Person · Venetian merchant-traveller
Niccolo de' Conti
Also known as Niccolò de' Conti, Nicolò de' Conti, Niccolò dei Conti, Nicolo Conti, Nicolo de Conti
Niccolo de' Conti (c. 1395–1469) was a Venetian merchant who spent some twenty-five years in the East, from about 1419 to 1444, sailing on Muslim-owned ships after learning Arabic in Damascus and Persian in Iran. He reached Cambay, Vijayanagara and the Thomas tomb at Mylapore, then Sumatra, Burma, Java and Champa. His story, taken down by Poggio Bracciolini in 1444, fed the Fra Mauro map of 1450 and was later used by Varthema and Pigafetta.
- Date
- c. 1395 – 1469
- Function
- Travel & migration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
In India he called Telugu the 'Italian of the East', because its words end in vowels as Italian words do.
His Vijayanagara visit is placed before 1420, 'perhaps during the reign of Deva Raya II', but the Deva Raya II article dates that reign from 1423, so the date and the ruler of the visit are uncertain.
Connections (5)
- Traveller routeHampi / Vijayanagara
Conti travelled inland to Vijayanagara, which he called the capital of the Deccan, and reported that its king was more powerful than all the other kings of India and levied tribute on Ceylon, Quilon, Pegu, Pulicat and Tenasserim. Like Abd al-Razzaq after him, he remarked on the royal harem. His account is one of the two main outsider descriptions of the Sangama court in the age of Deva Raya II.
- Traveller routeSan Thome, Mylapore
On the east coast Conti went to 'Maliapur', probably modern Mylapore in Chennai, and visited the tomb of St Thomas, the apostle whom Christian tradition credits with founding a community there. It was in India too that he married, apparently an Indian woman, who travelled with him for the rest of his journey until she and two of their four children died in an epidemic in Egypt on the way home.
- Traveller routeKhambhat / Cambay
Cambay in Gujarat was Conti's landfall in India. After crossing the desert to Baghdad, sailing down the Tigris to Basra and through the Persian Gulf, and learning Persian in Iran, he crossed the Arabian Sea to Cambay, travelling as he did throughout on ships owned by Muslim merchants. He passed through Cambay again in the 1430s on his way west by Quilon, Kochi and Calicut towards Aden, Jidda and Cairo.
- Life routeVenice
Conti left Venice around 1419 and returned in 1444 after twenty-five years away, and stayed there as a respected merchant. That year Poggio Bracciolini recorded his account for Book IV of De varietate fortunae, and the mapmaker Fra Mauro is thought to have drawn on conversations with him for the world map of 1450, taking many place names and descriptions directly from Conti. The first printed edition, in Latin, followed in 1492.
- AnalogueAbd al-Razzaq Samarqandi
Conti and Abd al-Razzaq reached south India within the same quarter-century, one a Venetian merchant on Muslim ships, the other a Timurid envoy from Herat, and both described Vijayanagara in the age of Deva Raya II. Their verdicts run in parallel: Conti thought its king the most powerful in India, Razzaq that nothing in the world equalled the city, and both remarked on the harem. Their narratives were published together in R. H. Major's India in the Fifteenth Century (1857).
Sources
Wikipedia, "Niccolò de' Conti"; "Deva Raya II". R. H. Major (ed.), India in the Fifteenth Century (Hakluyt Society, 1857); Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae, book IV.
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