﴾٣١﴿ ‫َوإ َذإ تُ ْت َ َٰل عَلَْيْ ِ ْم آ ََيتُ َنا قَالُوإ قَدْ َ َِس ْع َنا لَ ْو نَشَ ا ُء لَ ُقلْ َنا ِمثْ َل َه َٰ َذإ ۙ إ ْن َه َٰ َذإ إ اَّل َآ َسا ِطريُ ْ َإْل او ِل َني‬ ِ ِ And when our revelations are read to them, they say, “We have ِ heard. Had we willed, we could have said the like of this; these are nothing but myths of the ancients.” (Qur’ān 8:31) For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4) Unalterable and eternal truth remains like the Kingdom of Heaven, an eschatological hope. Mythistory is what we actually have – a useful instrument for piloting human groups in their encounters with one another and with the natural environment. William H. McNeill (“Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians,” 1986: 10) The legend that moved armies is very worthy of being studied. Maḥmūd ʻUmrān, Alexandria (during my visit to him a few days before his death in May 2015) Although Western scholars have well studied the legend of Prester John, I think it is essential to be studied by a Muslim Eastern scholar, in order to provide an Eastern-Islamic perspective about the legend and its impact during the crusades. Bernard Hamilton (The SSCLE Conference, Odense, 27th June - 1st July 2016) TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 1 Acknowledgements 3 Note of Transliteration and Style 5 List of Figures and Maps 6 List of Abbreviations 7 INTRODUCTION 9 Historiography: Prester John between Past and Present 17 Objectives and Methodology 28 CHAPTER 1. Setting a Geographic and Mythico-historical Stage for the Prester John Legend 37 1. Setting a Geographic Scope 1.1. Eastern Christians: Nestorians of Prester John 37 41 2. Myth and Legend versus History? 2.1. Myth 44 2.2. Legend 48 2.3. History 50 2.4. The Relationship between Myth, Legend and History 52 3. A Prehistory of the Prester John Legend 54 CHAPTER 2. Between Transmission and Reception: The Birth of the Prester John Legend and the Crusader-Muslim Conflict, 1122-1145 65 1. The St. Thomas Tradition and the Origin of Prester John 66 2. The Prester John Legend by Otto of Freising 74 3. The Fall of Edessa: The Birth of the Legend and an Actual John (Mār Yūḥannā) 82 4. The Battle of Qaṭwān (536/1141) and the Prester John Legend 5. Conclusion 92 100 CHAPTER 3. The Prester John Letter and its Perception between the Crusading Crisis in the Levant and ImperialPapal Schism in the West 103 1. The Legend and the Second Crusade (1145-49) 104 2. The Prester John Letter, ca. 1165-70 107 3. The Letter, the Byzantine Emperor and the Crusades 112 4. The Letter and the Imperial-Papal Conflict, 1154-1177 120 5. The Letter of Pope Alexander III to Prester John in 1177 133 6. The Two Letters between Reception and Perception 140 6.1. Prester John’s Letter between Circulation and Reception 141 6.2. The Perception of Pope Alexander’s Letter 148 7. Conclusion 150 CHAPTER 4. Imaging the Prester John Kingdom in the Three Indias: The Legend's Entanglements with Alexander Romance, Jewish and Arab Muslim-Christian Imagination 153 1. The Prester John Kingdom and Alexander Romance 154 1.1. The Letter between Alexandrian Tales and Jewish Travels 165 2. The Arab Geographic Conception of Indian Christian King(s) in the Twelfth Century 171 3. Prester John and the Mythical Indian Tales in the Arabian Nights 184 4. Coptic Perception of the Legendary Priest-king (John) in the Twelfth Century 188 5. Transferring the Figures of Nubian and Abyssinian Kings into Europe during the Crusades 195 6. Conclusion 201 CHAPTER 5. Waiting for King David, Son of Prester John: The Impact of the Legend on Peace and War during the Fifth Crusade (615-618/1217-1221) 203 1. The Legend between Silence and Rebirth 204 2. Rumours and Prophecies of an Imminent Christian King 205 3. King David and the Capture of Damietta: Obstructing Peace and Stimulating War 211 3.1. Awaiting King David and the Fiasco of the Fifth Crusade 221 4. The Arabic Prophecy of King David: The Entanglements with Nestorian, Coptic and Ethiopian Prophecies/Apocalypse 227 4.1. A Syriac-Arabic Figure of the Christian King (David) 228 4.2. A Coptic-Arabic Figure of Christian King (David) 233 4.3. An Ethiopian Figure of King David in Kébra Nagast 237 5. King David and the Mongols: Associating Imagination with Reality 5.1. Prester John/King David on the Eve of the Fifth Crusade 241 250 6. Conclusion 251 CHAPTER 6. The Mongol Figure of Prester John: Remembering the Legend and the Enterprise of Latin-Mongol Crusade(s), 1222-1300 253 1. The Legend, Frederick II’s Crusade and the Aftermath, 1127-1245 254 2. Prester John and the Papal-European Missions to the Mongols, 1245-48 263 3. The Legend and the Crusade of Louis IX against Egypt, 1248-1254 271 4. William of Rubruck and Re-imagining Prester John 276 5. The Entanglement of Prester John with Ung Khan in Eastern Accounts 280 6. The Legend and the Late-Thirteenth Century Attempts of a Mongol-Latin Crusade 287 7. Conclusion 293 CONCLUSION 295 Bibliography 305 Index 349 PREFACE This book considers the history of the Prester John legend and its impact on the Crusader-Muslim conflict, investigating its entangled mythical history between East and West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Previous works on the subject have thus far dealt primarily with the legend’s large-scale history, especially its Ethiopian sphere down to the early modern era. Further, the legend has been mainly discussed from Eurocentric perspectives. No study examines the legend from the viewpoint of both Arabic and Latin sources, hence there is an omission of the Eastern perspective on both source and academic levels. The present study thus responds to the still pressing need for a comprehensive historical investigation of the twelfth and thirteenth crusading history of the legend and its impact on the Muslim-Crusader encounters, examining various Latin, Arabic, Syriac, and Coptic accounts. It further reflects new eastern aspects of the legend, presenting a new Arab scholarly view. This book first charts a pre-history of the legend in the late ancient Christian prophecy of the Last Emperor down to the emergence of the legend in the mid-twelfth century, offering a historical investigation of Latin accounts and relevant contemporary Arabic-Muslim and Syriac Christian sources. Second, the work presents a historical discussion of the legend and its association with actual occurrences in the Far East and the Levant, analysing the legend’s history within the crusading crisis and the imperial papal schism in Europe. Meanwhile, the work considers the vague Prester John Letter addressed to Manuel I Komnenus, Byzantine Emperor, and its elaborate conception of a mythical eastern kingdom, revealing imaginative parallels on the wondrous East and legendary Eastern Christian kings in Arabic- Preface Muslim account of al-Idrīsī, Christian Coptic account of Ābū alMakārim and others. Moreover, the book examines how the legend impacted war and peace processes between the Ayyubids and the Crusaders during the Fifth Crusade against Egypt (615-618/12171221), revealing how it was mingled with Arabic and Eastern Christian prophecies at the time. The study concludes by investigating the perception of Prester John by the papal and European envoys to the Mongols in the thirteenth century, revealing how the legend was instrumentalised (and even weaponised) to establish a Latin-Mongol crusade through a parallel exploration of relevant Latin, Arabic and Syriac sources. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to the Yousef Jameel Education Foundation for granting me a four-year PhD fellowship (2017-2021), which has enabled me to write the first draft of the present book at the Philipps University of Marburg. I owe many thanks to the numerous people who have helped me on the writing journey of this book. First and foremost, I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Albrecht Fuess, my first PhD advisor, whose caring counsel and guidance over the years have helped me enormously, and who dealt with me like a third parent. I am equally thankful to my second advisor, Prof. Dr. Frank Rexroth (Göttingen University), for his enthusiasm, unfailing generosity and support despite his many duties and busy schedule. I have thus tried to emulate the reputation of Prof. Fuess and Prof. Rexroth for thoroughness and diligence as scholars in my own work. I would also like to express my gratitude to the other professors who were a part of the thesis committee and examiners: Prof. Dr. Stefan Weninger (CNMS of the Philipps University of Marburg) and Prof. Dr. Verena Epp (Institute for Medieval History at the Philipps University of Marburg). Each committee member has contributed valuable observations, comments and criticisms, which have helped me revise and further develop the ideas in this work. In addition, I am delighted to thank Dr. Keagan Brewer at the University of Sydney for the great suggestions and comments on some chapter drafts of the book. I also would like to thank Prof. Bernard Hamilton (d. 2019) and Prof. Maḥmūd ʻUmrān from Alexandria University (d. 2015), who encouraged me to embark on a much-needed investigation of the legend during the Crusades from a comparative Eastern-Western Acknowledgements source and scholarly perspectives. May God have mercy on their souls! I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Qāsim ʻAbduh Qāsim (d. 2021), Prof. Dr. ʻAly al-Sayed, Prof. Dr. Hatem al-Tahawy, who guided me in composing the first draft proposal of this work. Furthermore, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to my friends: Dr. Amar Baadj (Postdoc fellow at Trier University) and Dr. Mustafa Banister (Postdoc researcher at Ghent University) who served as my second pair of eyes in reviewing the first draft of this book. Great thanks go to Dr. Andrew Kurt (Associate Professor at Clayton State University), who reviewed and proofed the pre-publishing version of the book. I could not forget to thank all my Egyptian friends in Marburg for their continuous support. Many thanks to my colleagues and friends at the CNMS of the University of Marburg and the history department at Damanhour University. My thanks to the library of Marburg University, Göttingen University library, the Gotha research library and other libraries in Germany and Egypt. And of course, it is most difficult to find sufficient words to thank one’s own family members who are deserving of the greatest