Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo

Ruy González de Clavijo (died 2 April 1412) was a Castilian traveller and writer. In 1403-05 Clavijo was the ambassador of Henry III of Castile to the court of Timur, founder and ruler of the Timurid Empire. A diary of the journey, perhaps based on detailed notes kept while traveling, was later published in Spanish in 1582 (Embajada a Tamorlán) and in English in 1859 (Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour at Samarcand AD 1403-6).

Clavijo, a nobleman of Madrid and chamberlain to the king, set sail from Cadiz on 21 May 1403 in the company of Timur's ambassador, Muhammed al-Kazi, a Dominican friar, Alfonso Páez de Santa María, one of the king's guards, Gómez de Salazar, and other unnamed Castilians. Clavijo sailed through the Mediterranean, passing Majorca, Sicily and Rhodes to Constantinople. Using modern names for the countries through which he passed, Clavijo sailed along the Black Sea coast of Anatolia to Trebizond and then overland through Armenia, Iran to Turkestan. He visited Tehran in 1404. The original intention was to meet with Timur at his winter pasturage in what is now modern Georgia, but due to foul weather conditions and a shipwreck, the embassy was forced to return to Constantinople and spend the winter of 1403-1404 there.

After setting sail from Constantinople across the Black Sea, the entourage spent the following months following in the wake of Timur's army, but were unable to catch up to the rapidly moving, mounted horde. It is for this reason that the Castilian delegation continued all the way to Timur's capital at Samarkand, in modern Uzbekistan, arriving there on 8 September 1404, occasioning the most detailed contemporary description of Timur's court by a westerner. Clavijo found the city in a constant cycle of construction and rebuilding, in search of perfection:

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