The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger

Replica of 1879 edition by the Hakluyt Society, London.

This edition comes with a map available as a free download.

 Johann (Hans) Schiltberger (1380 – c. 1440) was a German traveller and writer.


The book not only is a very interesting sketch of various chapters of contemporary Eastern history, but also an account of countries and their manners and customs, especially of the countries visited by the author. 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 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.