Journey

Niccolò de' Conti — twenty-five years east (1419–44)

Stops (7)

1. Venice · home · left 1419

   He left Venice about 1419 as a young merchant and was away twenty-five years, travelling in Persian dress and, under duress at Cairo, as a Muslim. He dictated the account to the papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini in Florence on his return, as part of doing penance for the conversion. He travelled as a Persian merchant for twenty-five years, which is how he got further east than any European of his century.

2. Damascus · Damascus, and the language

   Damascus, where he learned Arabic well enough to pass as a Persian merchant for the rest of the journey. That disguise is why he got further east than any European of his century, and why the account exists — and it is also what he had to confess to the Pope to be absolved of.

3. Hormuz · Hormuz and the crossing

   Down the Gulf to Hormuz and across to India on the monsoon. He gives the ports in order and describes the ships as larger than European ones, with several masts and watertight compartments — one of the earliest European notices of the bulkhead, which Europe did not adopt for another four centuries.

4. Khambhat / Cambay · Cambay

   Cambay, entering India through the Gujarat trade, where he notes the Jains and the practice of not harming living things — one of the first European descriptions of Jainism. He also describes sati, which he had to explain to readers who had no framework for it, and the agate and carnelian work of the hinterland.

5. Hampi / Vijayanagara · Vijayanagara

   Vijayanagara — he gives the city a circuit of sixty miles, the largest figure any visitor gives, describes the king's wives and the festival processions, and is the earliest European to describe the capital at all. Poggio wrote it down from his dictation in Latin, which is the only form it survives in.

6. San Thome, Mylapore · Mylapore

   Mylapore on the Coromandel, where he visited the tomb of St Thomas and found a community of Nestorian Christians in communion with the Church of the East at Baghdad rather than with Rome — a distinction his Latin report blurs. His notice is one of the things that kept the Thomas tradition alive in Europe until the Portuguese arrived to look for it.

7. Malaiyur (Jambi / Malayu, Sumatra) · a year in Sumatra

   A year in Sumatra, in the pepper and gold country, before going on to Burma and Java — the eastern end of a route Europeans would not travel again for two generations. His account reached Europe through Poggio's Latin and was read by mapmakers, including Fra Mauro, who used it on his world map of 1459.