ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicholas Jubber was educated at Downside School and Oxford University. His travels have taken him through South America, Africa, the Middle East and many parts of Asia, and he has written for the Tablet, Boston’s Globe and Mail and the Lebanese Daily Star. The Prester Quest is his first book.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1177, Pope Alexander III wrote a letter to the Priest-King of the Indies, Prester John. As his emissary he chose his physician, Master Philip. No one knew where the legendary monarch’s kingdom lay (or indeed whether he even existed) but Master Philip was undeterred. He supposedly set out from Venice . . . and was never heard of again.
Centuries later, Nick Jubber found a copy of the pope’s original letter and conceived a plan: to complete Master Philip’s mission and deliver the letter, albeit eight hundred and twenty four years late.
Exciting, funny, crammed full of arcane history and learned trivia, The Prester Quest is the hugely entertaining account of his remarkable journey and marks the début of a tremendous new writer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Where do I start? I’ve managed to rack up such a collection of debts that, were I blasted back a century or two, there’d be a strong argument for having me hanged. Since we live in less punitive times, however, I shall try to make amends by issuing my thanks.
To the Frères de la Salle, Maria Khoury and Abouna Iyad Twal, thank you for employing and accommodating Mike and me during our first trip to the Holy Land, for which the help and encouragement provided by David and Nora Hirst (as throughout the course of this venture) was extremely generous and very much appreciated. The priests of the Latin Patriarchate, particularly Abouna Ra’ed Abusahlia, Abouna William Shomali, Abouna Maroun Lahham and His Beatitude Patriarch Michel Sabbah, always made us at home when we found ourselves in Jerusalem; as did the wonderful Father John-Luke Gregory. Particular thanks for hospitality and/or other kindnesses in different corners of our trip to Johnny Van den Bergh, Fr Tekle Mekonnen, Mgr Khaled Akasheh, the Harb family of Byblos, Abdul Rahman and his family in Ghada, Munther Twal, Bishop Selim Sayegh, Fr Michel Awit, His Beatitude Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, Dr David Wasserstein, George Hintlian, Diala Sa’adeh, Raymond Stock and Dr Yusuf Fadl Hasan. In Britain, thanks to Michael Adams, William Dalrymple, Jack Arbuthnot, Hratche Koundarjian, Charles Malas and Chris Doyle, and a big nod to Father Henry Wansbrough for help with the translation of Master Philip’s letter and for familiarizing us with the Judean desert. Various newspaper and magazine editors helped by commissioning articles and providing encouragement, of whom I would particularly like to thank Philip Lawler in Washington. To my family, especially my mother, thanks for encouragement and support (and apologies for all the worry!). Professor Bernard Hamilton and Arkady Hodge were invaluable advisers on historical matters, and suggested all kinds of incisive revisions to the text, for which I am enormously grateful. Equally invaluable were my agent Maggie Noach, my editor Simon Taylor and Deborah Adams at Transworld, who helped to cull the more verbose and pompous passages, for which you’ve no idea how grateful you should be. There are dozens of others – people who helped us on the journey or during the writing process – and I apologize to anyone I have failed to mention.
Most of all, as I hope will be apparent from reading this book, I owe an incredible debt to my travelling companion, Mike Hirst. His brio and determination were a tremendous source of strength and without him the journey described in these pages could simply never have been accomplished, nor this book written. Mike – shukran jazilan, habibi!
APPENDIX I
Prester John’s Letter to Manuel Comnenos
No twelfth-century copies of Prester John’s original letter are extant. However, in the nineteenth century Friedrich Zarncke reconstructed the ‘original’, given below, on the basis of his comprehensive study of the available manuscripts.
John the Presbyter, by the grace of God and the strength of our Lord Jesus Christ, king of kings and lord of lords, to his friend Manuel, Governor of the Byzantines, greetings, wishing him health and the continued enjoyment of the divine blessing.
Our Majesty has been informed that you hold our Excellency in esteem, and that knowledge of our greatness has reached you. Furthermore we have heard from our secretary that it was your wish to send us some objects of art and interest, for our pleasure. Since we are but human we take this in good part, and through our secretary we forward to you some of our articles. Now it is our desire to know whether you hold the true faith, and adhere in all things to our Lord Jesus Christ; for while we know that we are mortal, your little Greeks regard you as a god; still we know that you are mortal, and subject to human weaknesses.
