Beschreibung:

VARTHEMA, Ludovico (c.1470-1517). Itinerario . Seville: Jacob Croberger, 1520. The first Spanish edition of Varthema’s wildly influential account of his undercover travel through the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Persia, and India, "one of the most remarkable travel books of the Renaissance " (Blackmer). Ludovico Varthema, as famous in his own time as Columbus, posed as a mamluk named Yunus and escorted a pilgrim caravan to Mecca and Medina—making him the first recorded Christian to visit those cities. He continued to travel for five years—variously adopting the guises of a merchant trader, a doctor, an ascetic mystic, and a master cannon founder—providing a valuable primary witness for the state of overland travel through Asia, just as the Portuguese sea route was taking supremacy. After escaping imprisonment for being a Christian spy by means of the love of a Yemeni sultana, Varthema’s adventures took him to Somalia, through Persia halfway to Samarkand, and eventually to India. After becoming homesick, he gave himself up to the Portuguese and worked as an interrogator enforcing shipping regulations, living through the siege of Cannanore before being rescued by Tristao da Cunha’s armada. The combination of salacious first-hand detail, personal charisma, and picaresque exotic travels made his book an instant sensation. This edition was translated by Christoval de Arcos from the Latin edition, as he was unable to acquire the Italian first edition from 1510. Copies of any of the early editions are very rare; according to ABPC and RBH, only one other complete copy of this Spanish edition has come to auction in the last 60 years. Hakluyt Society, The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema , pp. xiii-xiv; Heredia 2866; Howgego V15; Norton 933. See Blackmer II 338 (Milan 1523 ed.). Folio (260 x 192mm). Woodcut border with armorial, woodcut initials (lightly toned). 19th-century navy morocco gilt by Émile Rousselle, edges gilt. Provenance : occasional cropped early marginalia.