A MISSING LINK IN EUROPEAN TRAVEL LITERATURE BURCHARD OF MOUNT SION’S DESCRIPTION OF EGYPT*

This article offers a first study and edition of Burchard of Mount Sion’s ‘Egyptian section’. This text—hitherto almost completely neglected by scholars—provides a detailed account of Egypt, and is preserved in its entirety in two manuscripts, following Burchard’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae. The present work provides an analysis of the contents and characteristics of this text, of the cultural context in which it was composed, and of its reception in medieval and early modern times. Appendix 1 includes a provisional edition of Burchard’s account of Egypt. Appendix 2 offers an edition of the final part of a shortened version of this text which is significant from the point of view of the history of its reception.

Burchard of Strasbourg's description, dating to 1175, 1 to which may be added several brief and partial accounts of this region by Franks who visited Egypt. 2 Against this background, it is very significant that there exists a highly elaborate thirteenth-century Latin travel account of Egypt, which has hitherto remained almost completely neglected by scholars: this text was composed by Burchard of Mount Sion and appears, in some manuscripts, following his extremely wellknown description of the Holy Land, or Descriptio Terrae Sanctae. Burchard was a Dominican friar who traveled in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 1280s, at least occasionally, as a diplomatic envoy. As we shall see below, he seems to have been strongly connected to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and may have belonged to the Dominican province of the Holy Land. 3 The aim of this article is to present for the first time Burchard's account of Egypt, examining its content and characteristics, but also looking at what this text can tell us about Burchard's work as an author as well as about his cultural environment. As will be seen, the shift from the description of the Holy Land to that of Egypt represents an important moment in the history of Western travel literature. The final sections of the article are devoted to the reception of Burchard's account of Egypt in medieval and early modern times. Two appendices are attached to this article: the first includes a tentative edition of Burchard's account of Egypt, and the second presents an edition of the final part of a shortened version of this text which is studied below and referred to as the 'abbreviated version'.
That the discussions of Western writing concerning Egypt make no mention of Burchard's Egyptian section is easy to explain: 4 Laurent's edition, which is the 1 For Burchard of Strasbourg's work, see Paul Lehmann and Otto Glauning, 'Mittelalterliche Handschriftenbruchstücke der Universitätsbibliothek und des Georgianum zu München', Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, Beiheft 72 (1940), pp. 61-73 [referred to below as 'Burchard of Strasbourg, Itinerarium']. A version of it also appears in: Arnold of Lübeck, Chronica Slavorum, ed. Johann M. Lappenberg, (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, 21), Hanover: Hahnianus, 1869, pp 235-241. The description of Egypt is found at pp. 236-239. 2 Among the authors of these accounts, one should mention Jean de Joinville, who accompanied King Louis IX on his Seventh Crusade and included in the text he later composed considerable information concerning Egypt. See, for example, his discussion of the Nile: Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. Jacques Monfrin, Paris: Garnier, 2010, pp. 92-95, pars. 187-191. Similarly, Jacques de Vitry also spent some time in Egypt and included comments concerning it in both his letters and the Historia orientalis. See, in particular, Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, ed. Robert B. C. Huygens, Turnhout: Brepols, 2000, pp. 584-588. 3 For the only critical edition of this text (which does not include Burchard's account of Egypt), see Johann C. M. Laurent (ed.), Peregrinatores medii aevi quatuor, Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1864, pp. 3-94. For biographical information on Burchard, see Jonathan Rubin, 'Burchard of Mount Sion's Descriptio Terrae Sanctae: A Newly Discovered Extended Version ', Crusades 13 (2014), pp. 173-190. 4 See, for example, Burnett's discussion of travel accounts of Egypt in Charles Burnett, 'Images of Ancient Egypt in the Latin Middle Ages', in Peter Ucko and Timothy Champion (eds), The Wisdom of Egypt, London: UCL Press, 2003, pp. 68-70. Burchard's work is also not mentioned in John P. only critical edition of Burchard's work, does not provide it, and so scholars were unlikely to suspect that the Descriptio ever included such a text. Laurent himself was aware that some textual witnesses of Burchard's work present an account of Egypt, but rejected its authenticity on the basis of a comment, placed at the beginning of the text, where Burchard states that his work was limited to the description of the Holy Land. 5 The publication of a textual witness which provides the 'abbreviated version' of Burchard's account of Egypt-in 1903, by Henri Omont-did not clarify this question, since his article was limited to one manuscript and did not shed light on the textual tradition of the Descriptio. Thus, scholars who were aware of this publication nevertheless remained hesitant as to the authenticity of this section. 6 Recent studies on some previously neglected manuscripts of the Descriptio provide a clear solution to this doubt. I have recently published a part of a manuscript, now in London (British Library, Add. 18929, referred to below as 'MS London'), which provides, following a text roughly parallel to that published by Laurent, an account of Burchard's travels to Egypt, Sicily, Italy and then back to the East. 7 An additional manuscript (MS Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek, 1.12.5, referred to below as 'MS Zwickau') includes most of these sections, including the description of Egypt, but ends with the account of Lucca. 8 That the sections dealing with Burchard's travels outside the Holy Land are indeed authentic and Cooper, The Medieval Nile: Route, Navigation and Landscape in Islamic Egypt, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014. This text is also not utilized in a very detailed paper on the traditions and sites related to Christ and his family's sojourn in Egypt: Beatrice Saletti, 'La sacra famiglia in Egitto: Pellegrini europei al Cairo tra XIV e XVI secolo ', Nuova Rivista Storica, 98/3 (2014), pp. 909-960. Notably, the only scholars who seem to have hitherto used this text are those who worked on Egypt's image in medieval German literature. However, the text they used, a 1584 German printed edition, is so far removed from Burchard's original work that its study is hardly instructive for understanding the actual medieval composition. See Abbas Amin, Ägyptomanie und Orientalismus: Ägypten in der deutschen Reiseliteratur, 1175-1663, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013Aleya Khattab, Das Ägyptenbild in den deutschsprachigen Reisebeschreibungen der Zeit von 1285-1500, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1982 Laurent (ed.), Peregrinatores, p. 12. 