If you should wish to come here to our kingdom, we will place you in the highest and most exalted position in our household, and you may freely partake of all that we possess. Should you desire to return, you shall go laden with treasures. If indeed you wish to know wherein consists our great power, then believe without doubting that I, Prester John, who reign supreme, exceed in riches, virtue and power all creatures who dwell under heaven. Seventy-two kings pay tribute to me. I am a devout Christian and everywhere protect the Christians of our empire, nourishing them with alms. We have made a vow to visit the sepulchre of our Lord with a very great army, as befits the glory of our Majesty, to wage war against and chastise the enemies of the cross of Christ, and to exalt his sacred name.
Our magnificence dominates the Three Indias, and extends to Farther India, where the body of St Thomas the Apostle rests. It reaches through the desert valley towards the place of the rising of the sun, and continues through the valley of deserted Babylon close by the Tower of Babel. Seventy-two provinces obey us, a few of which are Christian provinces; and each has its own king. And all their kings are our tributaries.
In our territories are found elephants, dromedaries and camels, and almost every kind of beast that is under heaven. Honey flows in our land, and milk everywhere abounds. In one of our territories no poison can do harm and no noisy frog croaks, no scorpions are there, and no serpents creep through the grass. No venomous reptiles can exist there or use their deadly power.
In one of the heathen provinces flows a river called the Physon, which, emerging from Paradise, winds and wanders through the entire province; and in it are found emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, topazes, chrysolites, onyxes, beryls, sardonyxes and many other precious stones.
There is also a sandy sea without water. For the sand moves and swells into waves like the sea and is never still. It is not possible to navigate this sea or cross it by any means, and what sort of country lies beyond is unknown. And though it lacks water, yet there are found, close to the shore on our side, many kinds of fish which are most pleasant and delicious for eating, the like of which is not seen in other lands.
Three days’ journey from this sea there are mountains from which descends a waterless river of stones, which flows through our country to the sandy sea. Three days in the week it flows and casts up stones both great and small, and carries with it also wood to the sandy sea. When the river reaches the sea the stones and wood disappear and are not seen again. While the sea is in motion it is impossible to cross it. On the other four days it can be crossed.
Between the sandy sea and the mountains we have mentioned is a desert. Underground there flows a rivulet, to which there appears to be no access; and this rivulet falls into a river of greater size, wherein men of our dominions enter, and take therefrom a great abundance of precious stones. Beyond this river are ten tribes of Jews, who, although they pretend to have their own kings, are nevertheless our servants and tributaries. In another of our provinces, near the torrid zone, are worms, which in our tongue are called salamanders. These worms can live only in fire, and make a skin around them as the silkworm does. This skin is carefully spun by the ladies of the palace, and from it we have cloth for our common use. When we wish to wash the garments made of this cloth, we put them into fire, and they come forth fresh and clean.
In a plain lying between the sandy sea and the mountains is a stone of incredible medical virtue, which cures Christians or would-be Christians of whatever ailments afflict them, in this fashion. There is in the stone a cavity of the shape of a mussel, in which the water is always four inches deep, and this is kept by two holy and reverend old men. These ask the newcomers whether they are Christians, or do desire to be so, and then if they desire the healing of the entire body, and if the answer is satisfactory they lay aside their clothes and get into the shell; then if their faith is sincere, the water begins to increase and rises over their heads; when this has taken place three times, the water returns to its usual height. Thus everyone who enters, leaves it cured of whatsoever disease he had.
For gold, silver, precious stones, beasts of every kind and the number of our people, we believe that we are unequalled under heaven. There are no poor among us; we receive all strangers and pilgrims; thieves and robbers are not found in our land, nor do we have adultery or avarice.
When we ride forth to war, our troops are preceded by thirteen huge and lofty crosses made of gold and ornamented with precious stones, instead of banners, and each of these is followed by ten thousand mounted soldiers and one hundred thousand infantrymen, not counting those who have charge of the baggage and provisions.
