Overview

This study fills a historical gap by exploring the writings of European travellers to Egypt between around 1300 and 1600. It draws upon sources hitherto inaccessible to English-speaking audiences. Most published travel writing about Egypt derives from the 18th and 19th centuries. Among the western visitors were Emmanuel Piloti, a Venetian merchant from Crete whose endearing personality won the affection of both fellow traders and Muslims, with whom he could even converse on the delicate matter of religion. Christopher Harant, a nobleman from Prague who survived the perils of the desert journey to the convent of St Catherine in Sinai, only to be executed on his return home by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand. Johan Wild, a German soldier captured by the Turks in Hungary and sold in the Cairo slave market to a tyrannical Persian merchant. The accounts, based on well documented research provide a personal insight into a region of cultural richness and natural beauty governed by despotic Mamluk sultans and early Ottoman governors.

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9780853236689

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ANNE WOLFF was born in Cairo and has had a long-standing interest in the history, politics and culture of the Middle-East and Eurasia. She is an experienced and respected egyptologist who has developed close working relationships with staff in SACOS in the universities of Liverpool, Durham and Cambridge. She has presented a number of papers at the annual ASTENE conference (Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Neat East) and at other conferences, and she has published papers in the ASTENE Bulletin.

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