The Blessed Ambassador

Embajada a Tamorlán is the remarkable travel account of Ruy González de Clavijo, the Castilian ambassador sent by King Henry III to the court of Timur in the early fifteenth century. His journey took him across Iran and Khorasan, leaving behind a valuable European eyewitness account of the lands, cities and peoples he encountered.

In 1404, while travelling through Khorasan, Clavijo visited Mashhad and the shrine of Imam ʿAlī al-Riḍā (peace be upon him). He describes the city as a great centre of pilgrimage, where every year large numbers of pilgrims came to the Imam’s shrine. Upon their return, people would kiss their clothes because they had visited the holy place.

Even more remarkably, the same happened to Clavijo and his companions. After visiting the shrine, people elsewhere who learned that the ambassadors had seen the sacred tomb kissed their clothes, saying that they had been near the “Saint of Khorasan.” His account provides a striking fifteenth-century European testimony to the immense reverence surrounding Imam al-Riḍā and the blessing associated with visiting his shrine. Clavijo also records a simple but valuable observation about the region: although Khorasan was a distinct land, “its language was Persian” (la su lengua era Persiana).