de India, ed. Rodrigo José de Lima Felner, 4 vols. (Lisbon: Typ. da Academia Real das Sciencas, 1858–1866), 4: 107–110.

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Cristoforo da Gama, which went in pursuit of Ahmad Graññ. More than a year later, the enemies met in two major confrontations. In late August 1542, in their second engagement, the Muslims utterly routed the Portuguese.100 This defeat clearly had a significant impact on the Portuguese. In addition to ending their military intervention in Ethiopia, it all but eliminated their presence in the Red Sea. The new negus of Ethiopia, Gälawdewos was, after Ahmad “Graññ’s” death in 1543, able to reestablish some form of peace in his empire and the Portuguese were forced to relinquish control of the Red Sea to the Ottomans. From 1536, an increase in Ottoman activity was even to be noted off Malindi, to the south of Ethiopia.101 These reports continued throughout the early 1540s, and culminated in several pitched battles between the Ottomans and the Portuguese at Mogadishu and Malindi.102 This tension remained an almost constant state of affairs throughout the century, particularly in the light of Ottoman designs to match the Portuguese presence in East Africa.103 As far as the Portuguese were concerned, Ethiopian weakness was not a political tragedy. While the Ethiopians’ ability to conquer geographical distance had been at the root of their perceived power in the West, now the king of Portugal, whose ambassadors, ships and soldiers dotted the known world, and carried on regular and profitable commerce over vast distances, had himself conquered the same geographical distance. The wealth, Christianity, prophetic claims, and ability to unify many lands under one Christian banner, granted as attributes of Prester John and other potential eastern allies, were now the attributes of the kings of Portugal, in their new roles as masters of the Indies. From the time of João iii’s accession in 1521, the Portuguese were keenly aware of their new role in the world. As sovereigns over the Indies they believed themselves in a far superior position to the Christians of Asia and Africa and were quite willing to flex both political and doctrinal muscle to further enhance their power and prestige in the eyes of their clients, Rome and the other Christian princes of Europe. The establishment of the Portuguese seaborne empire represented a major shift in the old, Prester John paradigm, from 100 Castanhoso, Historia, 40ff. 101 Corrêa, Lendas, 3: 846, 876–878. 102 Letter of João de Sepulveda to the king (Mozambique, 10 August 1542) in Documentos sobre os Portugueses em Moçambique e na Africa Central 1497–1840 = Documents on the Portuguese in Mozambique and Central Africa 1487–1840, eds. António da Silva Rego and Thomas W. Baxter, 8 vols. (Lisbon: n.p., 1962), 8: 130–141 (esp. 132–133). 103 Indeed, the Ottomans twice attempted 66 to conquer Ethiopia in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, but to no avail. See Michel Lesure, “Les Ottomans et l’Éthiopie.” Mare Luso-Indicum 3 (1976), 199–204; Cengiz Orhonlu, Osmanlı imparatorluğ’nun güney siyaseti Habeș eyaleti. (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Matbaası, 1974), 33–80.

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one of a Latin sense of dependence upon outside allies to a notion of their own global supremacy. Further requests for military assistance from Ethiopia in the 1530s and 1540s were met with Portuguese military intervention.104 Yet, as if to prove their role as the new, global leader of Christendom to the Papacy, the Portuguese imperial authorities, also began to exert their power as enforcers of Latin religious orthodoxy throughout the world. From comments in letters brought by an Ethiopian embassy in 1526/7, João iii believed that the Ethiopians desired union with Rome. Negus Libnä Dingil’s letters spoke of desiring firm and permanent relations with Portugal, and his ambassador, Zaga Za Ab, declared that they regarded themselves as “children of the Roman Church.”105 An embassy, led by João Bermudes, returned to Ethiopia in 1541, where he attempted to persuade Galawdewos, Libnä Dingil’s successor, to convert to the Latin rite.106 Bermudes falsely claimed, before Galawdewos, that he had been named patriarch by the Pope, and was thus deserving of obedience and respect, particularly in light of Portuguese aid against the Muslims, again emphasizing Portugal’s newfound confidence and sense of mastery in global affairs. Bermudes’ arrogance became such an annoyance to the negus, that he wrote a letter of complaint to João iii.107 In response, the Portuguese king, still of the opinion that the Ethiopians were desirous of union with Rome, suggested to the papacy that the appointment of a Jesuit patriarch and bishop would be best.108 In 1554, Paul iii appointed João Nunes Barreto and Andre de Oviedo as patriarch and bishop respectively.109 The pope sent an embassy to Gälawdewos, informing him of the appointments and, Galawdewos, not wishing to offend João iii, agreed to receive the Roman

104 Note letter in Sergew, “Ge’ez letters,” 558–564. On the failure of the Portuguese troops, see Corrêa, Lendas, Chapter 40; and Castanhoso, Historia, Chapter 12. 105 See Letter from Libnä Dingil to João iii (1524) noted in Alvares, Verdadeira informação, Chapter 115. Merid and Gerid, Question, 34–35. 106 João Bermudes, Breve relação da embaixada que o patriarcha D. João Bermudez trouxe do imperador da Ethiopia vulgarmente chamado Preste João dirigida a el-rei D. Sebastião, ed. Rodrigo José de Lima Felner (Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 1875), 52–53. 107 Letter, João iii to “King of Abyssinia,” 13 March 1546 in Castanhoso, Historia. 108 See João iii to Balthazar de Faria (27 August 1546) in Quadro elementar das relações politicas e diplomaticos de Portugal com as diversas potencias do mundo, desde o principio da monarchia portugueza até aos nossos dias, eds. Manuel Francisco de Barros e Sousa, visconde de Santarem, Luiz Augusto Rebello da Silva and Joaquim José da Silva Mendes Leal, 18 vols. (Paris: J.P. Aillaud, 1842–61), 12: 172. 109 On this appointment, see Pennec, Des Jésuites, 51ff; Mota Curto, História, 251–257.

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appointees in order to discuss religious matters.110 Oviedo arrived at the negus’ court in June 1557. Once there, a process of religious debate, often public and often heated, commenced, but Galawdewos would not be converted. Frustrated, Oviedo left the court and, on 2 February 1559, published a manifesto forbidding any close association between Latin Catholics and the Ethiopian Copts.111 Eventually, Oviedo turned against the Ethiopians, supporting forces rebelling against Prester John, as the negus was still called. The once powerful eastern ally was now branded a heretic and was to be dealt with as such. Prester John had become an unnecessary bother. The fantasy Christian king with the fabulous wealth had in the end been relegated to the role of a heretical, poor and obscure monarch of what came to be seen as a minor kingdom – irrelevant for the Portuguese and their dreams of world dominion.112

110 See Galawdewos’ letters to Portugal explaining the situation, ms. Lisbon. National Library. Collecção Pombalina, Papeis Varios, 490, fos 158–164. 111 Mañoel de Almeida, Historia de Ethiopia a Alta ou Abassia. Imperio do Abeixim cujo rey vulgarmente he chamado Preste Joam, in Rerum aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti a saeculo xvi ad xix, ed. Cesare Beccari (Rome: C. de Luigi, 1903–1917), 4.9. 112 The Prester John myth resurfaced in East Africa again in the late sixteenth century, through the stories of Vincent le Blanc, who visited Monomotapa and whose stories parallel the original Prester John letter in many respects. On this, see W.G.L. Randles, L’image du sud-est Africain dans la littérature européenne au xvie siècle (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1959), Chapter 10.

chapter 4

Saint Thomas in India and the Americas (to c. 1600) As noted briefly above, the stories of the Indian Patriarch who appeared in 1122, spoke of miracles associated with the Shrine of the Apostle Thomas, taking place within the eastern realms whence the patriarch came. Indeed, the role of Saint Thomas and stories about his mission were central to the Portuguese understanding of “the Indies.” Thomas’ missionizing and the belief in his establishment of a Christian community in southern India established the initial belief in the west of the existence of Christian coreligionists in Asia. Such tales lay the groundwork for the Prester John stories and the searches for “distant Christians” undertaken by the Portuguese and others. Beginnings The earliest extant text concerning Thomas in India is the second/third century Acts of Thomas, which gives a detailed description of the apostle’s journey to and stay and death in India during the first century. The Acts speak of his mission both in north and south India and his conversion of several members of the royal house of Mazdai in the south. While rejected by the Latin church as apocryphal, the Acts of Thomas and their placement of the apostle in India is echoed in many later Christian works. A number of devotional hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306–373) are dedicated to Thomas’ mission.1 Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 323–390), Saint Jerome (c. 347–420), Gaudentius of Brescia (d. 410), and Paulinus of Nola (c. 354–431) are fourth and fifth century writers who follow in this belief.2 Gregory of Tours (538–594) and Isidore of Seville’s (c. 560–636) testimonies seem to be the most

1 Saint Ephraem Syrus, Carmina nisibena, ed. Gustav Bickell (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1866), hymn 42. 2 Gregorios ho Nazianzenos, Contra Arianos et de seipso, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Graeca, 36, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: Imprimerie catholique, 1862), col. 227; Saint Jerome, Epistola ad Marcellam, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina, 22, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Impremerie catholique, 1845), cols. 588–589; Saint Gaudentius, of Brescia, [Sermones] in Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina, 20, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Imprimerie catholique, 1845), cols. 962–963; Paulinus of Nola, Operae in Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina, 61, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Imprimerie catholique, 1861), col. 514.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004324909_006

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likely to have influenced Iberian knowledge and thinking in this regard, so that by the seventh century, Thomas’ mission and its devotees had been squarely fixed in India.3 The stories of Saint Thomas were used as proof that Christianity, in some form, existed or had existed in the past, giving the Iberians both hope and a claim to a direct apostolic lineage to their religious and political missions in those regions.4 The place of Thomas Christians continued to occupy a place in western thought throughout the Middle Ages.5 Marco Polo claims to have visited St. Thomas’ grave in or around 1293.6 Perhaps the most detailed report on the community came from the Dominican Jordan Catala de Severac, who spent much of the 1320s preaching in the region.7

Da Gama and Saint Thomas

Versions of the letter of Prester John place St. Thomas’ burial place within Prester John’s lands. Odo of Rheims’ text also makes the connection explicit.8 The Portuguese belief in the wide geographical ambit of Saint Thomas’ preaching and apostolate drew them to the conclusion that they would indeed find Christians in “the Indies” as a result of his mission. The first voyages of Vasco da Gama in 1497 demonstrate the preexistent Portuguese belief in the presence of Christians in the “Indies,” in line with the Acts of Thomas.9 It was, after all, 3 Saint Gregory, Bishop of Tours, In Gloria Martyrum in A.E. Medlycott, India and the Apostle Thomas (London: David Nutt, 1905), cols. 71–80; Isidore, of Seville, Liber de Ortu et Obitu Patriarcharum, ed. J. Carracedo Fraga (Turnholt: Brepols, 1996), Chapter 74. 4 Luis Filipe F.R. Thomaz, « A lenda de S. Tomé apóstolo e a expansão portuguesa. » Lusitania Sacra 2e série, 3 (1991), 349–418. 5 On this in general, see Jana Valtrová, “Indian Christians in Medieval European Travel Accounts,” in Eastern Christianity, Judaism and Islam between the death of Muhammad and Tamerlane (632–1405), eds. Marián Gálik and Martin Slobodník. (Bratislava: Ústav orientaliskiy Slovenské akademie, 2011), 195–213.” 6 Polo, Description, 397–400. 7 Iordanus , Une image de l’Orient au xive siecle: les Mirabilia descripta de Jordan Catala de Sévérac: édition, traduction et commentaire, ed./transl. Christine Gadrat (Paris: École des Chartes, 2005): 55–62, 211–214, 280. 8 See Zarncke, “Priester,” 7: 837–846. 9 Several biographies of Vasco da Gama appeared for the 500th anniversary of his first voyage to Asia: Luís Adão da Fonseca, Vasco da Gama: o homem, a viagem, a época (Faro: Comissão de Coordenação da Região do Alentejo, 1997); Geneviève Bouchon, Vasco da Gama (Paris: Fayard, 1997); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge/

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a man from Da Gama’s crew who announced to two Muslims he encountered on the Indian shore that they were searching for Christians and spices.10 As Prester John had, by this time, been clearly identified as an African king, any Asian Christians were to be identified as the descendants of those to whom the apostle had preached. The literature of his first voyage to the East clearly indicates that Da Gama believed that all non-Muslim Asian peoples and polities were Christian. His assumption that the Indians he encountered were Christians is well known, and he brought home descriptions of the existence of Christian kingdoms across the whole of South and South East Asia to Portugal.11 His confusion of an image of Kali with the Virgin Mary in Calicut in 1498 perhaps emphasizes how the Thomas mythology influenced what he thought he saw in India.12 Indeed, almost all of the nations mentioned as lying beyond Calicut which are described in the Roteiro of the first voyage (Sumatra, Siam, Tenasserim, Melaka, Pegu and Pedir) are accredited with Christian rulers and peoples. The potential use of these polities in military action was in Da Gama’s mind, for the Roteiro provides information on the availability of armed men and of war elephants in each of the nations.13 This finding was quickly reported to the king upon Da Gama’s return to Portugal. Mañoel wrote to his in-laws, Ferdinand and Isabel of Spain, of the Christian wealth and abundance his sailors had discovered, information he had to know they wished to hear.14 Because of the widespread acceptance of the stories of St. Thomas’ apostolic mission to the Indies, much of Mañoel’s thinking and that of his courtiers, was conditioned by the initial belief that the Indies were a region full of Christian polities, inhabitants, and armies who could readily be persuaded to enter into the 10 11

12 13 14

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Francis Dutra, “A New Look at the Life and Career of Vasco da Gama,” Portuguese Studies Review 6/2 (1997–1998), 23–28. Roteiro, May 21. Ibid., April 4 (Christians at Kilwa), April 19 (Christian Indians at Malindi), May 21 onward (Christians at Calicut). On this and other issues of identity during the first of Da Gama’s voyages, see Subrahmanyam, Career and legend, 112–139. Manuel de Faria e Sousa, Ásia portuguesa, 6 vols. (Porto: Livraria Civilização, 1945–1947), 1: 36. Roteiro, 98–102. Letters of Mañoel to Isabel of Castile, (first has no date; second of 12 July 1499) in Roteiro, 193–195. This might have only been a bit of braggadocio for the actual contact with the Thomas Christian community of Kerala was only made after the landing of Cabral in 1500. See Letter of Mañoel i to Ferdinand and Isabel, 29 July 1501, in The voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India, from contemporary documents and narratives, ed./transl. William Brooks Greenlee. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1938), 48–49.

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fray against their “natural” Muslim enemies. Mañoel and other members of his court assumed that Easterners’ Christianity and apostolic ancestry would be inducement enough for them to assist the Portuguese in their crusading scheme, and they were to be favored in all matters over any other native peoples.15 Thus the Portuguese first directed their energies toward contacting the indigenous Christians in the East, and insuring the acquisition of the spices and profits necessary for Mañoel’s crusade.16 The Indian Ocean, fit neatly into the king Mañoel i’s (r. 1495–1521) vision of himself as a crusader and the increasing societal interest in the notion of the hidden king, or encobierto.17 While the location of Prester John and the acquisition of his assistance for a Maghrib crusade was the ideological cornerstone of the reign of João ii, by contrast, a messianic crusade for Jerusalem marked the rule of his successor, Mañoel. At the heart of Mañoel’s imperial and crusading ambitions, and within that context, his desire for alliance with Prester John, was the possibility of a direct crusade against Muslim lands in the Eastern Mediterranean. His plans to reconquer Jerusalem date as early as 1505.18 Mañoel, had been imbued with millennial eschatological theology from an early age.19 For Mañoel, the recapture of Jerusalem and an assumption of the title “Emperor of the East” or “Universal Emperor” was as much a matter of prophesy fulfillment than of any economic or mercantile enterprise. By 1513,

15

Instruction to this effect given to Almeida (5 March 1505) in Afonso de Albuquerque, Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, seguidas de documentos que as elucidiam, eds. Raymundo Antonio de Bulhão Pato and Henrique Mendes de Mendonca, 7 vols. (Lisbon: Typ. da Academia real das sciencias de Lisboa, 1884–1935), 2.318. 16 Summary of a report by Diego Lopes de Sequeira (13 February 1508) in Albuquerque, Cartas, 2.415. 17 Azevedo, Evolução, 18–19. 18 Charles-Martial de Witte, “Un projet portugais de reconquête de la Terre-Sainte (1505– 1507),” in Congresso internacional de história dos descobrimentos. Actas, 5/i (1961), 419. ­Subrahmanyam and Thomaz believe that this project lay at the root of all Portuguese imperial efforts during Mañoel’s reign. See Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Luis Filipe F.R. Thomaz, “Evolution of Empire: The Portuguese in the Indian Ocean during the Sixteenth Century,” in The Political economy of merchant empires, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 301; Luis Filipe F.R. Thomaz, “Factions, interests and messianism: the politics of Portuguese expansion in the east, 1500–1521,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 28/1 (1991), 99–100. 19 On this, see Luis Filipe F.R. Thomaz, “L’idée impériale manueline,” in La découverte, le Portugal et l’Europe: actes du colloque, Paris, les 26, 27 et 28 mai 1988, eds. Jean Aubin and Alfredo Pinheiro Marques (Paris: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, Centre Culturel Portugais, 1990), 78ff.

