The Venetian merchant-adventurer Niccolò de' Conti (ca. 1396-1469) contributed greatly to Europe's knowledge of the Eastern world.

Niccolò de'Conti was from a noble mercantile family; at an early age he decided to follow in the family tradition by establishing a lucrative trading operation in the East. Unlike most of his fellow Venetians, however, Conti did not concentrate solely on trade with Egypt. In 1419 he began a journey--reminiscent of that of Marco Polo--which lasted nearly a quarter of a century and took him to the Near and Far East. Like Marco Polo, Conti displayed a facility for language and for recording his observations for posterity.

The first phase of Conti's odyssey included a stay in Syria, where he spent enough time to learn to speak the Arabic language. He traveled overland through the desert to Baghdad; from there he moved on to Persia (modern Iran), where he...