"Jehan de Mandeville", translated as "Sir John Mandeville", is the name claimed by the compiler of a singular book of supposed travels, written in Anglo-Norman French, and published between 1357 and 1371. By aid of translations into many other languages it acquired extraordinary popularity. Despite the extremely unreliable and often fantastical nature of the travels it describes, it was used as a work of reference — Christopher Columbus, for example, was heavily influenced by both this work and Marco Polo's earlier Il Milione (Adams 53). In his preface the compiler calls himself a knight, and states that he was born and bred in England, of the town of St Albans.[1] Although the book is real, it is widely believed that 'Sir John Mandeville' himself was not. Common theories point that a frenchman by the name of Jehan a la Barbe (or others, see below). [2] He crossed the sea on Michaelmas Day 1322; had traversed by way of Turkey (Asia Minor), Armenia the little (Cilicia) and the great, Tartary, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt upper and lower, Libya, great part of Ethiopia, Chaldea, Amazonia, India the less, the greater and the middle, and many countries about India; had often been to Jerusalem, and had written in Romance as more generally understood than Latin. In the body of the work, we hear that he had been at Paris and Constantinople; had served the Sultan of Egypt a long time in his wars against the Bedouin, had been vainly offered by him a princely marriage and a great estate on condition of renouncing Christianity, and had left Egypt under Sultan Melech Madabron (al-Muzaffar Sayf-ad-Din Hajji I who reigned in 1346-1347); had been at Mount Sinai, and had visited the Holy Land with letters under the great seal of the sultan, which gave him extraordinary facilities; had been in Russia, Livonia, Kraków, Lithuania, "en roialme daresten" (? de Daresten or Silistra), and many other parts near Tartary, but not in Tartary itself; had drunk of the Well of Youth at Polombe (Quilon on the Malabar coast), and still seemed to feel the better; had taken astronomical observations on the way to Lamory (Sumatra), as well as in Brabant, Germany, Bohemia and still farther north; had been at an isle called Pathen in the Indian Ocean; had been at Cansay (Hangchow-fu) in China, and had served the emperor of China fifteen months against the king of Mann; had been among rocks of adamant in the Indian Ocean; had been through a haunted valley, which he places near "Milstorak" (i.e. Malasgird in Armenia); had been driven home against his will in 1357 by arthritic gout; and had written his book as a consolation for his "wretched rest". The paragraph which states that he had had his book confirmed at Rome by the Pope is an interpolation of the English version. At least part of the personal history of Mandeville is mere invention. Nor is any contemporary corroboration of the existence of such a Jehan de Mandeville known. Some French manuscripts, not contemporary, give a Latin letter of presentation from him to Edward III, but so vague that it might have been penned by any writer on any subject. It is in fact beyond reasonable doubt that the travels were in large part compiled by a Liège physician, known as Johains a le Barbe or Jehan a la Barbe, otherwise Jehan de Bourgogne. The evidence of this is in a modernized extract quoted by the Liège herald, Louis Abry (1643-1720), from the lost fourth book of the Myreur des Hystors of Johans des Preis, styled d'Oultremouse. In this "Jean de Bourgogne, dit a la Barbe", is said to have revealed himself on his deathbed to d'Oultremouse, whom he made his executor, and to have described himself in his will as "messire Jean de Mandeville, chevalier, comte de Montfort en Angleterre et seigneur de l'isle de Campdi et du château Pérouse". It is added that, having had the misfortune to kill an unnamed count in his own country, he engaged himself to travel through the three parts of the world, arrived at Liège in 1343, was a great naturalist, profound philosopher and astrologer, and had a remarkable knowledge of physics. And the identification is confirmed by the fact that in the now destroyed church of the Guillemins was a tombstone of Mandeville, with a Latin inscription stating that he was otherwise named "ad Barbam", was a professor of medicine, and died at Liège on November 17, 1372: this inscription is quoted as far back as 1462. Even before his death the Liège physician seems to have confessed to a share in the composition of the work. In the common Latin abridged version of it, at the end of c. vii., the author says that when stopping in the sultan's court at Cairo he met a venerable and expert physician of "our" parts, that they rarely came into conversation because their duties were of a different kind, but that long afterwards at Liège he composed this treatise at the exhortation and with the help (Jiortatu et adiutorio) of the same venerable man, as he will narrate at the end of it. And in the last chapter he says that in 1355, in returning home, he came to Liège, and being laid up with old age and arthritic gout in the street called Bassesauenyr, i.e. Basse Savenir, consulted the physicians. That one came in who was more venerable than