Mirabilia Descripta
The Wonders of the East

This volume (1863) contains a fourteenth-century description of travels in Persia and India by Jordanus, a Dominican missionary.

Catalani Jordanus (Author), Henry Yule (Translated by)

9781108010573, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 April 2010

104 pages
21.6 x 14 x 0.6 cm, 0.14 kg

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This volume contains the first English translation (in 1863) of a Latin manuscript written in about 1330 and published in France in 1839. Jordanus was a Dominican missionary to India, who became bishop of Columbum (probably a town on the Malabar coast). He recorded anything he thought noteworthy on his travels from the Mediterranean to India via Persia and back again, and his remarks on the climate, produce, people and customs of the countries he passed through are a valuable source of information.

Preface
1. The Mediterranean
2. Concerning Armenia
3. Concerning the realm of Persia
4. Concerning India the Less
5. Concerning India the Greater
6. Concerning India Tertia (S.E. Africa)
7. Concerning the Greater Arabia
8. Concerning the Great Tartar
9. Concerning Caldea
10. Concerning the land of Aran
11. Concerning the land of Mogan
12. Concerning the Caspian hills
13. Concerning Georgiana
14. Concerning the distances of countries
15. Concerning the island of Chios
16. Concerning Turkey
Index.

Subject Areas: Geography [RG]