The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

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The Travels of Sir John Mandeville or Mandeville's Travels is a book written between 1357 and 1371 that purports to be the travelogue of an Englishman named Sir John Mandeville around the world through many fanstastical locations. The earliest-surviving text is in French, followed by translations into many other languages; the work acquired extraordinary popularity. Despite the extremely unreliable and often fantastical nature of the travels it describes, it was used as a work of reference: Christopher Columbus, for example, was heavily influenced by both this work and Marco Polo's earlier Travels. According to the book, John de Mandeville crossed the sea in 1322. He traversed by way of Turkey (Asia Minor and Cilicia), Tartary, Persia, Armenia, the Holy Land, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Abyssinia, Chaldea, the land of the Amazons, India, China and many countries in the region. He had often been to Jerusalem, and had written in Romance languages as they were generally more widely understood...

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