thanks there is. I would like to thank my wonderful parents and my parentsin-law, who are always praying for me and are proud of me, and the beloved villagers and farmers with whom I grew up and developed my dream of becoming a historian. My heartfelt thanks also go out to my uncle, my sisters, my sisters-in-law, who provided love and support in every way imaginable. And of course- last but never least, I cannot express even a fraction of the gratitude and deep indebtedness I feel to my dear wife Iman and my children Mohamed, Leen and ʻUmar, who patiently weathered this lengthy process. My wife was a constant source of encouragement and a reminder of the life that exists outside the library. She and my children have always been my greatest source of support and encouragement, and my gratitude to them is immeasurable. This book is dedicated to them. 4 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND STYLE In the transliteration of Arabic words, I have adopted the system of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) with some minor modifications. The doubled Arabic letter yā’ (with shadda) is transliterated by an (ī) followed by (y), and the Arabic letter tā’ marbūṭa is transliterated with ah at the end of the word rather than a, and at in the construct state. The Arabic definite article (Ālif-Lām) at the beginning of the word is always transliterated to (al) regardless of whether it is followed by a sun or moon letter. The Coptic and Syrian names are transliterated according to the same style of translation as the Arabic names, as long they were mentioned in relevant Arabic sources. The work uses the common names Mamluk(s) and Ayyubid(s), instead of Mamlūk/Mamālik and Ayyūbī/Ayyūbīyah. Other well-known Arabic terms such as caliph and prince (amīr) that have entered the English vocabulary have been left in their Anglicised forms. In the bibliography, footnotes and general matters of style, I have consulted the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. LIST OF FIGURES AND MAPS Fig. 1. The Qarakhitai Empire and Qaṭwān (1141) 96 Fig. 2. The Holy Three Kings by Johannes von Hildesheim 127 Fig. 3. The Front Side of Three Kings’ Shrine in Cologne 128 Fig. 4. Prester John in his Earthly-paradisiacal Kingdom 146 Fig. 5. Al-Idrīsī’s World Map 175 Fig. 6. Savage People in the Lands of the Zinj and other Islands 180 Fig. 7. The site of the Ayyubid and Crusader Camps 214 Fig. 8. Crusaders surrounded by Ayyubid forces and Nile flood 226 Fig. 9. The Mongol Expansion at the Beginning of the 13th Century 246 Fig. 10. Depiction Ung (Wang) Khan with the Gown of a Cardinal Receiving Envoys from Genghis Khan 270 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abh.1 Der Priester Johannes, erste Abhandlung, des VII. Bandes der Abhandlungen der philosophischhistorischen Klasse der königlich sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Abh.2 Der Priester Johannes, zweite Abhandlung, Enthaltend Capitel IV, V und VI, des VIII. Bandes der Abhandlungen der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften BBKL Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon CSC Christian Society and the Crusades, 1198-1229, ed. Edward Peters Mediaevistik Mediaevistik Internationale Zeitschrift interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica MGH, Ldl Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis MGH, SS. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores MGH, SS., RGUS Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum für List of Abbreviations PAAS Pope Alexander III (1159-81): The Art of Survival, ed. Peter D. Clarke and Anne J. Duggan PJLIS Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, ed. and trans. Keagan Brewer PJMTLT Prester John: The Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, ed. Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton RHGF Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, 24 vols RRH Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani (1097 –1291) Setton The History of the Crusades (6 vols), ed. Kenneth M. Setton UKJ Die Urkunden der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, 4 parts, ed. Hans Eberhard Mayer Viator Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8 INTRODUCTION Pope Urban II (1035-1099) called for a holy military expedition to the Holy Land at the council of Clermont in 1095. This expedition was the beginning of a series of military campaigns later known as the Crusades. Although the past crusading movement is gone forever, it remains one of the most crucial medieval occurrences that influenced the relationships between East and West and Islam and Christianity down into the present. The distinction between a “crusade” and an unarmed pilgrimage or expedition remained blurred during the twelfth century. The term “crusade” or “crusader” (crucesignatus) appeared at the beginning of the thirteenth century. For instance, one of the early uses of the term in official documents goes back to the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, where Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) called for a new crusade, the Fifth Crusade (1217-1221). Using the term “crusade” does only refer to the twelfth and thirteenth-century Frankish war against the Muslims in the Levant, but it is also used to describe other wars, mainly prompted by the papacy, against “heretics” in Europe and Muslims in Spain (al-Andalus).1 Ḥurūb al-Ifranj or Ḥurūb alFiranjah was the term used to refer to the Crusades in the medieval Arabic sources. Since the nineteenth century, the Modern Arab 1 See Benjamin Weber, “When and Where Did the Word ‘Crusade’ Appear in the Middle Ages? And Why?,” in The Crusades: History and Memory, ed. K. Villads Jensen and T. K. Nielsen, OUTREMER 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 199-220; Michael Markowski, “Crucesignatus: Its Origins and Early Usage,” Journal of Medieval History, no. 10 (1984): 157–65. Introduction authors have used the expression of al-Ḥurūb al-Ṣalībīyah (i.e., the Crusades or the crusading wars).2 The Crusades became a flourishing subject in Western and Eastern academia, having considerable attention from the public audience. Several academic works have contributed significantly to the study of the history of the Crusades, especially the military and political aspects, relying mainly on examining traditional sources. While myths, legends, visions and prophecies influenced the crusading imagination, not enough research was devoted to studying the role of imagination and the mythical or wondrous appearances in shaping the crusading Muslim encounter during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This book thus is concerned with exploring the legend of Prester John (Presbyter Iohannes), whose legendary figure gripped the crusading and European imagination in the medieval and early modern epochs. The work considers the legend of this never existing priest-king and its impact on the Crusades, investigating its Eastern and Western entangled mythical history. The figure of the Christian saviour, king, or emperor has distant background and roots through a long-term period of Eastern Christian visions and myths. The figure of the Christian priest-king assigned to Prester John represented a developed account of the old tradition of the Christian legend of the Last Emperor, which was first circulated after the rise of Islam in the seventh century. Furthermore, the origin of the name of the legendary Prester John seems to carry echoes of the Apostle and Evangelist John (d. ca. 100 AD), sometimes called or associated with Presbyter John and the kernel of the Christian apocalyptic ideas and prophecies.3 Tracing the concept of the Christian saviour-king in the late ancient Eastern Christian prophecies Ahmed M. Sheir, “Between Peace and War: The Peaceful Memory of the Crusades between the Middle Ages and the Modern Arabic-Egyptian Writings,” in Studies in Peace-Building History between East and West through the Middle Ages and Modern Era, ed. Aly Ahmed Elsayed, Abdallah Abdel-Ati Al-Naggar, and Ahmed M. Sheir (Cairo: Sanabil Bookshop, 2019), 145-64. 3 Cf. Karl F. Helleiner, “Prester John’s Letter: A Mediaeval Utopia,” Phoenix 13, no. 2 (1959): 47–57; Clyde Weber Votaw, “The Apocalypse of John: IV. Its Chief Ideas, Purpose, Date, Authorship, Principles of Interpretation, and Present-Day Value,” The Biblical World 32, no. 5 (1908): 314-28. 2 10 Introduction will enhance the understanding of the history of the legend during the crusading period. In the early twelfth century, the kernel of the legend developed further thanks in part to the report of an alleged Indian patriarch by the name of John, who journeyed to Rome during the pontificate of Calixtus II (r. 1119-1124) in 1122 and presented a fantastic description of the St. Thomas tradition in India.4 In 1144, ʿImād alDīn Zankī, the Seljuk Atabeg of Mosul (r. 1127–1146) took control of the principality of Edessa - the first Frankish state established in the Levant in 1197. Consequently, Raymond of Poitiers, Prince of Antioch (r. 1136-1149), on the demand of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem (r. 1131–53), dispatched Hugh, bishop of Jabala (Jabla), to Pope Eugenius III (1145-1153) to ask for a new crusade. In 1145 in Viterbo, Hugh met the Pope and retold the first oral report of Prester John. Otto of Freising (d. 1158) witnessed Hugh’s report, and his Chronica includes the first surviving account of the legend. According to Otto, Hugh of Jabala spoke of a rich and powerful, albeit mysterious, Nestorian king called Prester John in the Far East, who was rich and powerful enough to assist the Crusaders in the Holy Land and attack the Muslims.5 Hugh’s account was most likely a distorted narrative of the actual battle of Qaṭwān between the Central-Asian Qarakhitai Yelü Dashi (r. 1124-1143) and the Muslim Seljuk Sultan Sinjar (r. 1118–1157) in 1141. Rumours of that dreadful battle reached the Crusaders, who likely assumed that the nomadic-Asian foe of Sinjar was a Christian monarch who would expunge the Muslims. In this regard, Cates Baldridge relates that “a combination of ignorance and wishful thinking quickly painted these eastern victors as followers of Christ 4 5 This story was mentioned in an anonymous text entitled “De Adventu Patriarchae Indorum” that was first brought to light in the modern era by Friedrich Zarncke in 1879. Cf. Friedrich Zarncke, ed., “Der Patriarch Johannes von Indien und der Priester Johannes,” in PJMTLT (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 2-35. For more details see below Ch. 2. Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia de Duabus Civitatibus, ed. Adolfus Hofmeister, in MGH, SS., RGUS, vol. 45 (Hanover: Lipsiae: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1912), ch.33: 363-67; F Beckingham, “The Achievements of Prester John,” in PJMTLT (UK and USA: Variorum and Ashgate, 1996), 3-5. 11 Introduction rather than, as in act they were, disciples of the Buddha.”6 Unlike most past scholarship, this work analyses the association between Otto’s report on the one side and the battle of Qaṭwān and other Christian legends spread in Edessa on the other side, especially those preserved in Syriac and Arabic accounts of the time. The legend of the priest-king John further spread and acquired popularity in Europe through the so-called Prester John Letter addressed to Manuel I Komnenus, Byzantine Emperor (r. 1142-1180), that was primarily composed between ca. 1165 and 1170.7 This Letter located the legendary Christian-eastern kingdom of Prester John in the Three Indias, which was a typical medieval title for massive swathes of south and east Asia as well as what was then believed to be the southeastern part of Africa (the Horn of Africa) that included the kingdom of Abyssinia.8 The Letter was an elaborate construction of the worthy and powerful kingdom of Prester John in the Three Indias, where the Shrine of the Apostle Thomas rests, abutting the Muslims’ lands from the Far East. Being a mighty priest-king, an ideal ruler and superior to other kings on earth, Prester John stimulated the enthusiasm of the crusader expectation of a possible ally against the Muslims. The Letter also mirrors the internal crusading disunity and the longstanding feuds with and prejudices toward the Byzantine Empire since the beginning of the crusade movement in the late eleventh century. The Letter commenced with an inaugural prelude followed by arrogant words from Prester John describing the Byzantine Emperor as “mortal and subject to human corruption.” 9 By the same token, these prejudices appeared in some contemporary eastern and western sources, which would further interpret the motives of the composition of both the legend and the Letter. Adding to that, the Letter mirrored the crisis over the schism between Emperor Frederick 6 Cates Baldridge, Prisoners of Prester John: The Portuguese Mission to Ethiopia in Search of the Mythical King, 1520-1526 (Jefferson and London: McFarland, 2012), 8. 7 See below chapter two. 8 Marianne O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West: Thought, Report, Imagination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), ch.1:13-52f; Beckingham, “The Achievements of Prester John,” in PJMTLT, 14-15, 17. 9 Keagan Brewer, ed., “Epistola Presbiteri Iohannis,” in PJLIS (Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), 68; also see below Ch. 3. 12 Introduction I Barbarossa (r. 1155-1190) and Pope Alexander III (r. 1159-1181), in which the Byzantine Emperor, the addressee, played a part as well. In this light, it is noteworthy that the legend of Prester John and the Letter were likely composed by persons in the inner circle of Frederick Barbarossa’s court.10 The legend was first written down by Otto of Freising, the half-brother of German King Conrad III (r. 1138-1152) and thus uncle of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The Letter was translated by Christian of Mainz, Barbarossa’s chancellor, who also engaged in the political struggle between Frederick Barbarossa and the Pope.11 The legendary medieval design of the Prester John kingdom appears as a reworked construction of the Alexander the Great Romance and his wonders of the East. 12 In this form, the Letter appears to be a medieval Latinised and Christianised design of the Alexander Romance, which has also been redesigned in Jewish, early Syriac, Arabic-Islamised and Coptic forms. The most exciting yet never studied aspect is the imaginative interconnections and similarities between the legendary Prester John figure and other oriental and Arabic accounts. For instance, the work of the twelfthcentury Muslim geographer al-Idrīsī (d. 1165/66) includes several reports of similarly legendary kings and kingdoms that were comparable to Prester John and his legendary realm in the Three Indias. Al-Idrīsī composed most of his work’s material on the authority of the information and itineraries of people such as travellers or merchants that he met in the Italian harbours, some of whom he hired to collect information for his book. This may provide us with clues to interpret the path of information transmission in Europe that 10 This hypothesis has been discussed in certain recent scholarship, see Wagner, Epistola Presbiteri Johannis, 244-53; Hamilton, “Prester John and the Three Kings,” 176-77; Leyser, “Frederick Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufen Polity,” 155. 11 Joachim Ehlers, Otto von Freising: Ein Intellektueller im Mittelalter (München: C. H. Beck, 2013), 9-12, 20-29; Ulrich Schmidt, “Otto von Freising,” in Biographischbibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 6 (Herzberg: Verlag Traugott Bautz, 1993), 1373-1374. 12Albert Mugrdich Wolohojian, trans., The Romance of Alexander the Great by PseudoCallisthene (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969), 1-27, 52-57, 116-121f. 13 Introduction the composer of the Prester John legend might also have used to form the alleged Letter and kingdom of Prester John. Other interesting, imaginative entanglements between Prester John and the Arabic-oriental-Indian spheres can be found in the Arabian Nights (the thousand and one nights). Like the Letter, the Arabian Nights contain a mixture of Greek, Alexandrian, Indian, Syriac and Arabic influences, which the Letter composer might have reconstructed in a Latinized-Christianized fashion. The most famous Arabian nights are those about the voyages of Sindbad, which include some relevant descriptions of Indian domains, people, kings, islands and exotic creatures and animals like the ones mentioned in the Prester John Letter.13 Furthermore, the twelfth-century Arabic-Coptic account of Abū alMakārim (d. 1209), on the History of churches and monasteries, provides an apparent description of the Nubian-Abyssinian Christian kings, whose domains are comparable to that of Prester John and his legendary domain and power. According to Abū al-Makārim, the king(s) of Nubia and Abyssinia was called al-Malik al-Qiddīs, i.e., “the priest-king” or “the saint king,” 14 which was the same title assigned to Prester John in accounts written during the period in which Abū al-Makārim wrote his account. In this respect, the twelfth-century accounts of the Muslim geographer al-Idrīsī and the Copt Abū alMakārim along with the Arabian Nights should give an accurate representation of further imaginative interconnections between the legendary kingdom of Prester John and other closely related kings, kingdoms and fables in the African-Asian spheres of the vague Three Indias. During the thirteenth century, the legend developed further thanks to the prophecy of a certain King David, son of Prester John, whose prophetic figure was associated with the Mongol Khan. The victories of the Mongols over the Muslim Khawārazmian state in Central Asia between 1219 and 1221 were attributed to that hypothetical King David and circulated in a book on the deeds of King David called 13 14 See below, chapter four. Abū al-Makārim, Tarīkh al-Kanāʼis wa al-Adyirah fī al-Qarn al-Thānī ʻashar, ed. alAnbā Ṣamwʾīl, vol. 2 (Cairo: Al-Naʻām lil-Ṭibāʻah, 2000), 132. 14 Introduction Relatio de Davide between 1220 and 1221.15 Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) and Oliver of Paderborn (d. 1227), who joined the Fifth Crusade and were its chief preachers and chroniclers, mentioned that the prophetic text on King David was initially written in Arabic, translated into Latin and sent to Europe. While the Fifth Crusaders fought to gain control of the city of Damietta in northern Egypt, they received a book/letter(s) written in Arabic predicting the arrival of the so-called King David, son of Prester John.16 Hence, the Arabic origin of the legend became increasingly evident during the Fifth Crusade, revealing, at the same time, the extent to which Prester John and his son King David shaped the crusading imagination. Furthermore, it seems that these prophetic texts were a crusading modification and interpretation of some Coptic and eastern Christian prophecies circulated as a reaction to the Arab Muslim conquest of Egypt and the Levant in the seventh century. The remnants of these prophecies survived and developed through time among Eastern Christians. One of the closest prophecies to the fifth-crusade prophecy of King David was the prophecy of the Syrian Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 873), which predicted the imminent coming of a powerful Christian king, who would seize Damascus, Egypt and other cities and lands.17 Within the context of the Fifth Crusade, King David’s prediction might have been a reworked version of some Coptic prophecies. Christine George argues that while Copts welcomed the Arab conquest of Egypt to shake off the shackle of the Byzantine persecution, they began to feel persecuted with shifting the Islamic Caliphate to Damascus and the beginning Umayyad Caliphate in 41Ah/661 AD. Therefore, some Copts voiced their irritation from the political regime through prophecies metaphorically attributed to a group of renowned Coptic saints. Some prophecies were assigned to the Patriarch of the Alexandria Church Athanāsiyūs the Apostolic (d. 373 AD), claiming that he predicted the rise of Arabs and their Keagan Brewer, ed., “Relatio de Davide,” in PJLIS (Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), 101-22. 16 See below chapter five. 17 Reinhold Röhricht, “la prophétie de Hannan le fil Isaac,” in Quinti belli sacri Scriptores Minores, ed. Reinhold Röhricht (Genevae, 1879), 205–13; Paul Pelliot, “deux passages de la prophétie de Hannan, fils d’Isaac’, in PJMTLT (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 113-37. 