The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (88 page)

1335.

If you want to teach someone a subject you do not know yourself, let
him measure the length of an object unknown to you, and he will
learn the measure you did not know before;—Master Giovanni da Lodi.

Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

When we consider how superficial and imperfect are the accounts of
Leonardo's life written some time after his death by Vasari and
others, any notes or letters which can throw more light on his
personal circumstances cannot fail to be in the highest degree
interesting. The texts here given as Nos.
1351—1353,
set his
residence in Rome in quite a new aspect; nay, the picture which
irresistibly dwells in our minds after reading these details of his
life in the Vatican, forms a striking contrast to the contemporary
life of Raphael at Rome.

_I have placed foremost of these documents the very remarkable
letters to the Defterdar of Syria. In these Leonardo speaks of
himself as having staid among the mountains of Armenia, and as the
biographies of the master tell nothing of any such distant journeys,
it would seem most obvious to treat this passage as fiction, and so
spare ourselves the onus of proof and discussion. But on close
examination no one can doubt that these documents, with the
accompanying sketches, are the work of Leonardo's own hand. Not
merely is the character of the handwriting his, but the spelling and
the language are his also. In one respect only does the writing
betray any marked deviation from the rest of the notes, especially
those treating on scientific questions; namely, in these
observations he seems to have taken particular pains to give the
most distinct and best form of expression to all he had to say; we
find erasures and emendations in almost every line. He proceeded, as
we shall see, in the same way in the sketches for letters to
Giuliano de' Medici, and what can be more natural, I may ask, than
to find the draft of a letter thus altered and improved when it is
to contain an account of a definite subject, and when personal
interests are in the scale? The finished copies as sent off are not
known to exist; if we had these instead of the rough drafts, we
might unhesitatingly have declared that some unknown Italian
engineer must have been, at that time, engaged in Armenia in the
service of the Egyptian Sultan, and that Leonardo had copied his
documents. Under this hypothesis however we should have to state
that this unknown writer must have been so far one in mind with
Leonardo as to use the same style of language and even the same
lines of thought. This explanation might—as I say—have been
possible, if only we had the finished letters. But why should these
rough drafts of letters be regarded as anything else than what they
actually and obviously are? If Leonardo had been a man of our own
time, we might perhaps have attempted to account for the facts by
saying that Leonardo, without having been in the East himself, might
have undertaken to write a Romance of which the scene was laid in
Armenia, and at the desire of his publisher had made sketches of
landscape to illustrate the text.

I feel bound to mention this singular hypothesis as it has actually
been put forward (see No. 1336 note 5); and it would certainly seem
as though there were no other possible way of evading the conclusion
to which these letters point, and their bearing on the life of the
master,—absurd as the alternative is. But, if, on a question of
such importance, we are justified in suggesting theories that have
no foundation in probability, I could suggest another which, as
compared with that of a Fiction by Leonardo, would be neither more
nor less plausible; it is, moreover the only other hypothesis,
perhaps, which can be devised to account for these passages, if it
were possible to prove that the interpretation that the documents
themselves suggest, must be rejected a priori; viz may not Leonardo
have written them with the intention of mystifying those who, after
his death, should try to decipher these manuscripts with a view to
publishing them? But if, in fact, no objection that will stand the
test of criticism can be brought against the simple and direct
interpretation of the words as they stand, we are bound to regard
Leonardo's travels in the East as an established fact. There is, I
believe nothing in what we know of his biography to negative such a
fact, especially as the details of his life for some few years are
wholly unknown; nor need we be at a loss for evidence which may
serve to explain—at any rate to some extent—the strangeness of his
undertaking such a journey. We have no information as to Leonardo's
history between 1482 and 1486; it cannot be proved that he was
either in Milan or in Florence. On the other hand the tenor of this
letter does not require us to assume a longer absence than a year or
two. For, even if his appointment_ (offitio) _as Engineer in Syria
had been a permanent one, it might have become untenable—by the
death perhaps of the Defterdar, his patron, or by his removal from
office—, and Leonardo on his return home may have kept silence on
the subject of an episode which probably had ended in failure and
disappointment.

