Johann Schiltberger (1381–1440?), German traveller and writer, was born of a noble family in 1381 (May 9th ?), probably at Hollern near Lohof, half way between Munich and Freising, on what was then a property of his family. In 1394 he joined the suite of Lienhart Richartinger, and went off to fight under Sigismund, king of Hungary (afterwards emperor), against the Turks on the Hungarian frontier. At the battle of Nicopolis (Sept. 28th, 1396) he was wounded and taken prisoner: when he had recovered the use of his feet, Sultan Bayezid I. (Ilderim) took him into his service as a runner (1396–1402). During this time he seems to have accompanied Ottoman troops to certain parts of Asia Minor and to Egypt. On Bayezid’s overthrow at Angora (July 20th, 1402), Schiltberger passed into the service of Bayezid’s conqueror Timur: he now appears to have followed Themurlin to Samarkand, and perhaps also to Armenia and Georgia. After Timur’s death (February 17th, 1405) his German runner first became a slave of Shah Rukh, the ablest of Timur’s sons; then of Miran Shah, a brother of Shah Rukh; then of Abu Bekr, a son of Miran Shah, whose camp roamed up and down Armenia. He next accompanied Chekre, a Tatar prince living in Abu Bekr’s horde, on an excursion to Siberia, of which name Schiltberger gives us the first clear mention in west European literature. He also probably followed his new master in his attack on the Old Bulgaria of the middle Volga, answering to the modern Kazan and its neighbourhood. 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, Abkhasia and Mingrelia; and finally escape (from the neighbourhood of Batum) followed. Arriving at Constantinople, he there lay hid for a time; he then returned to his Bavarian home (1427) by way of Kilia, Akkerman, Lemberg, Cracow, Breslau and Meissen After his return he became a chamberlain of Duke Albert III., probably receiving this appointment in the first instance before the duke’s accession in 1438. [1911 Encyclopedia Britannica]