Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo Rides to Samarkand

1404

The Castilian ambassador set out across Persia and the Oxus to deliver Henry III's letters to Timur. He found a city of blue-tiled domes, Chinese giraffes in the zoo, and a court where captured artisans from Delhi, Damascus, and Bursa labored under the same Turkic whip. His journal survives. His detailed account remains one of the most important European eyewitness records of the Timurid Empire at its zenith.