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Illustrations from the manuscript of:

The pilgrimage of the Knight Arnold von Harff from Cologne through Italy, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia, Palestine, Turkey, France and Spain, as he has completed in the years 1496 to 1499, described and illustrated by drawings.

Folio 59r  The Sultan (Viceroy) in Cairo.

Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 972. An account of Arnolf Van Harff's travels in 1496-1499. Produced in 1554.


A larger image of The Sultan in Cairo. The pilgrimage of the Knight Arnold von Harff.


Der Sultan (Vizekönig) in Cairo.


The woodcut is referenced as Figure 7. in Sultans with Horns: The Political Significance of Headgear in the Mamluk Empire by Albrecht Fuess
Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad on his throne.
Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad is depicted with a round turban, which might be identified as the takhfīfah ṣaghīrah, and no kallawtah cap is to be seen. The Mamluk dignitary to his left, called “Thodar” (dawādār) by von Harff, seems clearly to wear a kallawtah cap with a turban wrapped around it.
Sometimes this image is incorrectly identified as Sultan Qāytbāy (r. 872-901/1468-96), which is quite impossible as Harff left Cologne in November of 1496 and Qāytbāy had died in August of the same year. Harff even mentions the death of the former sultan.


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Woodcut of this subject.
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