Andanzas y viajes de Pedro Tafur

From Hispanopedia
Signature of Pedro Tafur.[1]

Andanzas y viajes de Pedro Tafur (originally Tractado de las andanças e viajes de Pero Tafur or Itinerario)[2][3][4][5] is a medieval travel book written around 1454 by Pedro Tafur, a Caballero Veinticuatro (an office belonging to the municipal corporations of certain cities of Spain) native of Seville, in which he recounts the journey he made between 1436 and 1439 through much of Europe, other places in the Mediterranean and the Near East, including Rome and Constantinople (Byzantium), a city he visited shortly before its Muslim conquest.[6]

A single manuscript from the early 18th century survives, a 91-folio copy originating from the Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé of Cuenca, which is currently held in the Library of the University of Salamanca, in its Historical Collection.[7]

Analysis

Pedro Tafur traveled across the three continents known in his time, and described both the settlements (among which he was especially interested in the cities) and the customs of their inhabitants. He also observed the nature and the fauna, often exotic to a European. He does not fail to give an account of the politics, society, industry and commerce of the lands he traveled through, placing these aspects in their historical context to the extent of his knowledge and of the information he received.[6]

One of the points of interest of the account is his meeting with the famous Venetian traveler Niccolò dei Conti, who provided him with news about the Middle and Far East with which to complete the description of the world known up to that time.[8]

Map of the travels of Pedro Tafur

Another characteristic of this travel book is the comparison it draws between the cities he visits and cities of Spain, above all the city of Seville. Tafur declares himself to be a «Castilian native of Seville», and contrasts everything he sees with the Sevillian city; for example, he compares the height of the great tower of Seville, the Giralda, with that of the Campanile of Saint Mark in Venice, or with that of the pyramids of Egypt. In size, he compares the City of Seville with the cities of Caffa, Breslau, Padua, Palermo or even Mecca. From Seville is that trujamán (interpreter of languages in commercial transactions) of the sultan of Egypt. In Chios, a friend he had met in Seville helps him cross to the Turkish coast; in Pera, he is received and entertained by Juan Caro, master of a ship, native of Seville and a close friend of his; in Caffa, he is well received by the podestà Paolo Imperiale, who had lived in Seville years before. In Constantinople, he finds in the service of the Emperor Juan de Sevilla, a trujamán, lute player and singer of romances.

Tafur's journey has as its nerve center Italy, more specifically Venice, since he always returns to this city after his wanderings, and he pays visits to the Pope, with whom he maintains close relations.[9]

He also boasts of having great friendships with emperors, kings, sultans, prelates and great lords, emphasizing that they always received him amicably and heaped honors upon him, given his status as a knight.[10]

Andanzas y viajes

Andanças é viajes de Pero Tafur por diversas partes del mundo avidos, one of the few medieval travel books known in Spain, remained unpublished until 1874, although not unknown, since it is cited by Ambrosio de Morales and by Gonzalo Argote de Molina, who had it among the manuscripts he consulted while writing his masterpiece Nobleza de Andalucía. Both call it Itinerario instead of the name assigned to it by the 18th-century manuscript, although the former name is less suitable, since Tafur's journey is not an itinerary of the kind undertaken by pilgrims to the Holy Land, but rather has a more individualistic and humanistic aim, that of the curious man who wishes to have an enriching life experience. Moreover, and unlike the other great Spanish travel book of the 15th century, the Embajada a Tamorlán by Ruy González de Clavijo, Tafur's book is neither a diary nor a chronicle, but an account composed fifteen years after the experience of the journey.[3][4]

It was written some fifteen years after his journey, approximately in 1454, and has come down to us in a single manuscript copy from the 18th century, which is preserved in the Biblioteca General Histórica of the University of Salamanca (ms. 1985). Its first publication is the work of Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, who titled it Andanças é viajes de Pero Tafur por diversas partes del mundo avidos (1435-1439) (Madrid, Colección de libros españoles raros y curiosos, volume VIII), and included a critical study. The first popular edition appeared in 1934 (José María Ramos, Madrid, Hernando), although the text reproduced that of the 1874 edition. In 1982 it was reissued with a study by José Vives. A new edition based on the original manuscript was produced by Miguel Ángel Pérez Priego for the second volume of Viajes medievales, of the Biblioteca Castro, 2006. This same editor published a standalone critical edition in 2009, once again revising the 18th-century manuscript.[6]

As Francisco Javier Villalba points out, Tafur's travel book or adventure book lacks literary quality and was not written by a true historian.[11] He recounts his travels using a simple, primitive and naive prose, lacking the ambition and culture of great literature, but which, far from being crude and monotonous, reveals a lively intelligence and a keen sense of observation, which lends freshness to his style, full of curious details. In short, his work is generally regarded as a travel book, interesting for being one of the few medieval ones preserved in Spain, but atypical, among other reasons because of the time elapsed between the making of the journey and its writing.[6]

Primary bibliography

Manuscript

  • Manuscript 1985 (ms. 1985) of the Library of the University of Salamanca. Historical Collection. 18th century. Spine label: TAFUR VIAGES. Pedro Tafur: Andanças e viajes. f. 1r Comienza el prologo dirigido al muy noble e muy virtuoso señor don Fernando de Guzman, comendador mayor de la orden de Calatrava, compuesto por Pero Tafur sobre el tratado que escribio de sus andanças e viajes por diversas partes del mundo avidos.[12][13]

