This book considers the history of the Prester John legend and its impact on the Crusades, investigating its entangled mythical history between East and West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The present study thus responds to the still pressing need for a comprehensive historical investigation of the twelfth and thirteenth crusading history of the legend and its impact on the Muslim-Crusader encounters, examining various Latin, Arabic, Syriac, and Coptic accounts. It further reflects on new eastern aspects of the legend, presenting a new Arab scholarly view. This book first charts a pre-history of the legend in the late ancient Christian prophecy of the Last Emperor down to the emergence of the legend in the mid-twelfth century. Second, the work presents a historical discussion of the legend and its association with actual occurrences in the Far East and the Levant, analysing the legend history under the crusading crisis and the imperial papal schism in Europe. Meanwhile, the work considers the vague Prester John Letter addressed to Manuel I Komnenus, Byzantine Emperor, and its elaborate conception of a mythical eastern kingdom, revealing imaginative parallels on the wondrous East and legendary Eastern Christian kings in Arabic Muslim and Christian accounts of the Muslim geographer and cartographer al-Idrisi, the Coptic Abu al-Makarim and the Syriac Ibn al-'Ibri (Bar Hebraeus), among others. Moreover, the book examines how the legend impacted war and peace processes between the Ayyubids and the Crusaders during the Fifth Crusade against Egypt (1217-1221), revealing how it was mingled with Arabic and Eastern Christian prophecies at the time. The study concludes by investigating the perception of Prester John by the papal and European envoys to the Mongols in the thirteenth century, revealing how the legend was instrumentalised (and even weaponised) to establish a Latin-Mongol crusade through a parallel exploration of relevant Latin, Arabic and Syriac sources.

The legend of Prester John has received much scholarly attention over the last hundred years, but never before have the sources been collected and coherently presented to readers. This book now brings together a fully-representative set of texts setting out the many and various sources from which we get our knowledge of the legend. These texts, spanning a time period from the Crusades to the Enlightenment, are presented in their original languages and in English translation (for many it is the first time they have been available in English). The story of the mysterious oriental leader Prester John, ruler of a land teeming with marvels who may come to the aid of Christians in the Levant, held an intense grip on the medieval mind from the first references in twelfth-century Crusader literature and into the early-modern period. But Prester John was a man of shifting identity, being at different times and for different reasons associated with Chingis Khan and the Mongols, with the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, with China, Tibet, South Africa and West Africa. In order to orient the reader, each of these iterations is explained in the comprehensive introduction, and in the introductions to texts and sections. The introduction also raises a thorny question not often considered: whether or not medieval audiences believed in the reality of Prester John and the Prester John Letter. The book is completed with three valuable appendices: a list of all known references to Prester John in medieval and early modern sources, a thorough description of the manuscript traditions of the all-important Prester John Letter, and a brief description of Prester John in the history of cartography.

This is an account of the Portuguese mission which landed at Massawa on the west coast of the Red Sea in April 1520 and re-embarked 6 years later. It was the first European embassy known to have reached the Ethiopian court and returned safely from it. It was a small group of fourteen, among whom was the chronicler Alvares, who wrote the most detailed early account of the country, valuable for Ethiopian history and the history of the expansion of Europe. Alvares's account was translated into English for the Hakluyt Society by Lord Stanley in 1881. This revision makes use of sources since discovered, corrects certain errors, and modifies the style of the early version. There is an introduction, detailed annotation and a number of appendices. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volumes first published in 1961.

During the 16th century, Portugal endeavored to locate the mythical kingdom of Prester John--a Christian nation rumored to be somewhere in the Orient, amidst the pagans and Muslims. This study chronicles Portugal's final attempt, a six-year odyssey in Ethiopia that resulted in a tragicomic collision with a proud but isolated Christian kingdom. After summarizing the Prester John myth and the many efforts it spawned, the work focuses on the Ethiopian mission's chronicler, Father Francisco Alvares, who fell in love with the country and its people, became a friend of its king, hid the Abyssinians' heresies from his superiors, and set in motion events that saved Ethiopia from imminent destruction. Unique in the annals of Europeans' initial contacts with African peoples, the Portuguese mission is a portrait of hopeful preconceptions buffeted and eventually transformed by encounters with a fascinating, utterly unexpected reality.

Brother Hiob, on missionary work in the Himalayan wilderness, discovers a village guarding a miraculous tree whose branches sprout books instead of fruit. These books chronicle the history of the kingdom of Prestor John, and Hiob becomes obsessed with the tales they tell.

This is an account of the Portuguese mission which landed at Massawa on the west coast of the Red Sea in April 1520 and re-embarked 6 years later. It was the first European embassy known to have reached the Ethiopian court and returned safely from it. It was a small group of fourteen, among whom was the chronicler Alvares, who wrote the most detailed early account of the country, valuable for Ethiopian history and the history of the expansion of Europe. Alvares's account was translated into English for the Hakluyt Society by Lord Stanley in 1881. This revision makes use of sources since discovered, corrects certain errors, and modifies the style of the early version. There is an introduction, detailed annotation and a number of appendices. Continued in the following volume (Second Series 115), with which the main pagination is continuous. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1961.

A HILARIOUS, SATIRICAL NOVEL FROM AWARD-WINNING INDIAN WRITER. Funny and sad, satirical and humane, this novel tells the interlinked stories of three unforgettable men whose trajectories cross in Denmark: the flamboyant Ravi, the fundamentalist Karim, and the unnamed and pragmatic Pakistani narrator. As the unnamed narrator copes with his divorce, and Ravi—despite his exterior of skeptical flamboyance—falls deeply in love with a beautiful woman who is incapable of responding in kind, Karim, their landlord, goes on with his job as a taxi driver and his regular Friday Qur’an sessions. But is he going on with something else? Who is Karim? And why does he disappear suddenly at times or receive mysterious phone calls? When a “terrorist attack” takes place in town, all three men find themselves embroiled in doubt, suspicion, and, perhaps, danger. An acerbic commentary on the times, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position is also a bitter-sweet, spell-binding novel about love and life today.