Howbeit, They Have A City Upon The Sea, Which Is Called LAYAS, At
Which There Is A Great Trade.
For you must know that all the spicery, and
the cloths of silk and gold, and the other valuable wares that come from
the interior, are brought to that city.
And the merchants of Venice and
Genoa, and other countries, come thither to sell their goods, and to buy
what they lack. And whatsoever persons would travel to the interior (of
the East), merchants or others, they take their way by this city of
Layas.[NOTE 4]
Having now told you about the Lesser Hermenia, we shall next tell you
about Turcomania.
NOTE 1. - The Petite Hermenie of the Middle Ages was quite distinct from
the Armenia Minor of the ancient geographers, which name the latter
applied to the western portion of Armenia, west of the Euphrates, and
immediately north of Cappadocia.
But when the old Armenian monarchy was broken up (1079-80), Rupen, a
kinsman of the Bagratid Kings, with many of his countrymen, took refuge in
the Taurus. His first descendants ruled as barons; a title adopted
apparently from the Crusaders, but still preserved in Armenia. Leon, the
great-great-grandson of Rupen, was consecrated King under the supremacy of
the Pope and the Western Empire in 1198. The kingdom was at its zenith
under Hetum or Hayton I., husband of Leon's daughter Isabel (1224-1269);
he was, however, prudent enough to make an early submission to the
Mongols, and remained ever staunch to them, which brought his territory
constantly under the flail of Egypt. It included at one time all Cilicia,
with many cities of Syria and the ancient Armenia Minor, of Isauria and
Cappadocia. The male line of Rupen becoming extinct in 1342, the kingdom
passed to John de Lusignan, of the royal house of Cyprus, and in 1375 it
was put an end to by the Sultan of Egypt. Leon VI., the ex-king, into
whose mouth Froissart puts some extraordinary geography, had a pension of
1000l. a year granted him by our Richard II., and died at Paris in 1398.
[Illustration: Coin of King Hetum and his Queen Isabel.]
The chief remaining vestige of this little monarchy is the continued
existence of a Catholicos of part of the Armenian Church at Sis, which
was the royal residence. Some Armenian communities still remain both in
hills and plains; and the former, the more independent and industrious,
still speak a corrupt Armenian.
Polo's contemporary, Marino Sanuto, compares the kingdom of the Pope's
faithful Armenians to one between the teeth of four fierce beasts, the
Lion Tartar, the Panther Soldan, the Turkish Wolf, the Corsair
Serpent.
(Dulaurier, in J. As. ser. V. tom. xvii.; St. Martin, Arm.; Mar.
San. p. 32; Froissart, Bk. II. ch. xxii. seqq.; Langlois, V. en
Cilicie, 1861, p. 19.)
NOTE 2. - "Maintes villes et maint chasteaux" This is a constantly
recurring phrase, and I have generally translated it as here, believing
chasteaux (castelli) to be used in the frequent old Italian sense of a
walled village or small walled town, or like the Eastern Kala' applied
in Khorasan "to everything - town, village, or private residence -
surrounded by a wall of earth." (Ferrier, p. 292; see also A. Conolly,
I. p. 211.) Martini, in his Atlas Sinensis, uses "Urbes, oppida,
castella," to indicate the three classes of Chinese administrative cities.
NOTE 3. - "Enferme durement." So Marino Sanuto objects to Lesser Armenia
as a place of debarkation for a crusade "quia terra est infirma"
Langlois, speaking of the Cilician plain: "In this region once so fair,
now covered with swamps and brambles, fever decimates a population which
is yearly diminishing, has nothing to oppose to the scourge but incurable
apathy, and will end by disappearing altogether," etc. (Voyage, p. 65.)
Cilician Armenia retains its reputation for sport, and is much frequented
by our naval officers for that object. Ayas is noted for the extraordinary
abundance of turtles.
NOTE 4. - The phrase twice used in this passage for the Interior is Fra
terre, an Italianism (Fra terra, or, as it stands in the Geog. Latin,
"infra terram Orientis"), which, however, Murray and Pauthier have read
as an allusion to the Euphrates, an error based apparently on a marginal
gloss in the published edition of the Soc. de Geographie. It is true that
the province of Comagene under the Greek Empire got the name of
Euphratesia, or in Arabic Furatiyah, but that was not in question
here. The great trade of Ayas was with Tabriz, via Sivas, Erzingan, and
Erzrum, as we see in Pegolotti. Elsewhere, too, in Polo we find the phrase
fra terre used, where Euphrates could possibly have no concern, as in
relation to India and Oman. (See Bk. III. chs. xxix. and xxxviii., and
notes in each case.)
With regard to the phrase spicery here and elsewhere, it should be noted
that the Italian spezerie included a vast deal more than ginger and
other things "hot i' the mouth." In one of Pegolotti's lists of spezerie
we find drugs, dye-stuffs, metals, wax, cotton, etc.
CHAPTER II.
CONCERNING THE PROVINCE OF TURCOMANIA.
In Turcomania there are three classes of people. First, there are the
Turcomans; these are worshippers of Mahommet, a rude people with an
uncouth language of their own.[NOTE 1] They dwell among mountains and
downs where they find good pasture, for their occupation is
cattle-keeping. Excellent horses, known as Turquans, are reared in their
country, and also very valuable mules. The other two classes are the
Armenians and the Greeks, who live mixt with the former in the towns and
villages, occupying themselves with trade and handicrafts. They weave the
finest and handsomest carpets in the world, and also a great quantity of
fine and rich silks of cramoisy and other colours, and plenty of other
stuffs. Their chief cities are CONIA, SAVAST [where the glorious Messer
Saint Blaise suffered martyrdom], and CASARIA, besides many other towns and
bishops' sees, of which we shall not speak at present, for it would be too
long a matter.
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