The ''Mongolicae Legationis Commentarius'' (Ambassador to the court of the Great Mogul) is a travel book written by the
Catalan Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
Antoni de Montserrat between 1589 and 1600, which describes the vicissitudes experienced during the travels that the author carried out when he was sent as ambassador to the court of the
great Mughal.
[ ] In his account, Montserrat records the experiences, the peoples, the cultures and the geography that he was able to observe on his journey from the capital of the
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an Early modern period, early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to ...
,
Fatehpur Sikri
Fatehpur Sikri () is a town in the Agra District of Uttar Pradesh, India. Situated from the district headquarters of Agra, Fatehpur Sikri itself was founded as the capital of the Mughal Empire in 1571 by Mughal emperors, Emperor Akbar, servin ...
, to
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
, passing through the current Indian states from
Kashmir
Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir P ...
,
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh (; Sanskrit: ''himācāl prādes;'' "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a States and union territories of India, state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen Indian Himalayan ...
,
Jammu
Jammu () is a city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region.The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of the Kashmir dispute ...
, the
Punjab
Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...
region,
Pakistan
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
or the
Himalayan ranges and the
Hindu Kush
The Hindu Kush is an mountain range in Central Asia, Central and South Asia to the west of the Himalayas. It stretches from central and eastern Afghanistan into northwestern Pakistan and far southeastern Tajikistan. The range forms the wester ...
.
The book is of great interest because it gives news for the first time of regions, ethnicities, religions, cultures and traditions unknown until then in the West, such as those of the Himalayas, which precisely motivated the Portuguese expedition of
António de Andrade in Tibet - the first European - in 1624.
The ''Mongolicae Legationis Commentarius'' is complemented by a miniature map widely recognized for its great value and accuracy, which gave it validity until the segle xix and considered the author of the first roof map of the world.
Although it is generally known as the "Map of the Himalayas", the truth is that Montserrat gives much more extensive descriptions that include India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tibet.
In 1582, Montserrat returned to Goa, where he began to write the chronicle in Latin, which he finished after he was released from his captivity, finishing it shortly before his death. It is not clear whether Montserrat wrote the book in Latin or in Portuguese - like ''Relaçam de Equebar, rei dos mogoras'' - although only a Latin version has survived.
References
Bibliography
* MONTSERRAT de, Antoni;
ALAY, Josep Lluís (edició i traducció): ''Ambaixador a la cort del Gran Mogol. Viatges d'un jesuïta català del segle XVI a l'Índia, Pakistan, Afganistan i Himàlaia'', Lleida, 2002.
* Martí Escayol, Maria Antònia. “Antoni de Montserrat in the Mughal Garden of good government European construction of Indian nature”, Word, Image, Text; Studies in Literary and Visual Culture, ed. Shormistha Panja et. al., Orient Blackswan, New Delhi, 2009. {{ISBN, 978-81-250-3735-4
Books about the Mughal Empire
Books about India