Johann Schiltberger - Writings

Writings

Schiltberger's Reisebuch contains not only a record of his own experiences and a sketch of various chapters of contemporary Eastern history, but also an account of countries and their manners and customs, especially of those countries which he had himself visited. First come the lands "this side" of Danube, where he had travelled; next follow those between the Danube and the sea, which had now fallen under the Turk; after this, the Ottoman dominions in Asia; last come the more distant regions of Schiltberger's world, from Trebizond to Russia and from Egypt to India. In this regional geography the descriptions of Brusa; of various west Caucasian and Armenian regions; of the regions around the Caspian, and the habits of their peoples (especially the Red Tatars); of Siberia; of the Crimea with its great Genoese colony at Kaffa (where he once spent five months); and of Egypt and Arabia, are particularly worth notice. His allusions to the Catholic missions still persisting in Armenia and in other regions beyond the Euxine, and to (non-Roman ?) Christian communities even in the Great Tatary of the steppes are also remarkable.

Schiltberger is perhaps the first writer of Western Christendom to give the true burial place of Muhammad at Medina: his sketches of Islam and of Eastern Christendom, with all their shortcomings, are of remarkable merit for their time: and he may fairly be reckoned among the authors who contributed to fix Prester John, at the close of the Middle Ages, in Abyssinia. Schiltberger also recorded one of the first European sightings of Przewalski horses. (Manuscript in the Munich Municipal Library, Sign. 1603, Bl. 210). His work, however, contains many inaccuracies; thus in reckoning the years of his service both with Bayezid and with Timur he is off unaccountably in multiples of two.

His account of Timur and his campaigns is misty, often incorrect, and sometimes fabulous: nor can von Hammer's parallel between Marco Polo and Schiltberger be sustained without large reservations. Four manuscripts of the Reisebuch exist: (i) at Donaueschingen in the Fürstenberg Library, No. 481; (2) at Heidelberg, University Library, 216; (3) at Nuremberg, City Library, 34; (4) at St Gall, Monast. Library, 628 (all of fifteenth century, the last fragmentary).

The work was first edited at Augsburg, about 1460; four other editions appeared in the 15th century, and six in the 16th; in the 19th the best were K. F. Neumann's (Munich, 1859), P. Bruun's (Odessa, 1866, with Russian commentary, in the Records of the Imperial University of New Russia, vol. i.), and V. Langmantel's (Tübingen, 1885); "Hans Schiltbergers Reisebuch," in the 172nd volume of the Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart. See also the English (Hakluyt Society) version, The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger ..., trans. by Buchan Telfer with notes by P. Bruun (London, 1879); Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, "Berechtigung d. orientalischen Namen Schiltbergers," in Denkschriften d. Konigl. Akad. d. Wissenschaften (vol. ix., Munich, 1823-1824); R. Röhricht, Bibliotheca geographica Palaestinae (Berlin, 1890, pp. 103-104); C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 356-378, 550, 555.