6 Henri Omont, 'Manuscrits de la bibliothèque de sir Thomas Phillipps récemment acquis pour la Bibliothèque nationale', Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes 64 (1903), pp. 490-553. Baumgärtner, who was not only aware of Omont's publication, but also identified an additional manuscript which transmits a section concerning Egypt, remained skeptical as to whether this part of the work was penned by Burchard; see Ingrid Baumgärtner, 'Burchard of Mount Sion and the Holy Land', Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 4/1 (Spring 2013), pp. 14-15. 7 Rubin, 'Burchard ', pp. 173-190. 8 For the ending of MS Zwickau, see fol. 144v, and cf. Rubin, 'Burchard', p. 189. Both MSS were alluded to by Rotter in a paper of which I was unaware when I published my 2014 paper: Ekkehart Rotter, 'Windrose statt Landkarte. Die geografische Systematisierung des Heiligen Landes und ihre Visualisierung durch Burchardus de Monte Sion um 1285', Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 69 (2013), pp. 47, n. 8; 70-71, n. 77 et passim. Rotter, however, did not study these MSS in detail or publish sections from them. were authored by Burchard seems unquestionable. This is made clear by the dates which are provided throughout the London/Zwickau version of the Descriptio and which together produce a coherent picture of Burchard's movements around the Mediterranean. 9 It is hard to see why a later scribe/editor would have been interested in making up such a sequence, and how he would have been able to produce one. Furthermore, various details concerning Burchard's biography and, in particular, his status as a Dominican friar, are also attested to in different sections of the London manuscript: at the beginning of the text as transmitted by this manuscript Burchard refers to himself as 'ego Burchardus ordinis predicatorum' ('I Burchard of the Order of Preachers'). Later, as he describes his visit to Rome, he describes two Dominican institutions-Sancta Maria in Minerva and Sancta Sabina in monte Aventino-as places 'ubi stant fratres' ('where there are friars'). 10 Additionally, one reads in the London text that Burchard went to Bologna in 1285 to meet the head of the Dominican order. Indeed, this seems to further confirm the authenticity of this text, since the Dominicans held their general chapter in the city that year. 11 To these points one should add some considerations of stylistic nature: several forms of expression appear in both the Descriptio as published by Laurent and in the 'new' parts of the text, suggesting that they were all written by the same person. Among these are: 'stupor est videre' and 'quantum potui… consideravi/indagavi/investigavi'. 12 It is thus certain that the Egyptian section as provided by the London and Zwickau manuscripts was indeed composed by Burchard, although, as is often the case, it may also include some later scribal interventions. 13 9 Rubin, 'Burchard ', p. 181. 10 Ibid., p. 178.

11
Georgina R. Galbraith, The Constitution of the Dominican Order, 1216-1360, Manchester: University Press, 1925 See, respectively, Laurent (ed.), Peregrinatores,pp. 25,88 and Appendix 1,l. 176;Ibid.,pp. 20,25,45,63,and Rubin,'Burchard',p. 186. 13 A complete detailed and updated list and survey of all extant manuscripts of the Descriptio remains a desideratum which the author of this paper hopes to fulfill. Of the twenty manuscripts which I have hitherto been able to explore only London and Zwickau include the complete Egyptian section, while several others include the 'abbreviated version' to which we shall return toward the end of this paper. This conclusion is supported also by Rotter, who examined a very considerable number of manuscripts and included them in his (incomplete) list. Indeed, he writes that only the London and Zwickau manuscripts transmit Burchard's travel from the Holy Land back to the West; see Rotter, 'Windrose', p. 70, n. 77 (the manuscript lists appear at pp. 103-106). For previous lists of manuscripts of the Descriptio, see Reinhold Röhricht, Bibliotheca Geographica Palaestinae, Berlin: Reuther, 1890, pp. 56-58;Thomas Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, 4 vols, Rome: Ad S. Sabinae, 1970-1993

Characteristics and Content of the Egyptian Section
Burchard's Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, as known to scholars through Laurent's 1864 edition, is a very detailed account of biblical geography of the Holy Land, related to contemporary actuality on the basis, at least in part, of the author's own experience, and often commended for being extraordinarily systematic. Taking Acre as the 'centre', Burchard drew four imaginary lines in conformity with the cardinal points, and then divided each of the quarters thus created into three subsections. 14 The greater part of his text, as provided by Laurent's edition, is made up of the detailed description of these sections, followed by three thematic chapters: on the length and breadth of the Holy Land, on its fruits and animals, and on the religious groups inhabiting it. Thus, Burchard's composition, as represented by Laurent's edition, could have justly been seen as a well-ordered and carefully preconceived discussion of the Holy Land.
But this major characteristic of the Descriptio does not apply to the newly discovered sections, which appear in the London and Zwickau manuscripts, the first of which provides the account of Egypt. Here one finds no introductory comments of the sort Burchard provided for his discussion of the Holy Land and no thematic or geographical plan can be recognized, except the sequence of his movement through space. Notably, the shift from a text based on a preconceived geographical logic to a narrative which follows the author's itinerary occurs within the text published by Laurent. However, since the text is truncated, this move could not have been appreciated for what it was. The discovery of the sections following the Descriptio as published by Laurent makes such an analysis possible for the first time. Given its significance for both the understanding of Burchard as an author and, as we shall see below, for the appreciation of an important moment in the history of Western travel literature, it is expedient to look at it in some detail.
