DANIEL (DANIL), of Kiev, the earliest Russian travel writer, and one of the leading Russian travellers in the middle ages. He journeyed to Syria and other parts of the Levant about He was the igumen, or abbot, of a monastery probably near Chernigov in Little Russia. He visited Palestine in the reign of Baldwin I., Latin king of Jerusalem (i i oo-18), and apparently soon after the crusading capture of Acre (1 Io4) ; he claims to have accompanied Baldwin, who treated him with marked friend liness, on an expedition against Damascus (c. Ito 7) . Though Daniel's narrative beginning at Constantinople, omits some of the most interesting sections of his journey, his work has con siderable value. His picture of the Holy Land preserves a record of conditions (such as the Saracen raiding almost up to the walls of Christian Jerusalem, and the friendly relations subsisting be tween Roman and Eastern Churches in Syria) peculiarly char acteristic of the time; his three excursions—to the Dead sea and Lower Jordan, to Bethlehem and Hebron, and towards Damascus —gave him an exceptional knowledge of certain regions. In spite of blunders in topography and history, his observant and detailed record is among the most valuable of mediaeval documents re lating to Palestine : it is also important in the history of Russian language, and in the study of ritual and liturgy. Several Russian friends and companions, from Kiev and an old Novgorod, are recorded by Daniel as present with him at the Easter Eve "Miracle" in the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
There are 76 mss. of Daniel's Narrative, of which only five are ante rior to A.D. 1500 ; the oldest is of 1475 (Leningrad, Library of Ecclesi astical History, 9/1086). Three editions exist, of which I. P. Sakharov's (1849) is perhaps the best known (in Narratives of the Russian People, vol. ii. bk. viii. pp. . See also the French version in I tineraires russes en orient, ed. Me B. de Khitrovo (Geneva, 1889) (Societe de l'orient latin) ; and the account of Daniel in C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography (1897) etc. ii.