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Afonso de Albuquerque, wrote to the king to claim that he had witnessed a celestial sign which confirmed him in all these goals.20 Mañoel’s own view of his succession (he was, in fact, seventh in line to the throne, those ahead of him in succession all having died) and his curious physical appearance (“arms so long that the fingers of his hands reached below his knees”), along with the undoubted prodding of some of his courtiers, all gave a prophetic cast to Portuguese expansion during his reign and to his crusading designs.21 Mañoel also worked to develop a culture of medieval chivalric crusading imagery and titulature to fend off any challenges he might receive from his nobility.22 Furthermore, the fiercest economic warfare took place in the Indian Ocean, with Christian and Muslim powers competing for control of the lucrative spice trade coming from India and points east.

Relations with the Portuguese

Despite Portuguese hopes, as the Portuguese established further contacts with the Christian communities of the Indian Ocean the truth of the situation proved to be somewhat different from earlier Portuguese expectations.23 By the sixteenth century, the Mar Thoma Khristianis (Saint Thomas Christians) of Southern India were a relatively small community.24 With no particular state of their own, the Christians of Kerala, who had for more than a millennium been engaged in both long and short-range trade and other mercantile enterprises, were clients of their Hindu and Muslim overlords. The Nasranis (another term for Thomas Christians) had neither the force of arms nor the innate hatred of Islam of which the Portuguese had boasted and for which the 20 Albuquerque, Cartas, 1: 399–400 (late 1513) and 1: 231 (4 December 1513). 21 Thomaz, “L’idée impériale”; Idem, “Factions, interests and messianism,” 97–109. 22 Susannah Humble, “Prestige, ideology and social politics: the place of Portuguese overseas expansion in the policies of Dom Manuel (1495–1521).” Itinerario 24/1 (2000), 21–44; Ivana Elbl, “The Overseas expansion, nobility, and social mobility in the age of Vasco da Gama,” Portuguese studies review 6/2 (1997–1998), 53–80. 23 For a general examination of Portuguese-Thomas Christian relations, see João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, “Os Portugueses e a Cristandade Siro-Malabar (1498–1530).” Studia 52 (1994), 121–178. 24 For a general history of the Nasrani/Saint Thomas community and church see The St. Thomas Christian encyclopaedia of India, ed. George Menachery, 2 vols. (Trichur: St Thomas Encyclopaedia of India, 1973); Leslie Brown, The Indian Christians of St. Thomas: an account of the ancient Syrian church of Malabar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

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Portuguese had hoped.25 While the community did express some interest in establishing formal relations with Portugal, it was not in the capacity of equals but as clients. Contact was first made with the “Christians of St. Thomas” following the landing of Cabral in 1500. In 1502, Da Gama, on his second voyage to India, was met by a Christian delegation from Cranganore, which declared its desire to submit to the authority of the Portuguese, reaffirming their allegiance to the Pope.26 This submission was restated a year later, when Afonso de Albuquerque was given gifts for King Mañoel from the Christians of Kollam.27 The most clear-cut evidence for the actual alliance between the Portuguese and the Nasrani Christians of Malabar exists in a surviving letter from four Malabari bishops to the catholicos, Mar Elias in 1504. The letter speaks of the coming of the Portuguese, and of the animosity between the Muslims of Calicut and the Christians (both the Portuguese and the Nasrani). The letter prays for the Portuguese king and demonstrates, in no uncertain terms, the willingness of the Malabari community to assist the Portuguese in their Holy War.28 While the Portuguese must have found these tributes quite gratifying, it was not the relationship of equals which they had been expecting or which they would need if they were to achieve their original crusading goals. The Thomas Christian community could be of assistance to the royal crusading scheme only in so far as it might divert trade away from Levantine Muslim traders operating in the region. Shortly after initial contact, the Portuguese were acting as benefactors of the Thomas community.29 On one level, the Christians of Kerala were still seen by the Portuguese as oppressed brethren who shared a natural antipathy for the Muslims. We find, for example, Albuquerque giving funds to the bishops of Kanur in order to restore their dilapidated church.30 This friendship was reciprocated, for clearly 25

Even some of the Portuguese voyagers themselves stated that Da Gama and Cabral had stretched the truth. See “The Anonymous narrative” in Voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral, 79. 26 Barros, Ásia, 1.6.6; Lopes, Navegação, 196–197; Schurhammer, “Three letters,” 70; Couto, Da Asia, Dec. 12, Chapter 5. 27 Albuquerque, Commentarios, 1: 14–15; Schurhammer, “Three letters,” 70. 28 Text of letter in Ibid., 66. 29 In fact, it was the Portuguese viceroy, Afonso de Albuquerque who gave funds to the Thomasite bishops of Cananore in order to restore their dilapidated church. See letter reproduced in Ibid., 70. In 1518, Mañoel decreed that all Goan lands that may have been originally owned by Christians must revert to Christian ownership. Proclamation of 15 March 1518, in Gabinete litterario das fontainhas, ed. Filippe Néry Xavier, 5 vols. (NovaGoa: n.p., 1846–1855), 2: 94–98. See Teotonio R. De Souza, Medieval Goa: a socio-economic history, 2d rev. Engl. ed. (Panaji, n.p., 2009), 59–60. 30 Letter reproduced in Schurhammer, “Three letters,” 70.

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the Christians did see themselves as victims of Muslim persecution. In 1523, Mar Jacob, the leader of the Kerala Christians, wrote to King João iii requesting further aid against just such attacks.31 In addition, we have the evidence of the participation of Keralan troops (assumed by Serjeant and others to be Christians) in Portuguese assaults on Calicut (1509–1510), Melaka (1511) and Hormuz (1515).32

The Myth Destroyed

However, as in Ethiopia, the presence of Latin priests and bishops in India became a cause for concern for Indian Christians. By 1530, Mar Jacob, wrote to João noting the growing discomfort among the Thomas Christian community with some of the methods of certain Portuguese priests.33 Penal laws decreed in India in the 1540s prohibited the public profession of Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism in Portuguese territory.34 Indigenous Christians, on the other hand, while proving faithful allies against Islam, were of a highly dubious orthodoxy, as the Goan Inquisition, established in 1560, was to highlight.35 As if to prove both their political and religious dominance of the region, the Portuguese 31

32

33 34

35

Letter reproduced in Ibid., 75. On Mar Jacob, see Roberto Gulbenkian “Jacome Abuna, an Armenian bishop in Malabar, (1503–1530),” Arquivos do Central Cultural Português 4 (1972) 149–176. Tarikh Shanbal sa 915 AH/1509-1510 ad in R.B. Serjeant, The Portuguese off the South ­Arabian coast: Hadrami chronicles, with Yemeni and European accounts of Dutch pirates off Mocha in the seventeenth century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 45; G.V. Scammell, “Indigenous Assistance in the Establishment of Portuguese Power in the Indian Ocean,” in Indo-­ Portuguese history: sources and problems, ed. John Correira-Afonso (Bombay: Oxford ­University Press, 1981), 170; See Arquivo português oriental. Documentos coordenados e anotados, ed. A.B. Bragança Pereira, 4 vols. (Bastorá: Tip. Rangel, 1936), 4:1/1, docs. 189 (letter from António Real to King Mañoel, 15 December 1512), 200 (“Trellado de hua carta em que eu Amtonio Real Responday ao capitam moor” 1512), 259 (letter of Pedro de Faria to King Mañoel, 4 January 1515), 267 and 269 (Afonso de Albuquerque “Mantimento dos soldados malabares” 30 June 1515/16 August 1515). Notably Father Alvaro Penteado, who gained the reputation of having a hot temper and a closed mind. See Schurhammer, “Three letters,” 79–81. C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire, 1415–1825 (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1969), 73; Michael N. Pearson, The Portuguese in India. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 117. Antonio Baião, A inquisição de Goa: tentativa de historia de sua origen, estabelecimento, evolução e extinção (Introdução à correspondencia doa inquisidores da India, 1569–1630), 2 vols. (Lisbon: Academia das Ciências, 1930–1949).

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placed the Keralan metropolitan, Mar Joseph, on trial in the 1560s on charges of doctrinal error. In order to refute the charges against him, Joseph was sent to Lisbon, where he was able to clear his name. It was at this same time (1562) that the Portuguese lodged an official complaint against the Chaldean catholicos, ʿAbdishô iv, at the Council of Trent, for continuing to claim authority over the bishoprics and sees of India.36 Mar Joseph was subsequently rearrested and tried on charges of heresy before the Goan inquisition in 1567.37 Again, Mar Joseph was cleared of all charges by the Grand Inquisitor in Lisbon, but the damage had been done.38 It was clear that the Latin orthodoxy the Portuguese expected (and eventually demanded) from the Nasrani bishops, as with those in Ethhiopia, was absent. The Jesuit Order’s influence as miles Christi was deeply felt during João’s reign. Even though the Ecclesiastical Council of Goa (1567) spoke against the forcible conversion of non-Christians, the Jesuit practice in India contradicted the Council’s orders. The Order fully supported the vice-regal decree of 4 December 1567, which commanded that all Hindu temples in Goa be destroyed, all non-Christian priests expelled and all copies of the Qurʾân burned.39 Dominican observers noted Jesuit seizure of Hindus and their forced baptism.40 The Jesuits were clearly in favor of the forced conversion of Hindus, and were clearly supportive of the vice-regal decree of 4 December 1567, which commanded that all Hindu temples in Goa be destroyed, all non-Christian priests expelled and all copies of the Qurʾân burned.41 36

Giuseppe Beltrami, … La chiesa caldea nel secolo dell’unione. (Rome: Pont. institutum orientalium studiorum, 1933), 62–63. 37 Idem, 91–92, n. 12; Bullarium patronatus Portugallae regum in ecclesiis Africae, Asiae atque Oceaniae: bullas, brevia, epistolas, decreta actaque Sanctae Sedis ab Alexandro iii ad hoc usque tempus amplectans, eds. João Augusto da Graça Barreto and Levy Maria Jordão, 5 vols. (Lisbon: Typographia Nationale, 1868–1879), appdx. 1, 3–34. 38 On the whole Mar Joseph saga, see (briefly), Brown, Indian Christians, 21–22. For more detailed description, though free from any criticism of the Jesuits, see Eugène Tisserant, Eastern Christianity in India: a history of the Syro-Malabar Church from the earliest time to the present day, transl./adap. Eduard Renée Hambye (London/New York: Longmans, 1957), 35–41; note Francisco Roz, De erroribus Nestorianorum qui in hac India orientali versantur, eds. Jean Castets and Irénée Hausherr (Rome: Pont. institutum orientalium studiorum, 1928), by the archbishop of Goa (consecrated in 1601). 39 Boxer, Portuguese seaborne, 67. 40 See Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio, Breve y verdadera relacion de los successos del Reyno de Camboxa, in Relaciones de Camboya y Japón, ed. Roberto Ferrando (Madrid: Historia 16, 1988); and Diego de Aduarte, An eyewitness account of the Cambodian expedition (Manila: Historical Conservation Society, 1988). 41 See Paul Axelrod and Michelle Fuech, “Flight of the Deities: Hindu Resistance in Portuguese Goa.” Modern Asian studies 30/2 (1996), 411–413, n. 72–85.

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This antipathy extended to the Keralan Christians as well, through the end of the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century. Even following the Synod of Diamper in 1599 when the Goan Archbishop Aleixo de Menezes, forcibly reunited Thomas and Latin rites, Jesuit interference in Keralan affairs caused many Syro-Malabari priests to reject Rome once again, swearing the so-called Coonan Cross oath in 1653. The result was the end of all social intercourse between the Portuguese and the native peoples of Kerala. Socotra Quite apart from Kerala, another point in the Indian Ocean where the Portuguese hoped to find a friendly Thomas Christian base from which they could attack Ottoman and Mamluk shipping was the island of Socotra off the Yemen coast.42 Because of its strategic position at the mouth of the Red Sea, the Portuguese attached great importance to the island, and established themselves there in 1505.43 Local tradition held that the island had been visited by the Apostle Thomas in the first century, and even early Arab chroniclers agreed that Socotra was inhabited by Christians.44 Dom Fernandes Pereira confirmed this fact to the Portuguese in 1505, noting that the Christians were living under Arab subjugation, and would be most readily available for any anti-Islamic campaign the Portuguese might suggest.45 This statement was echoed the next year in a letter from King Mañoel to Francisco de Almeida.46 However, as would be later the case in South India and Ethiopia, the Christians of Socotra quickly developed a distaste for Portuguese methods. By 1511, the Socotrans embargoed trade with the Portuguese fort on the island, which resulted in the near-starvation of the garrison.47 Reports indicated that this change in attitude was due to an attempt on the part of the resident Muslims on the island to 42 43

Briefly, see Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, 77. On the establishment of the Portuguese fort on Socotra by Tristão da Cunha (1507–1511), see Albuquerque, Commentarios, 1: 44–54. 44 Abu Muḥammad al-Ḥasan Ibn-Aḥmad Ibn-Ya’qūb Ibn-Yusuf Ibn-Dawud al-Hamdani, Kitāb ṣifat ǵazīrat al-ʿarab. = al-Hamdanis Geographie der arabischen Halbinsel nach den Handschriften von Berlin, Constantinopel, London, Paris und Strassburg, ed. David Heinrich Müller, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1884–1891); see Zoltán Biedermann, Soqotra, Geschichte einer christlichen Insel im Indischen Ozean vom Altertum bis zur frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006). 45 Pereira relayed this information to the king, see Barros, Ásia, 2.1.1. 46 In Albuquerque, Cartas 3. 269. 47 Castanheda, História 2.42; Corrêa, Lendas, 1: 857, 869; C.F. Beckingham, “Some notes on the history of Socotra,” in Arabian and Islamic studies: articles presented to R.B. Serjeant on

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i­ncite the Christians, “alleging that they intended to seize the island as they had done India.”48 The Portuguese assumed clear distinctions of faith on Socotra which the islanders themselves did not apply. The end result, however, was that the Portuguese decided to abandon the island.49

Saint Thomas in America

As the definition of the “Indies” widened to include the newly found continents in the Americas, so too did the ambit attributed to Saint Thomas and his preaching.50 Just as stories of Thomas’ mission in Asia lent credence to the existence of Christians in India, so too was it assumed that the indigenous populations of the Americas must be Christian or, more definitively, descended from Christians who were converted by the apostle’s mission. As early as 1493, commentators were speculating as to an apostolic presence in the New World.51 The earliest text commenting on the apostle’s American mission was an anonymous German tract (dated c. 1508) entitled Newen Zeytung auss Bresillg Landt.52 The belief that Christianity had been preached the occasion of his retirement from the Sir Thomas Adam’s Chair of Arabic at the University of Cambridge, ed. Robin L. Bidwell and G. Rex Smith (London/New York: Longman, 1983), 176. 48 Castanheda, História 2.42; Beckingham, “Some notes,” 174–175. 49 Barros, Ásia 2.5.2; Castanheda, História, 3.48 and 71; Corrêa, Lendas, 2: 177, 199; Beckingham, “Some notes,” 176. 50 See, generally, Vigneras, “Saint Thomas”; Pierre Duviols, La lutte contre les religions autochtones dans le Pérou colonial “l’extirpation de l’idolatrie,” entre 1532 et 1660 (Lima, Institut français d’études andines, 1971), 50–64; Verónica Salles-Reese, From Viracocha to the Virgin of Copacabana: representation of the sacred at Lake Titicaca (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 137–157; Alonso Ramos Gavilán, Historia del celebre santuario de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, ed. Ignacio Prado Pastor (Lima: Ignacio Prado Pastor 1988): 27; Antonio de la Calancha, Crónica moralizada, ed. Ignacio Prado Pastor, 6 vols. (Lima:s.n., 1974–1982), 703, 714–717, 728, 741–743, 745; Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva crónica y buen gobierno, eds. John V. Murra, Rolena Adorno and Jorge Urioste. (Madrid: Historia 16, 1987), 94. 51 Gose, Invaders as ancestors, 72; Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes: vision and imagination in early colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 312; Thérèse Bousse-Cassagne, “De Empédocles a Tunupa: Evangelización, hagiografía y mitos,” in Saberes y memorias en los andes: in memoriam Thierry Saignes (Paris: Institut des hautes études de l’Amérique latine/Lima: Institut français d’études andines, 1997), 159–160. 52 See Die “Newe Zeytung auss Presillg Landt,” in Sonderdruk aus der Ihering = Festschrift der Zeitschrift 1. Jahrgang 1920, ed. Clemens Brandenburger. (São Paulo: Typographia Brasil, 1920), 66.