Having described the Holy Land's various religious groups, Burchard argues that the great majority of population in the East, except Arabia and Egypt, is Christian, and it is only because these Christians are ruled by non-Christians that these territories are considered Muslim. 15 In order to support this argument, Burchard shares with his readers experiences from his sojourn in Armenia, thus breaking both with his original intention to restrict his work to the Holy  fact that the London text mentions another visit to Armenia which took place during the summer of 1285. 20 The expression 'ultima vice' ('last time') in the above-quoted phrase therefore indicates that these words must have been written before that later visit, and thus serves as evidence that the complete version of the Descriptio represented by the London/Zwickau text should be read at least partly as a notebook into which Burchard kept adding materials as time went by.
The notebook quality of the part of the Descriptio which follows the account of Armenia is evident in the Egyptian section of Burchard's work. It is this characteristic of his text that explains why, for example, the author discusses local Christianity (Appendix 1, ll. 85-89), leaves this subject in order to discuss a range of other themes, finally returning to this topic (Appendix 1, ll. 150-156) providing further, but also contradictory, information. Thus, in the first discussion he says that he had heard from Christians and Muslims that there were more than 300,000 Christians in Egypt, but in the second he speaks of over 600,000. 21 Perhaps more significantly, only in his second discussion of local Christians does Burchard refer to the extreme pressure exerted on them to convert. Given the similarity in the wording employed in the two discussionswhich makes it difficult to argue that one of them reflects a later interpolation rather than Burchard's own text-the best explanation for this is that, as Burchard continued his journey in Egypt, he accumulated additional information concerning Egypt's Christian community, which he then added into his notebook. A similar phenomenon can be noted with regard to Burchard's comments on the pyramids: having mentioned them briefly in the context of his description of the Nile (Appendix 1, ll. 64-66), Burchard returns to them, this time in a more elaborate manner, toward the end of his account of Egypt (Appendix 1,. Such examples can be multiplied, so that one can safely conclude that beginning with his discussion of Armenia, Burchard's Descriptio ceases to be a planned portrayal of a specific territory and begins to resemble a travelogue, at least occasionally updated as its author continues his travels. 22 It is noteworthy that while Burchard's manner of working took a clear turn between his discussion of the Holy Land and his account of Egypt, the attitudes guiding him remained much the same. His portrayal of the Nile reveals a perspective similar to that which characterizes his depiction of the Holy Land: an attempt to provide a complete picture of a geographical unit rather than a linear portrayal of the sites and geographical elements which he actually saw. In that, Burchard's Egyptian unit differs, for example, from the accounts of Egypt penned 20 Rubin, 'Burchard',pp. 181, For the second figure, I rely on the reading provided by MS Zwickau. See Appendix 1, l. 152. 22 It is, of course, possible that Burchard meant to later edit this section and was unable to do so, or, alternatively, that such an edited version exists but has not yet been discovered. by authors such as Burchard of Strasbourg, who wrote about a century earlier, or William of Boldensele, who wrote several decades later. Both of these authors were certainly curious about the Nile, but neither of them made an attempt of the sort Burchard did to provide a comprehensive picture of the Nile's various branches (Appendix 1, ll. 37-64). 23 Burchard of Mount Sion's relatively critical outlook, which characterizes his account of the Holy Land, is also revealed in his discussion of the origins of the Nile, as he chooses to leave this as an unresolved question rather than to repeat the widely held belief that the river comes out of paradise. 24 Given the fact that, as we have seen, Burchard composed his account of Egypt while traveling, adding information as he advanced, it is more expedient, in order to gain an understanding of its contents, to look at the main kinds of data it provides than to follow its narrative. These can be described as follows: 2. Egypt's Population: Burchard presents his readers with considerable information concerning Egypt's inhabitants. He is concerned, first and foremost, with the country's Christians, providing, as was already noted, different estimates as to their number in two places in this section. He also refers to the great number of churches on the one hand and to the persecutions to which these communities are subject on the other. But Burchard is also interested in Egypt's non-Christian populations. In this context he describes the division between Bedouins, Saracens and Turks. Interestingly, he thought that the Bedouins are more numerous than the members of the other groups, and that while the Saracens rule the country, the Turks are superior as the sultans come from their ranks and they make better soldiers. He was also impressed with the country's great population.
3. Geographical Information: much of Burchard's text is devoted to various aspects of Egypt's geography. Firstly, a considerable part of the text is devoted to Burchard's attempt to describe the Nile's branches. But his geographical interests were not limited to the Nile, and he also discusses Egypt's size and shape, names the regions bordering it, provides distances between various sites in it and enumerates its ports.
4. Biblical Geography of Egypt: in his description of Egypt, Burchard refers to several sites as connected to biblical traditions. Of central importance in this respect are locations considered to be related to the Exodus of the Hebrews, and to Mary and Christ's flight to Egypt. It is noteworthy, however, that in contrast to the part of the Descriptio which is devoted to the Holy Land, these sites do not take a central position in Burchard's account of Egypt.
5. Egypt's Economy: Burchard shares with his readers considerable information concerning substances which can be found in Egypt and comments also about those which cannot be found there and for which Egypt is dependent on import from other regions. Timber for the construction of boats is particularly significant in this context, as are also various metals. The difficulty of finding stones suitable for building houses brings Burchard to also characterize local structures.