From the text of No. 1379 we can hardly doubt that Leonardo intended
to make an excursion secretly from Rome to Naples, although so far
as has hitherto been known, his biographers never allude to it. In
another place (No. 1077) he says that he had worked as an Engineer
in Friuli. Are we to doubt this statement too, merely because no
biographer has hitherto given us any information on the matter? In
the geographical notes Leonardo frequently speaks of the East, and
though such passages afford no direct proof of his having been
there, they show beyond a doubt that, next to the Nile, the
Euphrates, the Tigris and the Taurus mountains had a special
interest in his eyes. As a still further proof of the futility of
the argument that there is nothing in his drawings to show that he
had travelled in the East, we find on Pl. CXX a study of oriental
heads of Armenian type,—though of course this may have been made in
Italy.

If the style of these letters were less sober, and the expressions
less strictly to the point throughout, it miglit be possible to
regard them as a romantic fiction instead of a narrative of fact.
Nay, we have only to compare them with such obviously fanciful
passages as No. 1354, Nos. 670-673, and the Fables and Prophecies.
It is unnecessary to discuss the subject any further here; such
explanations as the letter needs are given in the foot notes.

The drafts of letters to Lodovico il Moro are very remarkable.
Leonardo and this prince were certainly far less closely connected,
than has hitherto been supposed. It is impossible that Leonardo can
have remained so long in the service of this prince, because the
salary was good, as is commonly stated. On the contrary, it would
seem, that what kept him there, in spite of his sore need of the
money owed him by the prince, was the hope of some day being able to
carry out the project of casting the_ 'gran cavallo'.

Drafts of Letters and Reports referring to Armenia (1336. 1337).

1336.

To THE DEVATDAR OF SYRIA, LIEUTENANT OF THE SACRED SULTAN OF
BABYLON.

[3] The recent disaster in our Northern parts which I am certain
will terrify not you alone but the whole world, which

[Footnote: Lines 1-52 are reproduced in facsimile on Pl. CXVI.

1.
Diodario.
This word is not to be found in any Italian
dictionary, and for a long time I vainly sought an explanation of
it. The youthful reminiscences of my wife afforded the desired clue.
The chief town of each Turkish Villayet, or province —such as
Broussa, for instance, in Asia Minor, is the residence of a
Defterdar, who presides over the financial affairs of the province.
Defterdar hane
was, in former times, the name given to the
Ministry of Finance at Constantinople; the Minister of Finance to
the Porte is now known as the
Mallie-Nazri
and the
Defterdars
are his subordinates. A
Defterdar
, at the present day is merely
the head of the finance department in each Provincial district. With
regard to my suggestion that Leonardo's
Diodario
might be
identical with the Defterdar of former times, the late M. C.
DEFREMERIE, Arabic Professor, and Membre de l'Institut de France
wrote to me as follows:
Votre conjecture est parfaitement fondee;
diodario est Vequivalent de devadar ou plus exactement devatdar,
titre d'une importante dignite en Egypt'e, sous les Mamlouks.

The word however is not of Turkish, but of Perso-Arabie derivation.
[Defter written in arab?] literally
Defter
(Arabic) meaning
folio
; for
dar
(Persian) Bookkeeper or holder is the English
equivalent; and the idea is that of a deputy in command. During the
Mamelook supremacy over Syria, which corresponded in date with
Leonardo's time, the office of Defterdar was the third in importance
in the State.

Soltano di Babilonia
. The name of Babylon was commonly applied to
Cairo in the middle ages. For instance BREIDENBACH,
Itinerarium
Hierosolyma
p. 218 says: "At last we reached Babylon. But this is
not that Babylon which stood on the further shore of the river
Chober, but that which is called the Egyptian Babylon. It is close
by Cairo and the twain are but one and not two towns; one half is
called Cairo and the other Babylon, whence they are called together
Cairo-Babylon; originally the town is said to have been named
Memphis and then Babylon, but now it is called Cairo." Compare No.
1085, 6.

