The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema

By Ludovico di Varthema

             Who was Ludovico di Varthema? Unfortunately, scarcely any record of him is forthcoming except what he tells us himself. I have searched every available repository of such information, to learn something of his antecedents, and have searched in vain. Zedler finds no place for him in his Universal Lexicon; our own Biographical Collections pass him over and all that the French have to say is this:—
             “Varlomanas, gentilhomme Bolonais, et patrice Romain, fut un voyageur celebre clans le xvie siecle. West presque inconnu dans le notre, parce que l’abbe Prevost, et ceux qui ont ecrit l’histoire des voyages, ont neglige de parler du sien, quoiqu’il soit un des plus importants pour l’histoire de la geographie, et pour Thistoire en general.” I had hoped to glean some stray notices of him in the writings of his own countrymen but they are as barren of what we wish to know as the rest. Zurla does not even mention him in his Dissertation on the most illustrious Italian travelers and Fantuzzi, the only Italian historian who devotes more than a few lines to him, begins his article on “Lodovico Bartema” with an admission which I have been obliged to imitate, and ends it by erroneously stating that our author’s Itinerary was first published at Venice, and by hazarding a doubt respecting his return to Italy—a fact which is plainly stated at the conclusion of his narrative. Fantuzzi’s notice is as follows:—"Of this person, we know nothing beyond what the Co. Valerio Zani has written in the Preface to the Genio Vagante, torn. i. p. 32, viz., that Lodovico Bartema, a Bolognese by birth, flourished in the sixteenth century,—that he left Bologna for Venice, from whence he crossed over into Asia, and arrived first at Alexandria,” etc. “This is all we learn from the Co. Valerio Zani in the above named Preface, subsequent to which we possess no information about Lodovico Bartema hence, we do not know whether he returned to Italy, or where he died, except that, inasmuch as his Itinerary was printed for the first time in Venice, we are led to “believe that he did return thither for it is not easy to suppose that he sent his manuscripts from Portugal to be printed in Italy, which they appear to have been during his lifetime.”
             This is very unsatisfactory, and the deficiency is not supplied by any incidental allusions in the author’s dedicatory epistle. Agnesina, the illustrious lady to whom he dedicates his Itinerary, was the fourth daughter of Federico di Montefeltro, Count and second Duke of Urbino, by his second wife Battista Sforza, and was married in 1474 to Fabrizio Colonna, Lord of Marino, Duke of Albi and Tagliacozza. Of the lady Agnesina, Dennistoun says: “She inherited the talents and literary tastes which had descended to her mother, and transmitted them to a still more gifted daughter, the illustrious Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara.” Her brother, whose genius and acquirements are justly eulogized by Varthema, was Guidobaldo, who succeeded to the dukedom on the death of his father in 1482, and died on the 11th of April 1508. As he appears to have been living at the time the Dedication was written, it must have been prepared immediately after the author’s return to Italy...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ozymandias Press
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781531285920

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The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema

Ludovico di Varthema

OZYMANDIAS PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Ludovico di Varthema

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR

POST-SCRIPT ON THE SITE OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF BENGALA

PRIVILEGE

THE TRAVELS OF LUDOVICO DI VARTHEMA

THE TRAVELS

THE BOOK CONCERNING ARABIA DESERTA

THE SECOND BOOK OF ARABIA FELIX

THE BOOK CONCERNING PERSIA

THE FIRST BOOK CONCERNING INDIA

THE SECOND BOOK CONCERNING INDIA

THE THIRD BOOK CONCERNING INDIA

THE BOOK CONCERNING ETHIOPIA

INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR

WHO WAS LUDOVICO DI Varthema? Unfortunately, scarcely any record of him is forthcoming except what he tells us himself. I have searched every available repository of such information, to learn something of his antecedents, and have searched in vain. Zedler finds no place for him in his Universal Lexicon; our own Biographical Collections pass him over and all that the French have to say is this:—