6. Mirabilia: Burchard included in his description of Egypt several discussions of wonderful things he saw there. These include the pyramids, animals that he saw in a zoo he visited (particularly, the giraffe, which he had never seen before), the balm garden at Heliopolis and a festival, led by the sultan, in which the relics of Saint John are said to have played a central role.

Written Sources and Cultural Context
In describing the Holy Land, Burchard was working within an established Latin tradition, and, as was already mentioned, following a clear, systematic, plan. He is also likely to have sat down to compose this text having developed at least a general picture of what he intended to include in it. Furthermore, as he used for his work on this part of his project a considerable number of texts, 25 one may assume that he was working in, or within reach of, a library, plausibly that of one of Outremer's Dominican convents. 26 With Egypt, the circumstances were very different. Firstly, while it is possible that there circulated at the time accounts of Egypt which have not reached us, the number of Latin texts describing that region which were available in the 1280s must have been much more limited than that of descriptions of the Holy Land. Secondly, as we have seen above, Burchard seems to have composed this section while travelling, so that books would have been much less accessible to him. Indeed, while it is difficult to prove that he made use of no text at all, several indications point in this direction. Firstly, his account of the Nile's branches does not closely resemble any of those studied by Cooper. 27 The fact that Burchard's description of the Delta's eastern part, which he in fact visited, is much better than that of the West further supports the hypothesis that his knowledge of the Nile is based on personal observation and on contacts with people he met on his way. Secondly, while Burchard mentions Jacques de Vitry's work as a major source for his description of the Holy Land, 28 a comparison between Burchard and Jacques de Vitry's accounts of, for example, the balsam garden or Farama shows that these are unrelated. 29 Arabic accounts, which, theoretically at least, would have been much more useful for Burchard, are unlikely to have been accessible to him, since it is improbable that he was able to read Arabic. 30 That he did not use Arabic sources is confirmed by the fact that a very limited number of Arabic place names appear in the text. While there is no evidence that Burchard used specific texts as he was working on his account of Egypt, some pieces of information included in it must have originated in Latin works which Burchard had consulted earlier in his life. 25 Pringle, Pilgrimage, p. 50. 26 Evidence in support of this hypothesis is presented below. Such is, for example, Burchard's mention of the Theban Legion, probably based on one of the texts recounting the martyrdom of this renowned Roman army unit. 31 It is particularly likely that Burchard's comment in this regard is founded on William of Tyre's Chronicon, where the toponym Thebes is tied to a region neighboring Cairo on the one hand and to the famous Roman legion on the other. 32 Burchard's notion that the Nile has seven branches probably also goes back to earlier texts: this was a very common idea which appears in Western literature since ancient times and which was shared by authors much closer to Burchard in time, such as William of Tyre and Joinville. 33 The confusion between Bilbeis and Pelusium seems to also belong to this category, as it appears in earlier Latin works. 34 Burchard's reference to the unique astronomic attributes of Meroe and Aswan (Appendix 1, ll. 69-71) points to the same direction. Comparing it with its most likely sources, it is evident that it is corrupt. 35 This may be the result of difficulties in the transmission of the Descriptio, but it is probably at least partly due to the fact that Burchard wrote these comments out of memory rather than consulting a written work. While it is questionable whether Burchard used written sources in his Egyptian section, it is clear that this part of his work relied, to a considerable extent, on oral exchanges he had with members of various cultural groups that he encountered. This is made clear by numerous explicit references in the text to such exchanges (Appendix 1,114,(150)(151)157,(160)(161)182).
The discovery of the London and Zwickau manuscripts, both of which shed significant new light on Burchard's career, also enables us to place him more firmly within a cultural or intellectual context. In particular, they present evidence that his connection to Outremer was much deeper than that of a standard pilgrim, providing clear indications that Burchard's sojourn in this territory spread over a considerable period of time, 36 and that he was personally acquainted with major figures in the kingdom such as both the Latin and Greek patriarchs of Jerusalem. 37 Terms he employs also suggest that he was deeply influenced by the Frankish culture that developed in the kingdom of Jerusalem. Firstly, in his description of the Holy Land, he frequently uses leuca, a term typical of Frankish Outremer, as a unit of distance. 38 XV siècle, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013, p. 107, n. 35. It is noteworthy that in the Egyptian section things are more complex as miliare appears more frequently than leuca (10 and 6 times respectively, in addition to one mention of miliaria teutonica). This may be the result of exchanges Burchard had, during his travels in Egypt, with Italians who would have preferred miliare. For such contacts see below, Appendix 1, ll. 160-161 and 179-182. MS Zwickau, fol. 113v: ['Truly, I brother Burchard of the Order of Preachers, seeing that some people are affected by a desire to picture for themselves in some degree at least those things that they are unable to look upon face to face, and wanting to satisfy their wish as far as I can, have both recorded and studiously described that land through which I have frequently passed on foot and which I have diligently inspected in so far as I have been able during the ten years in which I was a brother of that province.'] frater provincie illius fui, quantum potui consideravi diligenter, et notavi et studiose descripsi.
Most of this paragraph appears also in the London manuscript, but the crucial words 'et [quam] per x annos, quibus frater provincie illius fui' are unique to the Zwickau manuscript. 41 If it is indeed trustworthy, Burchard should be seen a longtime member of the Dominican province of the Holy Land, and firmly placed within Outremer's intellectual milieus. But, as we have seen, even if one disregards these phrases, the extant evidence clearly shows that Burchard was strongly related to the Holy Land and, in all likelihood, to its Dominican province.
