Johann (Hans) Schiltberger was a German traveller and writer born of
an old aristocratic Bavarian family. At age 14, Johann joined knight
Lienhart Reichartinger in 1394 as a page and fought under King
Sigismund of Hungary against the Turks on the Hungarian frontier.
When Sultan Bajazet I. defeated the Christians in the Bulgarian city of
Nikopolis in 1396, Schiltberger was wounded and taken prisoner.
While some prisoners were ransomed, most were murdered. Since
Schiltberger was only 16 years old, he was spared, and from 1396 to
1402 served the Sultan as a foot runner. He accompanied Ottoman
troops to certain parts of Asia Minor and to Egypt. Schiltberger spent
the first six years of his captivity with the Turks and learned strange
languages and saw new regions.
It was said that the notoriously cruel Tamerlan once took five thousand Turks prisoner and had them
buried alive. Tamerlan also had all of the inhabitants of some conquered cities beheaded and then
had pyramids made from their heads. It appears Schiltberger followed Tamerlan to Samarkand and
perhaps also to Armenia and Georgia.
The "German Marco Polo”
Once in Constantinople, he lay hidden for a time; He had waited patiently for 32 long years for a
chance to escape and here he seized it and fled with four other Christians together on an Italian ship
leaving Constantinople.  He then returned to his Bavarian home in 1427 by way of Kilia, Akerman,
Lemberg, Kraków, Breslau and Meissen. Once home in Munich, he wrote a book, the Reisebuch,
about his experiences. It was a "best seller" in the  Middle Ages when reports of journeys to far away
places from people like Marco Polo were greedily devoured. Duke Albrecht III. employed him as a
treasurer; when the duke mounted the throne in Munich in 1438, Schiltberger retired to his property,
where he died years later as a bachelor, living such a withdrawn life after his return to his Bavarian
homeland that nobody even knows when he died. It is assumed to be around 1440.
When once he dared attempt escape with sixty other Christians, he was caught and served nine
months in the dungeon. Twelve of his companions did not survive the experience.Throughout the
lands of the Danube and from there on to the regions which had fallen under the Turks, on to the sea
and throughout the Ottoman dominions in Asia, he diligently recorded his experiences and
observations. On Bayezid's overthrow at Ankora in 1402, Schiltberger passed into the service of
Mongolian Khan Timur (Tamerlan), Bayezid's conqueror.
He tells of Siberian dog sleds, Indian war elephants, the river Euphrates, the cultivation of pepper and
enormous treasures of jewels, as well as the customs and religions of exotic peoples. Schiltberger
even wrote in his journal of wild people in Mongolia who have nothing in common with other human
beings. He claimed to have seen two of them himself that had been captured by a local warlord. He
speaks of Buddhism, Islam and the Persian religion of Zarathustra.  Schiltberger is possibly the first
Western European writer to give the true burial place of Muhammad at Medina. He describes the
splendor of Istanbul in the Byzantine period; the imperial palaces adorned with mosaics, the
Hippodrome where tournaments took place, the obelisks, and the 300 brass doors of Haghia Sophia,
all at a time when foreigners were forbidden to wander freely in the city. He notes the legend that
Alexander the Great artificially created the Bosphorus to link the Black Sea to the Marmara.
Schiltberger's Reisebuch contains not only a record of his own experiences and a sketch of various
chapters of Eastern history, but also an account of countries and their manners and customs,
especially of those countries which he had himself visited. Despite some flaws, his unique journey
provided a priceless historical document. Schiltberger saw the Ottoman dominions, Greece, Bulgaria
and Turkey. He became acquainted with Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Persia, Mesopotamien,
Armenia, Georgia and even part of India. He journeyed to the edge Siberia, then to the Crimea with
its great Genoese colony at Kaffa, where he spent five months.
After Tamerlan's death in 1405, Schiltberger ended up becoming became a slave to Tamerlan's son
Shah Rukh, then to his brother Abu Bekr, whose troops roamed up and down Armenia as nomads,
travelling with women, children, cattle and all their property from place to place. He next
accompanied Chekre, a Tatar prince, to Siberia, the steppes of Russia, the lower Volga and on to
Azov or Tana, still a trading center for Genoese merchants. He had even more travels in the Crimea,
Circassia, Abkhasia and Mingrelia.