The Legend of Prester John: the Ruler of Global Christendom

The last week or so has been rather busy. I managed to write a piece for Handelsblatt - but otherwise have been flat out with the parts of the world I work on that are in crisis. Starting with Iran.

I’ll post more on this when I can break free.

For now, though, here’s something I started writing last week before things became spicy and have been waiting to post - so think of it as a historical treat amid the reconfiguration not only of the Middle East and West Asia, but of the new world order.

It involves a man who strikes a chord today with the current situation unravelling in Iran - a man of mystery who I wrote about in The Silk Roads.

For more than six hundred years, Europeans wrote letters to him; they dispatched emissaries to his court; they prayed for his armies to arrive; they drew his kingdom on maps and placed him at the centre of strategies for conversion, conquest and global transformation.

His name was Prester John - a Christian priest-king said to rule a vast and fabulously wealthy kingdom somewhere beyond the edge of the known world. He was at once a bishop, an emperor, a magician, a crusader, a patriarch, and a messianic redeemer.

There was only problem.