ABSTRACT
Tafur’s travels were first printed in Madrid in 1874, and were edited by D. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada. The full title is: Andanças é Viajes de Pero Tafur for diversas partes del mundo avidos (1435–1439), and the work appeared as vol. 8 of the Coleccion de Libros Españoles raros ó curiosos. The editor used the only known manuscript from the library of the Colegio mayor de S. Bartolomé de Cuenca in Salamanca, now in the Biblioteca Patrimonial (sala 2a. J. pl. 4). This appears to be an early 18th century copy of an earlier manuscript. It is written on 911/2 folios, and preserves the spelling, the irregular punctuation, as well as the turns of speech current in the middle of the 15th century. It also shows the condition of the earlier manuscript, indicating by dots the blanks due to omissions of words or lines, or to damage due to careless handling or age. It may be inferred that this earlier manuscript was written in two columns, that about a third of a page was missing at the top of p. 1, which contained on one side the title of the book and half the prologue, and on the other the rest of the prologue, that a few lines of the text at the beginning were illegible and that the last page of the manuscript was missing, since the narrative breaks off abruptly. Calculating the missing portion by the space given in Clavijo’s Embassy to the Court of Timour, 1403–1406, to the return journey from Sicily to Spain, Tafur’s account of his voyage from Sardinia to the coast of Spain would not fill more than a page. No further manuscript has since been discovered, but much interesting information concerning Tafur himself has come to light since the original introduction was written.