Varlomanas, gentilhomme Bolonais, et patrice Romain, fut un voyageur celebre clans le xvie siecle. West presque inconnu dans le notre, parce que l’abbe Prevost, et ceux qui ont ecrit l’histoire des voyages, ont neglige de parler du sien, quoiqu’il soit un des plus importants pour l’histoire de la geographie, et pour Thistoire en general. I had hoped to glean some stray notices of him in the writings of his own countrymen but they are as barren of what we wish to know as the rest. Zurla does not even mention him in his Dissertation on the most illustrious Italian travelers and Fantuzzi, the only Italian historian who devotes more than a few lines to him, begins his article on Lodovico Bartema with an admission which I have been obliged to imitate, and ends it by erroneously stating that our author’s Itinerary was first published at Venice, and by hazarding a doubt respecting his return to Italy—a fact which is plainly stated at the conclusion of his narrative. Fantuzzi’s notice is as follows:—Of this person, we know nothing beyond what the Co. Valerio Zani has written in the Preface to the Genio Vagante, torn. i. p. 32, viz., that Lodovico Bartema, a Bolognese by birth, flourished in the sixteenth century,—that he left Bologna for Venice, from whence he crossed over into Asia, and arrived first at Alexandria, etc. This is all we learn from the Co. Valerio Zani in the above named Preface, subsequent to which we possess no information about Lodovico Bartema hence, we do not know whether he returned to Italy, or where he died, except that, inasmuch as his Itinerary was printed for the first time in Venice, we are led to believe that he did return thither for it is not easy to suppose that he sent his manuscripts from Portugal to be printed in Italy, which they appear to have been during his lifetime."

This is very unsatisfactory, and the deficiency is not supplied by any incidental allusions in the author’s dedicatory epistle. Agnesina, the illustrious lady to whom he dedicates his Itinerary, was the fourth daughter of Federico di Montefeltro, Count and second Duke of Urbino, by his second wife Battista Sforza, and was married in 1474 to Fabrizio Colonna, Lord of Marino, Duke of Albi and Tagliacozza. Of the lady Agnesina, Dennistoun says: She inherited the talents and literary tastes which had descended to her mother, and transmitted them to a still more gifted daughter, the illustrious Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara. Her brother, whose genius and acquirements are justly eulogized by Varthema, was Guidobaldo, who succeeded to the dukedom on the death of his father in 1482, and died on the 11th of April 1508. As he appears to have been living at the time the Dedication was written, it must have been prepared immediately after the author’s return to Italy.

One would have thought that Ramusio might have picked up some information respecting the early life and subsequent career of our author but his Discorso Breve to Varthema’s book is briefer than many of the notices prefixed to other far less important Voyages and Travels contained in his valuable Collection. Moreover, it is clear that the first authorized edition of the Itinerary, printed at Rome in 1510, was either unknown to him or beyond his reach since he tells us that his revised exemplar was prepared from a Spanish version made from the Latin translation,—a third hand process, which accounts for the many variations existing between his copy and the original Italian edition. The following is all that he says:—

This Itinerary of Lodovico Barthema a Bolognese, wherein the things concerning India and the Spice Islands are so fully and so correctly narrated as to transcend all that has been written either by ancient or modern authors, has hitherto been read replete with errors and inaccuracies, and might hare been so read in future, had not God caused to be put into our hands the book of Chrisfoforo di Arco, a clerk of Seville, who, being in possession of the Latin exemplar of that Voyage, made from the original itself, and dedicated to the Most Reverend Monsignor Bernardino, Cardinal Carvaial of the Santa Croce, translated it with great care into the Spanish language, by the aid of which toe have been enabled to correct in many places the present book, which was originally written by the author himself in our own vulgar tongue, and dedicated to the Most Illustrious Madonna Italy at that period. She was the daughter of the Most Illustrious Signor Federico, Duke of Turpino, and sister of the Most Excellent Guidobaldo, wife of the Most Illustrious Signor Fabricio Colonna, and mother of the Most Excellent Signor Ascanio Colonna and of the lady Vittoria, Marchioness Dal Guasto, the ornament and light of the present age. And the aforesaid Lodovico divided this volume into seven Books, in the First of which he narrates his journey to Egypt, Syria, and Arabia Deserla. In the Second, he treats of Arabia Felix. In the Third of Persia. In the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth, he comprises all India and the Molucca Islands, where the spices grow. In the Seventh and last, he recounts his return to Portugal, passing along the coast of Ethiopia, the Cape of Good Hope, and several islands of the Western Ocean.

In this dearth of all external aids, we are obliged to have recourse to the narrative itself; but even there, the materials for constructing a biographical sketch of its author are scanty in the extreme. He tells us on one occasion that his father was a physician but as he was acting a part when that statement was made, little reliance can be placed upon it. On another, he claimed a knowledge of casting artillery and although the circumstances under which the pretension was advanced are calculated to throw a doubt on its truth, it is not improbable that Varthema had been brought up to the profession of arms, or had at some antecedent period served as a soldier, since he incidentally remarks, in a subsequent chapter, that he had been present at several battles in his time. This conjecture is further supported by the particular attention which he pays to the military organization and peculiar weapons of the different people described in the course of his narrative. The only additional intimation which he lets drop of his private history gives us to understand that he was a married man and was the father of several children.