Egypt was governed from 1382 till 1517 by the Borgite or
Tcherkessian dynasty of the Mamelook Sultans. One of the most famous
of these, Sultan Kait Bey, ruled from 1468-1496 during whose reign
the Gama (or Mosque) of Kait Bey and tomb of Kait Bey near the
Okella Kait Bey were erected in Cairo, which preserve his name to
this day. Under the rule of this great and wise prince many
foreigners, particularly Italians, found occupation in Egypt, as may
be seen in the 'Viaggio di Josaphat Barbaro', among other
travellers. "Next to Leonardo (so I learn from Prof. Jac. Burckhardt
of Bale) Kait Bey's most helpful engineer was a German who in about
1487, superintended the construction of the Mole at Alexandria.
Felix Fabri knew him and mentions him in his
Historia Suevorum
,
written in 1488."

3.
Il nuovo accidente accaduto
, or as Leonardo first wrote and
then erased,
e accaduto un nuovo accidente
. From the sequel this
must refer to an earthquake, and indeed these were frequent at that
period, particularly in Asia Minor, where they caused immense
mischief. See No. 1101 note.]

shall be related to you in due order, showing first the effect and
then the cause. [Footnote 4: The text here breaks off. The following
lines are a fresh beginning of a letter, evidently addressed to the
same person, but, as it would seem, written at a later date than the
previous text. The numerous corrections and amendments amply prove
that it is not a copy from any account of a journey by some unknown
person; but, on the contrary, that Leonardo was particularly anxious
to choose such words and phrases as might best express his own
ideas.]

Finding myself in this part of Armenia [Footnote 5:
Parti
d'Erminia
. See No. 945, note. The extent of Armenia in Leonardo's
time is only approximately known. In the XVth century the Persians
governed the Eastern, and the Arabs the Southern portions. Arabic
authors—as, for instance Abulfeda—include Cilicia and a part of
Cappadocia in Armenia, and Greater Armenia was the tract of that
country known later as Turcomania, while Armenia Minor was the
territory between Cappadocia and the Euphrates. It was not till
1522, or even 1574 that the whole country came under the dominion of
the Ottoman Turks, in the reign of Selim I.

The Mamelook Sultans of Egypt seem to have taken a particular
interest in this, the most Northern province of their empire, which
was even then in danger of being conquered by the Turks. In the
autumn of 1477 Sultan Kait Bey made a journey of inspection,
visiting Antioch and the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates with a
numerous and brilliant escort. This tour is briefly alluded to by
Moodshireddin
p. 561; and by WEIL,
Geschichte der Abbasiden
V,
p. 358. An anonymous member of the suite wrote a diary of the
expedition in Arabic, which has been published by R. V. LONZONE
(
'Viaggio in Palestina e Soria di Kaid Ba XVIII sultano della II
dinastia mamelucca, fatto nel 1477. Testo arabo. Torino 1878'
,
without notes or commentary). Compare the critique on this edition,
by J. GILDEMEISTER in
Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palaestina Vereins
(Vol. Ill p. 246—249). Lanzone's edition seems to be no more than
an abridged copy of the original. I owe to Professor Sche'fer,
Membre de l'Institut, the information that he is in possession of a
manuscript in which the text is fuller, and more correctly given.
The Mamelook dynasty was, as is well known, of Circassian origin,
and a large proportion of the Egyptian Army was recruited in
Circassia even so late as in the XVth century. That was a period of
political storms in Syria and Asia Minor and it is easy to suppose
that the Sultan's minister, to whom Leonardo addresses his report as
his superior, had a special interest in the welfare of those
frontier provinces. Only to mention a few historical events of
Sultan Kait Bey's reign, we find that in 1488 he assisted the
Circassians to resist the encroachments of Alaeddoulet, an Asiatic
prince who had allied himself with the Osmanli to threaten the
province; the consequence was a war in Cilicia by sea and land,
which broke out in the following year between the contending powers.
Only a few years earlier the same province had been the scene of the
so-called Caramenian war in which the united Venetian, Neapolitan
and Sclavonic fleets had been engaged. (See CORIALANO CIPPICO,
Della guerra dei Veneziani nell' Asia dal
1469—1474. Venezia
1796, p. 54) and we learn incidentally that a certain Leonardo
Boldo, Governor of Scutari under Sultan Mahmoud,—as his name would
indicate, one of the numerous renegades of Italian birth—played an
important part in the negotiations for peace.