The Chinese Authorities In Gaubil And De Mailla Speak Strongly Of
His Oppressions, But Only In General Terms, And Without Affording Such
Particulars As We Derive From The Text.
The Hereditary Prince Chingkim was strongly adverse to Ahmad; and some of
the high Chinese officials on various occasions made remonstrance against
the Minister's proceedings; but Kublai turned a deaf ear to them, and
Ahmad succeeded in ruining most of his opponents.
(Gaubil, 141, 143,
151; De Mailla, IX. 316-317; D'Ohsson, II. 468-469.)
[The Rev. W. S. Ament (Marco Polo in Cambaluc, 105) writes: "No name is
more execrated than that of Ah-ha-ma (called Achmath by Polo), a Persian,
who was chosen to manage the finances of the Empire. He was finally
destroyed by a combination against him while the Khan was absent with
Crown Prince Chen Chin, on a visit to Shang Tu." Achmath has his biography
under the name of A-ho-ma (Ahmed) in the ch. 205 of the Yuen-shi,
under the rubric "Villanous Ministers." (Bretschneider, Med. Res. I.
p. 272.) - H. C.]
NOTE 3. - This term Bailo was the designation of the representative of
Venetian dignity at Constantinople, called Podesta during the period of
the Latin rule there, and it has endured throughout the Turkish Empire to
our own day in the form Balios as the designation of a Frank Consul.
[There was also a Venetian bailo in Syria. - H. C.] But that term itself
could scarcely have been in use at Cambaluc, even among the handful of
Franks, to designate the powerful Minister, and it looks as if Marco had
confounded the word in his own mind with some Oriental term of like sound,
possibly the Arabic Wali, "a Prince, Governor of a Province,... a chief
Magistrate." (F. Johnson.) In the Roteiro of the Voyage of Vasco da
Gama (2nd ed.
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