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in the apostolic era is expressed implicitly in early Andean chronicles, such as that of Miguel Estete (1495–c. 1572) and Diego de Trujillo (1494–?).53 By the 1550s, the belief seems to be a commonplace. For example, the Brazilian Jesuit preacher, Manuel da Nobrega, on several occasions wrote of evidence that Thomas had preached in Brazil, citing the homophonic relationship between the name “Tomé” (the Portuguese name for Thomas) and the Guarani divinity “Sumé.”54

Saint Thomas as Local Hero

In the period 650–750, the Toltecs held a creator god in reverence known as Quetzalcoatl-the “Plumed Serpent.” They also held in reverence a priest-king, named after the god, also known as Quetzalcoatl.55 The human, who was known for his saintly virtues, was deposed and left for exile in the east. The deity and the man gradually were conflated into single entity – a man-god, and adopted into the pantheon of the Aztecs, whom they believed would return, shaking “the foundation of heaven.”56 The arrival of Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) in 1519, corresponded to the year in the Aztec cyclical calendar that was associated with Quetzalcoatl. While the 53

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Miguel Estete, “El descubrimiento y la conquista del Perú.” In Crónicas iniciales de la conquista del Perú, eds. Alberto Mario Salas, Miguel A. Guérin and José Luis Moure (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1987), 281; Diego de Trujillo, Una relación inédita de la conquista: La Crónica de Diego de Trujillo, ed. Raul Porras Barrenechea (Miraflores: Instituto Raul Porras Barrenechea, 1970). See John Hemming, Red gold: the conquest of the Brazilian Indians (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1978), 46–47. See, also, the writings of Jean de Léry, Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brásil (1578), ed. Frank Lestingant. (Paris, Librairie generale française, Impr. Brodard et Taupin, 1994), Chapter 16; Andre Thevet, Les Français en Amérique pendant la deuxième moitié du xvie siècle: le Brésil et les Brésiliens (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953). See Sergio Buarque de Holanda, Visión del paraiso: motivos edenicos en el descubrimiento y colonización del Brasil (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1987), Chapter 5. See Nobrega’s letter to P. Simão Rodrigues, 15 April 1549, Part 3; his letter to Dr. Martin de Azpilcueta Navarro (the father of quantitative monetary theory), 10 August 1549; and “Informação das Terras do Brasil” to “Padres e Irmáos de Coimbra” (August? 1549) in Manuel de Nóbrega, Cartas do Brasil e mais escritos (opera omnia), ed. Serafim Leite (Coimbra, n.p., 1955), 49–50, 66. See Enrique Florescano The myth of Quetzalcoatl, transl. Lysa Hochroth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) David Carrasco, Quetzalcoatl and the irony of empire: myths and prophecies in the Aztec tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 150, 162.

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Quetzalcoatl myth was manipulated by the Spanish to Cortés’ advantage, it was the Franciscan friars who restored him to a modicum of divinity, coopting him for Christianity, claiming that Quetzalcoatl was, in fact, Saint Thomas. Quetzalcoatl was endowed with saintly virtues – born of a virgin, dedicated to redeeming a sinful people, an exemplary moral life – and then disappeared, promising to return.57 Of course, the allusion is not only to Thomas, but to Jesus himself who, according to Matthew 24:27, would return from the east.58 This identification became common in 18th century Mexican historiography, derived in large part from a now-lost work by the chronicler Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongora (1645–1700), the Phoenix of the West.59 The most notable and singular use of the Thomas/Quetzalcoatl interpretation would be that of the Dominican preacher José Servando Teresa de Mier (1763–1827), who, in a 1794 sermon, announced boldly that Saint Thomas, along with being Quetzalcoatl, had actually received the Virgin of Guadalupe long before the Spaniards. With other claims that denied both the Spanish and the indigenous population with any part in the Quetzalcoatl-Thomas paradigm, he boldly attempted to prove that the nascent creole Mexican nation in fact owed nothing significant in its history to the Spanish.60 In 1551, the Church officially denied any early apostolic presence in the New World.61 Yet, by the 1560s, the Spaniards were making the same interpretation of the Inkan god, Viracocha, as they had of Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs – that this was an indigenous identification of the apostle Thomas.62 While the 57 58

Idem, Chapter 4. Alfredo López Austin, Hombre dios: religion y política en el mundo náhuatl. (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1973), 24. 59 Benjamin Keen, The Aztec image in Western thought (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), 192; Irving A. Leonard, Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongora: a Mexican savant of the seventeenth century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1929), 92–96. Those who followed Sigüenza’s interpretation included Lorenzo Botrurini-Benaducci (1698–1755), Idea de una nueva história general de la América septentrional; Mariano Veytia (1718– c. 1780), História Antigua de Méjico and Joseph Joaquín Granados y Gálvez (1734–1794), Tardes americanas. See Keen, Aztec image, 231, 238–239, 291. 60 Frank Graziano, The millennial New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 185. 61 Primer Concilio Provincial Limenses, prologue, in Concilios limenses (1551–1772), ed. Ruben Vargas Ugarte, 3 vols. (Lima, n.p., 1951–1954); Juan de Solorzano Pereira, Política Indiana, ed. Miguel Angel Ochoa Brun, 5 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1972–1975), 1.8.30. 62 Gose, Invaders, 72; M. Mroz, “Los Viracochas de la conquista: entre una mita andino y un prejuicio cristiano,” in El culto estatal del imperio Inca: memorias del 46o Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Simposio arc-2, Amsterdam, 1988, ed. Mariusz S. Ziólkowski. (Warsaw: Universidad de Varsovia, Centro de EstudiosLatinoamericanos, 1991).

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pre-Spanish period was seen by groups such as the Augustinians as a time of degeneration, it was also seen as a partially Catholic time, hence cause for the relative rapidity of conversion – a return to a gospel the Inkas had heard and accepted in the past. In 1613 Inkan-Spanish chronicler Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua speculated that Thomas was a messenger of Viracocha.63 Conclusions The transformation of both Aztec and Inka gods into Saint Thomas demonstrated a prime Iberian tactic for justifying conquest in the Americas: appropriating indigenous cosmologies and religious beliefs to their own religious and political ends; by stating that older local deities were in fact Christian, the Spanish (in particular) could claim that the Americas were by rights Christian lands historically. The conquest of the Americas was simply a reclamation of lands that had been lost to the Christian world since the apostolic era, but which the Spanish were returning to their “rightful” owners. With the localization of Prester John in Ethiopia, the story of the Saint Thomas mission, its flexibility and its durability, also allowed both the Portuguese and the Spanish (and later creole Mexicans) to place themselves in a direct apostolic line to the Christianity of the distant past. Local cosmologies were rewritten to establish a place for the Iberians in the “proper order” of things. As we can witness in texts such as the Florentine Codex, the coming of such figures as Cortes, could be explained as part of the natural and expected order of history. 63

Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua, Relación de antigüedades de este reino del Peru, ed. Carlos Aranibar (Lima: Fondo de cultura económica, 1995), 189–193.

chapter 5

Columbus’ Plans for the New World and the Spanish Conversion of the Americas (1492–c. 1560) The beginnings of the Spanish expansion to the Western hemisphere began as a continuation of the search for allies in Central Asia, thus carrying on the legacy of the earliest searches for Prester John and his Mongol successors. The Genoese sailor Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus) left Spain in 1492 carrying letters for potential allies: rulers who would be able to assist militarily or financially with crusading. Columbus’ initial search was akin to earlier ­efforts to make contact with the “khans of China,” in the tradition of the Mongol-Latin diplomacy of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.1 Columbus was an avid student of the Venetian traveler Marco Polo, and his postilles (or annotations) of Polo reveal those aspects of the 13th century Venetian’s thought and travels which were of special interest to his Genoese successor.2 According to Polo, the khans of China had always been inclined toward friendship with Christian rulers, and held a close association with Prester John and a respect for his supposed power.3 They were rulers of international stature, meant to be approached as equals. Despite that by 1492 the Yuan dynasty and its khans had not ruled China for over a century, the Grand Khân was a clear object of Columbus’ mission, mentioned, as he is, no less than e­ ighteen times in Bartoleomeo de Las Casas’ postilles of Columbus’ own journals.4 1 On Columbus in general, see William D. Phillips, Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips, The worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); see also Toscanelli and Columbus. The letter and chart of Toscanelli on the route to the Indies by way of the west, sent in 1474 to the Portuguese Fernam Martins, and later onto Christopher Columbus a critical study on the authenticity and value of these documents and the sources of the cosmographical ideas of Columbus, followed by the various texts of the letter, ed. Henry Vignaud (London: Sands & Co., 1902). 2 See Marco Polo, Il Milione: con le postille di Cristoforo Colombo, ed. Luigi Giovannini (Rome: Paoline, 1985). On Columbus’ use of Polo, in particular, see Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Lire Marco Polo au Moyen Age: traduction, diffusion et réception du Devisement du Monde (Turnholt: Brepols, 2015), 319–342. 3 On Prester John and the khans, see Polo, Description, Chapters 66–68, 74. 4 William D. Phillips, Jr., “Africa and the Atlantic Islands Meet the Garden of Eden: Christopher Columbus’s View of America.” Journal of World History 3 (1992), 160. In the prologue of the journal of his first voyage, Columbus notes (in a clear reference to his reading of Polo) that

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004324909_007

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While Columbus stated that conversion of China was his object, an equally persuasive argument could be made for his interest in China’s material wealth. His annotations in his copy of Polo make the connection between gold and power, as food for the soul and body, absolutely explicit.5 Yet, in the context of the Spanish crusading agenda, religion and economic profit as we have seen were not easily separated, and on his first voyage we find Columbus bearing a letter from Fedinand and Isabel intended for the Grand Mongol Khan, who was still believed to rule over the wealth of the Far East.6 Thus, we come full circle to the earlier expectations of Prester John’s promised help to the Latins, now projected onto the Western hemisphere. The millennial mythologies developed by the Spanish during the first century of their occupation of the New World directly link Columbus to crusading and the search for allies.7 The German humanist Hieronymus Münzer told the Catholic monarchs that, following the fall of Granada, “Nothing remains the Grand Khan’s predecessors “had [often] sent to Rome to ask for men learned in our Holy Faith” and how Fernando and Isabella “enemies of the false doctrine of Mahomet … thought of sending me … to the said regions of India to see the said princes … and to see how their conversion to our Holy Faith might be undertaken.” See Christopher Columbus, “Carta de Colon a los reyes y diario de a bordo de su primer viaje,” Prologue in Colección documental del descubrimiento (1470–1506), ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela y Bueso, 3 vols. (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas: Fundación mapfre América, 1994), doc. 36 (1:109). [For English translation, see Chrisopher Columbus, Journals and other documents on the llfe and voyages of Christopher Columbus, ed./transl. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: The Heritage Press, 1963), 47–48]. See also Wey Gómez, The tropics of empire, 409–419. 5 Polo, Il milione, 192–197. 6 Columbus, “Carta de Creencia de Cristobal Colon ante el Gran Kan, Otorgada por los reyes catolicos,” 30 April 1492, in Colección documental, doc. 29 (1: 89). His search for the khân during his first voyage was concentrated on the north coast of Cuba, where contact with the Carib Indians in late November 1492 led him to believe that he had, in fact, encountered the fierce Chinese soldiers of the Grand Khan. See Columbus, Diario, 30 October and 26 November 1492. Less than a fortnight later, when on the northwest coast of Hispañola Columbus wrote that beyond this land was the land of “Caniba” or “caníbales,” who were subjects of the “Gran Can”. See Columbus, Diario de a bordo, ed. Luis Arranz Márquez. (Madrid: Historia 16, 1985), 11 December 1492. 7 See Valerie I.J. Flint. “Columbus, ‘El Romero,’ and the so-called Columbus Map,” Terrae Incognitae 24 (1992), 19–29, who disputed that Columbus’ goal was crusading. Cf. Carol Delaney, Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem: How Religion Drove the Voyages that Led to America (New York: Free Press, 2012); Abbas Hamdani, “Columbus and the Recovery of Jerusalem,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 99 (1979), 39–48; Delno C. West, “Christopher Columbus, Lost Biblical Sites, and the Last Crusade,” Catholic Historical Review 78 (1992), 519–541.

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to Your Majesties except to add to your victories the reconquest of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.”8 Much of the millennial speculation surrounding the Spanish derived from the writings of the Aragonese scientist and mystic Arnau de Villanueva (c. 1235–1311) who prophesied that “he who will restore the ark of Zion will come from Spain.”9 With this statement, to quote Phelan, “Jerusalem wandered across the Pyrenees,” and speculation about the millennial role of the Spanish monarchs came to the fore.10 Millennialists, most notably the Franciscan Geronimo de Mendieta (1525–1604), came to see the Spanish as the new chosen people of God, in a parallel to Abraham.11 The Last World Emperor was supposed to come from hiding to unite the world under a single, Christian, banner, fight the anti-Christ and restore Jerusalem and the Holy Places to Christianity, then abdicate his role to God, for whom he had been regent.12 Milhou has identified over a dozen writers who declared several Spanish monarchs the Last World Emperor in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.13 Poets and mystics made the connection between the New World conquests and the possibility of a crusade to the Holy Land palpable: Spain was destined to capture Jerusalem with its king destined to lead his people and, indeed, all Christendom, to their final eschatological salvation. 8 9

10

11 12 13

Hieronymus Münzer, Itinerarium Hispanicum, ed. Ludwig Pfandl, in Bulletin hispanique 48 (1920), 128. See his De cymbalis ecclesiae noted in José Maria Pou y Martí, Visionários beguinos y fraticelos catalanes (siglos xii–xv), (Vich: Editorial Seráfico, 1930; reprinted Madrid: Ed. Colegio “Cardenal Cisneros,” 1991), 55. John Leddy Phelan, The millenial kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World: a study of the writings of Gerónimo de Mendieta (1525–1604) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), 11. Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica Indiana, ed. Francisco de P. Solano y PérezLila, 2 vols. (Madrid: Atlas, 1973), iii.1. Hannes Möhring, Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit: Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000). Alain Milhou, Colomb et le messianisme hispanique, transl. Mayi Milhou-Binard. (Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerrannée, 2007), 332–334. See, among others, Alfred Morel-Fatio, “Souhaits de bienvenue addresses à Ferdinand le Catholique par un poète barcelonais, en 1473.” Romania 11 (1882), 333–356; Juan Anchieta, Romance, in Joaquín González Cuenca, Cancionero musical de Palacio. (Madrid: Visor, 1996), “En memoria d’Alixandre,” no. 328; El baladro del sabio Merlín: según el texto de la edición de Burgos en 1498, ed. Pedro Bohigas, 3 vols. (Barcelona: Selecciones Bibliófilias, 1957–1962); López de Palacios Rubios, Libellus de insulis Oceanis quas vulgus Indias appellat cited in Juan Gil Fernández, “Los franciscanos y Colón.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 46 (1986), 77–110.

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Columbus was obsessed with Jerusalem and wrote of it on many occasions, including in his 4 March 1493 letter to the Catholic monarchs, his Book of Prophesies, and in a February 1502 letter to Pope Alexander vi. He even provided a fund for its recapture in an early draft of his will.14 Columbus’ intention was for the monarchs of Spain to use the profits of the new world for crusading. The Spanish had only to look at Colombus’ exhortation on his first voyage: And he [Columbus] says that he hopes … that on the return … he would find a barrel of gold … and that they would have found the gold mine … and those things in such quantity that the sovereigns, before three years will undertake and prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher; for thus I urged your Highnesses to spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem.15 His claim that he was near the Terrestrial Paradise linked the New World to ­eschatological Joachimite prophecies regarding Castillian divine election.16 The conquest of paradise would allow the final crusade to come to pass. ­Explorers who followed Columbus, such as Vespucci, also claimed that the

14

Margaret Zamora, “Christopher Columbus’s ‘Letter to the Sovereigns’: announcing the discovery,” in New world encounters, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 7; Christopher Columbus, Libro de las profecías, transls. Delno C. West and August Kling. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991); Phelan, Millennial kingdom, 19; Leonard Sweet, “Christopher Columbus and the Millennial Vision of the New World.” Catholic historical review 72/3 (1986), 381 n. 47; Columbus, “Carta de Colón al papa Alejandro vi dandole cuenta de sus viajes y de sus propósitos,” in Colección documental, doc. 578 (3: 1431–1434). 15 Columbus, Diario, 26 December 1492, in Colección documental, 196. [Translation in Journals and other documents, 139]. On later connections between the precious metals of the Americas and crusading, see a Franciscan chronicle (c. 1630), where the author described the silver mines at Potosí as the scourge of the Turks. By the 18th century, Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa says Potosí had funded a “paid army against the enemies of the faith.” See Irene Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the colonial origins of the civilized world (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). 16 Jorge Magasich-Airola and Jean-Marc de Beer, America magica: when Renaissance Europe thought it had conquered paradise (London/New York: Anthem Press, 2006), 28–30. As noted above, the Spanish mystic Arnau de Villanueva predicted that “he who will restore the ark of Zion will come from Spain.” See Pauline Moffitt Watts, “Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual origins of Christopher Columbus’s ‘Enterprise of the Indies,’” American Historical Review 90 (1985), 94–95. See, too, Libro de las profecías, 238–239.

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Earthly Paradise was to be found in the New World.17 Columbus’ own thought was greatly influenced by pseudo-Methodius (via Pierre d’Ailly) and Joachim of Fiore, from whose writings he quoted in his own Libro de las Profecías, where he collected prophetic and millennialistic writings and Biblical passages regarding two major themes: salvation of the world, and the recapture of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Holy Temple.18 In Ferdinand he saw a new David, whose mission was to rebuild the Temple.19 Those who looked upon Columbus’ deeds also declared him as God’s h ­ uman agent. Jaime Ferrer, an advisor to Ferdinand and Isabel, referred to Columbus as “an apostle and ambassador of God.”20 The first generation of millennialist Franciscan friars came to Mexico shortly after the conquest in 1519–1520. Mendieta, who was among the first wave of Franciscans, agreed with Columbus by stating that the discovery of the Americas was made by “some divine revelation,” which was followed by Cortes who was the new Moses, leading the chosen people to Mexico. Mendieta argued that Columbus and Cortes were the vanguard for a new, Golden Age, not just in the Americas, but for the entire world. This would be an age where all non-Christians would convert to the True Faith and the path would be made clear for the eschatological return of the Messiah, Jesus-as-God. Both Spanish monarchs Carlos I and Felipe ii were, in turn, lauded as being the Last World Emperor, whose coming was foretold, and were to reign over the Christianized world until the final Emperor, God, would return to take up his rightful place. *** Did anyone actually listen to Columbus’ crusading rhetoric? How was it disseminated among the indigenous peoples of the Americas? One of the ways in which crusading ideology was presented to indigenous peoples was through 17 18

Magasich-Airola and de Beer, America Magica, 30–31. These were common topoi of apocalyptic literature since the Middle Ages. See Bernard McGinn, Visions of the end: apocalyptic traditions in the Middle Ages. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979). On Pseudo-Methodius, see Columbus, Libro, 160–165; on Joachim, see, for example, Libro, 238–239. 19 Libro, 61. 20 Graziano, Millennial, 29; letter of Jaime Ferrer in John Boyd Thacher, Christopher Columbus: His Life, His Work, His Remains, 3 vols. (New York/London: Putnam’s, 1903–1904): 2: 366, 368.

