Johann (Hans) Schiltberger (1380) was a German traveller and writer. He was born of a noble family, probably at Hollern near Lohhof halfway between Munich and Freising.
Travels
Schiltberger joined the suite of Lienhart Richartinger in 1394, and he then went to fight under Sigismund, King of Hungary (afterwards Holy Roman Emperor), against the Ottoman Empire on the Hungarian frontier. At the Battle of Nicopolis on 28 September 1396, he was wounded and taken prisoner; when Schiltberger had recovered the use of his feet, Sultan Bayezid I (Yıldırım) took him into his service as a runner (1396–1402). He was factually a military slave for over twenty years. During this time of enslavement he seems to have accompanied Ottoman troops to certain parts of Asia Minor and to Egypt.
On Bayezid's overthrow at the Battle of Ankara (20 July 1402), Schiltberger passed into the service of Bayezid's conqueror Timur: he now appears to have followed Timur to Samarkand, Armenia and Georgia. After Timur's death (17 February 1405) his German runner first became a slave of Shah Rukh, the ablest of Timur's sons; then of Miran Shah, a brother of Shah Rukh; then of Abu Bekr, a son of Miran Shah, whose camp roamed up and down Armenia.