Two fifteenth-century Venetians tell of the East. Giosofat Barbaro traded for years at Tana on the Sea of Azov among Tartars and Circassians, then went as ambassador to Uzun Hasan, ruler of Persia; Ambrogio Contarini followed on a further embassy across Germany, Poland and the Caucasus. The Hakluyt Society edition prints them in early English translations.
First-hand accounts of the steppe and Persia in the years of the Ottoman advance. Download the free EPUB.