The motives which led him to undertake this journey are briefly set forth in the dedication of his Itinerary. He had an insatiable desire of becoming acquainted with foreign countries, not unmixed with ambition for the renown which had been awarded to preceding geographers and travelers but being conscious, withal, of his inaptitude to attain that object by reading, knowing himself to be of very slender understanding and disinclined to study, he determined, personally, and with his own eyes, to endeavor to ascertain the situations of places, the qualities of peoples, the diversities of animals, the varieties of the fruit-bearing and odoriferous trees of Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Felix, Persia, India, and Ethiopia, remembering well that the testimony of one eye-witness is worth more than ten thousand hearsays. His surprising travels in search of this knowledge are recorded in the accompanying narrative with ingenuousness and honesty, and his personal adventures with a ready wit and humor, which do credit to his head and heart; the remarkable success of his book is attested by the successive editions which were called for in the course of a few years after its first publication, and its translation into several European languages but what reward was reaped by the enterprising traveler himself, beyond the barren honor of knighthood conferred upon him by Don Francisco de Almeyda after the battle of Ponani, and subsequently confirmed by Don Emanuel of Portugal, we have no means of ascertaining. As far as we know, the copyright of his Itinerary, secured to himself and to his heirs for ten years, officially granted at the special mandate of Pope Julius II, by the Cardinal Chamberlain of the Court of Rome, as appears from the document attached to the first edition of 1510, was the only recompense bestowed upon him by his admiring but parsimonious countrymen.

Turning from the author to the author’s book, I do not see how I can better introduce it than by rapidly leading the reader over the route pursued, halting here and there to illustrate the traveler’s journeyings by brief sketches of the history of the countries visited, and the different people with whom he came in contact. The antecedent investigations of Dr. Vincent and Dr. Robertson, and the very recent researches of Mr. R. H. Major, who in his able Introduction to India in the Fifteenth Century has done much towards exhausting the subject of the ancient intercourse with India prior to the discovery of the route via the Cape of Good Hope, must be my excuse for not venturing to supplement their learned essays in that line,—a task, moreover, for which I am utterly unqualified. With this candid admission, I shall now pass on to the narrative under review.

Varthema appears to have left Europe towards the end of 1502, and reached Alexandria about the beginning of the following year, from whence he proceeded by the Nile to Cairo. In his brief remarks on that city, he corrects the exaggerated idea of its extent which seems to have prevailed in the West even after his time for we find Giovan Leoni Africano enumerating it as une delle maggiore e mirabili citta che siano nel mondo. His summary account of the people and government is surprisingly accurate:—The inhabitants are Moors [Arabs] and Mamluks. The lord over them is the Grand Sultan, who is served by the Mamluks, and the Mamluks are lords over the Moors. Egypt, at the time, was governed by the Borjeeh Mamlak Sultan, El-Ashraf Kansooh el-Ghon, whose territories comprised Syria as far as the Taurus in Cilicia on the north, and the Euphrates on the east. Already, the Turks under Bayazid II had attempted to wrest Egypt from the hands of the Mamluks but their invasion in 1490 resulted in nothing beyond the annexation of Tarsus and Adana. It remained for Bayazid’s second son, Selim I, surnamed El-Yauz, about thirty years later, to put an end to a military dynasty which for upwards of two centuries and a half had usurped the authority of the Abbaside Khalifs, whose representative in the person of El-Mustansik Allah must have been residing in Egypt, in comparative obscurity, at the period of our author’s visit.