Bearing in mind that Burchard was at least partly working within the intellectual environment which developed in Frankish Outremer, it becomes easier to contextualize his account of Egypt. Firstly, as we have seen, the notion that Christians are very numerous in Egypt is repeated twice in this section. This claim should probably be connected to the argument which, as was already noted, Burchard makes at the beginning of his discussion of Armenia, according to which the population of the East is mostly Christian. But this line of thought is not Burchard's innovation. Writing several decades earlier, Jacques de Vitry, Acre's renowned bishop, made a similar argument. 42 Furthermore, Burchard's own comments also imply that the question of whether or not Christians made the majority among the inhabitants of the East was discussed at the time, since he argues that while some disagree with his view others support it. 43 Additionally, one may assume that information-of varying levels of accuracyconcerning the population of the East circulated in places such as Acre which was, at the time, an important gateway for Westerners traveling into Asia. That the East was mainly Christian may have also been an important notion for the Franks of Outremer in view of their continuing inability to effectively face Mamluk military power, as it would have possibly provided them with a reason for optimism.
Burchard also treats, in his account of Egypt, an additional subject which was central in the discourse of the kingdom of Jerusalem. This is the assistance provided to the Mamluks by Western merchants. In two places in his account of Egypt, Burchard mentions substances which are not found in Egypt  that if Western merchants would cease to bring them there, Egypt would no longer be able to sustain itself (Appendix 1,(178)(179)(180)(181)(182). These comments should be understood as a part of a much wider discourse on the support provided by Latin merchants to Outremer's Muslim foes. One aspect of the Latin engagement with this issue is the recurrent papal bans against such commercial activities, but it is also clear that this was a subject often discussed in places such as Acre which, on the one hand, saw a great number of merchants and, on the other, was very vulnerable to Mamluk attacks. 44 Evidence for this is provided by the discussion of these commercial ties by Fidenzio of Padova, who had spent a long time in the city before returning to the West where he completed, shortly before the final fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem, a text titled Liber recuperationis Terre Sancte. 45 Burchard's strong connection to the intellectual milieus in the kingdom of Jerusalem can perhaps also help to contextualize the complex nature of his work, and, in particular, his shift from the composition of a systematic description of the Holy Land to the writing of a travelogue documenting a journey through a range of other territories. This shift epitomizes what has been referred to as 'the ultimate relocation of the paradigm of travel from the ideal of pilgrimage to those of empirical curiosity and practical science' and dated to 1250-1450. 46 In other words, Burchard's decision to neglect his initial commitment to discuss in his work only the Holy Land and to provide his readers with abundant information concerning other regions resulted in the production of a text which captures the precise moment of such a move by an individual author. But how can one explain this radical change in Burchard's perception of his own work? It is likely that it was in Outremer that Burchard became exposed to this new inclination: one of the most prominent pioneers of the new trend was none other than William of Rubruck, who composed his Itinerarium in 1255 while teaching in Acre's Franciscan convent. The Itinerarium, like the part of the Descriptio that follows the section on Armenia, includes descriptions of territories through which its author traveled providing ample geographical and ethnographic information.  Land, 1274-1314, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991 Jaś Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés, 'Introduction', in Jaś Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés (eds), Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel, London: Reaktion Books, 1999, p. 31. advanced. 47 It seems likely that a pathbreaking project such as William's would have left a mark on Acre's culture for a long time, and that Burchard would have become aware of it as he worked in the city during the 1280s. Additionally, even if he would not have known William's work, Burchard is likely to have encountered in the kingdom of Jerusalem other texts which share this new trend. Burchard of Strasbourg's above-mentioned description of Egypt should, for example, also be tied to this new literary tradition and is very likely to have been available in Acre. 48 Thus, it is very likely that at least some of the notions which drove Burchard to continue writing as he traveled out of the Holy Land were related to the works of earlier authors which he encountered in the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Egyptian Section and the Descriptio's Manuscript Tradition
While, as was already noted, a survey of all extant manuscripts of the Descriptio remains a desideratum which lays outside the scope of the present article, a preliminary survey of twenty of them does enable us to make some conclusions with regard to the manuscript reception of the Egyptian section. 49 As we shall soon see, the conclusions of this partial survey are significant not only with regard to the way in which this section was treated by scribes/editors working on manuscripts of the Descriptio but also for the future reconstruction of this work's transmission history.
At the current state of research, it is possible to identify three groups of manuscripts which reveal different treatments of Burchard's account of Egypt. One group, which, as far as one can presently tell, includes only the two abovementioned manuscripts (London, British Library, Add. 18929 and Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek, 1.12.5), provides the complete Egyptian section and, as stated in the beginning of this article, forms the basis for the discussion above, as well as for the edited text in Appendix 1. 47 Guglielmo di Rubruk, Viaggio in Mongolia, ed. and trans. Paolo Chiesa, Milan: Mondadori, 2011. Reaching Acre, William settled down to edit his work into the form in which he sent it to Louis IX and in which it reached us. Guglielmo di Rubruk, Viaggio, pp. 316. 48 That this text was available in Acre is supported by the fact that from an early stage a description of Egypt, clearly based on Burchard of Strasbourg's text, circulated with a report, written in Acre at the request of Pope Innocent III, by Raoul de Mérecourt, patriarch of Jerusalem, and the masters of the Hospitaller and Templar knights. See, for example, Prague, National Library, XIV C 16, fols 23r-25r; Jacques Bongars (ed.), Gesta Dei per Francos, 2 vols, Hanau: Typis Wechelianis, apud heredes I. Aubrii, 1611Aubrii, , vol. I, pp. 1125Aubrii, -1129 For the existing lists of the manuscripts of the Descriptio, see above, n. 13.
