This vivid collection of Italian travel writing opens a window onto Persia, Tartary, and the volatile frontiers of the 15th and 16th centuries. Centered on Josafa Barbaro's journeys, it presents a proud Venetian vision of travel as discovery, diplomacy, and hard-earned knowledge, while also tracing the rise of Shah Ismail, whose restoration of Persian unity and identity deepened the divide between Persia and the Ottoman world. Barbaro's account, divided between voyages to Tana and Persia, ranges from geography and customs to burial mounds, treasure hunts, and the spread of the faith of Macomet among the Tartars, all rendered with sharp observation and practical detail. The volume is also shaped by the tragic life of William Thomas, the learned translator whose career ended at Tyburn after a treason trial under Mary I. His biography and legal record underscore the dangers of political dissent in Tudor England. Around these narratives swirl scenes of frontier migration, diplomatic encounters, and Persian military grandeur, as kings, consuls, merchants, and nomads collide in a world of alliance, betrayal, and conquest. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

À propos de l'auteur

Barbaro, Giosofat

Giosofat Barbaro was a 15th-century Venetian merchant, diplomat, and traveler whose life unfolded at the crossroads of commerce, politics, and discovery. Born into the world of the Venetian Republic, he spent much of his career moving through the eastern Mediterranean and beyond, serving as a keen observer of lands that were both strategically vital and culturally distant to his contemporaries. His reputation rests above all on the vivid account of his journeys, in which he recorded the peoples, customs, landscapes, and political conditions of regions stretching from the Black Sea to Persia with unusual clarity and practical intelligence. Rather than offering a fanciful adventure, his writing combines curiosity with the disciplined eye of a man trained in trade and diplomacy, making his work especially valuable as both literature and historical testimony. Barbaro’s central themes include encounter across cultures, the fragility of political power, and the ways travel can sharpen understanding of difference without erasing it. These concerns remain strikingly relevant today, when readers continue to grapple with questions of cross-cultural exchange, migration, and the challenge of seeing unfamiliar societies with fairness and nuance. His legacy lies in helping modern readers glimpse a wider early modern world through the perspective of someone who was not merely passing through it, but helping to connect it. Readers who enjoy travel writing, historical nonfiction, diplomatic memoirs, and accounts of the medieval and early modern East will find him especially rewarding.