From Egypt Varthema sailed to Syria, landed at Beyroot, and traveled by Tripoli to Aleppo. He notices the concourse of Persians and other foreigners at the latter place, which, until the route via the Cape of Good Hope became the great highway to and from India, was one of the principal stations of the overland transit trade between the Mediterranean on the one side, and Persia and the Persian Gulf on the other. Passing through Hamah, the Hamath of Scripture, and Menin in the vicinity of Helbon, still famous for the quality of its grapes, he arrived at Damascus, where he appears to have sojourned several weeks, and to have made good use of his time in acquiring some knowledge of colloquial Arabic. Here, he became acquainted with the Mamluks of the garrison, and by means of money, according to his own statement, induced a captain of that body, who was a renegade Christian, to attach him to a company under his command but he cautiously reserves, what is highly probable, that a profession of Islamism was exacted as a necessary condition of his enrolment among the Mamlaks. Whether on assuming the new name of Yunas, (Jonah) he underwent any more special initiation than that of repeating the simple formula, There is no god but the God, and Muhammed is His Apostle, does not transpire but the sequel of his narrative proves, that he had been tolerably well instructed in the outward ceremonies of Islam, and by practice, combined with an inquiring disposition, and a great facility in adapting himself to circumstances, eventually attained as correct an insight into the doctrines of the Koran as is possessed by the generality of Mussulmans.

This is not the place to discuss the morality of an act, involving the deliberate and voluntary denial of what a man holds to be the Truth in a matter so sacred as that of Religion. Such a violation of conscience is not justifiable by the end which the renegade may have in view, however abstractedly praiseworthy it may be and even granting that his demerit should be gauged by the amount of knowledge which he possesses of what is true and what false, the conclusion is inevitable, that nothing short of utter ignorance of the precepts of his faith, or a conscientious disbelief in them, can fairly relieve the Christian, who conforms to Islamism without a corresponding persuasion of its verity, of the deserved odium which all honest men attach to apostasy and hypocrisy.

Forming one of the Mamlak escort of the Hajj Caravan, Varthema set out from Damascus on the 8th of April 1503 on the march towards El-Medinah. Among the few Europeans who have recorded their visits to the Holy Places of the Mussulmans, he is still the only one who has succeeded in reaching them by that route. Joseph Pitts of Exeter in A.D. 1680, Ali Bey in 1807, Giovanni Finati in 1811, Burckhardt in 1814, and Burton in 1853, all penetrated into the Hijaz and returned therefrom by the lied Sea. In this respect, therefore, our author’s narrative is unique nevertheless we have the means of testing its authenticity by the Hajj Itinerary from Damascus compiled with so much care by Burckhardt. This has been attempted in the annotations on the text of the present edition, and the result is alike confirmatory of Varthema’s intelligence and accuracy. A journey of thirty days through a desert, which Sir John Maundeville and other travelers long after him would have filled with images of their own marvelous imaginations, is recounted in the sober coloring of a tourist of our own times, enlivened ever and anon with vivid sketches of the wild country and tribes through which the Caravan wended its solitary way. His description of the Bedawin, of their marauding incursions and mode of warfare, is minutely correct, and the picture which he portrays of an Arab encampment is as true to life now as it was three centuries and a half ago.

Among the most interesting incidents contained in this portion of Varthema’s peregrinations is the Caravan halt near a mountain inhabited by Jews, within three days’ march of El-Medinah. The stature of these people, which he limits to two feet in height, was either taken on trust from his Muhammedan companions, or estimated irrespective of the distance at which he saw them but tinged with borrowed fable as this part of his narrative undoubtedly is, the existence of a Jewish colony in that locality for ages anterior to his time is a well authenticated fact, though every trace of them, beyond an unfounded rumor that their descendants still existed there, performing in secret all the ceremonies of their religion, had disappeared when Burckhardt visited the Hijaz. Arabian authors refer the foundation of the settlement to different periods extending as far back as the days of Moses but the most probable account is that their first immigration occurred after the devastation of Judea by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, and that the colony was enlarged by successive bands of refugees in after times down to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and the persecutions to which they were subjected under the Emperor Adrian.

On entering El-Medinah, wishing to see every thing, our traveler’s party engaged the services of a Muzmvivir, or guide, whose duty it doubtless was then, as it is still, to instruct the pilgrims in the appointed ceremonies of the Hajj, as well as to accompany them in the character of ordinary ciceroni. The principal object of interest here was the tomb of Muhammed, and with one or two minor exceptions, attributable probably to his imperfect knowledge of Arabic, our author’s detailed description of the interior and exterior of the Mosque is strikingly verified by the later accounts of it as given by Burckhardt and Burton. He takes occasion, moreover, in the course of his observations, to correct the absurd notion, which prevailed extensively in those days, that the Prophet’s coffin was made of metal, and hung in mid air by the attraction of a powerful magnet.