15 15 Introduction destruction.18 Another prophecy was attributed to St. Samuel of Qalamūn (d. ca. 695) that predicted the end of Arabo-Muslim domination in Egypt through the assistance of a certain Christian (Rūm) king. 19 The prophecy of King David had a further connection with an Arabic-Coptic prophetic book called Kébra Nagast, which relates a venerable history of King Solomon and his young son King David, who was blessed to be the King of Ethiopia.20 On the eve of the Fifth Crusade, European sources such as the Alberic de Trois-Fontaines chronicle – written between 1232 and 1241 – referred to the Mongols as a part of Prester John’s army.21 Nevertheless, after the Mongol conquest of Eastern Europe, the remaining powers of Europe became confused about the actuality of the Mongols and their aims. At the same time, Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243-1254) sent four missions to the Mongols after the Council of Lyon in 1245, seeking to identify these unknown people and look for Prester John among them. This study explores the image of Prester John, which appeared in these European missionary-travel writings, especially the account of the Franciscan John of Plano Carpine (d. 1250), who travelled to the Mongols between 1245 and 1247. Some rumours linked the Mongols and Prester John during the Seventh Crusade to Egypt between 1248 and 1252. The second essential account is the travel of the Franciscan monk William of Rubruck (d. 1293), who journeyed to the Mongols at the request of King Louis IX (1226-1270) in 1253. Among other purposes, Rubruck aimed to propose an alliance project with the Mongols after the disastrous performance of King Louis IX in the Seventh Crusade, during which he was captured at the battle of Christine George, trans., “Al-Nnubūʾah al-Mansūbah ll-Qiddīs Athanāsiyūs alRasūlī,” Madrasat al-Iskandarih, no. 3 (2013): 223–56. 19 Samʻān al-Ᾱnṭiūanī, ed., Tanabbūʾāt al-Anbā Ṣamwaʾīl al-Muʻtaraf bi-Dyruh alʻĀmir bi-Jabal al-Qalāmūn (Cairo: Maṭbaʻat ʻAzmi, 1988), 29-31. 20 E.A. Wallis Budge, trans., The Queen of Sheba and her only Son Menyelek (Kébra Nagast), Parentheses Publications Ethiopian Series (Cambridge, Ontario: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ii-iii, 40-48; Rāhib min Dayr al-Barāmūs, al-Rahbanah alḤabashīyah, ed. Nīāfat al-Anbā Iysūzūrus (Cairo: Dār al-Qiṭār lil -ṭibāʿah, 1999), 1922. 21 Alberic de Trois-Fontaines, “Albrici monachi Triumfontium Chronicon,” ed. Paulus Scheffer-Boichorst, in MGH SS, ed. Georgius Heinricus Pertz, vol. 23 (Leipzig: Verlag Karl W. Hiersemann, 1925), 912. 18 16 Introduction Manṣūrah (648/1250). It is interesting to examine how these travel accounts presented a fanciful image of how the Tatars/Mongols became the vassals of Prester John, whose land was later conquered by Genghis Khan and his sons. Finally, the reception of Prester John among the Mongols by other late thirteenth-century accounts with a parallel insight on relevant Arabic and Syriac sources, especially those written by Ibn al-ʿIbrī (Bar Hebraios) (d. 1286), will be further analysed. HISTORIOGRAPHY: PRESTER JOHN BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT The legend of Prester John drew the attention of medieval missionaries, travellers, geographers, writers and historians. Likewise, it was the subject of sober reflections and accounts, and its imaginative importance endured many centuries through various incarnations in historical fiction, adventure novels and comic books, and anthropological, theological, philological, genealogical and historical literature. Of course, this work is far from being the first to tackle the legend of Prester John, and it cannot but be grateful to those who have paved the way. Most of the past scholarship mainly dealt with the largescale range of the legend’s history from the twelfth century into the early modern era. A significant number of these publications discuss in a smaller or greater degree the legend in its Ethiopian scope starting in the fourteenth century. Therefore, a historical review of the most preeminent and seminal studies of the Prester John legend to date will follow. While Prester John was the subject of several studies in the West, Arab academia is almost silent on the subject. The legend was never the subject of a full-length research study by a modern Arab historian. Only a brief overview of the legend can be found in the introduction of ʻĀdil Hilāl’s book in 1997 on the relations between the Mongols and Europe and its impact on the Muslims. In 2015, Maḥmūd ʻUmrān published a conference paper summarising the legend’s history during the Crusades in the context of a volume on the travellers and 17 Introduction geographers in the Middle Ages.22 Following their steps, Ḥātim alṬaḥāwī rehashed the basic story in an article published in the Tafāhum cultural magazine in 2018, scanning the medieval and early modern history of the legend of Prester John.23 Though those Arabic studies relied mainly on the western historiography on the legend and proposed nothing novel, they expressed a slight Arabic and Muslim perspective. These texts and their authors served as a catalyst to sketch a transcultural historiographical perspective on the legend through a comprehensive investigation of relevant contemporary sources, considering views and interpretations of recent scholarship on the legend in East and West. Among the first scholars who took the initiative to shed light on the legend in western academia was Gustav Oppert in 1864.24 He proposed the oldest theories on Prester John, provided an overview of the legend into the sixteenth century, focused on its Ethiopian part and examined the association between heroic poetry in German literature and the Letter text. However, the majority of the studies of Prester John stand on the shoulder of the German scholar Friedrich Zarncke, to whom all subsequent researchers on the Prester John legend must render gratitude. In 1876, Zarncke published the first Latin edition of the Prester John texts with a German introduction and comments that became the main source channels of the academic scholarship down to modern times. Zarncke provides a critical edition of the Letter of Prester John to the Byzantine emperor based on examining nearly one hundred manuscripts of the Letter, together with the letter of Pope Alexander III to Prester John in 1177.25 In his zweite Abhandlung, ʻĀdil Hilāl, Al-ʻalāqāt bayna al-Maghūl wa Ūrubbā wa Āthāraha a͑ la al-ʻĀlam alIslāmi (Cairo: Dār ʻīn, 1997), 18-26; Maḥmūd Saʻīd ʻUmrān, al-Raḥḥālah wa alJughrāfīyūn fī al-ʻUṣūr al-Wusṭā (Alexanderia: Dār al-Maʻrifah al-jāmiʻīah, 2015), 112-136. 23 Ḥātim al-Ṭaḥāwī, “Ūrubbā wa-al-Islām: Mamlakat al-Kāhin Yūḥannā, al-Ḥaqīqah, al-ʾusṭūrah, al-Maghza,” Majallat al-Tafāhum, s. 16, no. 16 (2018): 281–91. 24 Gustav Oppert, Der Presbyter Johannes in Sage und Geschichte: Ein Beitrag zur Voelker-und Kirchenhistorie und zur Heldendichtung des Mittelalters (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1864). 25 Friedrich Zarncke, [Abh.1] der Priester Johannes, erste Abhandlung, des VII. Bandes der Abhandlungen der phlosophisch-historischen Klasse der königlich sächsischen 22 18 Introduction Zarncke provides an edition of the texts on Prester John in the thirteenth century, such as the fifth-crusade Relatio de Davide, among others.26 Further discussion of each Latin text and source edited by Zarncke will be introduced in detail throughout the following chapters. Interdisciplinary research on the subject has flourished during the twentieth century. Most of these studies reflect Eurocentric historiographical interpretations and views of the large-scale legend history and narratives. Scholars more engaged with the narrative of Otto of Freising’s report, the literary and philological aspects of the Letter and the Ethiopian Prester John, overlook other sources from Eastern historical partners, especially Arabs. For instance, between the 1920s and 1940s, a few articles were published by Constantine Marinescu,27 E. D. Ross,28 Leonardo Olschki,29 and Malcolm Letts30 presenting hypotheses regarding the African-Ethiopian figure of Prester John with a brief overview of the legend in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Furthermore, Olschki presented allegorical theories on the Letter, arguing that it is useless in terms of its geographical and historical data Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (Leipzig, Hirzel, 1879), 872-934; Zarncke's texts of “der Patriarch Johannes von Indien und der Priester Johannes,” and “der Brief des Priesters Johannes an den byzantinischen Kaiser Emanuel,” and “der Brief des Papstes Alexanders II an den Priester Johannes,” reprinted in PJMTLT (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 23-112. 26 Friedrich Zarncke, [Abh.2] der Priester Johannes, zweite Abhandlung, enthaltend Capitel IV, V und VI, des VIII. Bandes der Abhandlungen der philosophischhistorischen Klasse der königlich sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (Leipzig, Hirzel, 1876), Reprint by Georg Omls Verlg togther with the erste Abhandlung as Zarncke, der Priester Johannes: 2 Teile in 1 Band, in 1980. 27 Constantine Marinescu, “le Prêtre Jean, Son Pays, explication de Son Nom,” Academie Roumaine. Bulletin de la Section Historique x (1923): 73–122; Constantine Marinescu, “Encore une fois le problème du Prêtre Jean,” Academie Roumaine. Bulletin de la Section Historique xxvi, no. 2 (1945): 203–22. 28 E. Denison Ross, “Prester John and the Empire of Ethiopia,” in Travel and Travelers of the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Newton (London. NY: Kegan Paul, 1930), 174–94. 29 Leonardo Olschki, “Der Brief des Presbyters Johannes,” Historische Zeitschrift 144, no. JG (1931): 1–14; republsihed in Leonardo Olschki, Storia letteraria delle scoperte geografiche: Studi e ricerche (Florence: 1937), 194-213. 30 Malcolm Letts, “Prester John: A Fourteenth-Century Manuscript at Cambridge,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 29 (1947): 19–26. 