The legend was the romantic story that in these far regions there lay a vast and powerful Christian kingdom ruled by a mighty potentate, Prester John. This tradition was the most important contribution of our period to regional geography, for, false as it was, it long persisted, became an integral part of late medieval geographical theory, and exerted in subsequent centuries a powerful influence on the course of exploration. The thirteenth-century Oriental travelers were constantly on the lookout for Prester John’s kingdom and, when it finally became obvious that there was no such kingdom in Asia, Prester John was transferred to Africa, where he was sought for by the Portuguese navigators of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. How did this strange legend come into existence, and what did it contribute to Western notions of Asia? _Origins of the Legend_ Various elements seem to have given rise to it. Perhaps rumors of the existence of a Christian nation in Abyssinia may at a very early period have fostered belief in the existence of a great Christian potentate in Asia. India in Asia and Ethiopia in Africa were often confused both in antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Furthermore, the story of the visit of the Indian archbishop or patriarch, already referred to, encouraged belief in a numerous Asiatic Christian population. Some of the elements of the patriarch’s report became an integral part of one of the twelfth-century versions of the story of Prester John. Then again, we have echoes of actual events in the East in Benjamin of Tudela’s _Itinerary_, as we have just seen, and in Otto of Freising’s _Chronicon_. Otto relates[1326] that in 1145 the bishop of Gabala in Syria had come to Viterbo to report to Pope Eugenius III, among other things, the fall of Edessa. Here Otto met the bishop, and what he learned is recorded in the _Chronicon_. This was to the effect that, not very long before, a certain John, king and priest, who dwelt in the Far East beyond Persia and Armenia and who, together with his tribe (_gens_), was a Christian, waged war with the Samiards (Saniards), two brothers who were kings of the Medes and Persians. John captured Ecbatana, the capital of the Samiards’ realm, defeated the brothers in battle, and put them to flight. He then proceeded to advance to the aid of the church at Jerusalem but was hindered from going very far by the river Tigris. Turning northwards in hope that the river would freeze over and thereby enable him to cross, he was finally constrained, after several years had elapsed, to give up the enterprise because continued warm weather prevented ice from forming. This John, Otto added, was said to have come of very ancient lineage, in fact, to have been one of the progeny of the Magi. The tribes under his command were perhaps the same as the “Kufar-al-Turak” of Benjamin of Tudela.[1327]