The Travels Of Marco Polo - Volume 1 Of 2 By Marco Polo And Rustichello Of Pisa










































 -  Dante alludes to the supposed skill
of Turks and Tartars in weaving gorgeous stuffs, and Boccaccio, commenting
thereon, says that - Page 254
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Dante Alludes To The Supposed Skill Of Turks And Tartars In Weaving Gorgeous Stuffs, And Boccaccio, Commenting Thereon, Says That Tartarian Cloths Are So Skilfully Woven That No Painter With His Brush Could Equal Them.

Maundevile often speaks of cloths of Tartary (e.g. pp.

175, 247). So also Chaucer:

"On every trumpe hanging a broad banere Of fine Tartarium."

Again, in the French inventory of the Garde-Meuble of 1353 we find two pieces of Tartary, one green and the other red, priced at 15 crowns each. (Flower and Leaf, 211; Dante, Inf. XVII. 17, and Longfellow, p. 159; Douet d'Arcq, p. 328; Fr.-Michel, Rech. I. 315, II. 166 seqq.)

NOTE 7. - SINDACHU (Sindacui, Suidatui, etc., of the MSS.) is SIUEN-HWA-FU, called under the Kin Dynasty Siuen-te-chau, more than once besieged and taken by Chinghiz. It is said to have been a summer residence of the later Mongol Emperors, and fine parks full of grand trees remain on the western side. It is still a large town and the capital of a Fu, about 25 miles south of the Gate on the Great Wall at Chang Kia Kau, which the Mongols and Russians call Kalgan. There is still a manufacture of felt and woollen articles here.

[Mr. Rockhill writes to me that this place is noted for the manufacture of buckskins. - H. C.]

Ydifu has not been identified. But Baron Richthofen saw old mines north-east of Kalgan, which used to yield argentiferous galena; and Pumpelly heard of silver-mines near Yuchau, in the same department.

[In the Yuen-shi it is "stated that there were gold and silver mines in the districts of Siuen-te-chow and Yuchow, as well as in the Kiming shan Mountains. These mines were worked by the Government itself up to 1323, when they were transferred to private enterprise. Marco Polo's Ydifu is probably a copyist's error, and stands instead of Yuchow." (Palladius, 24, 25.) - H. C.]

[1] Mr. Ney Elias favours me with a curious but tantalising communication on this subject: "An old man called on me at Kwei-hwa Ch'eng (Tenduc), who said he was neither Chinaman, Mongol, nor Mahomedan, and lived on ground a short distance to the north of the city, especially allotted to his ancestors by the Emperor, and where there now exist several families of the same origin. He then mentioned the connection of his family with that of the Emperor, but in what way I am not clear, and said that he ought to be, or had been, a prince. Other people coming in, he was interrupted and went away.... He was not with me more than ten minutes, and the incident is a specimen of the difficulty in obtaining interesting information, except by mere chance.... The idea that struck me was, that he was perhaps a descendant of King George of Tenduc; for I had your M. P. before me, and had been inquiring as much as I dared about subjects it suggested.... At Kwei-hwa Ch'eng I was very closely spied, and my servant was frequently told to warn me against asking too many questions."

I should mention that Oppert, in his very interesting monograph, Der Presbyter Johannes, refuses to recognise the Kerait chief at all in that character, and supposes Polo's King George to be the representative of a prince of the Liao (supra, p. 205), who, as we learn from De Mailla's History, after the defeat of the Kin, in which he had assisted Chinghiz, settled in Liaotung, and received from the conqueror the title of King of the Liao. This seems to me geographically and otherwise quite inadmissible.

[2] The term Arkaiun, or Arkaun, in this sense, occurs in the Armenian History of Stephen Orpelian, quoted by St. Martin. The author of the Tarikh Jahan Kushai, cited by D'Ohsson, says that Christians were called by the Mongols Arkaun. When Hulaku invested Baghdad we are told that he sent a letter to the Judges, Shaikhs, Doctors and Arkauns, promising to spare such as should act peaceably. And in the subsequent sack we hear that no houses were spared except those of a few Arkauns and foreigners. In Rashiduddin's account of the Council of State at Peking, we are told that the four Fanchan, or Ministers of the Second Class, were taken from the four nations of Tajiks, Cathayans, Uighurs, and Arkaun. Sabadin Arkaun was the name of one of the Envoys sent by Arghun Khan of Persia to the Pope in 1288. Traces of the name appear also in Chinese documents of the Mongol era, as denoting some religious body. Some of these have been quoted by Mr. Wylie; but I have seen no notice taken of a very curious extract given by Visdelou. This states that Kublai in 1289 established a Board of nineteen chief officers to have surveillance of the affairs of the Religion of the Cross, of the Marha, the Siliepan, and the Yelikhawen. This Board was raised to a higher rank in 1315: and at that time 72 minor courts presiding over the religion of the Yelikhawen existed under its supervision. Here we evidently have the word Arkhaiun in a Chinese form; and we may hazard the suggestion that Marha, Siliepan and Yelikhawen meant respectively the Armenian, Syrian, or Jacobite, and Nestorian Churches. (St. Martin, Mem. II. 133, 143, 279; D'Ohsson, II. 264; Ilchan, I. 150, 152; Cathay, 264; Acad. VII. 359; Wylie in J. As. V. xix. 406. Suppt. to D'Herbelot, 142.)

[3] The word is not in Zenker or Pavet de Courteille.

[4] Mr. Shaw writes Toonganee. The first mention of this name that I know of is in Izzat Ullah's Journal. (Vide J. R. A. S. VII. 310.) The people are there said to have got the name from having first settled in Tungan. Tung-gan is in the same page the name given to the strong city of T'ung Kwan on the Hwang-ho. (See Bk. II. ch. xli. note 1.) A variety of etymologies have been given, but Vambery's seems the most probable.

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