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the instructive medium of dance drama, notably the Moros y Cristianos, (literally, “the Moors and the Christians.”)21 Dramatic performances of conflict between Christians and Muslims were, in fact, a relative rarity in Spain prior to 1492, and few records of such performances remain.22 First performed in the New World in 1539 by indigenous Mexicans under the direction and for the entertainment of, Europeans, it portrayed a combat between Muslims and Christians, and culminated in the great victory of the Spaniards over the Infidels.23 The dramas portrayed the Spanish army leading the forces of Christendom, assisted by the army of Mexico on an attack on the Moors. Eventually, with divine intervention and saintly aid, Jerusalem is taken and the sultan and his army converted en masse to the True Faith.24 Spanish reports from Peru imply an awareness among the subjugated Inca leadership of their role in the broader Spanish crusade. Francisco López de Gomara (c. 1511–c. 1566) reported (and the Christian-Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616) after him) that Francisco Pizarro ventured to Cuzco in 1534/5 in order to persuade Manco Inca to “produce a great quantity of gold for the emperor­, who was much reduced by the expenses of his coronation, and the affairs of the Turk and Vienna and Tunis.”25 This, of course, is further evidence 21

On this generally, see Max Harris, Aztecs, Moors and Christians: festivals of reconquest in Mexico and Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); Robert Ricard, The spiritual conquest of Mexico: an essay on the apostolate and the evangelizing methods of the mendicant orders in New Spain, 1523–1572, transl. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), Chapter 12; Idem, “Contribution à l’étude des fêtes de au Mexique,” Journal de la société des Américanistes, n.s. 24 (1932), 51–84; Idem, “Encore les fêtes de au Mexique,” Journal de la société des Américanistes, 29 (1937), 220–227. See, too, Carlos René García Escobar, El Español: danzas de moros y cristianos en Guatemala. (Guatemala: Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, 1990); La danzas de conquista, eds. Jesús Jáuregui and Carlo Bonfigliuli. (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996); and Ma. Soledad Carrasco Urgoiti, El moro retador y el moro amigo: (estudios sobre fiestas y comedias de moros y cristianos) (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1996). 22 Harris, Aztecs, 31–63. 23 Two variations of the theme were presented: the Capture of Rhodes was performed at Mexico City, while a pantomime of the Capture of Jerusalem was presented at Tlaxcala. See Nueva colección de documentos para la historia de Mexico, ed. Joaquín García Icazbalceta, 5 vols., (Mexico City: Editorial Salvador Chávez Hayhoe, 1941), 325. 24 Toribio de Benavente Motolinía, Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, ed. Georges Baudot (Madrid: Castalia, 1985), tract 1, Chapter 15. 25 See Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los incas. In Obras completas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, ed. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, 4 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones ­Atlas,

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that crusade to the Holy Land was intimately linked with the development of Spanish empire in the Americas. *** In addition to funding a direct crusade, on 27 November 1492, Columbus wrote that “… Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any foreigner do business or set foot here, except Christian Catholics … nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts.”26 Columbus was positing, therefore, that the newfound lands and any Spanish involvement or settlement in them, should resemble a Latin paradise as closely as possible. The Spanish conquerors who followed Columbus honored this request (at least in theory). The insistence upon religious orthodoxy that existed on the Iberian peninsula was extended to the Spanish possessions overseas. Instituting restrictive laws covering immigration to the newly found lands was the most direct means of doing this in the New World.27 In agreement with Columbus’ notes, the crown issued instructions as early as 1501 to prohibit the entrance of Jews and Muslims into any territories under his jurisdiction.28 King Ferdinand extended this ban in 1513 to include the children and grand-children of Jews, Muslims, conversos and those condemned by the Inquisition.29 This desire for the maintenance of religious purity not only reflected the domestic 1960–1965), 2.2.22; Francisco López de Gómara, Historia general de las Indias y Vida de Hernán Cortés, ed. Jorge Gurría Lacroix, 2 vols. (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1979), 1.223. Garcilaso, Comentarios [2.2.23] reported that Manco Inca promised to bring Pizarro a large gold statue for the purpose. See Alain Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica en el ambiente franciscanista español (Valladolid: Casa-Museo de Colón: Seminario Americanista de la Universidad de Valladolid, 1983), 142, 144. 26 Columbus, Diario, 27 November 1492, in Colección documental, 160. 27 On these regulations in general, see Rafael Guevara-Bazan, “Muslim immigration to Spanish America,” Muslim World 56 (1966), 173–187; Louis Cardaillac, “Le problème morisque en Amerique,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velazquez, 12 (1976), 283–303; Richard Konetzke, “Legislación sobre inmigración de extranjeros en America durante la época colonial,” Revista internacional de sociologia 3/11–12 (1945), 269–299; Robert Ricard, “Les Morisques et leur expulsion vus de Mexique,” Bulletin Hispanique, 33 (1931) 252–254. 28 “Provision real prohibiendo ir a descubrir ni a los descubierto, sin licencia de sus altezas,” (3 September 1501) in Colección documental, doc. 481. 29 “Trastado de las mercedes, franquezas y libertades que sus altezas concedieron y otorgaron a la isla Españñola y los vecinos y moradores de ella,” (26 September 1513) in Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social de Hispanoamérica, 1493–1830, ed. Richard Konetzke, 3 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1953–62), 1: 59–60.

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policy of Spain, but also emphasized the belief that the Spanish crown had the power to fashion these new found lands to their own design. Special precaution was taken to insure that Muslims, in particular, would not be able to come to the Americas, either in the guise of conversos or as slaves. This was a particularly difficult problem, for despite the restrictive measures taken to limit the possibility of a Muslim presence in the Americas, the system was far from foolproof, and throughout the sixteenth century the Crown continued to attempt to ensure the religious purity of their newfound world through restrictive immigration legislation. As late as 1517, Cardinal Cisneros noted for example, that Judaism and Islam were both being practiced in the Spanish Caribbean.30 This was likely both in the cases of Islam and Judaism.31 The number of conversos who successfully evaded detection and practiced their faith in the New World is unknown, but as late as 1621 in Puebla, a reference to the Moriscos was made in a sermon by Father Juan de Grijalva.32 Eight to ten per cent of the fairly small African slave population in Spanish America in the first half of the century were of the Islamicized Malinke from the Gambia River valley.33 Some royal decrees, were specifically designed to limit Islamic immigration in the persons of African Muslim slaves.34 A prime example of this type of ordinance was that issued by Karl in 1530, in which he ruled that any slave found to be a Muslim was to be returned to Africa, and anyone who was found to be importing Morisco slaves was to be heavily fined.35 Vigilance against “prohibidos” was called for by Karl v in 1556 and again by Felipe ii in 1559, the same year in which the Holy Inquisition was established in Mexico, a further attempt to 30

See Cisneros’ grant (22 July 1517) of inquisitorial authority to the bishops of the Indies in José Toribio Medina, La primitiva inquisición americana (1493–1569): estudio histórico, 2 vols. (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Elzeviriana, 1914), 2: 3–5. 31 Peter Dressendörfer, “Crypto-musulmanes en la inquisición de la Nueva España.” Actas del Coloquio Internacional sobre Literatura Aljamiada y Morisca 3 (1978), 475–494. 32 See Ricard, “Morisques,” 252–254. 33 See Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic slave trade: a census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 97–98. The Malinke, converted to Islam in previous centuries, continued the practice of their religion following their capture and enslavement by the Spanish. On Muslim Malinke in Brazil, see Roger Bastide, The African religions of Brazil: toward a sociology on the interpenetration of civilizations, transl. Helen Sebba (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 46. 34 See Recopilación de leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, ed. Juan Manzano Manzano, 4 vols. (Madrid: J. de Paredes, 1681; reprinted Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1973), 9.26, 15 (3:312). 35 Guevara-Bazan, “Muslim immigration,” 179–180.

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insure the religious “purity” of the Spaniards’ new world.36 In this regard, Spanish America came to reflect the same attitude against conversos that was being exhibited in Spain itself. *** From King Ferdinand’s time (1504–1516), the fear of the Turks was a constant call to vigilance in the Americas.37 Yet, the possibility of Muslim incursion in the Americas, which appears intermittently in Spanish reports, was largely a fantasy.38 The anonymous author of the ca. 1585 work known as the Tarih-i Hind-i garbi, an Ottoman history and natural history of the New World commented that the Iberian conquests had taken an important opportunity away from the sultan: In twenty years the Spanish conquered all of that island and enslaved more than forty thousand, and many thousands fell prey to the sword. By the Lord God we always hope that that advantageous land will, in time, 36

37

38

See documents in Cedulario indiano, compil. Diego de Encinas, ed. Alfonso García Gallo, 5 vols. (Madrid, n.p., 1596; reprinted Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1945–1946): 1: 454–455; 4: 374, 381–384. On the use of Moriscos as Ottoman agents, see Andrew C. Hess, “The Moriscos: An Ottoman fifth column in sixteenth-century Spain.” American Historical Review, 74 (1968), 1–25; Abbas Hamdani [“Ottoman response to the discovery of America and the new route to India.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 101 (1981), 328–329] stated his belief that it was “likely, therefore, that these Moriscos could have served the same purpose [as Ottoman intelligence agents] in keeping track of the Spanish and Portuguese explorations in the Atlantic.” On Ottoman interest in the Americas, see The Ottoman Turks and the New World: a study of Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi and sixteenth-century Ottoman Americana, ed./transl. Thomas D. Goodrich (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1990); Thomas D Goodrich, “Ottoman Americana: The Search for the Sources of the Sixteenth-century Tarih-i Hind-i garbi,” Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 85 (1982), 269–294; Hamdani, “Ottoman response”; Andrew C. Hess, “Piri Reis and the Ottoman Response to the Voyages of Discovery,” Terrae Incognitae, 6 (1974), 19–38. On the Piri “Reis” map of the Americas, the earliest known and the source of which is a map made by one “Colon-bo” see Piri “Reis”, Kitab-ı bahriye, ed. Ertuğrul Zekâi Ökte (Istanbul: Historical Research Foundation, 1988). Paul Kahle, “A Lost Map of Columbus,” The Geographical Review, 23 (1933), 621–638; Svatopluk Soucek. “Pîrî Reʿ îs,” in Süleyman the Second [i.e. the First] and his time, eds. Halil Inalcik and Cemal Kafadar, (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), 343–352. See, also Seydi Ali “Reis”, [Muhît. German.] Die topographischen Capitel des indischen Seespiegels Mohit, ed. Wilhelm Tomaschek, transl. Maximilian Bittner (Vienna: K.K. Geographische Gesellschaft, 1897), 75–77.

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fall conquest to the brave of Islam of exalted lineage, and that it will be filled with the rites of Islam and be joined to the other Ottoman lands.39 If truth be told, the Ottoman interest in the New World was minimal. Much of Ottoman politics during the 1570s and 1580s concerned possible avenues for expansion in the Indian Ocean, not the Atlantic.40 Unlike the west, the Ottomans did not need to sail westward to get around an unfriendly enemy to access the riches of Asia: land and sea routes were directly accessible from the empire itself. While the gold and silver of the Americas may have been elusive, the Ottoman Empire was able to expand eastward, exerting “transcendant authority” over the Muslims of the Indian Ocean, as far away as Aceh in Sumatra.41 Both Ottoman weakness in the face of Iberian strength in the New World, as well as keen Ottoman interest in the Americas and the use of fifth column spies were mere mythologies, created by the Spanish and, later, European historians, to enhance the crusading prospects of the Iberians and the geo-political dominance of the West.42 *** Initially, Columbus’ first voyage ties him to the Latin search for both allies and material goods in Central Asia. The letter he carried for the khan of China was certainly written with the intention of making contact with a “known” power in the east, whose ancestors had shown friendship to the west. This quest for the khan quickly transformed into a search for wealth which Columbus stated was to be used for crusade. Failing to find any crusading allies, Columbus and his successors attempted to develop a support system for crusading by expressly stating that the gold from the Americas and the new converts to Christianity had a role (both actual and fictive) in such military and spiritual designs. The introduction of millennialism into the paradigm became a new element, which ushered in, according to its proponents, a quasi-eschatological New Age. The quest for Jerusalem lent an impulse to the Spaniards to shape the New World in a new Christian image. In this way old mythologies, such as those regarding Prester John and the belief in a distant salvatory land, blended with new ones to create a new purpose for a New World. 39 40

Ottoman Turks and the New World, 173. Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman age of exploration (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 160. 41 Casale, Ottoman age, 7. 42 Casale, Ottoman age, Introduction.

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“Christianized” Muslims in the Middle East (1400–1635) Since the late 1970s, much has been made of how Europeans have created the image of the easterner. This process has been problematized by scholars over the past 35 years or so, since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism. What my examples show are that peoples of the eastern Mediterranean, whether putatively Muslim, Christian or Druze, were often intimately familiar with the hopes and stereotypes which westerners had and were active agents in the manipulation of these stereotypes and mythologies. Even as the Spanish and Portuguese were launching their voyages in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, looking for Christians or converts with whom they could forge crusading alliances, a number of Latin states in Europe continued to search for anti-Islamic allies in a more programmatic fashion closer to home. Carrying on the tradition established with the Mongols in the 13th century, Western diplomats carried proposals of alliance throughout Eurasia in the hope of organizing a direct two-pronged assault against the Mamluks and Ottomans. In many of these cases, mythologies were created which Christianized these polities and princes, creating for them Christian genealogies or conversion stories based merely on rumor or anti-Ottoman politics. Prester John was transformed into a convert.

The Aq Quyunlu and Uzun Hasan

Of all the “Christianized” Islamic polities with which the West sought crusading alliance, one of the most genuinely mutual, and successfully implemented, relationships was that formed with the Aq Qoyunlu. Also known as the “White Sheep Turks,” the Aq Qoyunlu were a Türkmen confederation which had settled in eastern Anatolia in the wake of the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, and eventually established a base of power in Diyarbakır, in a region to the West of Lake Van and to the south of Trebizond.1 They had submitted to the 1 On the relationship between the Aq Qoyunlu and Trebizond, which falls outside the scope of this work, see Anthony Bryer, “Greeks and Turkmens: the Pontic exception,” Dumbarton Oaks papers 29 (1975), 113–149.

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rule of Timur and were able to profit from Timur’s other conquests in eastern Anatolia so that, by the middle of the reign of Qara Yoluq Osman (1403–1435), they had established themselves over a sizeable portion of the region. What made the Aq Qoyonlu so inticing as allies to the West is that they followed the same patterns established by the Il-khans: they had clear animosity toward an enemy of Europe—the Ottomans; they were often the prime initiators of diplomatic overtures to the West; and finally, members of their leadership became attached through marriage to a Christian polity (in this case, the Empire of Trabezond on the Black Sea). Later western commentators even went so far as to conflate these strands into an outright declaration of the Aq Qoyonlu as a Christian nation.2 The first known contact between the West and the Aq Qoyunlu was established in the mid-1420s, when Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary, Sigismund (r. 1387–1437) sent two Hungarian ambassadors to the East, to “Prince Kara-Yuluk, the ruler of Mesopotamia.” This embassy, recounted in a deed of gift, (written at Nagyszombat, 16 February 1428), encompassed diplomatic visits to a wide variety of eastern enemies of the Ottomans, notably the Golden Horde, the remainder of the Timurids and the Aq Qoyunlu.3 The deed emphasizes the Hungarian belief in the apparent willingness of these powers to come to the “aid of Our majesty and of Christendom.”4 The response of the Aq Qoyunlu to these overtures was quite positive, if we are to take at face value a September 1430 letter.5 The letter, which was apparently sent to Emperor Sigismund from Qara Yoluq Osman (r. 1378–1435), speaks of the Emperor’s ambassadors but, more importantly, it goes to some length to inform the Emperor of the large number of anti-Ottoman military actions which are in the offing, notably that of Timur’s son, Shāhrukh, who, the letter states, is about to launch an attack against the Turks. It then asks the Emperor 2 Adam Knobler, “Pseudo-Conversions and Patchwork Pedigrees: the Christianization of Muslim Princes and the diplomacy of Holy War,” Journal of World History 7/2 (1996), 193f; see, too, Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden, 196–197. 3 Lajos Tardy, Beyond the Ottoman Empire: 14th–16th century Hungarian diplomacy in the East (Szeged: Universitas Szegediensis de Attila József Nominata, 1978), 12–13, quotes the document in English translation. The original, see Historia critica regum Hungariae: stirpis arpadianae, ex fide domesticorum et exterorum scriptorum, ed. István Katona, 42 vols. in 44 (Pest: Sumptibus Ioannis Michaelis Weingand et Ioannis Georgii Koepf Bibliopol, 1779–1817), 12: 503–507; Wolfgang Stromer von Reichenbach, “Eine Botschaft des Turkmenenfürsten Qara Yoluq an König Sigismund auf dem Nürnberger Reichstag in Marz 1431,” Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 22 (1972), 433–542. 4 Tardy, Beyond 12; Historia critica, 12: 503–507. 5 Stromer von Reichenbach, “Botschaft.”

