The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema

In 1502 a native of Bologna, eager to see the world, leaves Venice for Alexandria and Cairo. He will not return for six years, having crossed half of the known globe.

At Damascus, Ludovico di Varthema takes the name Yunus, puts on the dress of the Mamluks and slips into the pilgrimage caravan. He walks to Medina, then to Mecca, which no European was supposed to behold, and he observes everything: the crowds, the markets, the sacrifices, even the unicorns kept there. Arrested at Aden as a Christian spy, he owes his freedom to cunning and to the protection of a queen.

An endless race toward the East then begins. Hormuz and its pearls, Herat, Persia, then the India of Cambay, Goa and Calicut, where he describes the king, the Brahmins, the Nayars and customs that no Italian had recorded before him. With a Persian merchant for company, he goes on to Ceylon and its cinnamon, Pegu, Malacca, Sumatra, the Spice Islands and Java. Back in Calicut, he passes himself off as a physician while Portuguese ships cruise offshore.

Curious about everything, full of nerve, as attentive to figures as to faces, Varthema wants to be a witness, not a compiler. Published in Rome in 1510, his account made Europe dream. It remains to be seen how a disguised pilgrim ended up a knight.