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

Stories of Muhammad's Ascenscion.

See Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, p. 184. The number 12,000 also has significance in Christian numerology, most significantly as the dimensions (length, width, and height) of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:16). The number also signifies the number of people who will be saved from each of the twelve tribes of Jews (Rev 7:3–8). While this number has clear significance in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the description of 12,000 bodies situated at a great height recalls the Islamic use of the number more directly than it does either Christian or Jewish uses of the number. For more on the Western narrative of Muhammad’s ascension, see the thirteenth-century Liber Scale Machometi (translated as Le livre de l’Echelle de Mahomet).

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Prester John's Mirror "Before the doors of our palace, near the place where the fighters struggle in battle, is a mirror of very great size to which one climbs by one hundred twenty five steps. Indeed the steps of the lower one-third are of porphyry, and partly of serpentine and alabaster. From this point to the upper one-third the steps are of crystal stone and sardonyx, Indeed the upper one-third are of amethyst, amber, jasper, and sapphire. Indeed the mirror is supported by a single column. Above this column is set a base. upon the base are two columns, above which is another base, upon which are four columns, above which is another base and upon which are eight columns, above which is another base and upon which are sixteen columns, above which is another base, upon which arc thirty-two columns, above which is another base and upon which are sixty-four columns, above which is another base, upon which are also sixty-four columns, above which is another base and upon which are thirty-two columns. And so in descending the columns diminish in number, just as ascending they increase in number, to one. Moreover, the columns and the bases are of the same kinds of stones as the steps by which one ascends to them. Indeed at the top of the uppermost column there is a mirror, consecrated by such art that all machinations and all things which happen for and against us in the adjacent provinces subject to us are most clearly seen and known by the onlookers. Moreover it is guarded by twelve thousand soldiers in the daytime just as at night so that it may not be by some chance or accident broken or thrown down." (Uebel translation)

The Letter repurposes a magical mirror hailing from Persian literature (see Slessarev) into the primary bastion of defense in Prester John’s kingdom: a Christian panopticon. This “mirror of very great size” located “before the doors of our palace” rests atop a structure built on a series of geometrically stacked columns, a design recalling the famed gardens of the legendary Old Man of the Mountain. The mirror protects John's realm from invasion by allowing him to see any distance in any direction. In what seems more than a coincidence, this magical mirror is guarded by 12,000 soldiers both day and night – the same number of angels guard the top of the ladder leading into the Afterworld in stories of Muhammad’s Ascension. Thus, the Letter provides both a parallel and a complement to one of the stories of an Islamic Paradise.

By way of this panoptical mirror, Prester John oversees the doings of the entire world, and, moreover, the mirror shows what will occur in the future, allowing John to track the machinations of presumed enemies of Christianity everywhere.