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to provide the Aq Qoyunlu and the Persians with an advisor.6 Firm evidence also exists to substantiate the presence of an ambassador of Qara Yoluq Osman in Hungary in 1435. A letter, addressed from the Emperor to the Magistrate of Pozsony and dated mid June 1435, orders that the needs of “Johannes Tartarus,” the envoy of Qara Yoluq, be provided for, and that he be taken to Nagyszombat (now Trnava, in western Sloavkia) to await the arrival of the Emperor.7 Nothing is known of the outcome of this embassy, and no evidence exists for any other embassies from Qara Yoluq Osman (or from Sigismund) before their respective deaths in 1435 and 1437. The presence of this envoy in Hungary in 1435 does provide sufficient proof that there was mutual interest in some form of diplomatic contact between the West and the Aq Qoyunlu and, if what is known about Sigismund’s general attitude towards crusade can be used as a gauge, forms a link in the chain of evidence that argues for some form of antiOttoman alliance.8 The pattern of imagining a Christian king “behind” Islam, established by the Prester John stories, still continued. There then follows a nearly twenty year hiatus in any firm, diplomatic contact with the Aq Qoyunlu. Several reasons exist for this absence of activity, most notably the state of complete political unrest and chaos which existed among the Aq Qoyunlu following the death of Qara Yoluq Osman. This was a direct result of what Morgan has referred to as the “inherent weakness in the Aq Qoyunlu confederation,” namely that it was never able to develop a mechanism for succession to the throne.9 Consequently, there was a twenty-two year period of intermittent civil war among the Aq Qoyunlu, and no less than eleven claimants for the throne in 1435.10 The situation in Anatolia was coupled with a general lack of crusading zeal on the part of the Western monarchs or, at least, no manifest interest in pursuing an eastern alliance, not even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. It was not until 1452, when the ascendancy of Uzun Hasan (1423–1478) began, that a modicum of stability reappeared in eastern Anatolia. The Venetians took a great interest in establishing an eastern alliance in 1463, and in December approved the appointment of Lazzaro Quirini as an envoy to 6 Tardy, Beyond, 16. 7 “Nuncio Illustris Kayayluk Domini Mesopotamiae”. See Codex diplomaticvs Hvngariae ecclesiasticvs ac civilis, ed. György Fejér, 11 vols. (Buda: typis typogr. Regiae vniversitatis vngaricae, 1829–1844), 10.8. suppl: 648. A letter was also sent to the envoy himself. Addressed to “Fideli nostro Johanni Tartaro Noncio Illustris Principis Carayluk,” Ibid. 8 Tardy, Beyond, Chapters 2–3. 9 David Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040–1797 (London/New York: Longman, 1988): 104; on succession problems inherent in the Aq Qoyunlu, see Woods, Aqquyunlu, 12–16. 10 On the civil war, see Idem, Chapter 3.

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Uzun Hasan.11 Envoys of Uzun Hasan had, themselves, come to Venice in mid 1464 and again in 1465, bearing letters proposing an alliance against the Ottomans.12 The Venetians replied in kind, stating that they, the Pope and the other leaders of Latin Europe were doing their utmost to facilitate the downfall of the Ottomans.13 Quirini remained at Uzun Hasan’s court until 1471, when he returned to Venice with fresh offers of alliance and plans to march against the Ottomans, and his desire to have the rulers of the West join him in such a venture.14 A number of diplomatic exchanges between Venice and the court of Uzun Hasan took place during the 1470s, all mentioning an anti-Ottoman alliance between the two parties. However, an outbreak of plague devastated Iran in 1475–76, halting further communications with the West. As a result of this interruption and the conclusion of a peace between the Ottomans and the Venetians in 1479, Western interest in pursuing the alliance waned. Uzun Hasan’s death in 1478 resulted in a protracted civil war. He was succeeded by Yaqub, who turned away from the expansionist, anti-Ottoman policies of the previous regime. Two embassies were dispatched from the West to Yaqub’s court in 1485: one from Venice, the other, from Mátyás I Corvinus, but of these nothing is known. Aq Qoyunlu diplomatic correspondence with the Ottomans from this time increasingly began to praise the Ottoman warrior role against the Franks: a practice unknown in Uzun Hasan’s time. This marked the end of diplomatic contact between the West and the Aq Qoyunlu.15 11

On Venetian overture to the East, see a report of the Misti (30 August 1463) and two letters written by Ser Giovanni Aimo to Mátyás I. Corvinus (6 October 1463 and 29 September 1464), both discussing the possibility of alliance in Listine o odnošajih izmedju juznoga Slavenstva i mletacke republike, comp. Šime Ljubic, 11 vols. (Zagreb, Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1868–1893), 10: 269, 277, 314. 12 Guglielmo Berchet, La Repubblica di Venezia e la Persia (Turin: G.B.Paravia, 1865), 3–4. 13 “El novo santissimo pontefice, capo e principe de Christiani, fa et e per far ogni di piu a ruina del ditto Ottoman.” Sen. Secreta, Reg. 22, fols. 38v–39r, doc. dated 26 September 1464 in Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976–1984), 2: 272–273 n. 7. 14 See Magyar diplomacziai emlékek Mátyás király korából 1458–1490, eds. Iván Nagy and Albert Nyáry, 4 vols. (Budapest: A.M. Tud. Akadémia, 1875–1878), 4: 295; this document, written to Mátyás I. Corvinus of Hungary, is reputedly translated from a Persian original (now lost). See Tardy, Beyond, 63. For letters to Giovanni Orsini, Grand Master of the Hospitallers (21 February 1471) and James ii, king of Cyprus (same date), see Mehmet Sefit Keçik, Briefe und Urkunden der Kanzlei Uzun Hasans: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Ost-Anatoliens im 15. Jahrhundert (Freiburg im Breisgau: K. Schwarz, 1976), plates 18–19, 38–39 and translation at 148–149, 164–165 respectively. 15 Woods, Aqquyunlu, 146 and notes.

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Why had the “best laid plans” of both the Venetians and the Aq Qoyunlu gone awry? The overwhelming military superiority of the Ottomans, and their ability to control the chief communication routes between Italy and Iran must be cited as the most obvious and compelling reasons. They simply made any coordinated action almost impossible. The lack of communication also allowed the Venetians, the Papacy and the other Latin polities who had heard of Ottoman/Aq Qoyunlu antipathy, to generate a false notion of the actual strength and size of Uzun Hasan’s army – creating, again, a tabula rasa regarding distant lands of the East. Uzun Hasan was clearly a leader of some skill and military prowess. He had been able to extend the power of the Aq Qoyunlu confederation in Iraq, much of Iran, and throughout eastern Anatolia. His own position at the head of a not terribly stable confederation of tribes was tenuous, and his several defeats at Ottoman hands did little to improve his status among his own people. That he was an enemy of the Ottomans was enough to win him advocates in Venice and Hungary who were desperate to find an eastern ally. His connection (albeit by marriage) with the Trapezuntine royal house, made him doubly attractive as a potential ally by associating him with Christianity, and a son by “Despina Khatun” (Theodora Megale Komnene) was recognized by many as the legitimate claimant to the throne of Trebizond as late as 1500.16 He was, in essence, a Christian-esque ruler who spent his career fighting Islam, who fit the model pre-established by the Mongol Il-khans and Timur. While Prester John was slowly evolving into an African king, stories of Uzun Hasan preserved the idea of a Christian ally in the East.

The Safavids

The succession of alliances between the West and the Il-khans, Timūr and the Aq Qoyunlu, from the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, was followed by diplomatic interest in Shāh Ismāʿil, the first of the Safavid rulers of Iran. Interest in his potential as an ally developed, again in Venice, from the time he first moved westward from Gīlān (albeit to attack the Aq Qoyunlu) in 1499.17 This date corresponded to the outbreak of war between the Ottomans 16 Iorga, Notes et extraits, 5, 328. In fact, Uzun Hasan had two sons by his Trapezuntine wife. One, Maqsud, was executed shortly after his father’s death. The other, Masih Mirza, died in battle in 1491. 17 Fisher, Foreign relations, 58; on the whole Ottoman-Safavid conflict, and its sources, see Adel Allouche, The origins and development of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict (906– 962/1500–1555) (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1983); for a different approach to western texts about

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and the Venetians who, once again, looked to the East for allies. Throughout his reign, until his death in 1524, Ismāʿil was the subject of speculation, anticipation and negotiation in the Latin West as a whole, and Venice in particular. A glance at the citations referring to his exploits which appear in the Diarii of Marino Sanudo the Younger proves this point several times over.18 Active pursuit of diplomatic contact with Shāh Ismāʿil can be traced back to mid1502, when the Venetian-Ottoman conflict was drawing to a close. Ismāʿil had confirmed his overlordship of a substantial part of Iran and had established his capital at Tabriz. Reports of the first embassy, sent by the Venetians, began to appear in the Diarii in June 1502, when it was reported that the Senate, with an eye toward alliance against the Ottomans, sent Constantin Laschari from Cyprus as an envoy to Ismāʿil and the Karaman-oğlu.19 The responses which came back from Anatolia and Iran were overwhelmingly favorable to such a plan. In a report, dated 12 October 1502, Laschari noted Ismāʿil’s desire for Venetian help in the form of galleys and artillery.20 Further good news was sent from Cyprus the following month, noting the preparations which Ismāʿil had made to launch a full scale attack against the Ottomans.21 Beside the Venetians, whose reports were taking on a surprisingly theological tone for such a mercantile society, favorable reports regarding the intentions of Ismāʿil were also reaching Pope Alexander vi. He received information from his legate in Hungary, noting that Ismāʿil was raising an army to march against the Ottomans.22 Over the period of the next dozen or so years, the alliance with Ismāʿil became a project of both the Venetians and the papacy.

Ismāʿil see Palmira Brummett, “The Myth of Shah Ismail Safavi: Political Rhetoric and ‘Divine’ Kingship,” in Medieval Christian perceptions of Islam: a book of essays, ed. John Victor Tolan (New York: Garland, 1996), 331–359. 18 See Marino Sanudo, Šah Ismail I nei Diarii, ed. Biancamaria Scarcia-Amoretti. (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1979): passim. Indeed, Ismāʿil saw himself in a somewhat prophetic role as the living embodiment of Jesus, Alexander and ʿAli, See V. Minorsky, “The Poetry of Shâh Ismāʿil I,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 10/4 (1942), 1042; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Turning the stones over: Sixteenth-century millenarianism from the Tagus to the Ganges,” Indian economic and social history review 40/2 (2003), 140–141. 19 Barbara von Palombini, Bündniswerben abenländischer Mächte um Persien, 1453–1600 (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1968), 41–43. 20 Sanudo, Šah, 33–37. 21 Dated 27 November 1502, Sanudo, Šah, 21–23. 22 Note letter in Marino Sanudo, I diarii di Marino Sanuto (mccccxcvi–mdxxxiii) dall’ autografo Marciano ital. cl. vii codd. cdxix–cdlxxvii, 58 vols. (Venice: F. Visentini, 1879– 1903): (26 November 1502).

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Clearly Ismāʿil had an active interest in cultivating an alliance with the West. His own military strength was relatively small in comparison with that of the neighboring Ottomans and, though he was able to extend his power into Iraq, he needed outside assistance to launch an assault westwards. In the summer of 1505 he sent another request to the Venetians for arms and assistance through Bortolo Contarini, the Venetian consul in Damascus.23 For their part, the Latins showed great interest in an alliance with Iran.24 Pope Julius II (r. 1503–1513) in the period 1507–1508 wrote of Ismāʿil’s potential as an ally to both King Mañoel of Portugal and Ulászló ii of Hungary.25 The latter apparently had been in contact with Ismāʿil, and was encouraged to continue his contacts by the Pope.26 In May Julius had sent an envoy to Iran, but little if anything seems to have come of his visit.27 The general popular reaction in France and Venice towards this new potential ally was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Ismāʿil had become the subject of a personality cult, as had Gazan and Uzun Hasan before him. The earlier myths, dating from the Prester John tales, were again being revived in the case of Iran. Not only were rumors abroad to the effect that he had converted to Christianity but, in France at least, Julius was held to be dragging his feet in supplying Persia with the arms and support that it needed to destroy the Ottomans once and for all.28 As with the embassies and overtures between the West and the Aq Qoyunlu, the actual implementation of an alliance with Ismāʿil did not come to fruition. Ismāʿil’s 1514 defeat at Çaldıran by Selim i only emphasized the strength of the Ottomans, and the extreme difficulty of effecting any sort of workable alliance with the West. Plans continued to be floated on both sides. The reign of Pope Leo x (1513–1521) saw a resurgence of interest in an alliance, as voiced 23 Sanudo, Šah, 84: “Dice vol andar contra turchi, et col esser amico di questa Signoria.” 24 On Veneto/Papal-Safavid relations  1508–1509, see Palombini, Bündniswerben, 43–45, 50–51. 25 Dorothy M. Vaughan, Europe and the Turk: a pattern of alliances, 1350–1700 (Liverpool: University Press, 1954; reprinted New York: ams Press, 1976), 208; Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa, 7 vols. (Hamburg: F. Perthes, 1840–1863), 2: 557 and refs. 26 Note (16 June 1508) in Rinaldi, Annales, sa 1508. 27 Sanudo, Šah, 84: the nuncio was sent “qual vien a la ruina et dil turco e infedelli.” 28 For the comparison of Ismāʿil and Julius, see Jean Lemaire de Belges, L’Historie moderne du Prince Syach Ismail, sit Sophy Arduelin, where Ismāʿil is described as ‘le Coulomb … [qui] apporta en l’arche de Noë, la branche d’olive, qui est signe de paix, entre Dieu et les hommes’ while Julius is ‘le Corbeau … [qui] demoura obstiné sur une charogne puante.’: quoted in Clarence Dana Rouillard, The Turk in French history, thought, and literature (1520–1660) (Paris: Boivin, 1941), 33.

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in the writing of Fra Paolo Giustianini and Fra Vincenzo (or Pietro) Querini, entitled Libellus ad Leonem Decimum.29 They exhorted the Pope to enlist the aid of Ismāʿil, and to attempt to convert Qansuh al-Ghawri, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt. They argued further that, if the Mamluks were given part of the Ottoman empire in return for conversion and alliance, the rest of the nations of Islam would follow suit.30 This scheme stood in direct opposition to the various coeval plans to have the Ethiopians ally against the Mamluks. The Pope, nevertheless, himself prepared a memorandum on a projected crusade (dated 16 November 1517) which he sent across Europe, following the Ottoman conquest of Egypt.31 Both the French king, François i, and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian responded. The German reply, which was quite detailed, predicted that by 1520, after a liberation of North Africa from the hands of the Muslims, the crusaders would be able to attack Anatolia with the help of Ismāʿil. In return for this assistance, Persia was to be given a large portion of Anatolia.32 His prediction, of course, was not fulfilled. It is unclear whether Ismāʿil heard of the renewed enthusiasm for his cause in the West, but he did attempt to reestablish relations with a variety of western monarchs. Ismāʿil had made contact with representatives of King Mañoel of Portugal and Ulászló ii of Hungary.33 In 1516, Lajos ii of Hungary sent an embassy to Ismāʿil under a Maronite, Petrus de Monte Libano, with some form of anti-Ottoman alliance in mind. King Carlos i of Spain (the future Emperor­ Karl v) also, apparently, sent an envoy at the same time, with the same intention.34 In Shawwâl 924/October 1518, Ismāʿil wrote a letter to Carlos, 29

On Leo x and the reaction to the defeat at Çaldıran see Palombini, Bündniswerben, 51–55. 30 Kenneth M. Setton, “Pope Leo x and the Turkish peril,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical society 113 (1969), 372; Paolo Giustianini and Pietro Quirini, Libellus ad Leonem x, in Annales Camaldulenses ordinis Sancti Benedicti, eds. Giovanni-Benedetto Mittarelli and Anselmo Costadoni (Venice, 1773; reprinted Farnborough: Gregg, 1970): 9: 641–648. 31 Palombini, Bündniswerben, 58–61. 32 Setton, “Pope Leo x,” 405; Négotiations de la France dans le Levant, ed. Ernest Charrière, 4 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1848–60): 1: 49–63. 33 Ismāʿil wrote to Emperor Karl v that he had received embassies from both nations see Charles Holy Roman Emperor, Correspondenz des kaisers Karl v, ed. Karl F.W. Lanz, 3 vols. (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1844–46), 1: 52–53. The Portuguese sent embassies from the East, one under Miguel Ferreira in 1513–1515. See Albuquerque, Commentarios; Idem, The commentaries of the great Afonso Dalboquerque, second viceroy of India, ed/transl. Walter de Gray Birch, 4 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1875–1884): 4: 75–76, 180–184. 34 Laurence Lockhart, “European Contacts with Persia, 1350–1736,” in The Cambridge History of Iran 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods, eds. Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986): 382.