the others by reason of his age and white hairs, was evidently expert in his art, and was commonly called Magister Iohannes ad Barbam. That a chance remark of the latter caused the renewal of their old Cairo acquaintance, and that Ad Barbam, after showing his medical skill on Mandeville, urgently begged him to write his travels; "and so at length, by his advice and help, monitu et adiutorio, was composed this treatise, of which I had certainly proposed to write nothing until at least I had reached my own parts in England". He goes on to speak of himself as being now lodged in Liège, "which is only two days distant from the sea of England"; and it is stated in the colophon (and in the manuscripts) that the book was first published in French by Mandeville, its author, in 1355, at Liège, and soon after in the same city translated into "said" Latin form. Moreover, a manuscript of the French text extant at Liège about 1860 contained a similar statement, and added that the author lodged at a hostel called "al hoste Henkin Levo": this manuscript gave the physician's name as "Johains de Bourgogne dit ale barbe", which doubtless conveys its local form. There is no contemporary English mention of any English knight named Jehan de Mandeville, nor are the arms said to have been on the Liège tomb like any known Mandeville arms. But Dr. George F. Warner has suggested that de Bourgogne may be a certain Johan de Bourgoyne, who was pardoned by parliament on August 20, 1321 for having taken part in the attack on the Despensers (Hugh the younger and Hugh the elder), but whose pardon was revoked in May 1322, the year in which "Mandeville" professes to have left England. Among the persons similarly pardoned on the recommendation of the same nobleman was a Johan Mangevilayn, whose name appears related to that of "de Mandeville", which is a later form of "de Magneville". The name Mangevilain occurs in Yorkshire as early as 16 Hen. I. (Pipe Roll Society, xv. 40), but is very rare, and (failing evidence of any place named Mangeville) seems to be merely a variant spelling of Magnevillain. The meaning may be simply "of Magneville", de Magneville; but the family of a 14th century bishop of Nevers were called both "Mandevilain" and "de Mandevilain", where Mandevilain seems a derivative place-name, meaning the Magneville or Mandeville district. The name "de Mandeville "might be suggested to de Bourgogne by that of his fellow-culprit Mangevilayn, and it is even possible that the two fled to England together, were in Egypt together, met again at Liège, and shared in the compilation of the Travels. Whether after the appearance of the Travels either de Bourgogne or "Mangevilayn" visited England is very doubtful. St Albans Abbey had a sapphire ring, and Canterbury a crystal orb, said to have been given by Mandeville; but these might have been sent from Liège, and it will appear later that the Liège physician possessed and wrote about precious stones. St Albans also had a legend, recorded in John Norden's Speculum Britanniae (1596) that a ruined marble tomb of Mandeville (represented cross-legged and in armour, with sword and shield) once stood in the abbey; this may be true of "Mangevilayn" or it may be a mere myth. There is also an inscription near the entrance of St Albans Abbey, which reads as follows: "Siste gradum properans, requiescit Mandevil urna, Hic humili; norunt et monumental mori." "Lo, in this Inn of travellers doth lie, One rich in nothing but in memory; His name was Sir John Mandeville; content, Having seen much, with a small continent, Toward which he travelled ever since his birth, And at last pawned his body for ye earth Which by a statute must in mortgage be, Till a Redeemer come to set it free." However, it can be argued[weasel words] that this inscription was set up long after the fourteenth century and assumed the reality of Sir John Mandeville; it certainly does not of itself prove it. The book may contain facts and knowledge acquired by actual travels and residence in the East, at least in the section which treats of the Holy Land and the ways of getting thither, of Egypt, and in general of the Levant. The prologue points almost exclusively to the Holy Land as the subject of the work. The mention of more distant regions comes in only towards the end of this prologue, and (in a manner) as an afterthought. By far the greater part of these more distant travels, extending in fact from Trebizond to Hormuz, India, the Malay Archipelago, and China, and back again to western Asia; has been appropriated from the narrative of Friar Odoric (1330). These passages, as served up by Mandeville, are almost always, indeed, swollen with interpolated particulars, usually of an extravagant kind, whilst in no few cases the writer has failed to understand those passages which he adopts from Odoric and professes to give as his own experiences. Thus, where Odoric has given a most curious and veracious account of the Chinese custom of employing tame cormorants to catch fish, the cormorants are converted by Mandeville into "little beasts called loyres (layre, B), which are taught to go into the water" (the word loyre being apparently used here for "otter", lutra, for which the Provençal is luria or loiria).