The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427Schiltberger, Johannes
History
The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427
Schiltberger, Johannes
Timur, 1336-1405 -- Early works to 1800; Turkey -- History -- Bayezid I, 1389-1403; Voyages and travels -- Early works to 1800
(2.) “the juice of an apple which they call liuon.”—There can scarcely
be a doubt that this was the lemon, called nimbouka in Sanscrit;
neemon, leemon in Hindostani, and lemonn by the Arabs, a fruit with
which Schiltberger could scarcely have been familiar in his own
country, or in those parts of Asia Minor, Central Asia, and even
Egypt, through which he travelled. The lemon, brought from India by
the Arabs about A.D. 912, was first planted at Oman; then at Basra in
Irak; afterwards in Syria, where the plant became common, whence it
was introduced into Palestine and Egypt. Jacques de Vitry includes
the lemon tree with others he saw for the first time when in the Holy
Land in the 13th century: “sunt ibi speciales arbores tam fructiferæ
quam steriles” (_Gesta Dei per Francos_, etc., lxxxvi); from which it
might almost be inferred that the Crusaders, who are supposed to have
introduced this plant into Europe, did not do so until after Jacques de
Vitry wrote. The genus, however, could not have been entirely unknown
in the West, it being recorded in _Chronica Montis Cassiniensis, Pertz
Scr._, 7, 652, that when the prince of Salerno in the year 1000 (1016?)
was besieged by the Arabs, forty Norman knights who passed that way on
their homeward journey from the Holy Land, delivered him. Upon taking
their leave, the knights were accompanied by ambassadors from the
prince, who were bearers of presents of the “poma cedrina (citrina?),
amigdalas quoque et deauratas nuces”, and a message to the Norman
people, inviting them to come to so beautiful a country and help him
to defend it (Abd-Allatif, S. de Sacy edition, 115–117; Makrizi in
Quatremère; _Journ. Horticultural Society_, ix, 1855; Risso et Poiteau,
_Hist. et Culture des Orangers_, Paris, 1872; Hehn, _Kulturpflanzen und
Hausthiere in ihrem Uebergang aus Asien nach Griechenl. und Ital._,
Berlin, 1877).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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