author
Francisco Alvares
A Portuguese priest and explorer, he left one of the earliest detailed European accounts of Ethiopia after traveling there with a royal embassy in the early 1500s. His writing helped introduce many readers in Europe to the Ethiopian court, churches, and landscapes.
1 Audiobook
Narrative of the Portuguese embassy to Abyssinia during the years 1520-1527
by Francisco Alvares
About the author
Born around 1465 in Coimbra, Francisco Álvares was a Portuguese clergyman connected to the court of King Manuel I. In 1515 he joined the Portuguese mission sent toward Ethiopia, and he later spent years connected with the embassy that reached the court of Emperor Lebna Dengel.
Álvares is best remembered for the book he wrote about that journey, usually known as Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Índias. It became an important early source on Ethiopia for European readers because it described what he saw in unusually concrete detail, from religious life and court customs to places that few Europeans had recorded firsthand.
His lasting reputation comes less from literary fame than from the value of his observations. Even centuries later, historians still turn to his account as a vivid witness to sixteenth-century Ethiopia and to the meeting of Portuguese and Ethiopian worlds.