19 Introduction that might be designed to present an imaginary ideal society. In 1950, some works on the legend were composed by Nowell,31 Slessarev32 and Helleiner.33 Nowell reintroduced an overview of the legend and the Letter focusing on the figure and name of Prester John in Ethiopian culture and literature. Slessarev, based on a French version preserved in the James Ford Bell collection of the University of Minnesota Library, rediscussed the Letter and its utopian traditions. Helleiner speaks of the utopian aspects of the Letter, pointing to the tradition of St. Thomas in India in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Due to the enduring fascination fostered by such dramatic aspects of the legend, Robert Silverberg depicts a dramatic fictional scenario about Prester John, the Steppes, the embellishments and Fantasies, and the Portuguese and Prester John in Ethiopia.34 Silverberg’s book did not concern the precise history of the Prester John story; it is best seen as a historical novel rather than an academic history work. Similarly, Gumilev offered an idiosyncratic work published in Russian in 1970 and translated into English by R. Smith in 1987.35 Gumilev approaches the subject in a roundabout and popular form in the sense of a medieval world history of Central Asia and the Steppes from the eighth century to the early fourteenth century. Gumilev depicts a dramatic history of Nestorianism among the Naimans and Keraits, with the emergence of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. In this framework, this book is designed to discuss the Asian events that later led to the birth of the legend of Prester John, but never discusses the legend and its medieval context in a specific sense. Since 1980, significant developments have emerged on the subject, especially in the conceptual, historical, literary and philological spheres of the Prester John Letter. A fresh look at Prester John was Charles Nowell, “The Historical Prester John,” Speculum 28, no. 3 (1953): 435–45. Vsevolod Slessarev, Prester John: The Letter and the Legend (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959). 33 Karl F. Helleiner, “Prester John’s Letter: A Mediaeval Utopia,” Phoenix 13, no. 2 (1959): 47–57. 34 Robert Silverberg, The Realm of Prester John (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1972). 35 L.N. Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John, trans. T. E.F Smith, Past and Present Publications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 31 32 20 Introduction promoted in German academia with Knefelkamp’s work, “die Suche nach dem Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes,” published in 1986.36 Knefelkamp sketches an interesting folkloric, ethnological, literary and historical presentation of the legend between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. He examines different genres of German literature, travel literature, epics and encyclopaedias with a heavy concentration on the Ethiopian figure of Prester John. Knefelkamp’s study shows how the Portuguese expansion into Africa relied on the search for Prester John.37 Between fiction and history, Meir Bar-Ilan provides a short paper about Prester John in India and Ethiopia38 based on the Hebrew version of the Letter.39 Depicting a general landscape of the Prester John legend in terms of the history of early contact of Europeans with East Asia, Igor de Rachewiltz wrote on “Prester John and Europe’s Discovery,” which was originally a lecture that he gave at the Australian National University.40 The next body of Prester John studies is presented in the most significant collection of articles on the topic, edited by Beckingham and Hamilton under the title Prester John: the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, published in 1996.41 The volume has done much to illuminate the legend's historical aspects, among other contributions. It combined original essays from various scholars with three of Zarncke’s translations of the original Prester John texts first published Ulrich Knefelkamp, Die Suche nach dem Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes: Dargestellt anhand von Reiseberichten und anderen ethnographischen Quellen des 12. bis 17. Jahrhunderts (Gelsenkirchen: Verlag Andreas Müller, 1986). 37 Ulrich Knefelkamp, Die Suche nach dem Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes: Dargestellt anhand von Reiseberichten und anderen ethnographischen Quellen des 12. bis 17. Jahrhunderts (Gelsenkirchen: Verlag Andreas Müller, 1986); see also, Ulrich Knefelkamp, “Die Priesterkönig Johannes und seine Reich-Legende oder Realität?,” Journal of Medieval History, no. 14 (1988): 337–55. 38 Meir Bar-Iian, “Prester John: Fiction and History,” History of European Ideas 20, no. 1–3 (1995): 291–98. 39 Edward Ullendorff and C.F. Beckingham, The Hebrew Letters of Prester John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 40 Igor de Rachewiltz, “Prester John and Europe’s Discovery of East Asia,” East Asian History, no. 11 (1996): 59–74. 41 Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton, eds., Prester John: The Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes [PJMTLT] (Aldershot: Variorum: 1996). 36 21 Introduction in 1879. In the frame of the influence of the quest for Prester John, Beckingham presents a brief description of Africa and India in the late Middle Ages, ending with the Portuguese search for Prester John in Ethiopia.42 In another article, which was first an inaugural lecture at the SOAS in London in 1966, Beckingham indicates the connection between Hugh of Jabala’s report on Prester John the Gür-Khan (Yelü Dashi) of Qarakhitai.43 He gives a detailed explanation of the conception of the Three Indias in the medieval European imagination. Other volume sections combine useful information on Prester John and the “Three Kings of Cologne” by Hamilton 44 and the deeds of King David, son of Prester John, called Relatio de Davide by J. Richard.45 The latter aimed to touch upon the question of the historical value of the Relatio text as a source for Mongol history. Likewise, David Morgan’s article “Prester John and the Mongols” uncovers the connection between the legend and the Mongols.46 These articles are significant contributions to the history of the Mongols, discussing some aspects of the relation between Prester John and the Mongols. Nevertheless, further discussion on the imagined connection between the Mongols and Prester John in the context of the Crusading-Muslim encounter is needed. On the steps of Zarncke and Knefelkamp, Baum published a German study on the topic in 1999. 47 He traces the Christian cultural encounter between Asia, East Africa and Europe from the early Middle Ages to the sixteenth century. Baum studies Prester John, providing a dedicated study to display the medieval and early modern C.F. Beckingham, “Quest for Prester John,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 62 (1980): 291-310, republished in1996 in PJMTLTs, 271-90. 43 Charles F. Beckingham, “The Achievements of Prester John,” in Between Islam and Christendom: Travellers, Facts, and Legends in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: Variorum, 1983), 3-24, reprinted in the in PJMTLT, 1996, 1-22. 44 Bernard Hamilton, “Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne,” in Studies in the Medieval History presented to R.H.C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr Harting and R.I. Moore (London: Hambledon Press, 1985), 73-97, republished in 1996 in PJMTLTs, 171-185. 45 Jean Richard, “The Relatio de Davide as a Source for the Mongol History and the Legend of Prester John,” in PJMTLT, 139–58. 46 David Morgan, “Prester John and the Mongols,” in PJMTLT, 159–70. 47 Wilhelm Baum, Die Verwandlungen des Mythos vom Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes: Rom, Byzanz und die Christen des Orients im Mittelalter (Klagenfurt: Verlag Kitab, 1999). 42 22 Introduction history of the legend in the context of a historical presentation of the history of the Eastern Church and the Eastern Christians. The scope of Baum’s work is impressive and the material used is extremely diverse, but the central tendency of the work is eclectic. The data is based on a mountain of material in the secondary literature. Many details are connected or interpreted in an idiosyncratic manner, and some scientifically questionable or no longer tenable theses are redundant.48 In 2002, Baum republished a book chapter from his work on the Syrian Christians, revealing the spread of Nestorianism among the Naiman tribe, whose ruler Ung Khan was called John, as the origin of the legend among the legend the Mongols.49 On the shoulders of Zarncke’s edition, Bettina Wagner published a new revised edition of the Letter’s manuscripts with a German translation in 2000.50 Wagner has explored about 200 manuscripts of the Letter, including about one hundred versions that Zarncke studied in 1879, between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. The edition provides revised textual traditions of the Letter’s manuscripts with new editions of several variants that distinguish the work from that of Zarncke. She also presented a new palaeographical analysis of the Letter’s manuscripts while providing more handwritten marginal comments written in the versions she examined. Additionally, Wagner has given a detailed temporal and spatial map of the manuscripts of the Letter in Europe, which served the present work to measure the extent to which the legend was known in Europe in the Middle Ages. She also provides descriptions of scribal dialect, translation technique and possible origins of the texts, along with discussing the contemporary function of the German text. In general, Wagner’s Siegbert Uhlig, “Wilhelm Baum: Die Verwandlungen des Mythos vom Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes. Rom, Byzanz und die Christen des Orients im Mittelalter,” Aethiopica: International Journal of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies, no. 4 (2001): 247–50. 49 Wilhelm Baum, “Der Priesterkönig Johannes und die syrische Christenheit,” in Syriaca. Zur Geschichte, Theologie, Liturgie und Gegenwartslage der syrischen Kirchen, Studien zur orientalischen Kirchengeschichte. Band 17 (Hamburg: Lit, 2002), 177–84. 50 Bettina Wagner, Die ›Epistola Presbiteri Johannis‹ Lateinisch und Deutsch: Überlieferung, Textgeschichte, Rezeption und Übertragungen im Mittelalters. Mit bisher unedierten Texten (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000). 