Flattery finds no place in our land; there is no strife among us; our people have an abundance of wealth; our horses, however, are few and wretched. We believe that there is none to equal us in wealth and numbers of people.
When we go out on horseback on ordinary occasions, there is borne before us a wooden cross, without decoration or gold or jewels, so that we may be reminded of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also a single golden vase full of earth to remind us that our flesh must one day return to its original substance, the earth. But in addition there is also carried before us a silver bowl full of gold, that all may know that we are lord of lords. Our magnificence surpasses all the wealth which is in the world.
There are no liars among us, nor does anyone dare to tell an untruth, for he who speaks a lie dies forthwith, or is regarded by us as dead. His name is not mentioned, nor is he honoured among us. It is our pleasure to follow truth and to delight therein.
The palace in which our sublimity dwells is built after the pattern of that which the apostle Thomas erected for King Gundafor, and resembles it in its offices and the rest of its structure. The ceilings, pillars and architraves are of shittim-wood. The roof is of ebony, which cannot be injured by fire. At the extremities, above the gables, are two golden apples, set in each of which are two carbuncles, so that the gold shines by day and the carbuncles shine by night. The greater gates of the palace are of sardonyx inlaid with the horn of the serpent called cerastes, so that none may enter with poison; the lesser gates are of ebony; the windows are of crystal. The tables at which our court dines are some of gold and some of amethyst; the columns supporting them are of ivory. In front of the palace is the square where we watch the judicial contests of the trial by combat: the square is paved with onyx, in order that the courage of the fighters may be increased by the virtue of the stone. In our palace there is no light burning, except what is fed by balsam. The chamber in which our sublimity reposes is marvellously bedecked with gold and all manner of precious stones. But whenever an onyx is used for ornament, four cornelians are set about it, so that the evil virtue of the onyx may be tempered. Balsam burns perpetually in our chamber. Our bed is of sapphire, because of its virtue of chastity. We possess the most beautiful women, but they approach us only four times in the year and then solely for the procreation of sons, and when they have been sanctified by us, as Bathsheba was by David, each one returns to her place.
We feed daily at our table 30,000 men, besides casual guests; and all of these receive daily sums from our treasury, to nourish their horses and for other expenses. This table is made of precious emerald, with four columns of amethyst supporting it; the virtue of this stone is that no one sitting at the table can fall into drunkenness.
During each month we are served at our table by seven kings, each in his turn, by sixty-two dukes, and by three hundred and sixty-five counts, aside from those who carry out various tasks on our account. In our hall there dine daily, on our right hand, twelve archbishops, and on our left twenty bishops, and also the Patriarch of St Thomas, the Protopapas of Samarkand and the Archprotopapas of Susa. Each of them returns to his dwelling every month in his turn; otherwise no one departs from our side. Abbots, in the same number as the number of days in the year, minister to us in our chapel.
If you ask us how it is that the Creator of all things, having made us the most supreme and the most glorious over all mortals, does not give us a higher title than that of presbyter, ‘priest’, let not your wisdom be surprised on this account, for here is the reason. At our court we have many ministers who are of higher dinity than ourselves in the Church, and of greater standing in divine office. For our household steward is a patriarch and a king, our marshal is a king and an archbishop, our chief cook is a king and an abbot. And therefore it does not seem proper to our Majesty to assume those names, or to be distinguished by those titles with which our palace overflows. Therefore, to show our great humility, we choose to be called by a lesser name and to assume an inferior rank. If you can count the stars of the sky and the sands of the sea, you will be able to judge thereby the vastness of our realm and our power.
APPENDIX II
Pope Alexander III’s Letter to the King of the Indies
Alexander the bishop, servant of the servants of God, to my dearest son in Christ, the illustrious and magnificent king of the Indies, health and the apostolic blessing.
The apostolic see over which, though unworthy, we preside, is the head and mistress of all believers in Christ. The Lord attests this, for he said to blessed Peter (to whom, though unworthy, we are the successor), ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I shall build my Church’ (Matt. 16). Christ wished this rock to be the foundation of the Church, foretelling that it would not be shaken by any whirlwinds or tempests. And therefore not undeservedly did blessed Peter, on whom he founded the Church, receive in a special and outstanding way among the apostles the power of binding and loosing. For to him it was said by the Lord, ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the gates of the underworld will not prevail against it. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ (ibid.).