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requesting assistance and an alliance against the Ottomans.35 In the late summer of 1523, Ismāʿil again wrote to Karl v, urging action against their common enemy, and asking why the Europeans were still bickering among ­themselves when such important work was at hand.36 The letter, sent via Petrus de Monte Libano, arrived at the Imperial court sometime after 1524. When Karl did respond, in a letter dated 25 August 1525, he was only lukewarm.37 The letter was sent via an envoy, Jean de Balbi, whose missives back to the imperial court from the Middle East still survive.38 It is unclear whether Jean actually reached Tabriz. If he did, it would have been after Ismāʿil’s death in 1524. News of Persia (and the rest of the “East” for that matter) became far more widespread in the West during Ismāʿil’s reign, of course, than it had a century before as a result of the printing revolution and the explosion in the production of popular printed matter across Europe. Literacy rates increased precipitously, and writers, who themselves were members of the bourgeoisie, were able to address their pamphlets and treatises to a wider audience than previously possible.39 The theme of conversion was a popular topic. Two printed reports of conversion – one French (1508) and another German (1512) – were the result of Western-Persian diplomacy and plans for alliance.40 The former, Le baptesme de Sophi Roi de Perse, is reputedly a French translation of a Latin report, written by Monolitricon Manoliflundino, a knight Hospitaller from Rhodes, and addressed to Grand Master Aiméry d’Amboise.41 A palm-sized tract, Le baptesme de Sophi, purports to be an eyewitness account of the baptism of the shah by four Franciscans on 17 May 1508. Apart from the shah making a long speech about the ignorance of the Ottoman sultan regarding the True Faith, the text is notable for its confusion regarding the supposed Christian ancestry of the shah. The author placed much emphasis on Ismāʿil being the nephew of the

35 Palombini, Bündniswerben, 62–64. 36 Charles, Correspondenz, 1: 52–53. 37 He wrote: “Displicuit quidem nobis, illum ad designatum a serenitate vestra tempus non aplicuisse, ut mature de negotio deliberare possemus; sed tamen mirati fuimus …” Charles, Correspondenz, 1: 168–169; Lockhart [“European Contacts,” 382] states that this letter was dated February 1529. 38 Charles, Correspondenz, 1: 192–206, 329–330, 335–336, 379, 385; Palombini, Bündniswerben, 66–70. 39 See, briefly, Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The printing revolution in early modern Europe (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 303–450; and Peter Burke, Popular culture in early modern Europe (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 250–259. 40 Vom dem neuen Propheten in Persia, Sophey gennant. 41 Pope Julius ii often cited the grand master of Rhodes as his source for Persian affairs.

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emperor of Trebizond and thus of Christian blood.42 The patterns of a belief in the Christian ancestry, conversion and alliance that had dominated Western imagination about earlier Central Asian rulers, including Prester John, were thus being repeated here but at a much grander scale. Relations between the West and Iran and plans to use Iran as an ally in the war against the Ottomans were rather intermittent following Ismāʿil’s death. His son, Tahmasp (1524–1576) continued to wage war against the Ottomans throughout much of his reign, but he showed little interest in the West. Two missions we know of appear in the period of his reign before the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, an intercepted mission from Karl v in 1531, and the presence of a Venetian ambassador proposing alliance in 1540/2.43 Pope Pius v’s (r. 1566–1572) letter to Tahmasp was sent in 1571.44 It is not surprising, however, that Tahmasp sent no reply: Vincentino d’Alessandri, an Italian trader who was in Persia in 1571, reported that Tahmasp was interested in little but women and song, and would prove a poor ally.45 This did not prevent a general renewed interest in Iran in the West. Tahmasp died five years after Lepanto, and in 1583, Pope Gregory xiii (r. 1572–1585) sent an ambassador, Giovanni Battista Vecchietti, to the court of Tahmasp’s younger son, Mohammad Khodabandeh. This was done shortly after the publication in Paris of several apocryphal letters (perhaps of Flemish provenance) to Felipé ii of Spain, offering perpetual alliance against the Turks.46 Again, however, the papal ambassador reported that the position of the Shah was too weak for any alliances to be formed.47 42

43

44 45

46

47

The source for this story is unclear, though it parallels the life of Uzun Hasan who, as we have already noted, married the Trapezuntine emperor’s niece. Knobler, “Pseudo-­ Conversions,” 193. The capture of the embassy was noted by Marino Sanudo in his Diarii, see Michel Mazzaoui, “Šâh Tahmâsb and the Diaries of Marino Sanuto (1524–1533),” in Die Islamische Welt zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Festschrift für Hans Robert Roemer zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Ulrich Haarmann and Peter Bachmann. (Beirut/Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1979), 435 and n. 80. The second embassy was described by the ambassador, see Michele Membré, Relazione di Persia (1542). Ms. inedito dell’Archivio di Stato di Venezia, ed. Francesco Castro (Napoli, Istituto universitario orientale, 1969). Lockhart, “European contacts,” 384. See Vicentio d’Alessandrini, The travels of a merchant in Persia. In A narrative of Italian travels in Persia, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, transl. Charles Grey (London: Hakluyt Society, 1873), 2: 215–225. Copie des lesttres du grand Sophy … exorte … aller combattre avec luy contre le grand Turc. See Rouillard, Turk, 75. A second text, Copie de deux lettres escrittes au roy Philippe … par le Roy de Perse … par le Grand Turc, appeared in Antwerp in 1585. Lockhart, “European contacts,” 385–386.

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Eventually, relations with Iran were reestablished, during the reign of Shāh Abbās (1587–1629). The details of the many embassies, writings and speculations emanating from the West during this time are too many to discuss here.48 Shortly after the turn of the seventeenth century, we see another flurry of publication of tracts regarding supposed conversion, this time regarding Abbās.49 By 1601, Rome witnessed the arrival of a Persian embassy under the guidance of Anthony Sherley.50 Latins, both in Rome and Spain, witnessed the spectacle of a grand “eastern” embassy, which included several baptized Persians. The most famous of these was Uruch Beg (1560–1604), so-called “Don Juan of Persia,” a Christianized Iranian who wrote a memoir of the embassy.51 This was also a period when reports of the Persian capture of the Ottoman strongholds at Tabriz and Sis came hard on the heels of Austro-Ottoman conflict in Transylvania. Almost immediately, westerners were saturated with rumors that Abbās. had, himself, converted to Christianity. The number of such reports from different parts of Europe is quite remarkable: the Ardennais scholar, Remacle de Mohy du Rondchamp (1554–1621), wrote of it in 1605–1606; a series of letters, also published in Liege by Mohy du Rondchamp also discussed the matter.52 Included in Mohy du Rondchamp’s collection were letters addressed to “the most pious and powerful king of Ethiopia” and “to the most powerful king of the Persians” in which the author asks both monarchs to continue their attacks against Islam.53 In this way, the author was uniting the two streams of the distant Christian ruler trope: the Ethiopian and the Asian. Mohy also noted in both letters, as well as in a missive to Pope Paul v, that Abbās. had converted to the Catholic faith.54 Mohy had already written of Abbās.’ overtures to the West in his earlier Cabinet Historial.55 Tracts, similar to those regarding Ismāʿil, were also produced by several printers in France. 48

49 50 51 52

53 54 55

For a short outline of events, see Lockhart, “European contacts,” esp. 386ff; Jan Paul Niederkorn, “Zweifrontenkrieg gegen die Osmanen: Iranisch-Christliche Bündnispläne in der Zeit des ‘langen Türkenkriegs’ 1593–1606,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Osterreichische Geschichtsforsching 104/3–4 (1996), 310–323. See Knobler, “Pseudo-conversions,” 194–195. Anthony Sherley, Relation of travels into Persia (London: N. Butter & I. Bagset, 1613; reprinted Amsterdam: Thetrum Orbis Terrarum, 1974). Juan, de Persia, Relaciones de Don Juan de Persia, ed. Narciso Alonso Cortés (Madrid: Gráficas Ultra, 1946). See Léopold Dupont, “Unité chrétienne et croisade contre les turcs: un livre de Remacle Mohy retrouvé,” Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique = Archief- en bibliotheekwezen in België 45/1–2 (1974), 43–63. Ibid., 58–62. Ibid., 48–49. Ibid., 57.

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The most notable of these was an 1606 tract, La nouvelle conversion du roy de Perse published in three editions (Paris, Angers and Lyons). The narrative includes a series of impressive military victories by Abbās over the Ottomans and his subsequent conversion by Jesuits on Pentecost, 1605.56 What makes this text so singular is its discussion of the faith of previous Persian rulers. The author, who had clear Jesuit sympathies, reports (incorrectly) how the Shiʾa were of the race of Uzun Hasan: the same Uzun Hasan whose Christian pedigree was discussed above; how Shah Ismāʿil converted his people to this new faith, which was quite different from the faith of the Ottomans, and how he himself had been on the verge of conversion; and how the 1601 embassy to Pope Clement viii and Spain allowed the Jesuits to bring the Persians, great allies that they were, to the True Faith.57 A subsequent tract of 1616, Histoire veritable de tout qui ‘est passé en Perse depuis la conversion du grand Sophy, which was written by a “Knight of Malta” tells much the same tale. Herein we find a combination of the Hospitaller provenance of the 1508 story and a post-battle baptism, similar to that of 1606.58 Again, the tracts both appeared when reports of Persian victories were coupled with Persian diplomatic initiative. These literary “conversions” were merely one method of justifying alliances with Eastern princes in crusade. The maternal descent of Christian blood into the afore-mentioned rulers, was a convenient topos in times of crisis.59 Such topoi hark back to Prester John and Saint Thomas, as imagined by the West since the Middle Ages. Iran remained a key player in Western crusading plans well into the seventeenth century, as the production of these tracts demonstrates. Their status as Muslims proved irrelevant in the larger scheme of anti-Ottoman warfare.

Florence and the Druze of Lebanon

Another curious transformation of our theme can be seen regarding 17th century Lebanon. In November 1613, Fakhr-al-Din ibn Maan, the founder of modern Lebanon, landed at the Italian port city of Civitavecchia with about sixty partisans and family members. His object was to create an active military 56 57 58

59

La nouvelle conversion du roy de Perse:auec la deffette de deux cents mil Turcs apres sa conuersion. (Paris: François Hyby, 1606). Ibid. Pierre Boitel Gaubertin, Histoire veritable de tout ce qui s’est faict & passé en Perse depuis les ceremonies de baptisme du grand Sophy qui fut au commencement de l’année 1614 iusques à la my juin 1616 (Paris: n.p., 1616). See Knobler, “Pseudo-Conversions.”

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­alliance with the Papacy and the Medici rulers of Florence to drive the Ottomans from his land.60 In doing so, he hoped to create an independent Druzeled state. He would stay in the Italian peninsula for two years, first as the guest of the Medici and then at the pleasure of the viceroy of Sicily as the powers of Europe debated what to do with him. He was to become something of a cause celebre as was the group he represented, the Druze, who were to be speculated about, written about and generally studied throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries. In 1605, Raffaello Cacciamari, a counselor to Grand Duke Ferdinando i of Florence, wrote that in order to succeed in recapturing both Cyprus and Jerusalem from the Ottomans, contact should be made with the Druze, who were known to be in rebellion against Constantinople.61 Ferdinando was an interesting figure: he enacted an edict of tolerance in the late sixteenth century inviting Jews and heretics to settle in Florentine lands and the city of Livorno became a center for Jewish refugees from Spain. He also established the Typographia Medicea, in order to publish books in Arabic. He launched an expedition to Brazil to establish a Florentine colony there, and had dreams of establishing a Florentine empire in Africa. Ferdinando’s first diplomatic foray in Lebanon was actually towards Ali Janbulad, a Kurdish leader with whom Fakhr al-Din was allied.62 A formal alliance was signed in October 1607, which included a guarantee of Christian control of the Holy Places in Palestine.63 The alliance was very short lived, however, as Janbulad was defeated by the Ottomans within 2 months, and the focus of Tuscan diplomacy shifted to Fakhr-al-Din. In 1608, Ferdinando sent the Druze leader some arms, by way of a gift, and received in return Fakhr-al-Din’s agreement to treaty terms similar to those made with Jânbûlâd. Pope Paul v also sanctioned these new negotiations.64 Ferdinando died in 1609, and was succeeded by his tubercular son, Cosimo ii, best known as the primary political supporter of his childhood tutor Galileo Galilei. 60

61 62 63 64

Fakhr ad-Din ii, principe del Libano, e la corte di Toscana, 1605–1635, eds./transls. Bulus Qar’ali, Ettore Rossi and Ottoroni Montenovesi, 2 vols. (Rome: Reale academia d’Italia, 1936–1938), docs. xxiv–xxv. Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. i. On the Jânbûlâd rebellion of 1605/6–7, see Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn, Provincial leaderships in Syria, 1575–1650 (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1985): 24–27. Martiniano Roncaglia, “Fahr ad-Dîn ii al-Ma’nî, e la corte di Toscana: nuovi documenti (1607–1631),” al-Machriq 57 (1963), doc. ii. See letter from Paul v to Fakhr al-Dîn (16 January 1609), Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. xi.

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From 1610 to 1613, the Medici court and the papacy continued its support for Fakhr-al-Din and his fight against the Ottomans in Lebanon with singularly unflagging loyalty. Paul v even went to the extent of commending the Maronite community of Lebanon into Fakhr-al-Din’s hands for protection.65 In 1613, as noted above, Fakhr-al-Din, sensing a unfavorable change in Ottoman leadership, left Lebanon for the Medici court.66 Fakhr-al-Din was met with great ceremony, and was granted lodging in the Old Palace in Florence. Cosimo, seeing himself as the future king of Jerusalem, wrote to his allies to announce Fakhr-al-Din’s presence and to reopen negotiations to implement the crusading plans which had been discussed in his father’s time.67 Within a few months, much speculation arose in Italy about who the Druze actually were. It was concluded that they were direct descendants of crusaders who, following the fall of Acre in 1291, were led by the comte de Dreux to the region of Mount Lebanon. Again, we can see how the topos of the “distant Christian ruler” was transformed over time. This is a formulation that would have much currency in the early modern period. Henry Maundrell’s 1697 Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem on Easter followed this vein, as did Richard Pococke’s Description of the East from the 1740s and Puget de Saint-Pierre’s 1763 work entitled Histoire des Druses, Peuple du Liban, formé par une colonie de françois. It is clear that Fakhr-al-Din believed that, in order to secure his own position in Lebanon, he would need more assistance than the Medicis could provide. It was his desire to receive assistance from the king of France as well. Both he and Cosimo were, Fakhr-al-Din wrote, “the two lights of hope of Christendom.”68 Ultimately, Cosimo arranged for a military expedition to go to Lebanon [in April 1614] in order to restore Fakhr-al-Din to power.69 The emir refused, however, to be part of such a mission, acting upon news he had received of conditions in Lebanon.70 This impasse remained for well over a month, with Fakhr -al-Din expressing grave reservations about the Florentines’ ability to muster sufficient forces to guarantee his and his family’s security. At the urging of the French ambassador (and Orientalist) François Savary De Brèves, Fakhr-al-Din 65 66 67 68 69 70

See letter from Paul v to the Maronite Patriarch, Yuhanna Makhluf (25 September 1610) in Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. xiv. Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. xix. Michel Chebli, Fakhreddine ii Maan, prince du Liban, 1572–1635 (Beirut: Impr. catholique, 1946), 69. Fakhr-al-Din to De Brèves in Fakhr ad-Din ii, 197. Fakhr ad-Din ii, docs. xliii–xliv. Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. xlv.

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signed an agreement whereby Cosimo would agree to protect and house Fakhr al-Dîn and his family, and endeavor to make arrangements for an armada to go to Lebanon, with Fakhr-al-Din’s advisors and entourage. But, by the summer of 1615, Fakhr-al-Din was no closer to returning to Lebanon with European assistance than he had been the previous year. Furthermore, the Ottomans had been able to secure a peace with many of the ­powers of Europe, and very few states remained which would not have found his presence an embarrassment. Consequently, he accepted an invitation by Don Juan Téllez-Girón, the duke of Osuna and viceroy of Sicily, to move to Messina.71 Clearly little progress would be made if he remained in Florence, and the Medici court apparently felt that Fakhr-al-Din had outstayed his usefulness as a potential weapon in Tuscan eastern diplomacy. The emir remained in Sicily (first in Messina and then Palermo) for nearly three years, at the end of which time, hearing of better tidings in his homeland, he returned to Lebanon.72 Enthusiasm for Fakhr-al-Din as an agent of European ambitions regarding Jerusalem dissipated following his return to Lebanon. It was revived, however, in 1628 by Cardinal Antonio Marcello Barberini (1569–1646), brother of Pope Urban viii, who wrote of the potential of Fakhr-al-Din as an agent for the recovery of the Holy Places.73 The following year, the Tuscan court resumed commercial relations with Fakhr-al-Din, who encouraged the Europeans to reestablish consuls in Lebanon, for the economic benefit of all parties. This situation persisted until 1633, when the Ottomans again besieged Fakhr-al-Din.74 An ambassador he had sent to the courts of Ferdinando ii (Cosimo ii’s son) and to Urban viii, requesting munitions and assistance in return for granting the Christians possessions of Jerusalem, arrived too late to change the situation in Lebanon.75 Fakhr-al-Din was captured in 1633 and was beheaded in Constantinople at the order of Sultan Murād iv in the early Spring of 1635.76 If we are to consider the broader consequences of this little episode, and examine the place of Tuscan-Druze relations in the broader scale of OttomanWestern relations, we might see the following. First, the Fakhr-al-Dîn/­Medici diplomacy marked the entry of the Druze people onto the international stage. Previously, the Druze were a largely hidden minority group, living in the 71 See Fakhr ad-Din ii, docs. lxxii–lxxviii (pp. 275–82). 72 See Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. lxxxiv. 73 See report of Giovanni Battista Santi (28 June 1628) in Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. xciv. 74 See report of Fra Adriano dell Brossa (22 August 1633) in Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. clxvii; Abu-Husayn, Provincial, 124ff. 75 Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. clxx. 76 Abu-Husayn, Provincial, 126; see Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. clxxii.

