Afanasy Nikitin (; died 1472) was a Russian merchant from Tver and one of the first Europeans (after Niccolò de' Conti) to travel to and document his visit to India. He described his trip in a narrative known as The Journey Beyond Three Seas (, Khozhdeniye za tri morya). The voyage In 1466 Nikitin left his hometown of Tver on a commercial trip to India. He travelled down the Volga River, and although Tatars attacked and robbed him near Astrakhan, he succeeded in reaching Derbent, where he joined Vasili Papin, the envoy of Ivan the Great (the Grand Prince of All Rus') to the shah of Shirvan. At Derbent, Nikitin vainly endeavoured to find means of returning to Russia; failing in this, he went on to Baku and later to Persia proper by crossing the Caspian Sea. He lived in Persia for one year. In the spring of 1469, Nikitin arrived at the city of Ormus and then, crossing the Arabian Sea, and making several prolonged stays along the way, reached the sultanate of Bahmani, where he would live for three years. From what he tells us, he appears to have made his living by horse-dealing. During that time he visited the Hindu sanctuary of Perwattum, which he called "the Jerusalem of the Hindus". On his way back, Nikitin visited Muscat, the Arabian sultanate of Somalia, and Trabzon. In 1472 he arrived at Feodosiya by crossing the Black Sea. On his way to Tver, Nikitin died not far from Smolensk in the autumn of that year. During his trip, Nikitin studied the population of India, its social system, government, military (he witnessed war-games featuring war elephants), its economy, religion, lifestyles, and natural resources. The abundance and trustworthiness of Nikitin's factual material provide a valuable source of information about India at that time, and his remarks on the trade of Hormuz, Cambay, Calicut, Dabhol, Ceylon, Pegu and China; on royal progresses and other functions, both ecclesiastical and civil, at Bahmani, and on the wonders of the great fair at Perwattumas well as his comparisons of things Russian and Indiandeserve special notice.| Religion After studying Nikitin's account, and especially his references to Islam (much of India was ruled by Muslim sultans, and many Muslim merchants lived along the coast), particularly the prayers he transliterates from Arabic and Turkic into Cyrillic letters, Gail Lenhoff and Janet Martin speculated that Nikitin might have converted