The work of Ruy de Clavijo is a unique monument of Spanish prose: travel notes written in the form of a diary by the Spanish ambassador sent at the head of a return embassy to Timur's capital Samarkand. This work is interesting not only as a document in which the facts and events of the early 15th century are noted through the eyes of a European. in the East, but also as a kind of historical encyclopedia. Clavijo's work was created approximately half a century before the start of Spanish printing, and its publication was carried out only a century and a half later, at the time of the highest power of Spain, when Mexico and Peru had already been conquered, when the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez Balboa penetrated through the Isthmus of Panama to South America, when Spanish influence reigned supreme in Europe. The publication of Clavijo's work was intended to illustrate the far-sighted policy of the Spanish kings at the very beginning of the 15th century. who captured the Canary Islands (1402), which became the prologue to discoveries in the New World, and sent embassies to the East - to Asia Minor and even to Samarkand. A kind of encyclopedicism - the desire to cover more, to make the narrative varied and entertaining - gives Clavijo’s work a special flavor and constitutes a distinctive feature of the author's writing style. CONTENTS: Preface 2 The life and deeds of the great Tamerlane, original text and translation 7 Explanatory index 395 Index et notes 424 List of chapters of Clavijo's diary with their contents 452 List of places visited by Clavijo 458