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remote mountains of Lebanon. With Fakhr-al-Din’s foray to Italy, they became viewed as critical players in the crusading ambitions of the west. Which raises the point that the thought of a crusade of recovery had not completely died out in Latin Europe, even by the seventeenth century. Their notion of crusading was, albeit, romanticized almost beyond recognition, in such texts as Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberate (1580). What is increasingly typical of this period, however, are the attempts to create what I have called elsewhere “Patchwork Pedigrees” which intentionally Christianize the background of non-Christian princes, a motif which again goes back to Prester John and Saint Thomas.77 Christian genealogies were fashioned for Ottoman pretenders and the Shiʾi Safavid shahs of Iran alike – anyone who was in any position to defeat the Ottomans. In doing so, religious “others,” whether they be Muslim or Druze, were transformed into coreligionists and thus suitable and logical allies in anti-Ottoman holy war. Did Fakhr-ad-Din know of the myths created about Druze origin? It is likely. His correspondence with Savary de Brèves mentioned Godfrey of Bouillon and so we know he was aware enough of crusading history to include references to medieval Latin heroes in his letters.78 The Franciscan Eugene Roger, writing in the later 17th century, claimed to have heard the Godfrey of Bouillon connection story from Fakr-al-Din.79 He clearly played the rumors for all they were worth. In a letter, the Emir addressed the French Duc de Guise as “cousin.” Writing in the middle of the nineteenth-century, the Rev Henry Osborn, in his Holy Land Past & Present seemed to think Fakhr-al-Din actually invented the story himself.80 77 78 79

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Knobler, “Pseudo-Conversions.” Fakhr ad-Din ii, doc. xxxiv. Eugene Roger, La Terre Sainte, au, Terre de promission: description topographique des Saints Lieux, avec un traite des nations de differentes religions qui l’habitent, leurs moeurs, croyances, ceremonies et police: l’histoire de Fakhr de-Dine ii Man, prince des druzes, ed. Elias Kattar (Kaslik: Université Saint-Esprit, 1992). Henry S. Osborn, The Holy Land: past and present: sketches of travel in Palestine (London: Virtue, 1868).

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Jews and the Search for the Ten Lost Tribes Latin Christians in the West were not the only polities inventing mythologies of distant coreligionists. Jewish knowledge and belief in unexplored regions was, likewise, based on a combination of scholarship, myth and religious text, but, like Christians, there was a strong belief among European Jewish communities in the existence of unseen coreligionists. Often, Jews envisioned these coreligionists as members of the so-called Lost or Ten Tribes, who had not returned to Israel following the Babylonian exile.1 Their return, as the Prophets claimed, would herald the coming the Messiah.2 In this way, the search or desire to make contact with these hidden Jews always held a special significance for Jewish commentators that went beyond the hunger for political liberation from Christian or Muslim oppressors. Comparing Jewish with Christian designs regarding distant coreligionists will allow us to garner a fuller picture of the European mythological landscape. Jewish claims of the existence of powerful coreligionists dwelling in some unknown and distant place, hold particular importance in the ongoing polemical debate between Jews and Christians in medieval and early modern Europe. Christian, anti-Jewish polemic had long maintained that the Jews were a stateless people. That their lack of a king or army was proof of their doctrinal errors in light of Jesus’ assumption of David messiahship.3 For Jews, on the other hand, the belief in the existence of a distant and powerful Jewish state gave lie to Christian polemic. It also allowed for the Jewish assumption of a type of power Christians claimed as exclusively their own. And it used the notion of the eventual return of these armies/tribes as proof that the Davidic messiah had not yet come (i.e. that Jesus was a false messiah). In truth, medieval Jewish notions of geography and distance varied little from their Christian contemporaries, using Biblical and Talmudic geographical concepts to envision the world. India and Ethiopia/Cush, according to the book of Esther, marked the edges of the known world as personified in this 1 IChron. 4:43, 5:26. On this phenomenon see Ben-Dor Benite, Ten lost tribes. 2 Is. 11:11; Jer. 31:7; Eze. 37:8. On this, see Adolf Neubauer, “Where are the ten tribes?” Jewish quarterly review, 14–16; Muslim traditions about the Lost tribes also exist, see Uri Rubin, Between Bible and Qurʿan: the children of Israel and the Islamic self-image (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1999), 26–30, 46–48. 3 Isidore of Seville, Fide, col. 465.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004324909_009

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case by the boundaries of Ahasuerus’ kingdom.4 The Indies were, likewise, viewed by both groups as lands of great material wealth.5 Christians in the west came to know of their coreligionists and their kingdom in Ethiopia. Psalm 67 speaks of Ethiopia stretching out its hand to God was interpreted (as it was by later Christian commentators) as meaning the acceptance of monotheism in the country.6 Jews in Spain and Ashkenaz also came to believe in the strength of their brethren in northeastern Africa where Jewish traditions regarding ­Ethiopia were based on mishnaic sources regarding Moses, who, according to Josephus, was asked by Pharaoh to lead an army against the Ethiopians and subsequently wed an Ethiopian woman.7 The words of the Prophets regarding the wealth of Cush came to be enhanced by a midrashic tradition that linked 4 Est. 1:1, 8:9. Talmudic commentators come to interpret this as being from one end of the earth to the other. (bt. Megillah 11a; EstR 1:1). On European Jewish views of Ethiopia, see Jacob Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba :boundaries of gender and culture in postbiblical Judaism and medieval Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). For Cush as a place of wealth and merchandise, see Seder ʿolam, ed. Hayim Milikovski, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Yad Yitshak BenTsevi, 2013), 23. 5 Job 28:19; Is. 45:14; S.D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India traders of the Middle Ages: documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”), 2 vols. (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), passim. 6 For Christian interpretations of Psalm 67, see John Block Friedman, The monstrous races in medieval art and thought (Syracuse, ny: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 174; Aurelius Augustinus, Obras de San Agustin/20. Enarraciones sobre los Salmos, 2, ed. Balbino Martin Perez, 4 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de autores cristianos, 1965), 746–747; Saint Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, Sancti Hilarii Pictaviensis Episcopi Tractatus super Psalmos, eds. Jean Doignin and R. Demeulenaere, 3 vols. (Turnholt: Brepols, 1997–2009), 67.32, 33. 7 In general, see A.Z. Aescoly, “Yehudi habash ve-sefrut ha-ivrit.” Tsiyon 1 (1935), 316–36, 411–435). See Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, transls. Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin, 7 volumes. (Philadelphia: The Jewish publication society of America, 1936–1942), 2: 286; Tessa Rajak, “Moses in Ethiopia: Legend and Literature,” Journal of Jewish studies 29 (1978), 111–122; Avigdor Shinan, “Moses and the Ethiopian woman: sources of a story in the Chronicles of Moses,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 27 (1978), 66–78; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities in Josephus, ed./ transl. H.St.J. Thackeray, 10 vols. (London: Heinemann/New York: Putnam, 1926–1981), 2.242ff. See later medieval re-workings of Josephus in the Chronicles of Moses, ed. Avigdor Shinan, Hasifrut 24 (1977), 100–116. See also, Shimʾon, ha-Darshan mi-Frankfort, Yalkut Shimʾoni, eds. Arthur B. Hyman, Isaac N. Lerer and Yitshak Shiloni, 10 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kuk, 1973), 1.168 and the Sefer ha-yashar, ed. Joseph Dan (Jerusalem: Mosad Byalik, 1986); see also the English translation Sefer Hayasher: the Book of the generations of Adam, eds./transls. Abraham B. Walzer and Nachum Y. Kornfeld (Brooklyn: Simcha Graphic, 1993). See also, see Elʾazar ben Asher, ha-Levi, The chronicles of Jerahmeel; or, The Hebrew Bible historiale. Being a collection of apocryphal and pseudo-epigraphical books dealing with the history of the world from the creation to the

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Jews in Ethiopia with some of the Lost Tribes whose coming was to have such significant eschatological and millennial repercussions. By the advent of Islam in the early seventh century, therefore, both the Christian and Jewish West had a well developed belief in the existence of coreligionist nations in distant lands “on the other side” of Islam. The appearance during the Middle Ages of numerous pseudo-Messiahs among western and central Asian Jewry raised questions in the west of strong Jewish rulers and armies who might be able to come to the assistance of their brethren. Numerous tales of Jewish leaders defeating Muslim and Christian armies in the East piqued the interest of Sephardi Jews in particular, as the Prester John myth did for Latin Christians. Yitzhak ben Yakov (first half of the 8th century), was an active prophetmessiah near Isfahan in Persia. Also known as Abu Isa, he supported the idea that both Jesus and Muhammad were legitimate prophets among their own peoples. He urged the redemption, reclamation and rebuilding of Zion and subsequently attracted a considerable following among the local Jewish population. While not explicitly described as being a member of one of the Lost Tribes, he was discussed as having gathered an armed force which included members of the Tribes of Moses and, in some accounts, of defeating Muslim armies in battle.8 “Serenus” was another messianic claimant from Syria/Persia, whose fame and news of his supposed military exploits reached the Jewish communities in western Europe. Isidore of Badajoz, as well as other Spanish chroniclers spoke of his following and some stated how Jews from the West, in hearing of his coming, went eastward to join him9

death of Judas Maccabeus (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1899; reprinted New York: Ktav, 1972): 113ff. 8 Harris Lenowitz, The Jewish messiahs: from the Galilee to Crown Heights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 71–76; Leon Nemoy, “al-Qirqisani’s account of the Jewish sects and Christianity,” Hebrew Union College Annual 7 (1930), 317–397; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karim Shahrastani, Livre des religions et des sectes, eds./transls. Daniel Gimaret, Guy Monnot and Jean Jolivet, 2 vols. (Paris: Peeters, 1986–1993); Moses Maimonides, Letter to Yemen in A Maimonides reader, ed. Isadore Twersky (New York: Behrman House, 1972), 437f. 9 Lenowitz, Jewish messiahs, 77–78; Isidore of Badajoz, Coronica in España sagrada. Theatro geographico-historico de la iglesia de España. Origen, divisiones, y terminos de todas sus provincias. Antiguedad, traslaciones, y estado antiguo y presente de sus sillas, en todos los dominios de España, y Portugal, eds. Enrique Flórez, et al., 51 vols. (Madrid: M.F. Rodriguez, 1747–1879), 8: 298; Continuationes Isodorianae byzantia Arabica et hispana, ed. Theodore Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, n.d.,), 359 n. 1; on this, in general, see Joshua Starr, “Le Mouvement messianique au début du viiie siècle,” Revue des etudes juives 101 (1937), 81–92.

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We know that the Khazars of Central Asia, or at least their monarchs, did, in fact, convert to Judaism.10 Scholars have debated the actual date, and suggestions have ranged from 740 to 861.11 News of the Khazar conversion was well known in the West by the time the poet/philosopher Yehudah ha-Levi, wrote his famous Kuzari between 1120 and 1140. Jewish authors often assumed that the Jews of Khazaria, in Central Asia, were somehow descended from one of the Ten Tribes. The anonymous author of the so-called “Schechter Letter” (c. 949) mentioned, albeit skeptically, a tradition that the Khazar Jews were descended from the tribe of Simeon.12 News of distant Jewish tribes came to the West manifestly in the letter to the Jews of Spain regarding “Eldad ha-Dani” in the 9th century.13 A Jew of Babylon, Eldad is represented as a descendant of one of the Lost Tribes who wished to bring news of Jewish power and success afar to Jews living under Muslim rule across the Mediterranean.14 A letter of 883 sent to the Jews of Spain, from the Jews of Babylon about Eldad, noted how strong Jewish armies of a Jewish ­kingdom fought and defeated Christian Ethiopians princes.15 He wrote, too, of 10

This has recently been challenged. See Shaul Stampfer, “Did the Khazars convert to Judaism?” Jewish Social Studies 19/3 (2013), 1–72. 11 For a provocative discussion of the issue, see Roman Kovalev, “Creating ‘Khazar Identity’ Through Coins: The ‘Special Issue’ Dirhams of 837/38,” in East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Florin Curta (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 220–253; see also Constantine Zuckerman, “On the date of the Khazars’ conversion to Judaism and the chronology of the kings of the Rus Oleg and Igor; a study of the anonymous Khazar “letter” from the Genizah of Cairo,” Revue des Études Byzantines 53 (1995), 246; Omeljan Pritsak, “The Khazar Kingdom’s Conversion to Judaism,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2/3 (1978), 278–279; Shlomo Pines, “A Moslem text concerning the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism,” Journal of Jewish studies 13 (1962), 47; Peter B. Golden, “Khazaria and Judaism,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 3 (1983), 127–156. 12 Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew documents of the tenth century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1982), 113. 13 Two very distinct versions have appeared of Eldad’s story. 14 See Sefer Eldad ha-Dani, in Abraham Epstein, Kitve, ed. Abraham Meir Habermann, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1949–1956), 1: 1–189; the only English translation is that contained in Jewish travelers in the Middle Ages: 19 firsthand accounts, ed./transl. Elkan Nathan Adler (London: G. Routledge, 1930; reprinted New York: Dover, 1987), 5–15. The editions and translations differ considerably in the order in which they present the text. The first printed edition was printed in Mantua (c. 1475). See also Ben-Dor Benite, Ten lost tribes, 86–90. 15 These, according to Eldad, are the tribes of Naphtali, Gad and Asher. The text of Eldad’s letter printed in Istanbul (1519) is much more explicit in describing the defeat of the Christian Ethiopians. Considering the (then) current failure of the long hoped-for Prester John alliance to pan out in Ethiopia, the Jewish reemphasis of Jewish strength in light of Christian weakness is particularly pointed.

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Jewish armies and “mighty men of war” who defeated Muslim armies in the Hejaz, and who exacted tribute from Muslims in Iraq.16 Eldad’s views on the Khazars were that they even took tribute from Muslim nations. Several versions of the Eldad story exist, such as those collected in Jerahmeel b. Solomon’s Chronicles of Jerahmeel (12th century). One of Jerahmeel’s documents, the Chronicle of Elchanan b. Joseph, is more specific than Eldad’s account in discussing the great Jewish nations that took tribute from Muslims in the East.17 There has also been some recent scholarship which has attempted to make the case for the Eldad story being the source for the Christian Prester John story, arguing that the latter was an attempt to discredit the former in a claim of dueling mythologies.18 Perhaps even more significantly, in the mid-10th century, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, vizier to the Umayyad caliphs Abd-ar-Rahman iii (r. 911–961) and Hakim (r. 961–976), heard of a Jewish kingdom in Central Asia and sent investigators to discover what they could.19 Following Hasdai’s inquiries, news of its existence came to be widely disseminated, both in Spain and Ashkenaz. A letter (now lost) received by Hasdai’s ambassador, and reported by Jehudah al-Barceloni, came to be considered an important treatise in Spain.20 Hasdai himself wrote a letter to the Khazar khan requesting information on the extent, strength and scope of his kingdom.21 While no verifiable reply was ever received, a letter, purporting to be from the Khazar khan Joseph, circulated in Spain in the 11th century. While no specific mention was made of the possibility of the Khazars coming to assist their coreligionists in Spain, rumors of a strong Khazar army certainly suggests that such action was not far from the minds of many 16

The tribe of Ephraim and the half-tribe of Manasseh dwelling in the Hejaz. The tribe of Simeon and the half tribe of Manasseh live in Babylonia. 17 Elʾazar ben Asher, ha-Levi, Chronicles of Jerahmeel, 199–200. 18 On Eldad and his relationship to Prester John, see Micah Perry, “The Imaginary War between Prester John and Eldad the Danite and its Real Implications,” Viator 41/1 (2010), 1–23. 19 On Hasdai’s correspondence, see Golb and Pritsak., Khazarian, Chapter 9. 20 Simha Assaf, “R. Yʾhuda al-Barzeloni ʿal-ʾiggeret Yosef Melech ha-kuzarim,” Jeshurun 5 (1925), 113–117, [reprinted in Mekôrôt û-mehkarim be-toldot Yisrael, (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1946): 91–95]; Idem, “L’divre R. Yʾhuda Barzeloni ʿal ha-kuzarim,” Tsiyon 7 (1941), 48; Jacob Mann, Texts and studies in Jewish history and literature, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1931–1935; reprinted New York: Ktav, 1972), 1:8; cf. Simon Dubnow, “Maskanot ahanorot bi-sheʾelat ha-kuzarim.” In Sefer zikaron li-khevod ha-Dr. Shemuel Avraham Poznanski, (Warsaw: ha-Vaʿad shel Bet-ha-keneset ha-gadol bi-Rehov Telomatskah, 1927): 3; Ben-Zion Dinur, “me-ʿarchiviono shel Perets-Smoleskin,” Kiryat sefer 1 (1924), 77–84. 21 Mann, Texts, 1:23. Attribution of Hasdai’s letter has been a subject of dispute.

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European Jews. Abraham Ibn Daʾūd (fl. 1160–1161) noted that he had seen Khazar descendants in Toledo.22 Quite apart from the case of the Khazars, the belief in the existence of other large Jewish communities, particularly those under independent Jewish leadership, was very significant for western Jews for the liberatory potential such lands might possess. Moses ibn Ezra (fl. 1080) wrote that Khorasan was the dwelling place of the 10 tribes in his own time.23 Benjamin of Tudela (fl. 1170) noted 80,000 Jews dwelling in Ghazna (in Central Asia).24 A letter written pseudepigraphically in the name of Moses Maimonides in the early 13th century claimed that a series of Jewish tribes had gathered in an army in Isfahan. The cause of this ingathering was “to reassure the oppressed hearts of our distant brothers, so that they stand up a little longer during this time of oppression.”25 The coming of the Mongols was met with much more enthusiasm by Jews than it was by Christians. 1240, which was the year 5000 in the Jewish calendar, was a year of messianic expectation. A contemporary Jewish letter from Sicily refers to the Mongols as “emissaries from the enclosed [nations]” who were greatly feared by all the major kings of Europe.26 The Annales Marbacenses reported that Jews celebrated the coming of the Mongols as redeemers.27 Another chronicle, the Gesta Treverorum Continuatio described the Jews heralding the Mongols as the coming Messiah.28 .

