The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

Letter from King Henry IV to Prester John

In a letter dated October 20, 1400, Henry IV, King of England (r. 1399-1413) writes a letter to the "King of Abyssinia, Prester John" in order to discuss a possible alliance against the Egyptian Muslim Mamluks. Curiously there is no mention of the actual name of the Ethiopian Emperor of the time, Dawit I, despite the fact that Dawit had previously sent embassies to Europe. 

Read the letter in F.C. Hingeston (ed.), Royal and Historical Letters during the reign of Henry the Fourth (London, 1860), vol. 1, no.147, pp. 421-22. 

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