Prepare a message about one of the travels of antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Julian of Hungary, “Columbus of the East” – a Dominican monk who went in search of Great Hungary, the ancestral home of the Hungarians. By 895, the Hungarians had settled in Transylvania, but they still remembered the distant lands of their ancestors, the steppe regions east of the Urals. In 1235, the Hungarian prince Bela equipped four Dominican monks on a journey. After a while, two Dominicans decided to return back, and the third companion of Julian died. The monk decided to continue on his way alone. As a result, having passed Constantinople, passing along the Kuban River, Julian reached Great Bulgaria, or Volga Bulgaria. The Dominican’s return journey ran through the Mordovian lands, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir, Ryazan, Chernigov and Kiev. In 1237, Julian of Hungary set off on a second journey, but already on the way, reaching the eastern lands of Russia, he learned about the attack on Great Bulgaria by Mongol troops. Descriptions of the monk’s travels became an important source in the study of the history of the Mongol invasion of the Volga Bulgaria.