Giorgio Interiano

His travelogue La vita: & sito de Zichi, chiamiti ciarcassi: historia notabile[1] was among the first European accounts of the life and customs of the Circassian people.

[2] The poet Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) called Interiano, with whom he had worked for a number of years, "magnus naturalium rerum investigator,"[3] or "learned seeker into recondite matter.

"[4] Interiano was the author of one of the first Europe descriptions of Circassia, a book called La vita: & sito de Zichi, chiamiti ciarcassi: historia notabile.

[5] Interiano's account is considered to be more "learned" than other travelogues of the time,[4] though it is still fits into the Orientalist idiom, the texts of which tend to focus on the exotic and savage character of all natives of Asia.

"[6] Circassian priests, he wrote, were "ignorant, illiterate men performing the Greek ritual without any knowledge of the language," and "nobles never entered a church until they were sixty years of age, because, as they lived by rapine, they were deemed to desecrate the sacred edifices.