JOHANN

SCHILTBERGER  or HANS (1381-1440?), German traveller and writer, was born of a noble family in 1381 (May 9th ?), probably at Hollern near Lohof, half way between Munich and Freising, on what was then a property of his family . In 1394 he joined the suite of Lienhart Richartinger, and went off to fight under Sigismund, king of Hungary (afterwards emperor), against the Turks on the Hungarian frontier . At the battle of Nicopolis (Sept . 28th, 1396) he was wounded and taken prisoner: when he had recovered the use of his feet, Sultan Bayezid I . (Ilderim) took him into his service as a runner (1396–1402) . During this time he seems to have accompanied Ottoman troops to certain parts of Asia Minor and to Egypt . On Bayezid's overthrow at Angora (July loth, 1402), Schiltberger passed into the service of Bayezid's conqueror Timur: he now appears to have followed Themurlin to Samarkand, and perhaps also to Armenia and Georgia . After Timur's death (February 17th, 1405) his German runner first became a slave of Shah Rukh, the ablest of Timur's sons; then of Miran Shah, a brother of Shah Rukh; then of Abu Bekr, a son of Miran Shah, whose camproamed up and down Armenia . He next accompanied Chekre, a Tatar prince living in Abu Bekr's horde, on an excursion to Siberia, of Which name Schiltberger gives us the first clear mention in west European literature . He also probably followed his new master in his attack on the Old Bulgaria of the middle Volga, answering to the modern Kazan and its neighbourhood . Wanderings in the steppe lands of south-east Russia; visits to Sarai, the old capital of the Kipchak Khanate on the lower Volga and to Azov or Tana, still a trading centre for Venetian and Genoese merchants; a fresh change of servitude on Chekre's ruin; travels in the Crimea, Circassia, Abkhasia and Mingrelia; and finally escape (from the neighbourhood of Batum) followed . Arriving at Constantinople, he there lay hid for a time; he then returned to his Bavarian home (1427) by way of Kilia, Akkerman, Lemberg, Cracow, Breslau and Meissen After his return he became a chamberlain of Duke Albert III., probably receiving this appointment in the first instance before the duke's accession in 1438 .

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 Mahomet at Medina: his sketches of Islam and of Eastern Christendom, with all their shortcomings, are of remarkable merit for their time: and he may fairly be reckoned among the authors who contributed to fix Prester John, at the close of the middle ages, in Abyssinia . His work, however, contains many inaccuracies; thus in reckoning the years of his service both with Bayezid and with Timur he unaccountably multiplies by 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 MSS. of the Reisebuch exist: (I) at Donaueschingen in the Fiirstenberg Library, No . 481; (2) at Heidelberg, University Library, 216; (3) at Nuremberg, City Library, 34; (4) at St Gall, Monast . Library, 628 (all of 15th century, the last fragmentary) . The work was first edited at Augsburg, about 146o; 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 (Tubingen, 1885); " Flans Schiltbergers Reisebuch," in the 172nd volume of the Bibliothek desliterarischen 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 . Braun (London, 1879); von Hammer, " Berechtigung d. orientalischen Namen Schiltbergers," in Denkschriften d . Konigl . Akad. d . Wissenschaften (vol. ix., Munich, 1823–1824) ; R . Rohricht, Bibliotheca geographica Palaestinae (Berlin, 189o, pp . 103-104); C . R . Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii .

356-378, 55o, 555 . (C . R .