We had indeed long heard, from many sources, and from common knowledge, how, since you came to profess the name of Christ, you have devoted yourself ceaselessly to good works and have concentrated on what is pleasing and acceptable to God. Furthermore, our dear son Master Philip, our doctor and member of our household, informs us that he has spoken in those parts with great and honourable men of your kingdom, about your pious intention and purpose. Being a far-sighted and discreet man, circumspect and prudent, he has frequently told us that he has clearly heard from them about your wish and proposal to be instructed in the catholic and apostolic teaching, and that it is your fervent concern that you and the land entrusted to your Highness should never be seen in any respect to diverge from or clash with what is held by the faith of the apostolic see. Consequently we fully share our joy with you, as with a very dear son, and give heartfelt thanks to him from whom all gifts come, joining our intentions and prayers to yours. May he who caused you to adopt the name of Christian inspire your mind with his ineffable love, that you may desire to know fully what the Christian religion should hold about all the articles of faith. No one who fails to accord in word and deed with the Christian profession can hope for salvation from that profession. It is not sufficient to bear the name of Christian while holding other personal views than those of the catholic and apostolic teaching, since Jesus says in the gospel, ‘Not everyone who says to me “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven’ (Matt. 7).
Further commendation of your virtue comes from the desire which the trustworthy Master Philip avers to have heard from your household, that you earnestly desire to have a church in Rome and some shrine in Jerusalem where trustworthy members of your kingdom can dwell and receive fuller instruction in the apostolic teaching, so that you and your subjects may subsequently receive and hold this same teaching. Placed, albeit unworthily, in the see of St Peter, according to the Apostle (Romans 1) we recognize our debt to wise and foolish, rich and poor. We feel the greatest concern for the wellbeing of yourself and your people, and, in accordance with ministry of the office we have undertaken, we earnestly wish to recall you from those articles in which you are departing from the Christian and catholic faith, since the Lord himself said to blessed Peter, whom he made head of all the apostles, ‘And you in your turn must strengthen your brothers’ (Luke 22). Although it may seem excessively burdensome and laborious among so many labours, various journeys and changes of location in distant and unknown lands, to appoint to you a delegate from our side, nevertheless, in consideration of the duties of our office, and having carefully weighed your proposal and intention, we are sending to your Majesty this same Philip, doctor and member of our household, a person in every way discreet, circumspect and prudent, confident in the mercy of Jesus Christ, that if you wish to continue in the proposal and intention which we understand you have conceived by the Lord’s inspiration, once you have been instructed by the mercy of God about those articles of Christian faith in which you and your people seem to diverge from us, you will soon have no need to fear anything from the error which might impede the salvation of yourself and your people or obscure the name of Christianity among you.
And so, your illustrious Majesty, we encourage and exhort you in the Lord, as far as this Philip is concerned, as you revere blessed Peter and ourselves, receive him with kindness and treat him with due warmth, as an honourable person, discreet and far-sighted, and sent to you from our side. And if it is your wish and intention, as it certainly should be, that you should be instructed in the apostolic teaching on those matters which Philip puts forward on our behalf, listen to him carefully and diligently. Send to us with him honourable persons and letters sealed with your seal, by which we may know fully your intentions and your wishes. The greater and more elevated you seem, and less puffed up by wealth and power, the more willingly will we accept and the more effectively grant your petitions both for the grant of a church in Rome and of shrines in the church of blessed Peter and Paul and in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and your other reasonable requests, since we wish to satisfy your very laudable desires in every way that God allows, and to gain for the Lord your soul and the souls of your people.
Given at Venice in the Rialto, 5th of the Kalends of October [1177]
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John of Würzburg, The Library of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, Vol. V (London, 1897)
Sir Henry Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither (London, Hakluyt Society, 1866)
CHAPTER ONE
The Invisible Physician
MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with Prester John – priest-king of the Indies and trustee of the Fountain of Youth – took place in an intifada.