48 23 Introduction edition provides a wealth of vital details about the Letter that are of great value to the present research. Furthermore, the anthropologist Johnny Wyld spoke of the fictional figure of Prester John, focusing on the imaginative description of Prester John in recent scholarship and the history of the nomadic tribes in Central Asia and the Steppes. Since the essay was originally part of a general talk given in 1999, it offers a general view of the legend in Central Asia.51 Exploring the Paris manuscript (BNF. Ms.all. 15), Gerhardt and Schmid published an essay in 2004 discussing the utopian content of the Letter. It comes across as an anthropological and philological investigation of the Paris manuscript of the Letter, providing a brief political-historical discussion of the Letter’s content.52 In 2006, Manuel João Ramos provided a further historical reading of the textual content of the Letter as a part of his volume on Christian mythology. He sheds light on multi-layered visions of the Letter and the kingdom of Prester John to bring together the common elements of the Letter’s scholarship in the twentieth century.53 In a doctoral dissertation published in 2009,54 Michael Brooks rereads the evolution of the Prester John legend from its roots in central and eastern Asia to its final destination in Abyssinia in the sixteenth century. As in several previous studies, Brooks reinterprets the large range of the legend in terms of space and time while focusing on the textual analysis and literary tradition that produced the perfect atmosphere for the pervasiveness of the Prester John legend. However, Brooks solely analyses modern university history textbooks to investigate how the Prester John is received and taught in European world history curricula. In this vein, Brooks’s project presents a new Johnny Wyld, “Prester John in Central Asia,” Asian Affairs 31, no. 1 (2000): 3–13. Christoph Gerhardt and Wolfgang Schmid, “Beiträge zum ‘Brief des Presbyters Johannes’. Bemerkungen zum utopischen Charakter der ‘Epistola’ und zu Ihrer deutschen Bearbeitung in der Pariser Handschrift (BNF, Ms. All. 150),” Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum und Deutsche Literatur 133, no. 2 (2004): 177–94. 53 Manuel João Ramos, Essays in Christian Mythology: The Metamorphosis of Prester John (Lanham: University Press of America, Inc., 2006). 54 Michael E. Brooks, “Prester John: A Reexamination and Compendium of the Mythical Figure Who Helped Spark European Expansion” (PhD. Thesis, University of Toledo, 2009), 1-317. 51 52 24 Introduction perspective on the legend in its late medieval and early modern setting. It also deals with university didactic approaches of the legend, providing an overview of its developments in geography, visual arts and history texts. Echoing the study of Wasserstein on Eldad ha-Dani and Prester John in 1996,55 Micha Perry wrote on the relations between Prester John and Eldad the Danite (ninth-century Jewish traveller). He introduces both Eldad’s travels and the Letter in the context of the history of medieval Christian-Jewish relations, examining the literary relationship between the Eldad text and the Letter.56 While Perry explains how both Jews and Christians retold these utopian tales, demonstrating how the two societies shared the same imaginary belief in the Middle Ages, the present book demonstrates how both Latins and Muslims shared the same imaginative concept on the wonderous East, albeit differently. In his master’s thesis in 2011, Christopher Taylor presented the legend in the frame of the enclosure and expansion of Latin Christendom within the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He reviews the legend and the Letter, presenting Prester John as an anchoring point of the conflict between the desired eschatological significance of Christianity and Islam. Taylor aimed to situate his study on the legend to concern a question of scepticism, rather than investigating what is “over or “beyond” Prester John. In the last ten pages of his thesis, he presents an overview of how the Crusaders waited for Prester John during the Fifth Crusade; unfortunately, a solid analysis of the primary sources is lacking.57 David J. Wasserstein, “Eldad Ha-Dani and Prester John.” In PJMTLT, (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), XII: 213–36. 56 Micha Perry, “The Imaginary War between Prester John and Eldad the Danite and its Real Implications,” Viator 41, no. 1 (2010): 1–24. 57 Christopher Eric Taylor, “Waiting for Prester John: The Legend, the Fifth Crusade, and Medieval Christian Holy War,” (M.A. Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2011), 1-64. 55 25 Introduction Later, Taylor developed his thesis and published it in two articles in 201158 and 2014.59 In 2013, I-Chun Wang provided a short comparative literary study presenting an example of the literary and cultural similarities between “Alexander the Great, Prester John, Strabo of Amasia and wonders of the East.” 60 Although the article does not provide a critical study, it provides a literary history for the Letter, which this study uses to tackle the legend’s connections with early and late ancient wonders. In a similar vein, Tilo Renz, in “Das Priesterkönigreich des Johannes,” rereads the literary and fictional content of the Letter and its reception in German literature, studying its literary context in the travel reports of the medieval and early modern era.61 In a testimonial, messianic, eschatological and theological reading for the legend of Prester John and his son King David, Camille Rouxpetel wrote her article “La figure du Prêtre Jean,” in 2014.62 She provides a beneficial treatment of the relation between the apocalyptic messianic figure of the Pseudo-Methodius apocalypse, the prophecy of Hannan of Isaac (Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq) and the King David prophecy of the Fifth Crusade. In an excellent study on The Mongol empire between myth and reality, Aigle dedicates a chapter to the Mongols and the legend of Prester John.63 Aigle discusses the events in Inner Asia on the eve of the Mongol invasions, referring to the power struggle between Ong Khan, who was said to have been a Christian, and Temüjin (Genghis Christopher Taylor, “Prester John, Christian Enclosure, and the Spatial Transmission of Islamic Alterity in the Twelfth-Century West,” in Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse, ed. Jerold C. Frakes (New YorK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 39–64. 59 Christopher Taylor, “Global Circulation as Christian Enclosure: Legend, Empire, and the Nomadic Prester John,” Literature Compass 11, no. 4 (2014): 445–59. 60 I-Chun Wang, “Alexander the Great, Prester John, Strabo of Amasia, and Wonders of the East,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14, no. 5 (2012): 1–9. 61 Tilo Renz, “Das Priesterkönigreich des Johannes,” in ErinnerungsorteErinnerungsbrüche mittelalterliche Orte, die Geschichte Mach(t)en, ed. Frank Meier and Ralf H. Schneider (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2013), 239–56. 62 Camille Rouxpetel, “La figure du Prêtre Jean: les mutations d’une prophétie souverain chrétien idéal, figure providentielle ou paradigme de l’orientalisme médiéval?” Questes: Revue Pluridisciplinaire d’études Médiévales, no. 28 (2014): 99–120. 63 Denise Aigle, The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality: Studies in Anthropological History (Leiden. Boston: Brill, 2014), 41-65. 58 26 Introduction Khan). She also tells of the western reaction to the Mongol advance and the evolving figure of the Prester John concept in the accounts of the papal and European missionaries to the Mongols from the year 1245 into the early fourteenth century. Aigle’s chapter provides the background on which this study builds its last chapter, which rather focuses on the consanguinity between the Latin, Eastern Christian and Arabic accounts, revealing a diverse cultural perception of the Mongol figure of Prester John. Following Zarncke’s edition, Keagan Brewer published an English and Latin edition for the Latin texts of Prester John between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries.64 Brewer’s volume begins with an introduction, which gives an excellent overview of the medieval and early modern history of the legend of Prester John. Before each Latin text, Brewer provides contextual information about the Latin text that helps the reader to understand the circumstances in which the text was produced. The volume ends with appendices containing a list of annotated sources, bibliographical details of the edition, translations and manuscripts, an appendix of the manuscript traditions of the Prester John Letter and other relevant texts on the legend. Each source text will be further discussed throughout the chapters of the present study. In 2017, in the context of his study on Mythology and Diplomacy in the Ages of Exploration,65 Adam Knobler commenced his book with a mythical-historical introduction of the legend, discussing how the Ethiopian figure of Prester John turned the European diplomatic endeavours towards Ethiopia in the early modern era. Knobler, however, gives an essential insight into how the legends, especially Prester John, played a vital role in shaping European diplomacy with Asia and Africa in medieval and early modern periods. Following the endeavours to provide further discussions on the literary and imaginative content of the Letter, Marco Giardini published an article 64 Keagan Brewer, ed., [PJLIS] Prester John: The Legend and Its Sources (Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate, 2015). 65 Adam Knobler, Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 5-30. 27 Introduction discussing the name and origin of Prester John.66 Giardini sheds light on the complex intertwinement of the Letter’s narrative, investigating various meanings of Prester John’s name in historiographical and literary writings, discussing several theories regarding the interpretation, transliteration and translation of Prester’s John name. In 2019, Jonathan Dixon submitted his dissertation on The Prester John Legend and European Conceptions of Eastern Alterity before 1800, which deals with the extended history of the Prester John legend. Dixon examines how Prester John reflected a broader European conception of Eastern alterity. It also presents a history of the transfer of Prester John from being an Asian king during the Crusades into an Ethiopian king in the figure of the Ethiopian emperor in the late medieval period and early modern era.67 In addition to all of the scholarly endeavours above, further comprehensive studies are dedicated to discussing the Ethiopian Prester John, but there is not enough space to be reviewed here.68 OBJECTIVE AND METHODOLOGY While there are excellent works on the legend, they mainly deal with the wide range of aspects of the legend from the twelfth century into Marco Giardini, “‘Ego, Presbiter Iohannes, Dominus Sum Dominantium’: The Name of Prester John and the Origin of his Legend,” Viator 48, no. 2 (2017): 195-230. 