Four Pilgrims

He passed the wet season at Kapiśa, and then, protected by the King’s envoys, went along the North bank of the Kâbul river and through districts memorable in the record of the I...

This boldest of pilgrims, greatest of Chinese travellers came into the world A.D. 603—nearly twelve hundred years after the founder of his faith. He was the fourth son of a Chin...

There is preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, a valuable collection of ancient manuscripts presented by an old pupil of the College, who was no other t...

Alas! the visit was of little profit. As in Ibn Batûta’s time, nearly two centuries before, the island was divided between four kings, and “for that they were waging fierce war...

Now, the yearly caravan from Damascus to the Holy Cities of Arabia was in preparation—a journey which the pious Moslem makes by rail to-day. For, as has been truly remarked, “th...

Before Batûta reached India, and therefore long before Varthema’s time, Afghan chiefs had swooped down on the fertile plains of India with the war cry of “Allah and the Prophet,...

Batûta joined the Persian Caravan to Mecca, and once again journeyed across the territory of the Wahabi in Central Arabia. This, his third pilgrimage, over, he resolved to see I...

The home-bound fleet was now loading. Varthema had given the Portuguese a year and a half of faithful service; he tells us that he was anxious to return to Europe; he had had fu...

Our ambassador sets off with the returning mission attended by two favourites of the Sultan, and a guard of 1,000 horse. He has charge of gifts which far surpass the Chinese pre...

Batûta speaks of Bengal as the land of plenty. Everything was cheaper there than anywhere else in the wide world. He picked up a very beautiful slave-girl for a trifle. But the...

On arriving at Aden; which was a place of call for every ship trading with India, Persia, and Ethiopia, custom-house officers at once came on board the ship, ascertained whence...

Having unloaded the junk, our travellers chartered a sampan and sailed to Quilon. Now Varthema was very silent about the Portuguese at Cochin and Cannanore when he was on his ou...

He waited forty days for the snows to melt on the “Hindu Kûsh—the Slayer of the Hindus, so called because most of the slaves brought from India die here of the bitter cold there...

After duly visiting the tomb of the Prophet at Medina and performing the prescribed rites at Mecca, Batûta, still insatiate of travel, joined the Persian caravan on its homeward...

For six days the wind was favourable; but it was now December of the year 1503; and on the seventh day out, the North Eastern monsoon drove the vessel back “with 25 others, lade...

Once more we find Hiuen-Tsiang by the Kâbul river. Many years had passed since he rested on its banks and entered India. Since that time he had made himself a finished Sanskrit...

Among Mohammedan pilgrims and travellers Ibn Batûta stands without a peer. He was born in a city which was once an extreme outpost of Roman rule in Africa, the Ancient Tingis, t...

No commercial arithmetic called a certain Ludovico di Varthema to adventure. Like Dante’s Ulysses, “nothing could quench his inward burning to have full witness of the world.” “...

Marauder as he was, the Arab, like his half-brother the Hebrew, carried an ethical spark in his bosom which could be readily fanned into a consuming blaze. He was accustomed, in...

We left our hero on the Kâbul river, beyond the boundaries of India: a royal reception awaited him at Kapiśa, and a hundred experienced men were chosen to conduct and protect hi...

Now, besides the shrewd reading of Batûta’s character by the holy man of Alexandria, who saw in him the born traveller, another Sheik had also read his man aright and foretold t...

Albeit sheltered by a cognate Latin people, our traveller had by no means found a haven of perfect safety. In a few days, we find him taking his part in a great sea-fight betwee...

But Batûta’s travels were by no means at an end. He made a filial visit to the place where earth that “makes all sweet” had closed on his father’s history. Once at Tangier, the...

One of the eye-witnesses of the wretchedness of Christians in Palestine was a certain Peter, a man from Picardy; high-strung; one to whom a very varied experience brought no sat...

Gautama was the son of a petty chieftain, who exercised limited authority in a district which lay north of Faîzâbâd. He lived about 600 years before the beginning of the Christi...

At intervals an order came from T’ai-Tsung and his successor to appear within the green enclosure which surrounded the Imperial Throne. It was by Imperial command that the world...

And now, in the spirit of Alexander sighing for new worlds to conquer, he looked forward with dismay to the return-journey of the caravan. A perilous surprise awaited him which,...

China was protected from serious invasion by her geographical position. Northward, it was no easy business for the barbarous intruder to find a way into China from the Manchuria...

Very soon after Hiuen-Tsiang set forth on his arduous enterprise, Jerusalem witnessed a remarkable scene (A.D. 629). Heraclius, Emperor of New Rome, had overthrown the hosts of...

By the close of the Fifteenth Century, the relative stability of society and of its convictions during the Middle Ages was undone. The Italian, at least, had cast off the restra...