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The most important factor that affected the value of Varthema’s book on his travels is that it achieved a great success at once, passing from edition to edition in various languages. Like many travellers of his date, he acquired a working knowledge of colloquial Arabic, deliberately setting himself to learn it, and he spent a year and a half on the West Coast of India in the neighborhood of Calicut and Cochin as a factor of the Portuguese Viceroy. There are few points in the Eastern travels of the great Italian wanderer, Ludovico di Varthema, that give them an unusual interest. The first is their date between 1502 to 1508; that is to say, he was on his way over the East within four years of the opening of the sea-route to India by Vasco da Gama. Varthema’s travels have naturally been discussed by many scholars, and their results have been considered in this edition of the book which is greatly enhancing the value of the present edition.
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ISBN : 9789353245795
Pages : 144
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