"The cream and
essence of whatever is written in this volume might be represented in
these few words."
A Musulman author quoted by Hammer, Najmuddin of Rei, gives an awful
picture of the Tartar devastations, "Such as had never been heard of,
whether in the lands of unbelief or of Islam, and can only be likened to
those which the Prophet announced as signs of the Last Day, when he said:
'The Hour of Judgment shall not come until ye shall have fought with the
Turks, men small of eye and ruddy of countenance, whose noses are flat,
and their faces like hide-covered shields. Those shall be Days of Horror!'
'And what meanest thou by horror?' said the Companions; and he replied,
'SLAUGHTER! SLAUGHTER!' This beheld the Prophet in vision 600 years ago.
And could there well be worse slaughter than there was in Rei, where I,
wretch that I am, was born and bred, and where the whole population of
five hundred thousand souls was either butchered or dragged into slavery?"
Marco habitually suppresses or ignores the frightful brutalities of the
Tartars, but these were somewhat less, no doubt, in Kublai's time.
The Hindustani poet Amir Khosru gives a picture of the Mongols more
forcible than elegant, which Elliot has translated (III.
