Prester John, also called Presbyter John or John the Elder, legendary Christian ruler of the East, popularized in medieval chronicles and traditions as a hoped-for ally against the Muslims. Believed to be a Nestorian (i.e., a member of an independent Eastern Christian church that did not accept the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople) and a king-priest reigning “in the Far East beyond Persia and Armenia,” Prester John was the centre of a number of legends that hark back to the writings of “John the Elder” in the New Testament.

Prester John The Kereit ruler Wang Khan as Prester John, illustration from The Travels of Marco Polo, 15th century.

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The legend arose during the period of the Crusades (late 11th–13th century), when European Christians hoped to regain the Holy Land (Palestine) from the Muslims. In 1071 Jerusalem had been conquered by the Seljuq Turks. Based on a report about Prester John by Bishop Hugh of Gebal in Syria (modern Jbail, Lebanon) in 1145 to the papal court at Viterbo, Italy, the story was first recorded by Bishop Otto of Freising, Germany, in his Chronicon (1145). According to this, John, a wealthy and powerful “priest and king,” reputedly a lineal descendant of the Magi who had visited the Christ Child, defeated the Muslim kings of Persia in battle, stormed their capital at Ecbatana, and intended to proceed to Jerusalem but was impeded in the last goal because of difficulties in crossing the Tigris River.

The battle referred to by Hugh may have been that fought at Qatwan, Persia, in 1141, when the Mongol khan Yelü Dashi, the founder of the Karakitai empire in Central Asia, defeated the Seljuq sultan Sanjar. The title of the Karakitai rulers was Gur-khan, or Kor-khan, which may have been changed phonetically in Hebrew to Yoḥanan or in Syriac to Yuḥanan, thus producing the Latin Johannes, or John. Though the Gur-khans were Mongol Buddhists, many of their leading subjects were Nestorians, and, according to a report by the Franciscan missionary Willem van Ruysbroeck in 1255, the daughter of the last Gur-khan and wife of King Küchlüg of the Naiman, a Central Asian people, was a Christian. Küchlüg, whose father’s name was Ta-yang Khan (Great King John in Chinese), was defeated by the great Mongol ruler Genghis Khan in 1218. In 1221 Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre in Palestine, and Cardinal Pelagius, a Western churchman accompanying Crusaders at Damietta in Egypt, reported to Rome information about a Muslim defeat by a certain King David of India, the son or grandson of Prester John. This King David probably was none other than Genghis Khan. Because of rumours, lack of reliable information, or wishful thinking on the part of European Christians, the historical events, personages of the period, and geographical areas involved became interwoven into the legend of Prester John.

A 13th-century chronicler, Alberic de Trois-Fontaines, recorded that in 1165 a letter was sent by Prester John to several European rulers, especially Manuel I Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor, and Frederick I Barbarossa, the Holy Roman emperor. A literary fiction, the letter was in Latin and was translated into various languages, including Hebrew and Old Slavonic. Though addressed to the Byzantine (Greek) emperor, no Greek text of the letter is known, and its anti-Byzantine bias is demonstrated by the Byzantine emperor’s being addressed as “governor of the Romans” rather than “emperor.” In the letter the realm of Prester John, “the three Indies,” is described as a land of natural riches, marvels, peace, and justice administered by a court of archbishops, priors, and kings. Preferring the simple title “presbyter,” John declared that he intended to come to Palestine with his armies to battle with the Muslims and regain the Holy Sepulchre, the burial place of Jesus. The letter notes that John is the guardian of the shrine of St. Thomas, the apostle to India, at Mylapore (now in Chennai), India.

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In response to an embassy from Prester John, Pope Alexander III sent a reply in 1177 to John, “the illustrious and magnificent king of the Indies and a beloved son of Christ.” The fate of this letter is unknown, though its intent probably was to gain support for Alexander in his controversies with Barbarossa. In the 13th and 14th centuries various missionaries and lay travelers, such as Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, Giovanni da Montecorvino, and Marco Polo, all searching for the kingdom of Prester John, established direct contact between the West and the Mongols.

After the mid-14th century, Ethiopia became the centre of the search for the kingdom of Prester John, who was identified with the negus (emperor) of that African Christian nation. The legend, however, locates Prester John in Asia, especially in Nestorian areas.