Jerusalem: October 2000. An Ethiopian monk clutches the skirts of his serge cassock and bolts past the chapel of Simon of Cyrene. Two elderly Arabs pack up their backgammon board, the pieces chattering as they tiptoe down a side street. Behind them, sub-machine guns bob above flak jackets as a pair of Israeli settlers swagger between two black tents of Palestinian womanhood. The Via Dolorosa has been stripped to the essential components for a fight: the Israeli army versus the Palestinian youth.
Khaki-suited soldiers file around the chapel: stiff-jawed young men whose boots chime on the bricks; teenage girls biting their lips, weapons dangling from their fingers. Behind shields of reinforced plastic, they huddle under an archway, waiting to be provoked. The Palestinians cluster around the chapel, gelabiyyas and leather jackets swelling in front of a pin-striped Armenian hawking ‘I got stoned in Jerusalem’ T-shirts. No one is interested in his wares: all eyes are on the path to the Wailing Wall.
Sticks, stones, the plywood seat of a chair – the street clatters as they shoot off a rooftop and land under parachutes of dust. Noses and helmets peek out of the archway and into a lull. Noses and helmets retract as a shriek precedes a king-sized thump against the ground. Someone has disposed of a sofa.
‘Come on, Nick!’
Mike’s hand claps my shoulder as he inches ahead. I tread gingerly beside him – anything he can do – but didn’t that tchk! come from a safety-catch? A soldier rasps, ‘Get back!’, a boooooom!, and I note (with some relief) that Mike and I are both on the safe side of a horizontally held machine gun.
‘Show over!’ barks the soldier whose weapon is currently employed as a cordon.
Then the shooting resumes. As do the screams.
Mike and I had arrived in Jerusalem three weeks before the intifada broke out: enough time to get our bearings, see the major sites and find the best place for baklava. Then the city turned into a pinball machine where the pellets were propelled by slingshots, automatic rifles and long-range rocket launchers. Jews rocked in front of the Wailing Wall, while stones flew from al-Aqsa Mosque. Each stone augmented the volume of the Hebrew prayers, and the volume of the Hebrew prayers augmented the quantity of stones. Little boys with slingshots ran in front of tanks and went home on stretchers. Mike and I were teaching some of them in a school in the Old City. They turned up to class with rubber-coated bullets that they’d picked up on the battle sites. They rolled up their trousers and competed for Wound of the Week.
I first aspired to visit the Middle East at the age of ten. For my birthday, I had been given a Treasury of Children’s Literature – a collection of stories that included several tales from the Thousand and One Nights. I fancied turning the peg of the Enchanted Horse, or grasping the wings of Sindbad’s Rukh as it swooped through an Oriental updraught. But the horses in Hertfordshire weren’t made of ebony and no one I knew had ever fished a genie out of the river Chess. So, when Christmas brought an old door painted like Dr Who’s TARDIS, I decided to go to the planet of the Cybermen instead.
Some years later, long after I conceded that there were technical obstacles to my extraterrestrial ambitions, my Oriental interests resurfaced.
I was working as a lackey in a publishing firm, where I spent so much time preparating coffee for my superiors that I wondered if I wasn’t turning into a cafetière. Any day, my right arm would grow into a brass handle and my left arm into a spout.
‘This isn’t what you want to do, is it?’ said Mike, fresh from coaching cricket in Bangalore.
To the tune of Teacher’s whisky trickling into chipped coffee mugs, a plan was hatched. We would leave London post-haste (slurp), plonk ourselves in Jerusalem (more slurps) and teach English (several more slurps and some hiccups). We would write a few articles (someone open the window) about the final stages of the peace process (oh my God, Nick, you’ve ruined the flower bed).
We just didn’t expect its final stages to be a whizz of stones, religious slogans and dumdum bullets.
Even the school was mayhem. The secret smokers, who emerged from flanks of pastry-coloured brick with red faces and burnt fingers, were at war with the basketball jocks, who detested the recorder players, who kept stumbling over the staircase layabouts, who hated the kids who played intifada. And the kids who played intifada were divided into three mutually antagonistic sects: the ‘demonstrators’ who threw marbles; the ‘ambulance-drivers’ who neenaw-neenawed around the playground; and anyone who was big enough and could get hold of a stick – the ‘Israeli soldiers’. It was as irreconcilable and uncontrollable a web of tribal identities as any in the Middle East. Which made teaching akin to an apprenticeship for the UN diplomatic service.
