hayton corycus (2 Ergebnisse)

First edition in Latin of this account of Asia and the Middle East, which informed European understanding of the Mongols for several hundred years. Prince Hayton, an exiled member of the Armenian royal family, dictated his account in 1307 to convince Pope Clement V to launch a new crusade. Born around 1240, Hayton arrived at the papal court in Poitiers in 1306, having lost a power struggle in the Armenian court and hoping to enlist Clement's support. His account, written down in French by one Nicolas Faulcon of Toul and quickly translated into Latin, is divided into four books. "Book I is a geographical survey of fourteen countries of the Far East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, and parts of the Near East. Book II is a brief account of Muslim military history, including the rise of the Saljuqs and Khwarazmians. Book III, the longest, describes the early history of the Mongols, information on the Great Khans, the Il-Khans of Iran, and Mongol warfare in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus to ca. 1304. Book IV contains Het'um's suggestions to Pope Clement V (1305-14) on initiating a crusade to retake Jerusalem and parts of Cilician Armenia, Lebanon and Syria from Muslim powers, using the combined forces of the Europeans, Cilician Armenians and Mongols" (Bedrosian). His knowledge likely derived from Armenia's extensive dealings with the Mongol Ilkhanate. Hayton's report "bears testimony to the fading hopes for a Christian-Mongol alliance which, despite the conversion of the Ilkhan Ghazan (r. 1295-1304) to Islam, persisted as long as the Mongols went on attacking the Mamluks in Syria" (p. 44). The editio princeps was printed in Paris in French (Les fleurs des hystoires de la terre d'Orient, 1510), and Richard Pynson issued an English translation in the late 1510s. This Latin edition was edited by Menrado Molthero. Cordier 2002; HD16 H870; Löwendahl 5 (for the French edition). Robert Bedrosian, Het'um the Historian's History of the Tartars, 2004; Joan-Pau Rubiés, "Late Medieval Ambassadors and the Practice of Cross-Cultural Encounters, 1250-1450", in Palmira Johnson Brummett, ed., The 'Book' of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250-1700, 2009. Quarto (195 x 150 mm): A-R4 S3; 71 leaves, unnumbered. Woodcut title-page border, figurated initials, printer's Janus device. Late 19th-century quarter diced russia, raised bands, second compartment lettered in gilt, others with gilt fleur-de-lys, marbled sides and endpapers. Several old pencil notations, one in blue, on endpapers verso and initial binder's blank; traces of inscription at head of title page. Sides and joints worn, occasional browning and faint damp-staining internally, final leaves with a few tissue repairs at cutter, touching a couple of letters: very good.

[CONTAINED IN]: Historia Orientalis Haythoni Armenii: et hic subiectum Marci Pauli Veneti Itinerarium, item Fragmentum è Speculo historiali Vincentij Beluacensis eiusdem argumenti. Helmaestadii [i.e. Helmstedt] : [Iacobus Lucius], 1585. Quarto (205 x 160 mm), contemporary speckled calf, spine with raised bands (expertly restored); [8], 211, [3], [69], [11] leaves (lacking the final colophon leaf), with thefolding genealogical chart of the family and successors of the Prophet Muhammad bound into the appendix to Hayton of Corycus; text in Latin; mild browning throughout, otherwise excellent. The third edition in Latin (according to Yule) of Marco Polo's Travels, after the first of 1485 and the second (in Novus OrbisRegionum) of1532/37 and 1555. Unquestionably, the famous account of Marco Polo is the single most important travel narrative of the Middle Ages, one that shaped Western perceptions of Asia and the Islamic world for centuries. Columbus carries a copy of the first Latin edition (1485) with him on his first voyage to the Indies, which he annotated extensively. It might also be argued - as Sabin has done - that it provided a major impetus for the exploration of the New World: 'The travels ofMarcoPoloin the East claim a place in an American collection in consequence of the remarks of distinguished geographers that they were perused by Columbus, and that the revelations made by him of the wonders of Cathay and Zipanga stimulated the great navigator to accomplish through the sea, what the Venetian traveller had by land' (Sabin). Here, the Travels are bound with two other works by thirteenth-century writers: the Historia Orientalis of Armenian monk and historiographer Hayton of Corycus(c.1235-c.1314), which contains descriptions of Cathay, Tartary, Turkestan, India, Persia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Syria, and the Saracen Empire, and is an important early source on Islam; and a fragment of theSpeculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais (c.1190-1264), also relating to the Far East and Islam, which formed part of his encyclopaedic Speculum Maius, or The Great Mirror. All three works were edited by Reinerus Reineccius. Provenance : Frederik Muller Rare Books, Holland Private collection, Tokyo, acquired from the above circa 2000.