A second group includes manuscripts which end at the point in which the text provided by Laurent does: 50 Inde veni Damiatam, que antiquitus Memphis dicitur. Hec est terra Yesse, in qua olim filii Israel morabantur, Pharaoni in luto et latere servientes. In hac eciam postea lapidatus est Ieremias.
Reading these phrases, it becomes clear that this cannot have been the way Burchard planned to complete his elaborate, systematic and well-ordered text. It ends much too abruptly, with Damietta reached and mentioned but not described and with no concluding remarks made. The slight variations occurring between textual witnesses ending at this point are instructive in this regard. Some scribes who produced a text ending at this point clearly felt that something was missing in the text they copied. Thus, for example, a manuscript now in Lilienfeld, adds at this point the words 'non plus inveni' ('I found no more'). 51 Additionally, the very last phrases appearing in several manuscripts suggest that some scribes actually had before them a text that went on for at least several additional words which, gradually becoming unintelligible, were omitted. Thus a manuscript now in Prague adds at this point the words 'et sic ista sufficiant' ('and thus these shall suffice') which implies that the copy used by this scribe went further on. 52 The final text of a manuscript now in Zwettl reads 'Dothapius nevus [?] in Memphis et inde', which is probably a corruption of 'De Taphnis [Tinnis] venimus in Memphis' ('from Tinnis we came to Memphis'). 53 A third group provides a text of the Descriptio which closes with an account of Egypt, albeit one which is much shorter than that provided by the London/Zwickau text. The description of Egypt transmitted by this group, to which we shall refer as the 'abbreviated version', is important since, as we shall soon see, it enjoyed a considerable reception, a fate not shared by the complete Egyptian account, and because its analysis sheds light on the transmission of the Descriptio.
Before we examine the contents of the abbreviated section, it would be expedient to compare the beginning of this redaction with the parallel text in the London/Zwickau redaction: which is the beginning of the desert and from there to the gulf of Al-'Arish where the first port of Judea is. From that gulf to Ras Kasrum which is the first city in Egypt in the desert of Pharan and from there to Farama, the beautiful fortified city, but no man lives in it because, its inhabitants having been driven out, snakes completely occupied it.' For the variants in MS Zwickau, and for the identification of the various sites mentioned, see the text in Appendix 1. Comparing the texts, it becomes clear that the London/Zwickau version is more complete and, in all likelihood, closer to the original. The text provided by the abbreviated version results from the work of an editor who was both less interested in Burchard's personal story, thus omitting the date of his journey to Egypt, and less knowledgeable about the geography of the Levant, thus leaving out the reference to Al-'Arish and Ras Kasrum. That two of the kingdom of Jerusalem's most important sites, Acre (Ptolemais) and 'Atlit (Castrum Peregrinorum), are not mentioned in the text provided by the abbreviated version may imply that the editor was not familiar with the late thirteenthcentury Eastern Mediterranean and, also, perhaps, that he was working after the kingdom's fall in 1291. In any case, it is extremely unlikely that Burchard himself, who constructed his description of the Holy Land around Acre, would have omitted it from a discussion of his travel along the coast. It is thus most probable that the account of Egypt, as provided by the abbreviated version, represents a reedited text based on the London/Zwickau redaction.
It is worthwhile to compare these two paragraphs also to the text provided by This paragraph shares with the abbreviated version the omission of Acre and 'Atlit as well as Al-'Arish. It is thus likely that the text presented in Laurent's edition is dependent on that provided by the manuscripts of the abbreviated version. This conclusion may be applicable to the whole of the Descriptio and should thus be taken into account in any future attempt to reconstruct the text and its tradition.
What are the contents of this section? Following the opening paragraph cited above, the abbreviated version follows the text provided by the London/Zwickau redaction, with minor variants, up to the subsection which deals with the balsam garden. Here, with the words 'et quia fons iste modicus est' ('and because that spring is small'), the two traditions again separate, with the abbreviated version providing four paragraphs which differ in significant ways from the parallel text in the London/Zwickau redaction.
The first of these four paragraphs (which are edited below in Appendix 2), in both the London/Zwickau text and in the abbreviated version, discusses the Muslim attempt to increase the amount of water available to watering the balsam garden. In both texts a well is dug from which bulls draw water. Through a canal the water is then led to the holy spring to be mixed with its water. By these means the water of the new, artificial well, acquires the original spring's unique ability to fertilize the garden. The abbreviated version text differs from that of London/Zwickau only in that it mentions a stage in which the Muslims thought that, as the well they dug was near the spring, its water would share the unique quality of the water originating from the holy spring. Only once they had seen that this was not the case, they dug a canal in order to have the water of the well mix with that provided by the original spring.
The second paragraph describes a miracle associated with the bulls drawing water from the well: these refuse to work between Saturday at noon and sunrise on Monday. This description does not appear in a complete form in the parallel place at the London/Zwickau section. Rather, a note appears here which refers to an earlier discussion of this miracle in the text: and indeed, this phenomenon is mentioned much earlier in Burchard's work, in the section devoted to Ein-Gedi. There he writes: 67 Dixerunt mihi cultores orti quod boves qui trahunt aquam pro irrigando orto a meridie diei sabbati usque in diem lune numquam trahere volunt aquam propter celebritatem diei dominice etiam si conciderentur.