‘Can we turn to page forty-three of Wuthering Heights?’
Silence.
‘Samir! Stop flicking ink at Ahmad. Wuthering Heights?’
Silence.
‘Jamal, where’s your book? Ibrahim, will you give Jamal back his book?’
‘Meesta – why we read this story?’
‘Ah well, it’s, er – Samir!’
But when teacher, now reduced to a quivering lump of exasperation, asks, ‘So who thinks Arafat will make a deal with Barak?’ – hands shoot, spring, stalk into the air.
‘The talking goes nowhere!’
‘Why the Arabs doesn’t help?’
‘Meesta, is true there is monster in the lake of Scotland?’
Very restless and exciting, sure. But all the time? Sometimes, all I wanted was a bit of shush. So, every few days, I stole out of the school and strolled into the Franciscan Library behind the Chapel of the Flagellation. There I certainly found (give or take the scratch of a few pencil sharpeners) plenty of shush. I also found several mythical quests, a couple of wandering poets and a few fair damsels in pelisses of damascened silk. I found the Crusades.
As well as a Templar Knight who turned al-Aqsa Mosque into a toilet; a Syrian prince who, fearing a coup, buried his brother alive; squabbles over the proprietorship of relics; desecration of religious sites; and arguments about the status of Jerusalem. I hadn’t left the intifada, I’d just found it in a different costume. The gunships droning over the library marked a change in technology, not mentality.
Even the physical distinctions clinched past to present, since so much of the detail on which modern Western civilization was founded – from the mathematical discoveries that preceded the Industrial Revolution to the silk and brocade that refurnished European wardrobes – could be traced to the Crusades. The medieval and the modern: like trains on circular tracks, truckety-trucking in opposite directions; but, once each circuit, passing side by side, so that a passenger in the brightly lit carriage of one could peer into the misty windows of the other. Yoked together, squeezing out the centuries in connections as thick as blood; as distant and as close as the opposite ends of a family tree:
Figure 1: The Crusader Kingdom family tree.
These links brought the Crusades breathlessly to life. But there were other, stranger stories that occupied the spaces outside the links, and introduced me to a world whose bridge into the present day had, apparently, long since sunk.
In 1165 – sixty-six years after the Crusaders had seized Jerusalem – a letter, addressed to Manuel Comnenos, the Emperor of Byzantium, appeared in Western Europe. It described a spectacular kingdom, where you could climb the Tower of Babel, meet the Lost Tribes of Israel and, if you were an infirm but devout Christian, be cured by a magic stone. Would Manuel like to visit? He’d soon discover that, in terms of ‘gold, silver, precious stones, beasts of every kind, and the number of our people’, the author of this epistle was ‘unequalled under heaven’. Now, you might think this fellow sounds rather impressed with himself, but he was actually blessed with humility. So what if his bed was made out of sapphire? And who could begrudge him his emerald-tipped sceptre? And what’s so poncy about the fire-washed items spun from salamander skin that filled his royal wardrobe? The fact is, he was incontestably humble – after all, he left grand titles like Protopapas to his dining partners, and gave himself the meagre title of prester, or priest. His name – which would become Christendom’s byword for the exotic and elusive – was Prester John.
The letter was a phenomenon. Scribes copied it into Latin, Old Slavonic, all the important languages; minstrels sang about Prester John, noblemen debated his whereabouts, and in 1177 Pope Alexander III appointed himself his pen-pal. He wrote a reply and sent it with his physician, Master Philip, who disappeared into the East and was never heard of again.
I was mesmerized by the story of Prester John. It had an atmosphere of mystery and magic that, in its own way, was recreated on a rooftop I often used as a short cut from the Muslim quarter to the school. On the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, past bin-bags full of sun-drugged cats and boys kicking footballs between limestone walls erected under the Ottoman Turks, was the Monastery of the Sultan. An egg-shaped dome stood in the centre of the courtyard, near an olive tree that apparently witnessed Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac. Behind them was a row of mud-brick houses with pockmarked doors and lintels of corrugated iron. Outside one of these houses was a member of the Ethiopian community who lived in the monastery. He wore a white shemma shawl and a square black skullcap. In one hand he gripped a walking stick; in the other, a leather-bound book with red-tinted pages.