67 Jonathan M.T. Dixon, “The Prester John Legend and European Conceptions of Eastern Alterity before 1800” (Doctoral Thesis: University of Cambridge, 2020). 68 Marco Giardini, “The Quest for the Ethiopian Prester John and its Eschatological Implications,” Medievalia 22 (2019), 55-87; Matteo Salvadore, The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 1402-1555, (London: Routledge, 2016); Andrew Kurt, “The Search for Prester John, a Projected Crusade and the Eroding Prestige of Ethiopian Kings, c.1200–c.1540,” Journal of Medieval History 39, no. 3 (2013): 297–320; Cates Baldridge, Prisoners of Prester John: The Portuguese Mission to Ethiopia in Search of the Mythical King, 1520-1526 (Jefferson and London: McFarland, 2012); Matteo Salvadore, “The Ethiopian Age of Exploration: Prester John’s Discovery of Europe, 1306-1458,” Journal of World History 21, no. 4 (2010): 593–627; Bernard Hamilton, “An Ethiopian Embassy to Europe, c. 1310,” in PJMTLT (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 197–206; Francisco Alvares, The Prester John of the Indies: A True Relation of the Lands of the Prester John, being the Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Ethiopia in 1520, trans. C. F. Beckingham and G. W.B. Huntingford, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), reprinted by Ashgate in 2011. 66 28 Introduction the early modern era. Scholarship on the subject during the Crusades seems to remain, to this day, mostly disconnected from the meaningful discussion of intertwined Arab-Latin histories and Muslim-Christian interrelations. Furthermore, previous studies mainly provide Eurocentric views on the shared histories of the Crusades and the medieval East-West relations in general. Thus, there is still a pressing need for a comprehensive historical investigation of the legend during the Crusades. This work, consequently, is exclusively dedicated to scrutinising the shared Eastern and Western history of the legend and its impact on the Crusades, presenting a transcultural historiographical view through analysis of relevant Arabic, Coptic and Syriac and Latin sources. This work thus uncovers the extent to which the legend played a part in shaping the actual historical occurrences of the Crusades. It evaluates how the belief in Prester John influenced the crusading advocates and shaped the military and political decisions of the crusade leaders, which in turn shaped the war and peace-making processes between the Muslims and the Crusaders. In this regard, the study aims to examine the history of the legend and its entanglements with further Christian prophecies and eastern wonders in Arabic and Eastern Christian accounts. The book further examines the repercussions of the Prester John in Europe, examining how the legend mirrored the schism between Frederick Barbarossa and the Papacy. It investigates the role of the Mongol advance into Asia in shaping the European and crusading imagination about Prester John, analysing the mythical Mongol figure of Prester John in Western and Eastern reports. The work argues that a complete understanding of the legendary priest-king John requires an analysis of the contemporary Arabic and Eastern Christian literary, geographical and historical accounts, which include legends, prophecies or apocalyptical priest-king(s) or domain(s) that are similar to the legendary figure of Prester. It thus deals with the legend from transcultural views and multicultural source perspectives, recasting a Latin-Western and Arab-Eastern perspective of the crusading history of Prester John. Side by side, the study also shows how Arabs and Eastern Christians shared the same imaginary belief about Christian kings, albeit in different forms, 29 Introduction presenting an imaginative Latin conception of the Eastern alterity of the wondrous East during the Crusades. Regarding study approaches and methodology, the work considers the legend and its impact during the crusade from fresh Eastern and Western perspectives, prioritising an explanatory factor in the sources’ tenor and contents. The present work thus uses an interpretative approach based on the investigation and analysis of the primary sources and interpretation of specific texts to understand the entangled structure of the legend and its impact on historical occurrences. Each source and account will be introduced at the first instance of its mention. Addressing texts and narratives on the legend through a different range of Eastern and Western sources in narratological form aims, in the end, to analyse common narratives in Latin sources and germane Arabic sources, written by Muslims, Syrians and Copts.69 Examining different texts and narratives should also provide a micro-historical enquiry and interpretation of the western and eastern aspects of the legend during the Crusades. Secondary sources are utilised as contrapuntal historical references, while some secondary texts serve as primary sources for the attitudes of particular historians. The crusading movement is one of the trans-Mediterranean phenomena70 that could not be understood without considering the 69 On narratology see, Monika Fludernik, “Narratology in the Twenty-First Century: The Cognitive Approach to Narrative.” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 125, no. 4 (2010): 924–30; Jan Christoph Meister, “Narratology,” in Handbook of Narratology, eds. Peter Hühn et al (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009) 329–50; Gerald Prince, “Narratology,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, ed. Raman Selden, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 8:110– 30; Gerald Prince, Narratology. The Form and Functioning of Narrative (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982). 70 On Medieval Transcultural Entanglement see; Felipe Rojas and Peter E. Thompson, “Introduction: The Transcultural Medieval Mediterranean,” in Queering the Medieval Mediterranean: Transcultural Sea of Sex, Gender, Identity, and Culture, ed. Felipe Rojas and Peter E. Thompson, The Medieval Mediterranean, 121 (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 1–12; Jelena Erdeljan, “Cross-Cultural and Transcultural Entanglement and Visual Culture in Eastern Europe, ca. 1300–1550,” in Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions, ed. Maria Alessia Rossi and Alice Isabella Sullivan (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2021), 29–56; 30 Introduction various Latin-Arab and Christian-Muslim transcultural views. In this context, Prester John’s legend is considered a transculturalMediterranean paradigm that had eastern roots impacting the relationship between East and West, Islam and Christianity in the Middle Ages. Hence, the “transcultural”71 approach and investigation considers the Prester John legend through a transcultural perspective combining different cultures that contributed to forming the crusading-Latin legendary of Prester John, as the awaited Eastern Christian saviour, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.72 Offering a transcultural reading and conversation is intended to examine potential conceptual aspects of Prester John, exploring relevant Eastern Christian legends and wonders in Arab, Muslim and Eastern Christian tradition through medieval space and time. At the same time, it aims to uncover a sort of hypothetical alternative, expressing interaction and integration dimensions, on the level of legendary perception, between East and West that have distinct cultural elements, though interconnected, especially across the Mediterranean scope. Daniel G. König, ed., Latin and Arabic: Entangled Histories, Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality–5 (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2019), vii-xii, 21131; Albrecht Classen, “Medieval Transculturality in the Mediterranean from a Literary-Historical Perspective. The Case of Rudolf von Ems’ der Guote Gêrhart (ca. 1220–1225),” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5, no. 1 (2018): 133–60. 71 The conceptual term “Transculturación” was coined by Fernando Ortiz in his 1940 work: See, Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Havana: Jesús Montero, 1940); Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint. Tobacco and Sugar (New York: Knopf, 1947). 72 For more on transcultural approach see; Daniel G. König, “The Transcultural Approach Within a Disciplinary Framework: An Introduction,” The Journal of Transcultural Studies 7, no. 2 (2016): 89–100; Madeleine Herren, Martin Rüesch, and Christiane Sibille, Transcultural History: Theories, Methods, Sources (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2012); Virginia H. Milhouse, Molefi Kete Asante, and Peter O. Nwosu, eds., Transcultural Realities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on CrossCultural Relations (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006); Andreas Hepp, Transkulturelle Kommunikation (Konstanz: UVK, 2006). For more collections of essays on (medieval) transculturality see, the Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies, published by De Gruyter: https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jtms/html [accessed on 20. Nov. 2021]; The Journal of Transcultural Studies, initiated in 2010, published by Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies (HCTS), https://heiup.uniheidelberg.de/journals/index.php/transcultural/index [accessed on 20. Nov. 2021]. 