It is noteworthy that the wording of the Ein-Gedi passage and the Egyptian section with regard to this miracle is almost identical, which suggests that at some stage a scribe/editor working on the abbreviated version simply copied these words from the earlier part of the Descriptio. On the other hand, while in the Ein-Gedi section Burchard only attests that he was told about the miracle, the abbreviated version says that its author actually saw it (Appendix 2,. The third paragraph focuses on bathing in the holy spring. The author says that he bathed in it as do Christians and Muslims. He continues, saying that the Muslims have a terrible stench that can only be effaced by baptism and, in 67 MS London, fol. 22r: ['The cultivators of the garden told me that the bulls who draw water for the irrigation of the garden never wish to draw water, even if they would have been beaten to pieces, between Saturday at noon and Monday, because of the renown of Sunday.'] A very similar phrase appears in the discussion of Ein-Gedi in the above-mentioned Vatican manuscript (fol. 8r): 'Dixerunt mihi cultores orti quod boves qui trahunt aquam de fonte ipso a meridie sabbati usque ad diem lune nullo modo volunt aquam trahere etiam si in frustra conciderentur.' particular, baptism in that spring. However, he continues, while Muslims baptize their children and sometimes themselves there, that is not done in order to receive the benefits of the sacrament, but rather in order to get rid of the aforementioned odor. This paragraph has no parallel in the London/Zwickau text and one wonders whether it is indeed authentic. Perhaps it is related to Burchard of Strasbourg's account, as here we read that Muslims venerate the balsam garden spring and bathe in it. 68 The fourth paragraph, which closes the text of the abbreviated version, describes a miracle which is narrated further down in the London/Zwickau redaction (Appendix 1, ll. 142-149). Both texts describe an annual event, attended by Muslims, in which a chest containing relics related to Saint John is taken out of a church in Cairo and then carried several leucae downriver. Placed in the Nile's water, it is seen miraculously moving upstream to the place from which it was taken. The differences between the two texts are, however, noteworthy. While in the London/Zwickau text the aim of the placing of the chest in the Nile is to predict the river's inundation, in the abbreviated version, the purpose of the ceremony is to reveal whether the saint wishes to return to its original place. Further differences include the parties involved. Most notably, the London/Zwickau text mentions only Muslims as participants in this ceremony and argues that it is attended by the sultan himself, while the abbreviated version refers generally to Christians and Muslims as taking part in the ceremony and makes no mention of the sultan. It should also be noted that while in the London/Zwickau redaction this paragraph is separated from the discussion of the balsam garden by the description of the zoo, the abbreviated version omits the latter altogether so that the account of this miracle directly follows the paragraph concerning the bathing in the balsam garden spring.
These differences seem to support the hypothesis according to which the abbreviated version represents the work of an editor who reshaped Burchard's original work. 69 Most notably, it is likely that while Burchard, who visited Egypt, and carefully studied the Nile, was aware of the great significance of its inundation for the country's inhabitants, this was completely alien, and of negligible meaning, for the later editor. Indeed, it is most likely that the ceremony which Burchard had in mind was related to the river's inundation: while I was unable to find sources which describe a celebration identical to that described by the London/Zwickau redaction, the closest available evidence, related to the Coptic festival of the martyr, is indeed connected to the great 68 Burchard of Strassbourg, Itinerarium, p. 65. 69 For simplicity's sake, we refer in the discussion below to one hypothetical scribe/editor. It should be noted, however, that the abbreviated version may well be the cumulative result of the work of several scribes/editors. river's flooding. 70 Thus, the editor who produced the abbreviated version distanced the text from the reality of Egypt in the 1280s.
Perhaps more significantly, the editor who produced the abbreviated version of Burchard's account of Egypt thought that much of the material provided by the London/Zwickau text was of little interest and therefore stopped copying the manuscript he had before him in the midst of the account of that region, following the description of the miracle associated with the relics of Saint John. Not only did this editor thus abbreviate the portrayal of Egypt, but he also omitted everything that follows in the London/Zwickau text, including the description of Burchard's travels through Sicily and Italy and then back to the East. One can thus assume that this was an editor who was primarily interested in holy sites and miracles, and much less so in, for example, Egypt's economy, or in Burchard's comments on the volcanoes at the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The Abbreviated Version: Reception and Circulation
While the complete account of Egypt, as transmitted by the London and Zwickau manuscripts, seems to have been completely forgotten for centuries, the abbreviated version never disappeared from Western discourse. Firstly, it was extensively used by Marino Sanudo in his Liber secretorum fidelium crucis. In fact, much of the content of the chapter which appears under the title 'Continet dispositionem regni Aegypti' ('Includes the disposition of the Kingdom of Egypt'; book III, part xiv, ch. 12, pp. 259-262) is copied directly from Burchard's Egyptian section. This can be seen through phrases such as this: 71 In Babylone quoque est miraculum memoria dignum: in monasterio enim ibidem constructo ad honorem beati Iohannis Baptistae est scrineum cum reliquiis eius…post celebrationem vero Missae scrineum in flumine ponunt, experiri volentes ubi Sanctus reliquias suas manere velit, in hoc videlicet loco an potius in priori… The discussion of Egypt which Alonso Tostado, a fifteenth-century exegete, included in his commentary on Matthew also presents significant phrases and even paragraphs taken from Burchard's account of Egypt. Most notably, Tostado copied into his work the description of the balsam garden and that of the miracle associated with the relics of Saint John. 73 Furthermore, Tostado explicitly refers to Burchard's work as a source he used. 74 Looking at Tostado's comments regarding both the balsam garden and the relics miracle it becomes clear that he too used the abbreviated version of Burchard's account of Egypt rather than that provided by the London/Zwickau text. 75 It is also noteworthy that while Tostado also made use of Sanudo's Liber secretorum fidelium crucis, he must have known Burchard's work independently, as he cites from it phrases which do not appear in the Venetian's book. 76 The abbreviated version of Burchard's account of Egypt remained present in Western discourse for centuries also through the printing of textual witnesses of the Descriptio which, like the above-mentioned Oxford, Paris, Philadelphia and Vatican manuscripts, included that section (although not always in its entirety). 