Another superstition which the party ventured to question on the spot, was the supernatural light which the more credulous Moslems believe to issue from the sepulchre of their Prophet, as firmly as pious Christians of the Greek rite believe in the fable of the Holy Fire as it is manufactured at Jerusalem. The discussion which took place on this subject between the Captain of the Mamluks and certain Sheriffs of the Mosque reveals the renegade’s general disbelief in Mohammedanism; though it may well be doubted whether such an unreserved manifestation of it could have been attempted with impunity except by a person in his position.

The character of the townspeople, which is proverbially bad, elicits from Varthema the epithet of canaglia, and expressing equal disgust at the vanities of Muhammed, which form the staple attractions to the pilgrim visitors at El-Medinah, or The City, par excellence, he resumes his onward journey towards Meccah, which was accomplished in ten days. The intervening country appears to have been in. a very unsettled state, for he records two skirmishes with large bands of Arabs, and ascribes the cause to the prevalence of a great war between four brothers who were fighting for the lordship of Meccah. In a subsequent chapter, whilst describing Juddah, he mentions incidentally that the government of that town was administered by one of the brothers of Barachet, who was then the ruling Sultan of Meccah.

By the latter designation, we are undoubtedly to understand the Sherif, which title, as applied to the Arab ruler of Meccah, has entirely superseded the more ancient one of Amir. The particular family from which candidates for that dignity were elected claim, in common with several others which assume the same honorable distinction, to be the descendants of Hasan, the eldest son of ‘Ali, through his two sons Zaid and Hasan el-Musanna but the first historical notice which we possess of their territorial jurisdiction in the Hijaz, is given by Ibn Shubnah, during the reign of the Ayyubite princes in Yemen, who records that in his time El-Medinah and Meccah were severally governed by two members of that family, each bearing the title of Amir. Although exercising almost sovereign power within the limits assigned to them, the Sheriffs were avowedly subordinate to the successive Khalifs of the Omeyya and Abbaside dynasties, and subsequently to the Mamlak Sultans of Egypt, whose prerogative it was to recognize their authority by investing them annually with a robe of honor. This suzerainty, in his time, is casually adverted to by Varthema, who speaks of the lord of Juddah and the Sultan of Meccah as being subject to the Grand Sultan of Cairo.

But a supremacy which, in effect, was barely nominal, seldom availed to maintain public order in the Hijaz, more especially whenever rival factions among the Sheriffs contended for the chief magistracy of Meccah. Such family feuds were of constant occurrence, and one was actually in progress at the time of our traveler’s visit, and his incidental remarks on the subject are so strikingly corroborated by native historical records, as to merit special illustration. The following passages, translated from the Kurrat el-Ayun, an Arabic manuscript Chronicle of Yemen, besides substantiating the statements of Varthema, afford a general view of the political condition of the Hijaz at the period referred to.

The facts thus recorded are corroborated by the author of the Ruah er-Rudh, another Arabic chronicle of a later date but these extracts amply suffice to attest the truth of Varthema’s incidental remarks respecting the feud which existed between the rival brothers Barakat and the general insecurity of the country resulting therefrom. Moreover, a careful comparison of dates, as they may be gathered from our traveler’s journal, with those given in the above quotations, renders it highly probable that the Arabs whom the caravan encountered between El-Medinah and Meccah and those also who caused the precipitate rush from Arafat consisted of adherents of one or other of the contending factions.

To return to our review of the narrative. Entering Meccah with the Hajj, Varthema proceeds to give an account of the city and its inhabitants, noticing particularly the great number of foreigners who had arrived there from the east and west, some for purposes of trade, and some on pilgrimage for the pardon of their sins and the various commodities which were imported by them from Africa, the western coast of India, and the Bay of Bengal. Next, he takes us into the Great Mosque, describing the Ka’abah and the well Zemzem, with the various ceremonies performed there and thence he accompanies the pilgrims to Arafat, and returns with them in haste through the Valley of Mina, where he witnessed the customary lamination of the Great Devil.

Considering that our author is the first European traveler on record who visited the holy places of the Muhammedans, and taking into account how scanty must have been his previous knowledge of the history and distinctive doctrines of Islam, his description of Meccah and of the Hajj may fairly claim to be regarded as a literary wonder. With but few exceptions, his minutest details are confirmed by later and far more learned writers, whose investigations on the whole have added comparatively little to the knowledge which we possess of the Mussulman pilgrimage through the pages of Varthema and the occasional correspondence between some of his statements and those of Burckhardt is so striking, as to give rise to the conjecture that that enterprising traveler had perused his book either before or after his own journey into the Hijaz. Burton, whose eastern learning and personal experience of