Petahiah of Regensburg (Ratisbon) was a Jewish traveler from Central Europe who visited the Islamic Near East in the last quarter of the twelfth century. He was born into a family of rabbinic scholars in Bohemia and was apparently involved in trade. He commenced his famous journey in the early 1170s, setting out either from Regensburg or Prague. After traveling eastward through Poland and Russia, he headed south across the Caucasus and into Asia Minor, and from there made his way to various parts of the Near East, including Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Persia (see Iran/Persia), before retu…