77 Indeed, most of the editions of the Descriptio published hitherto include a unit Babylon too there is a miracle worthy of record. In a monastery built there in honour of the blessed John the Baptist there is a chest with his relics […] After the celebration of mass they put the chest in the river, wishing to discover where the saint wishes his relics to remain, that is in this place or in the former.' 73 Alphonsi Tostati commentaria in primam partem Matthaei, Venice: Apud Io. Baptistam et Io. Bernardum Sessam, 1596, fol. 133r-133v. 74 '…sicut scribit frater Brocardus Theutonicus…'; 'Et testatur in libro suo frater Brocardus se vidisse, cum non crederet omnibus asserentibus...' Alphonsi Tostati commentaria, fol. 133r. 75 Thus he includes the phrase 'Sed deceptos se videntes…' (Alphonsi Tostati commentaria, fol. 133r) which is a part of the abbreviated section (Appendix 2, l. 4) but does not appear in the London/Zwickau text (cf. Appendix 1, ll. 125-130). Similarly, describing the relics miracle, he says, as does the abbreviated version, that this ceremony takes place in order to discover whether or not the relics of Saint John wish to remain in the site to which they were taken or to return to the place from which they were removed. Alphonsi Tostati commentaria, fol. 133v. 76 For example, in his description of the balsam garden Sanudo says nothing of the additional well dug in it (p. 260). Tostado does include this detail in a manner practically identical to that of the abbreviated section. Cf. Bongars, Gesta, vol. II, p. 260; Alphonsi Tostati commentaria, fol. 133r. 77 See above, n. 55. devoted to Egypt. 78 In all of these cases, the text provided is based on the abbreviated version rather than on the London/Zwickau redaction. Furthermore, one can identify two major families among these editions as far as the account of Egypt is concerned. The first branch includes all four subsections which appear in Appendix 2, and ends with the words 'Id retulerunt mihi Christiani et Sarraceni bona fide' (cf. Appendix 2, ll. 32-33). 79 This is followed by an extraordinary autobiographical paragraph which, in all likelihood inauthentic, implies that in the sixteenth century a person such as Burchard would have been perceived as an early explorer. 80 The text provided by the second family ends with the digging of the new well in the balsam garden, thus omitting paragraphs 2-4 provided by Appendix 2. 81 Perhaps this version resulted from the work of an author who was skeptical with regard to miracles.

Conclusion
Having examined the early-modern printed editions of Burchard's account of Egypt, we can now return to Laurent's edition with which we have begun this article. As was noted, Laurent was aware of the existence of a section dealing with Egypt in the 1519 edition of the Descriptio but rejected its authenticity on the basis of Burchard's statement that he would only describe the Holy Land. The  evidence presented above from the London and Zwickau manuscripts reveals that Burchard certainly did include in his work an account of Egypt as well as of several other regions through which he traveled, and that Laurent's argument in this regard should be rejected. What Laurent saw as evidence that the account of Egypt is inauthentic actually bears testimony to a unique moment in Burchard's work as an author, a moment in which he decided to continue documenting his travels even as he left the Holy Land. As we have seen, this specific shift should be seen within the context of a significant trend in late medieval Western travel literature, a trend to which Burchard may have become exposed in Acre. Furthermore, departing from the Holy Land, Burchard changed not only his subject matter but, to a considerable degree, also his manner of working: while his account of the Holy Land was written according to a carefully preconceived plan, his description of Egypt is a work whose structure results from the author's movement through space and the order in which various pieces of information reached his ears. Perhaps, however, this switch was too radical for Burchard's audience: as we have seen, the complete account of Egypt lay forgotten for centuries, during which an abbreviated version, which stressed holy sites and miraculous events, remained dominant, until it was rejected as inauthentic by Laurent. Within this context, the present article attempted to rescue from oblivion Burchard's complete account of Egypt and to shed light on its development and reception.

Appendix 1
The tentative edition of Burchard's 'Egyptian section' presented here is based on the only two manuscripts which are currently known to include a complete version of this part of his work: London, British Library, Add. 18929 and Zwickau, Ratsschulbibl. 1.12.5. This is the first time that this text is published in its entirety. Parts of it have, however, been printed before: the first part of the text, as provided by the above-mentioned abbreviated version, was published by Omont, but, as we have seen, this redaction is considerably different from the parallel text of the London/Zwickau version and is the result of a significant reediting effort. I have found no reference to any similar account. The closest description seems to be that of the Coptic festival of the martyr, though it differs in significant points from that provided by Burchard. For example, in the festival of the martyr it was the finger of a Coptic martyr that was being placed in the Nile rather than relics of Saint John. However, this Coptic festival does resemble that which is depicted by Burchard in the connection created between the placing of a relic in the Nile and the river's inundation. The presence of prominent Mamluks, though not of the Sultan himself, is also attested to in a Muslim source describing this festival.

Appendix 2
This appendix includes a tentative edition of the four final paragraphs of Burchard's account of Egypt as provided by the abbreviated version. This text was previously edited by Omont on the basis of one manuscript: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Nouv. acq. lat. 781. 1 As we have seen, this part of the abbreviated version differs markedly from the parallel section of the complete account transmitted by the London and Zwickau manuscripts. The text presented below is that of Vatican, Urb. lat. 393, with variants from the following MSS provided by the apparatus: I also refer in the apparatus to Omont's edition [Omont].