31 Introduction At the same time, examining the Eastern-Western history of the legend during the Crusades uncovers hidden scopes of the transfer and reception history of imagination and legendary concepts across the Mediterranean. This study reveals the interconnectedness of the Prester John legend with similar legends, prophecies, or other similar imaginative structures of the figure of Prester John in East and West.73 For instance, the work is concerned to go beyond the early roots of the core of the legendary idea of an Eastern-Christian priest-king in Eastern Christian tradition, proposing its transcultural and transfer hypotheses into the crusading time. The work seeks to look at the entangled history of the legend during the Crusades in eastern and western perception, creating connected histories between East and West. This entanglement may include conflicting complexities like parallels, similarities and variations, exchanges and developments, exceptions and generalizations, alongside shared cultures that were also overlapped. Thus, the way of the legend transmission across religion or boundaries will be considered.74 On the one hand, exploring these transcultural entanglements and interactions between East and West in the context of the legend history is considered here as an exemplar of transmission of legends and imaginary concepts across medieval Mediterranean societies. On the other hand, it shows the different perceptions of Indo-Asian and Far Eastern legends among Arab-Muslim, Eastern Christian and Latin populations. To better examine the legend’s reception in the West and among the Crusaders, this work also uses the approach of reception history On the entangled history, see König, Latin and Arabic Entangled Histories, 31-121; Elisheva Baumgarten, Ruth Mazo Karras, and Katelyn Mesler, eds., Entangled Histories: Knowledge, Authority, and Jewish Culture in the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 1-20; Eliga H. Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery,” The American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (2007): 764–86; Sönke Bauck and Thomas Maier, "Entangled History," Inter-American Wiki: Terms-ConceptsCritical Perspectives, 2015; www.uni-bielefeld.de/einrichtu ngen/cias/publikationen /wiki/e/entangled-history.xml. 74 On this theory see, Baumgarten, Karras, and Mesler, Entangled Histories, 1-6. 73 32 Introduction (Rezeptionsgeschichte),75 which was recently more a part of visual arts, psychological and literary studies than history. Moreover, the study uses the legend as a memory site for the Latin sources and travel accounts in the second half of the thirteenth century. In general, the transcultural and entangled history of the legend here followed multiple paradigms and phases starting from its Eastern Christian core in late antiquity down into the Latinised and crusading form of the vague Prester John within the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. During the Crusades, the legendary figure of the Eastern priest-king John was a centre of mixed-cultural linkages between East and West. During the thirteenth century, another transcultural dimension will be attributed to the legend through the new growing power, the Mongols, whose Khan was imagined as the Prester John or his successor. Final transcultural and transborder changes to Prester John's legendary figure, though it is not part of the present work, was the Ethiopian spheres of the legend between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The argument of this study will be advanced in the following manner. The first chapter seeks to establish context by way of geographical, mythical and historical settings. It therefore defines myth, legend and history, presenting a brief understanding of the relationship between mythology and history and its significance for the theme of the present work. The chapter later presents a distant history of the Prester John figure and the interconnection with the apocalypse of St. John and the apocalypse of the Last Emperor, and with the figure of the Byzantine Emperor in the seventh century and Emperor Charlemagne in the tenth century. The second chapter centres on a historical discussion of the roots of the Prester John legend in the tradition of St. Thomas in India in the report of the so-called John, patriarch of India, who visited Rome in 75 Günter Grimm, Rezeptionsgeschichte: Grundlegung einer Theorie mit Analysen und Bibliographie, UTB für Wissenschaft 691 (München: Fink, 1977); Geert Lernout, ‘Reception Theory’, in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman, 2nd ed. (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 797–9; Madeline Caviness, “Reception of Images by Medieval Viewers,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Malden, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 65–85. 33 Introduction 1122. This chapter further discusses how the downfall of Edessa to Zankī in 1144 sparked the birth of the legend on the authority of the oral account of Hugh of Jabala, whose report was recorded by Otto of Freising. It also examines later intercorrelated imaginations between the legend in Otto’s chronicle and other Syriac Christian divine legends regarding Edessa, such as the legend of King Abgar and the miracles of an eastern priestly metropolitan called Mār Yūḥannā. The chapter then reinvestigates the roots of the legend in the Central Asian war between the Qarakhitai Yelü Dashi and the Seljuk Sinjar, discussing further similar legendary reports regarding that war in Arabic and Syriac accounts such as the chronicles of Ibn al-Athīr, Ibn al-ʻIbrī and Mīkhāʼīl al-Suryānī (Michael the Syrian) and their intertextual dialogues with Otto’s report. The third chapter seeks to historicise the legend itself during the Second Crusade. It then interprets the Prester John Letter to the Byzantine Emperor and the hypotheses on its origin and date, discussing its association with the political schism between Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III. Some prophetic visions regarding that schism will be explored to provide further literary and imaginative interconnections between the Letter and the political struggle between the Pope and the emperor. The Letter reveals anti-Byzantine machinations against its addressee, Emperor Manuel Komnenus. This chapter consequently endeavours to investigate the soul of hostility between Byzantium and the Latins at the time, discussing historical aspects of the Letter and the motif of its composer. Eventually, the reception of that Letter and Pope Alexander III’s letter to Prester John in 1177 in the contemporary Latin accounts and chronicles shall be examined. Following the eastern parallels of the legend, the fourth chapter examines interconnections between the Prester John figure and the Pseudo-Romance of Alexander the Great, which was a part of several medieval imaginative literary apocalyptical accounts in West and East, Islam and Christianity. It also uncovers the re-contextualisation and transformation of the Alexander Romance in medieval Christian garb in the twelfth-century Prester John Letter. Furthermore, this chapter examines the interconnections of the legendary figure of 34 Introduction Prester John and his kingdom with the medieval Arabic imagination, which have never been discussed. In doing so, the chapter studies the geographical and cartographic imagination and fanciful descriptions of Indian and Abyssinian kings that are comparable to the Prester John figure in the twelfth-century geographical and cartographical Nuzhat al-mushtāq (Tabula Rogeriana) of al-Idrīsī, who wrote his account at the request of the Sicilian King Roger II of Sicily (r. 1130-1154). Following Bernard Hamilton’s suggestion of the similarities between the Letter and the Arabian Nights, some contents of similar stories to the legend in the Arabian Nights will be investigated. This will be followed by analysing the legendary priest-king figure of eastern Christian kings, especially in the Nubian-Ethiopian and Indian orbit, in the twelfthcentury account of the Copt scholar Abū al-Makārim as well as in other sources. Unlike previous works that suggest the transformation of the Prester John figure into the Abyssinian king by the fourteenth century, this chapter demonstrates the possibility of the transformation of the legendary priest-king figure of the Nubian-Abyssinian king(s) into the figure of Prester John by the Nubians, Copts or Franks since its first dissemination in the twelfth century. The fifth chapter is dedicated to discussing the legend’s role in forging the war and peace events between the Ayyubids and the Crusaders during the Fifth Crusade against Egypt (615-618/12171221). It also analyses the Latin accounts of Jacques de Vitry and Oliver of Paderborn, the chief preachers of the Fifth Crusade, about Prester John and his son King David, revealing how they employed the legend to boost crusading zeal in Egypt. This chapter further examines the genesis of the prophetic texts Relatio de Davide regarding the imminent arrival of King David, son of Prester John, in the Arabic prophecies of both Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq, the Copt al-Anbā Samuel of Qalamūn and Athanāsiyūs the Apostolic. Moreover, the association between the figure of the Fifth Crusade King David and the Solomonic Christian figure of the Ethiopian King David will be discussed. This is followed by an investigation of how news of the Mongols’ advance against the Central Asian Muslims reached the Crusaders in Egypt and brought to mind the legend of Prester John. This chapter uncovers the legendary association between the Mongols 35 Introduction and King David by examining the Relatio de Davide text and other Arabic and eastern texts. It eventually shows how belief in the legend and King David led the leaders of the Fifth Crusade into a disastrous campaign. The sixth chapter traces the association between Prester John and the Mongols after the Fifth Crusade until the end of the thirteenth century. It also discusses the impact of the diplomatic relationship between Frederick II and the Muslims on the discourse of the legend during the Sixth Crusade. The established friendship between Egyptian Ayyubid Sultans and Frederick II might have created “a period of silence” for this legend between 1221 and 1244. It interprets the reports of European envoys to the Mongols such as John of Plano Carpine (d. ca. 1252), William of Rubruck (fl. 1248-1255) and Marco Polo (d. 1324), revealing how they depicted the last image of Prester John among the Mongols. In a discussion of the oriental origins and entanglements of the legend, this chapter shall examine the roots of the Prester John legend among the Mongols in the Syriac and Arabic accounts such as Ibn al-‘Ibrī (d. 1286), Ibn al-Dawādārī (d. 1335/36) and others. Finally, the chapter aims to clarify how the legacy of Prester John was employed to propose a Western alliance with the Mongols against the Muslims in the mid-thirteenth century. At the same time, it represents the legend in its final Asian-Mongol form before its transfer to Ethiopia by the fourteenth century. 36