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But if you were to go to a library at the end of the 1300s, or through the 1400s, you would probably find a book that was then, way more popular than those titles we still read, a book that purported to be a description of the world, a guide the traveling and distant lands of BC area and Almanac of everything that was just off the horizon. I am not talking about Marco Polo. No, I’m talking about something far, far weirder and far, far less tethered to reality, a volume of medieval fantasy masquerading as a field guide called The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, supposedly the Titular Knight set out from England in the 1330s and embarked on a journey that would take him to the Middle East, Africa and Asia, though as it will become apparent, not a Middle East, not in Africa and not an Asia that we would recognize here in reality. No Mandeville spoke is not really about actually real foreign lands. It’s about what European’s thought that was just outside the bounds of their civilizations. It’s about what’s beyond that mountain range that marks the borders of the lands you know. It’s about what medieval people thought the foreign looks like. And all of it is mysterious, alluring, and intimidating unknown.

In the late 1300s and 1400s, “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville” emerged as a popular medieval fantasy, offering a whimsical view of distant lands. While supposedly based on real journeys to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, the text reflects European perceptions of the unknown rather than accurate geography. It captures the allure and mystique of foreign cultures.