‘Chreestiarn?’ he asked, his voice a tinny croak.
I nodded.
‘Ortadox?’
‘Catholic.’
He shrugged. ‘Well-kam,’ he said.
It was a restful place, far removed from the ruckus of the intifada. Perched on a step beside the priest, I asked about his homeland. His black cheeks caught white sparkles of sunlight.
‘Gon-daar,’ he rasped, expressing the word as much with his gleaming eyes as with his parched lips: ‘Tana . . . La-lee-ba-la.’
I didn’t know much about these places. But each had a magical association: fairytale castles; the source of the Blue Nile; the tomb of the great twelfth-century king, Lalibela, in an underground church hewn out of pink tufa rock. The priest fluttered his fingers in the air, then stuck his wrists together, opening and closing his hands like a crocodile’s jaws.
‘Eetopyar,’ he beamed.
Over the four centuries in which the Prester John legend proliferated, his kingdom became ever more fanciful. As scriveners hurried to churn out the latest edition of his letter, his subjects acquired horns, hoofed legs or dogs’ heads. Skiapods (whose feet hooded their heads like a parasol) turned up in his realm, as well as cannibals who dined on their parents, and the odd European traveller. Not that they always appreciated the experience. In the early fourteenth century, a Franciscan friar called Odoric of Pordenone located Prester John fifty days west of Peking.
‘Not one hundredth part is true,’ he grumbled, ‘of what is told of him as if it were undeniable.’
But a contemporary of Odoric begged to differ. Sir John Mandeville, a knight from St Albans, assured his readers that Prester John was every bit as wondrous as he claimed, alive and well in the High Ind. Mandeville should know: he’d been there himself. He’d seen the horned men, drunk from ‘the well of youthe’, and met maidens who protected their chastity by secreting venomous serpents in a sensitive part of their anatomies. His travelogue remained widly popular until it was discredited by the Victorians.
The discrepancies between Mandeville and his fellow peregrines underlined the most baffling feature of the Prester John story. Where on earth was he? Was he on earth at all? So much of his kingdom – the Fountain of Youth, milk and honey, immunity to lies – recreated the mythical detail of Paradise. One of the rivers in his kingdom even emerged from Paradise. Would the discovery of Prester John reveal Adam and Eve’s first home? No one could work it out, and Prester John wasn’t particularly generous with geographical detail. He did admit suzerainty over ‘the Three Indies’, but that could be anywhere from the South China Sea to the Horn of Africa. So the best way to solve the conundrum was by default. India didn’t have enough Christians, the Tartary Mongols worshipped the wind, and the Great Khan of China was hardly the same as the priest-king. But Africa . . . As knowledge of the others ruled them out, the Prester Questers turned to the rhinoceros horn on the Red Sea. In the 1330s, Friar Jordanus of Severac produced a Mirabilia of the East, in which he recorded a Christian land full of precious stones and monsters, and golden mountains guarded by gryphons. Its ruler was ‘more potent than any man in the world’, and it was called ‘Æthiopia’.
But the Ethiopian connection may have been made earlier.
Sir Henry Yule, the great Victorian scholar of medieval travel, suggested that Prester John was identified with Ethiopia as early as 1177. Pope Alexander, in his letter to the priest-king, remarked that his physician, Master Philip, had met subjects of Prester John ‘in partibus illis’ – ‘in those parts’. They had asked for a chapel in Jerusalem. There was, Yule decreed, only one candidate. The Abyssinians, as the Ethiopians were called, were Monophysites under the spiritual control of the Coptic Patriarchate in Alexandria. They had appealed to the Catholic rulers of Jerusalem for help against their overseers, and asked for a chapel. They received both the chapel and the monastery that I had visited on the rooftop of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But not from the Pope.
In 1187, most of Outremer – the Crusader kingdom – was spat into the sea after the mighty Muslim warrior Saladin won a decisive battle at the Horns of Hattin and seized Jerusalem three months later. Some time after Saladin’s accession (although possibly not until 1250), the Ethiopians were granted their first real estate in the Holy City.
True Account of the Land of Prester John of the Indies