No. 6577 · dated by century
Cosmas Indicopleustes
6th centuryMerchant and explorerAfrica · c. 550Most named place: Ceylon (approximate)
Cosmas Indicopleustes was an Alexandrian merchant, traveler and later hermit. He made several voyages to India and had described them in is work “Christian Topography”.
Cosmas spend the first part of the 6th century travelling as a merchant on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Around the mid-6th century he noted his experience in a work entitled “Christian Topography”. He described and sketched some of what he saw in his Topography. Some of these have been copied into the existing manuscripts, the oldest dating to the 9th century. He describes places and commodities from Ethiopia to Sri Lanka.
