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15th century. Russia. Self-declared eyewitness of the 1453 siege and fall of Constantinople and author of a Russian-language account titled the Tale on the Conquest of Constantinople [ Повесть о взятии Царьграда ]. Everything we know about him comes from the epilogue to the Tale, in which he reveals his name and says that he was taken captive as a boy by foraying Ottoman Turks in Southern Russia. At some point during the siege, Nestor-Iskinder managed to escape from the camp of the Ottoman attackers. He claims to have witnessed the rest o…

[Летописец Переяславля Суздальского] 1215. Lithuania. A prose chronicle in Church Slavonic, probably composed and written in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by an Orthodox writer with a negative attitude towards Catholicism. The chronicle, originally entitled Letopisec russkich carej [Летописец русских царей (Chronicle of the Russian Tsars)], was named Chronicle of Perejaslavl’-Suzdal’ by its first editor, M. Obolenskij (1851), because of the contents of its second part.The first part (28 folios) includes the text of the Povest’ vremennych let, with extra details on the 11th-cent…

[Троицкая летопись] post 1408. Russia. A prose chronicle in Church Slavonic (Russian recension), compiled (according to Kloss) at Trinity Monastery in Sergiev Posad near Moscow by Epiphanius the Wise, as is suggested by his style of "word weaving". The only (parchment) manuscript perished in the great Moscow fire of 1812, but had been amply used some years before by the historian N. Karamzin in his famous History of the Russian State. M. Priselkov reconstructed the text in 1950, basing himself on Karamzin's direct quotations (and less reliable borrowings), deviant readings from the Tr…