Schiltberger joined the suite of Lienhart Richartinger in 1394, and he then went to fight under Sigismund, King of Hungary (afterwards emperor), against the Ottoman Empire on the Hungarian frontier.
At the Battle of Nicopolis on 28 September 1396, he was wounded and taken prisoner; when Schiltberger had recovered the use of his feet, Sultan Bayezid I (Yıldırım) took him into his service as a runner (1396–1402).
Wanderings in the steppe lands of south-east Russia; visits to Sarai, the old capital of the Kipchak Khanate on the lower Volga and to Azov or Tana, still a trading centre for Venetian and Genoese merchants; a fresh change of servitude on Chekre's ruin; travels in the Crimea, Circassia, Abkhazia and Mingrelia; and finally escape (from the neighborhood of Batum) followed.
[2] Arriving at Constantinople, Schiltberger stayed in hiding there for a time; he then returned to his Bavarian home (1427) by way of Kilia, Akkerman, Lemberg, Kraków, Breslau and Meissen.
[2] Schiltberger is perhaps the first writer of Western Christendom to give the true burial place of Muhammad at Medina: his sketches of Islam and of Eastern Christendom, with all their shortcomings, are of remarkable merit for their time: and he may fairly be reckoned among the authors who contributed to fix Prester John, at the close of the Middle Ages, in Abyssinia.
[2] His account of Timur and his campaigns is misty, often incorrect, and sometimes fabulous: nor can von Hammer's parallel between Marco Polo and Schiltberger be sustained without large reservations.
), and V. Langmantel's (Tübingen, 1885); "Hans Schiltbergers Reisebuch," in the 172nd volume of the Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart.
by Buchan Telfer with notes by P. Bruun (London, 1879); Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, "Berechtigung d. orientalischen Namen Schiltbergers," in Denkschriften d. Konigl.