*** 22

23 24

25 26

27 28

Abraham ben David Ibn Daʾud, A critical edition with a translation and notes of the Book of tradition (Sefer ha-qabbalah), ed./transl. Gerson D. Cohen (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1967), Heb., 68/transl. 93. M. Schreiner, “Le Kitab al Muhadara de Moise b. Esra,” Revue des etudes juifs 21 (1890), 98–117; 22 (1891), 62–81, 236–249. Benjamin, of Tudela, The itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: travels in the Middle Ages, ed./ transl. Marcus Nathan Adler (London: H. Frowde, 1907; reprinted Malibu: J. Simon, 1983). See Walter J. Fischel, “The Jews of Central Asia (Khorasan) in medieval Hebrew and Islamic literature,” Historia Judaica 7 (1945), 39. See also Ben-Dor Benite, Ten lost tribes, 100–108. Adolf Neubauer, Une pseudo-biographie de Moise Maimonide,” Revue des Etudes Juives, 4 (1882), 173–188. Sophia Menache, “Tartars, Jews, Saracens and the Jewish-Mongol ‘Plot’ of 1241,” History 81 (1996), 334. In this, the letter was drawing on the mythology of Alexander the Great and the enclosed nations of Gog and Magog. On this subject in general, see Andrew Runni Anderson, Alexander’s gate, Gog and Magog, and the inclosed nations, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Medieval academy of America, 1932). Annales marbacenses, ed. Hermann Bloch (Hannover/Leipzig: Hahn, 1907), 174. Gesta Treverorum continuata: Contiunatio iii (Hanover/Leipzig: Hahn, 1879), 403.

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While many more Christians than Jews searched for and claimed to have found members of the Ten Lost Tribes from the thirteenth through the nineteenth (and even into the twentieth) centuries, Jews held particular interest in the military capacity of such tribes, and their concomitant attempts to make alliances in the West. For example, in the early sixteenth century we have the publication of a Hebrew-language version of the letter of Prester John, where the great king stands as a foil for the Jewish people.29 It speaks of how Prester John’s kingdom is “near to the country of the Jews.”30 The Jews are restrained from advancement by the fabled Sambatyon river, which can only be crossed on the Sabbath. Unlike the Christian version of the letter, the Jews of the Hebrew letter are powerful and independent: “if the Jews were able to cross they would cause great damage … against Christians as well as Ishmaelites … for there is no nation … which can stand up to them.”31 Other pieces of Jewish messianic history begin to find interest in this period, close to or immediately following the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. For example, the Sefer Eldad ha-Dani was published at least six times between 1474 and 1563, with a Latin translation appearing in Paris in 1584. The turn of the sixteenth century also saw the appearance in Italy of Asher Lämmlein, who predicted the imminent coming of the Messiah in 1500.32 He was followed shortly thereafter by Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, who wrote at length of a forthcoming Turkish invasion of Europe and its messianic portents. He also spoke of the “Falasa” of Ethiopia as a “strong kingdom of Jews who are valiant.”33 The most significant discussion of the Ten Lost Tribes among 16th century Jews (and Christians, for that matter) surrounded the arrival in Europe of David ha-Reuveni.34 Claiming to represent a Jewish nation in the East whose troops were massing for an assault on Islam, David ha-Reuveni appeared in the West in 1523 and for the next seven years traveled throughout Europe seeking

29 30 31 32

33

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The Hebrew letters of Prester John, ed./transl. Edward Ullendorff; ed. C.F. Beckingham (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). Hebrew Letters, 42–43. Hebrew Letters, 58–59. Isaiah Tishby, “Acute Apocalyptic Messianism,” in Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, ed. Marc Saperstein (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 269, 281 nos. 33, 34. Steven Kaplan, “Some Hebrew Sources on the Beta Israel (Falasha),” Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies: University of Addis Ababa, 1984, ed. Taddese Beyene (Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopian Studies/Frankfurt: Frobenius Institute, 1988), 205. See Moti Benmelech, “History, Politics, and Messianism: David ha-Reuveni’s Origin and Mission,” ajs Review 35/1 (2011), 35–60.

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papal and royal backing for a joint Jewish-Christian military campaign against the Ottomans.35 His broad scheme was to convince Pope Clement vii to broker a peace between France and the Empire, which then, in conjunction with the Ethiopians and the Jewish army of his brother, “King Joseph” would restore Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Clement clearly took him seriously, and placed him under Papal protection, a curious turn of events considering that it implied an approval of a Latin-Jewish alliance.36 Giambattista Ramusio (1485– 1557), the Venetian compiler of travellers’ texts, impressed by Reuveni’s stories, likened him to Prester John.37 Likewise, his contemporary, Abraham Farissol, devotes an entire chapter of his Iggeret to Reuveni.38 The Pope recommended Reuveni to the Portuguese, whose own political interest in Ethiopia was of historical record, and have been mentioned earlier. Reuveni proceeded to Portugal where he spent two years at the court of King João iii. Preaching a message of crusade before Christians and salvation before conversos, Reuveni trod a careful and, as later events proved, dangerous line. He joined forces in 1532 with another preacher, the Portuguese-born converso Solomon Molkho, whose work in Salonika had, like Reuveni, attracted Papal patronage. Reuveni’s popularity among Jews and Molkho’s personal reconversion to Judaism (he circumcised himself), drew the ire of the Imperial court at Ratisbon, and saw both men condemned by the same Latin audiences and hierarchy that had praised them hitherto. The significance of Reuveni was that he demonstrated the willingness of the Papacy to believe in the existence of unseen armies, waiting to march on Jerusalem, despite the lack of any substantive proof. Reuveni’s claims are a good example of Jewish manipulation of the Christian belief in distant allies.

35

36 37 38

A text attributed to Reuveni and outlining his supposed exploits and travels has been published in many editions. The most authoritative is Sipur David ha-Reuveni ‘al-pi kitavyad Oksford bi-tzaruf kitavim ve ‘adviot mi-beni ha-dor’ ‘im mavo’ ve-k-‘arot, ed. Aaron Zeev Aescoly (Jerusalem: Mosad Byalik, 1993). An English translation may be found in Jewish travelers, 251–328. On Reuveni, see Miriam Eliav-Feldon, “Invented identities: credulity in the age of prophecy and exploration.” Journal of early modern history 3/3 (1999), 203–232. 1523 is also the year in which a Christian pamphlet claiming the massing of 600,000 Jews appeared in Germany. See Andrew Colin Gow, The red Jews: antisemitism in an apocalyptic age, 1200–1600, (Leiden/New York: e.j. Brill, 1995), 148–155. See Rinaldi, Annales. Giovanni Batista Ramusio, Navigazioni e viaggi, ed. Marica Milanesi, 6 vols. Turin: Einaudi, 1978–1988. Abraham ben Mordechai Farissol, Igeret orhot shalem, id est, itinera mundi sic dicta nempe cosmografia, transl. Thomas Hyde (Oxford: Henry Bonwick, 1691). [Early English Books, 1641–1700, 1331:8], Chapter 14.

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Several Jewish scholars who came after Reuveni mused about the Ten Lost Tribes. Farissol’s interest in Reuveni was not merely an isolated incident.39 He viewed Reuveni skeptically but was willing to allow that he may have represented one of the Ten Lost Tribes. This search was central in the writing of his Iggeret. His commentaries on distant Jews were legion.40 He saw the new explorations in the Americas, in particular, as an opportunity for the possible discovery of Jews in the new found lands. The Italian rabbi Azariah dei Rossi (c. 1511–1578) took a carefully historical approach to the Tribes. He stated that there were numerous Jews in Ethiopia, but that these were not descended from the Tribes, but rather from either the Queen of Sheba or from Moses’ Ethiopian wife.41 The appearance of Reuveni and Eldad both proved that there was no “insuperable” mountain or river, but that the larger masses of Jews did not follow because they were simply comfortable where they were.42 Joseph ben Loew ben Bezalel, otherwise known as the Maharal of Prague (1520–1609), argued that the plausibility of the existence of the Ten Tribes was made manifest by the discovery of America. America was the olam hadash, (new world) the place of refuge for the separated (not lost) tribes.43 None of these commentators ventured that the Tribes were going to come to Europe to liberate the Jews there. In this, they differed from the claims of Reuveni considerably, or Christian commentators of the seventeenth century, who spoke of the appearance of the Tribes as imminent.44 It is clear from these accounts that Jews, like the Druze, were able to create  their own stories and mythologies, in part based on and in reaction to, Christian mythologies. Their ability to manipulate Christian, as well as Jewish audiences, with tales of distant coreligionists created a milieu of dueling mythologies with both bowed to the veracity of the others’ tales, yet then used them for their own purposes. 39

See David B. Ruderman, The world of a Renaissance Jew : the life and thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981). 40 Farissol, Iggeret, Chapters 1, 10, 13, 14, 15, 24, 25, 28. 41 André Neher, Jewish thought and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century: David Gans (1541–1613) and his times (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1986): 140. 42 Neher, Jewish Thought, 141. 43 Neher, Jewish Thought, 142–144. 44 Adam Knobler, “Crusading for the Messiah: Jews as Instruments of Christian anti-Islamic Holy War,” in Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, eds. Michael Gervers and James M. Powell (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000).

Conclusions The mythologies of the Middle Ages concerning a distant king or peoples who would come to assist their European coreligionists, gradually evolved into realities of the Early Modern period. Diplomacy was to reveal a variety of truths which often fell short of European presuppositions. Prester John became the epithet for the negus of Ethiopia, a king (among many) of a small northeast African polity.1 Saint Thomas came to be regarded as the Patron Saint of India, but the community of his followers there were condemned as heretics, and relegated to a curious footnote by those Europeans trying to trace the history of “mainstream” Christianity in the West. His history in the New World, while first linked to indigenous American beliefs about earlier gods, soon was disregarded by the mainstream Catholic church. The Il-khans, Timurids, Aq Quyunlu and Safavids, each collapsed in turn, ­having made an impression on Iranian culture and politics but without ever having converted to Christianity as western commentators had hoped. Columbus would die before seeing his legacy amount to much, though much of his personal concern in later life was to see that his heirs would be entitled to some profit from the worlds he uncovered. While the Jews were unable to conduct their own diplomacy, and were certainly not crusaders, the Ten Lost Tribes are still invoked in determining the legitimacy of claims to Jewish ancestry of different groups globally, including in Asia and Africa. The extent to which mythologies underpinned the voyages of expansion and exploration in the early modern period is quite striking. In the Latin case, Christianity was imagined to be both a global, preexisting belief system and a religion that was a readily evident truth which would attract adherents easily. The origin of Prester John’s Christianity was rarely questioned nor was the global nature of St. Thomas’ preaching, who was to have spread the gospel in two hemispheres. The episodes with David Reuveni and the Druze of Lebanon demonstrate how Jewish and Christian mythologies began to rely on each other’s expectations. The Ten Lost Tribes are still assumed to exist by many in an attempt to globalize Judaism. The actual crusades to the Holy Land achieved few of the goals with which they began. The Latin desire to find allies “on the other side of Islam” with 1 Though it should be mentioned that Prester John continued to fascinate some observers well beyond the seventeenth century. On this, see Michael E. Brooks, “Prester John: A Reexamination and Compendium of the Mythical Figure Who Helped Spark European Expansion,” (PhD dissertation, University of Toledo, 2009), Chapter 7.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004324909_010

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whom they could fight the crusades, resulted in grave disappointment and the search was eventually abandoned as unnecessary. Yet the entire process, of trying to find such allies and creating such fantastical tales about them, left a legacy of discovery of previously unknown peoples and places, and the establishment “new Europes,” with Christian (or Jewish) populations from Santo Domingo to Sydney. Mythmaking about hidden, mystical lands continued through the 20th century, from El Dorado to Shangri-La, but no longer was crusading at the heart of such fantasies. Rather, storytellers chose to use them as mirrors to hold up to their western readers as utopias. Prester John’s kingdom was certainly posited as a utopia. The Americas were first thought by Columbus to be near Paradise. The Thomas Christians, while not living in a paradise or utopia, represented a “lost” apostolic church which per force was directly connected to Jesus’ life and preaching, and thus a “pure” Christianity. What do diplomacy and mythology have to do with each other? Diplomatic overtures to newly discovered groups or polities are, per force, taken under pre-existing cosmographical assumptions. In this way, in most cases, the Latin west assumed it had some knowledge of the peoples they met, even if such assumptions were based purely on false expectations. Mythologies such as Prester John set the stage for all further encounters and diplomacy in the lands where he was supposed to dwell, simply because he became part of Latin cosmological reality. Having been able to situate so many different groups and peoples into places in European cosmology, one of the missing pieces of the puzzle is how Europeans were considered in the cosmologies of those they encountered. Most of the societies that the Latins faced had written culture, but sources from these different places have yet to be examined systematically for the descriptions they had of Europeans. This examination of European expansion from the non-European side would be a worthwhile project for the future. The Ten Lost Tribes, too, need more examination in conjunction with studies of Early Modern European Expansion. Jews developed a world view that paralleled that of Christians in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, aware of the voyages of exploration and their results. There is as of yet no study which integrates the Jews into the history of expansion, other than as individual players. Much more could be said about the use of mythologies in diplomatic history and this history of European-non-European contacts after the time period under examination here. North America, the Pacific, Himalayan Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are still to be examined and compared for first and lasting impressions. European mythologies about these places abound, and were used in establishing relationships with the wider world in the 17th, 18th, and 19th

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centuries as they were in the centuries previous, but that, too, is the subject for more, future work. The persistence of mythologies, and the desire to find allies “out there” continued to shape the expectations of emissaries, diplomats and explorers into the seventeenth century and beyond. The mythologies upon which first contact with non-European peoples were predicated soon gave way to realities which diplomacy unveiled. Yet, as the world map increased in size and scope, new mythologies were created about newly discovered peoples and places in the new holes the new maps contained.

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Index Abaqa 15n, 17. See also Il-khans Acts of Thomas 57, 58 Ahmad “Graññ” 52–54 Allies, search for anti-Muslim 2, 4, 17, 20, 30, 34, 38n, 39, 43n, 46, 51, 54, 55, 63, 70, 71, 79–81, 85, 91, 95, 103, 105–107 Aq Quyunlu 3, 80–84 Aragon 17, 19, 26, 27, 36, 39, 40, 42, 43, 51

Jerusalem 6, 11, 14, 15, 20, 25, 32, 38–39, 43, 49, 51, 60, 72–75, 79, 92–94, 103 Jews 2, 4, 10, 76, 92, 105, 106 Joachim, de Fiore 73, 74 John, Patriarch 5, 6 John, Prester 2, 6, 7, 9, 12, 30, 36, 41, 43–48, 51–52, 56n, 58–60, 69, 100n, 102, 105, 106

Bayezid 23–27 Bukhārī, hadith collection by 31, 34n, 35n

Llull, Ramon 18, 21n Louis ix of France 12, 13, 15

Christianity, pre-Columbian in Americas 66–69 Clavijo, Ruy Gonzalez de 28 Columbus, Christopher 2, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 79, 105 Cortes, Hernán 67–69, 74 Crusades 6–8, 10, 17, 19, 21, 22, 24, 32, 42–45, 47n, 60, 71–76, 79, 87, 93, 95

Mahfuz 49–52 Mamluks 14, 15, 21, 22, 30, 38–40, 43, 45, 49, 50, 87 Mañoel I of Portugal 48, 51, 59–62, 65, 86, 87 Manuel ii Palaeologos 24, 27, 28n Mendieta, Geronimo de 72, 74 Methodius, pseudo- 34, 74 Mexico 3, 68, 69, 74, 75, 77 Mongols 2, 8–15, 16n, 17–22, 71, 101 Moros y cristianos 75 Mythology(ies) x, xi, 9, 22, 32, 33, 36, 43, 56n, 59, 68, 71, 79, 86, 95, 96, 100, 104–107

Edward ii of England 21 Eldad, ha-Dani 99, 100, 102, 104 Enrique iii of Castile 26–28 Ethiopia 2, 3, 87, 90, 96–99, 102–104 Fakhr-al-Din 91–95 Ferdinand of Aragon 59, 74, 76, 78 Ghazan 19–22, 25. See also Il-khans Güyük khan 11–13 Henrique, prince of Portugal, “the Navigator” 44–46 Hungary/Hungarian kings 9, 10, 81, 82, 84, 86, 87

Nile 30, 31n, 36n, 40, 41 Öljeitü 21, 22. See also Il-khans Ottomans 23, 24, 26, 45, 48n, 50–54, 65, 78–96 Peru 3, 75 Portugal/Portuguese 3, 41n, 42–67, 87n, 103

Il-khans 14–19, 21, 22 India 3, 6n, 7, 49, 53, 57–59, 61–64, 96 Indian Ocean 35, 43, 49–52, 60, 61, 63, 79 Inkas 68, 69

Reuveni, David ha- 102–105

Jaume I of Aragon 17, 18, 19n

Tarik-i HInd-i Garbi 78

Safavids 3, 84–91 Socotra 50, 65, 66

151

Index Ten Lost Tribes of Israel 2, 4, 96, 98, 99, 102, 104 Thomas, apostle 1, 6, 57, 58, 65, 67–69, 105 Thomas Christians/Mar Thoma Khristianis 3, 57, 58, 61–63, 65, 105, 106 Timūr 2, 23–29, 81 Toqtamiş 23

Venice/Venetians 20n, 23, 82–86 William, of Rubruck 13 Wives, Christian of Turco-Mongol princes 14, 84n Zär’a Ya’iqob 40, 41