Niccolò de' Conti

[4] The only exception are the travel accounts by Franciscan friar Odoricus Mattiuzzi (1286-1331) from Friuli, who in 1310 visited Armenia, Mesopotamia, Persia, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Sumatra, Java, Cambodia, Champa and China.

Around 1421, de' Conti crossed to "Pedir" in northern Sumatra, where he spent a year, gaining local knowledge, particularly on the gold and spice trade.

He then sailed to the mouth of the Ganges, visited Sonargaon and Chittagong (in modern Bangladesh) and then went overland to Arakan (now Rakhine State, Burma).

De' Conti described South-East Asia as "exceeding all other regions in wealth, culture and magnificence, and abreast of Italy in civilization".

[2] In the 1430s he sailed back to India (Quilon, Kochi, Calicut, Cambay) and then to the Middle-East (Socotra, Aden, Berbera in Somalia, Jidda in the Hejaz), from where he travelled overland via Mount Sinai, where the Spanish traveller Pedro Tafur encountered him in 1436 and reported some of Niccolò's marvels, including detailed accounts of Prester John,[8] and thence, in company with Pedro, to Cairo.

[9] Accounts of Niccolò de' Conti's travels, which first circulated in manuscript form, are said to have profoundly influenced the European geographical understanding of the areas around the Indian Ocean during the middle of the 15th century.

This country is worth seeking by the Latins, not only because great wealth may be obtained from it, gold and silver, all sorts of gems, and spices, which never reach us; but also on account of its learned men, philosophers, and expert astrologers, and by what skill and art so powerful and magnificent a province is governed, as well as how their wars are conducted.De' Conti's book was used by several explorers and travel writers, such as Ludovico di Varthema (1510), and Antonio Pigafetta, who travelled around the world with Magellan's expedition.

Alfred Russel Wallace cited de' Conti's account of the peoples of Java and Sumatra in his 1869 book The Malay Archipelago.

[18] The first printed edition of de' Conti's account was made in 1492 in the original Latin by Cristoforo da Bollate and dedicated to Pietro Cara, who was going on a journey to India.

The first English edition was translated from the Spanish, and printed in 1579 by John Frampton, using a combination of Marco Polo's and de Conti's narrations.