Editions

  • Marcos Jiménez de la Espada (ed.), Andanças é viajes de Pero Tafur por diversas partes del mundo avidos (1435-1439), Madrid, Impr. de M. Ginesta, 1874. Colección de libros españoles raros ó curiosos, vol. 8. Reissued in Andanças e viajes de un hidalgo español, Pero Tafur (1436-1439), Barcelona, El Albir, 1982. X, 93, XXVII, 618, 27 p. (Colección de libros de viajes; 2); in Giuseppe Bellini, Rome, Bulzoni (Letterature e culture dell'America latina. Memoria, viaggi e scoperte; 1), 1986 and in Andanzas y viajes de un hidalgo español, Madrid, Miraguano/Polifemo (Viajeros Hispánicos, 13), 1995.
  • José María Ramos García (ed.), Andanças e viajes de Pero Tafur, Madrid, Hernando, 1934 (Biblioteca Clásica, 265). A popular edition that modernizes the spelling, with a preliminary study and glossary.
  • Andanzas y viajes por diversas partes del mundo habidos, Dueñas (Palencia), Simancas (el Parnasillo), 2005.
  • Miguel Ángel Pérez Priego (ed.), Andanças e viajes, Seville, Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2009.

Translations

  • Malcolm Letts, Travels and adventures 1435-1439, New York; London, Harper and Bros, 1926. Also published in London, G. Routledge and Sons, 1926. English.
  • Ḥasan Ḥabashī, Riḥlat Ṭāfūr fī ʻālam al-qarn al-khāmis ʻashar al-mīlādī, Cairo, Dār al-Maʻārif bi-Miṣr, 1968. Arabic.
  • L. K. Masielia Saichesa, Stranstviia i puteshestviia, Moscow, Indrik, 2006. Russian.

References

  1. ↑ Rafael Ramírez de Arellano, «Estudios biográficos: Pero Tafur», Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 41, 1902, p. 293. Record at cervantesvirtual. PDF file
  2. ↑ Sofía Carrizo Rueda, «Tractado de las andanças e viajes de Pero Tafur», in José Manuel Lucía Mejías and Carlos Alvar Ezquerra, Diccionario filológico de literatura medieval española: textos y transmisión, Madrid, Castalia, 2002. The first printed edition was published under the title Andanças é viajes de Pero Tafur por diversas partes del mundo avidos (1435-1439) and in other editions it was titled Andanzas y viajes de un hidalgo español.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Inoria Pepe Sarno, «La biblioteca di Argote de Molina. Tentativo de catalogo della sezione manoscritti», Studi di Letteratura spagnola, Facoltà di Magisterio e di Lettere dell'Università di Roma, Facoltà di Lettere dell'Università di Torino, Società Filologica Romana. Seminario di Spagnolo della Facoltà di Magisterio dell'Università di Roma, 1967, pp. 165-262. File. Cf. p. 284, item 124 «Itinerario de Pero Ruyz Tafur»
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Franco Meregalli, «Las memorias de Pero Tafur», Dicenda, 6, 1987, pp. 297-299. PDF file. On p. 298 of his article Meregalli reproduces the quotation from Ambrosio de Morales, which reads: «Mas todavía pondré aquí luego lo que Pero Tafur, cavallero principal de Córdoba criado del rey Don Juan el segundo, dice desto en su Itinerario (...)»
  5. ↑ Tratado de las andanças e viajes de Pero Tafur is a more appropriate title than just Andanças e viajes..., according to Beltrán Llavador (1991:142).
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Pablo Castro Hernández, «Un estado de la cuestión sobre las Andanças e viajes de Pero Tafur: discusiones historiográficas y problemáticas de estudio», Revista Electrónica Historias del Orbis Terrarum, November 26, 2013. PDF file
  7. ↑ Oscar Lilao Franca and Carmen Castrillo González, Catálogo de manuscritos de la Biblioteca Universitaria de Salamanca. II. Manuscritos 1680-2777, Universidad de Salamanca, 2002, pp. 309-310.
  8. ↑ Francisco Javier Villalba Ruiz de Toledo, «El viaje de Don Pero Tafur (1436-1439)», Arbor, no. 711-712, 2005, pp. 545-549.
  9. ↑ José Vives, Andanças e viajes de un hidalgo español (Pero Tafur, 1436-1439) con una descripción de Roma. Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia, 19, 1946, p. 128.
  10. ↑ Carrizo Rueda, Sofía, Paradigma y enigma en Pero Tafur. dition Reichenberger, Kassel, 1997, p. 111
  11. ↑ Villalba Ruiz de Toledo, «El viaje de Don Pero Tafur (1436-1439)», 2005, p. 541.
  12. ↑ See record at Philobiblon
  13. ↑ Oscar Lilao Franca and Carmen Castrillo González, Catálogo de manuscritos de la Biblioteca Universitaria de Salamanca. II. Manuscritos 1680-2777, Universidad de Salamanca, 2002, pp. 309-310.

Bibliography

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