Vols. vii. and viii.,
reproductions in J. B. Chabot's Hist. de Mar Jabalaha III., Paris, 1895,
and preferably in Prince Roland Bonaparte's beautiful Documents Mongols,
Pl. XIV., and we give samples of the two in vol. ii.[1]
NOTE 2. - "The Seven Arts," from a date reaching back nearly to classical
times, and down through the Middle Ages, expressed the whole circle of a
liberal education, and it is to these Seven Arts that the degrees in arts
were understood to apply. They were divided into the Trivium of
Rhetoric, Logic, and Grammar, and the Quadrivium of Arithmetic,
Astronomy, Music, and Geometry. The 38th epistle of Seneca was in many
MSS. (according to Lipsius) entitled "L. Annaei Senecae Liber de Septem
Artibus liberalibus." I do not find, however, that Seneca there mentions
categorically more than five, viz., Grammar, Geometry, Music, Astronomy,
and Arithmetic. In the 5th century we find the Seven Arts to form the
successive subjects of the last seven books of the work of Martianus
Capella, much used in the schools during the early Middle Ages. The Seven
Arts will be found enumerated in the verses of Tzetzes (Chil. XI. 525),
and allusions to them in the mediaeval romances are endless. Thus, in one
of the "Gestes d'Alexandre," a chapter is headed "Comment Aristotle
aprent a Alixandre les Sept Arts." In the tale of the Seven Wise Masters,
Diocletian selects that number of tutors for his son, each to instruct him
in one of the Seven Arts. In the romance of Erec and Eneide we have a
dress on which the fairies had portrayed the Seven Arts (Franc. Michel,
Recherches, etc. II. 82); in the Roman de Mahommet the young impostor
is master of all the seven. There is one mediaeval poem called the
Marriage of the Seven Arts, and another called the Battle of the Seven
Arts. (See also Dante, Convito, Trat. II. c. 14; Not. et Ex. V., 491
seqq.)
NOTE 3. - The Chinghizide Princes were eminently liberal - or indifferent -
in religion; and even after they became Mahomedan, which, however, the
Eastern branch never did, they were rarely and only by brief fits
persecutors. Hence there was scarcely one of the non-Mahomedan Khans of
whose conversion to Christianity there were not stories spread. The first
rumours of Chinghiz in the West were as of a Christian conqueror; tales
may be found of the Christianity of Chagatai, Hulaku, Abaka, Arghun,
Baidu, Ghazan, Sartak, Kuyuk, Mangu, Kublai, and one or two of the
latter's successors in China, all probably false, with one or two doubtful
exceptions.
[1] See plates with ch. xvii. of Bk. IV. See also the Uighur character in
the second Paiza, Bk. II. ch. vii.
[Illustration: The Great Kaan delivering a Golden Tablet to the Brothers.
From a miniature of the 14th century.]
CHAPTER VIII.
HOW THE GREAT KAAN GAVE THEM A TABLET OF GOLD, BEARING HIS ORDERS IN THEIR
BEHALF.
When the Prince had charged them with all his commission, he caused to be
given them a Tablet of Gold, on which was inscribed that the three
Ambassadors should be supplied with everything needful in all the
countries through which they should pass - with horses, with escorts, and,
in short, with whatever they should require. And when they had made all
needful preparations, the three Ambassadors took their leave of the
Emperor and set out.
When they had travelled I know not how many days, the Tartar Baron fell
sick, so that he could not ride, and being very ill, and unable to proceed
further, he halted at a certain city. So the Two Brothers judged it best
that they should leave him behind and proceed to carry out their
commission; and, as he was well content that they should do so, they
continued their journey. And I can assure you, that whithersoever they
went they were honourably provided with whatever they stood in need of, or
chose to command. And this was owing to that Tablet of Authority from the
Lord which they carried with them.[NOTE 1]
So they travelled on and on until they arrived at Layas in Hermenia, a
journey which occupied them, I assure you, for three years.[NOTE 2] It
took them so long because they could not always proceed, being stopped
sometimes by snow, or by heavy rains falling, or by great torrents which
they found in an impassable state.
[Illustration: Castle of Ayas.]
NOTE 1. - On these Tablets, see a note under Bk. II. ch. vii.
NOTE 2. - AYAS, called also Ayacio, Aiazzo, Giazza, Glaza, La Jazza, and
Layas, occupied the site of ancient Aegae, and was the chief port of
Cilician Armenia, on the Gulf of Scanderoon. Aegae had been in the 5th
century a place of trade with the West, and the seat of a bishopric, as we
learn from the romantic but incomplete story of Mary, the noble
slave-girl, told by Gibbon (ch. 33). As Ayas it became in the latter part
of the 13th century one of the chief places for the shipment of Asiatic
wares arriving through Tabriz, and was much frequented by the vessels of
the Italian Republics. The Venetians had a Bailo resident there.
Ayas is the Leyes of Chaucer's Knight, -
("At LEYES was he and at Satalie") -
and the Layas of Froissart. (Bk. III. ch. xxii.) The Gulf of Layas is
described in the xix. Canto of Ariosto, where Mafisa and Astolfo find on
its shores a country of barbarous Amazons: -
"Fatto e 'l porto a sembranza d' una luna," etc.
Marino Sanuto says of it: "Laiacio has a haven, and a shoal in front of it
that we might rather call a reef, and to this shoal the hawsers of vessels
are moored whilst the anchors are laid out towards the land." (II. IV. ch.
xxvi.)
The present Ayas is a wretched village of some 15 huts, occupied by about
600 Turkmans, and standing inside the ruined walls of the castle.
