#Brass birmingham regolamento full#

'I determined, personally, and with my own eyes', he declares in the prefatory dedication, 'to ascertain the situation of places, the qualities of peoples of Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Felix, Persia, India, and Ethiopia, remembering well that the testimony of one eye-witness is worth more than ten hear-says.' His good fortune did not continue unabated, however: after embarking at Jeddah and sailing to Aden, he was denounced as a Christian spy and imprisoned. Impressed and fascinated, he describes not only rites and rituals, but also social, geographical, and day-to-day details. Varthema was amazed by what he observed: 'Truly I never saw so many people collected in one spot as during the twenty days I remained there', he begins, and arriving at the Great Mosque, continues, 'it would not be possible to describe the sweetness and the fragrances which are smelt within this temple.' Thanks to his knowledge of Arabic and Islam, Varthema was able to appreciate the local culture of the places he visited. In 1503 he reached Alexandria and ascended the Nile to Cairo, continuing to Beirut, Tripoli, Aleppo and Damascus, where, adopting Islam and taking the name of Yunas, he joined a Mameluke escort of a Hajj caravan and began the pilgrimage to Mecca. Varthema, a gentleman adventurer and soldier from Bologna, left Venice at the end of 1502. All early editions of Varthema s 'Itinerario' are exceedingly rare (even the 2013 Hajj exhibition at the MIA, Doha, only featured the 1654 reprint cf.

While Montalboddo's famous anthology of discoveries, printed in 1507, contained the first printed reference to the Arabian Gulf region, it was Varthema's work, published only three years later, that offered the first actual report from the region by a Western traveller who had visited the coast. On his return journey from Mecca (which he was the first Westerner to describe), Varthema visited Ras al-Khaimah ('Giulfar') and portrayed the city as 'most excellent and abounding in everything', with 'a good seaport', and whose inhabitants are 'all Muslims'. The first English edition of Ludovico di Varthema's famous travels to Arabia, Persia, and India: the highly important and adventurous narrative containing the first printed eyewitness account of any place in today's United Arab Emirates.

#Brass birmingham regolamento full#

Splendid modern full navy blue morocco, bands on spine with title showing faded gilt, covers double-ruled gilt.