There Is Another Tartar
Governor Of Persia At Tauris, Named Argon, Who Presides Over The Tribute.
But Mangu-Khan Has Recalled Both Of These Generals To Make Way For One Of
His Brothers, As I Formerly Mentioned, Who Is To Have The Command In
Persia.
I was in the house of Bacchu, who gave me wine, while he drank
cosmos; and, although it was the best new wine, I would rather have had
cosmos, if he had offered it, being more restorative for such a half
starved wretch as I then was.
We ascended the Araxes to its head, and
beyond the mountains, where it rises, is the good city of Arsorum [10],
which belongs to the Soldan of Turkey [11]. When we departed from Bacchu,
my guide went to Tauris to speak with Argon, and took my interpreter with
him; but Bacchu caused me to be carried to Naxuam [12], formerly the
capital of a great kingdom, and the greatest and fairest city in those
parts, but the Tartars have now made it a wilderness. There were formerly
eight hundred churches [13] of the Armenians here, which are now reduced to
two very small ones, in one of which I held my Christmas as well as I
could, with our clerk Gosset. Next day the priest of this church died, and
a bishop with twelve monks came from the mountains to his funeral, for all
the bishops of the Armenians are monks, and likewise most of those
belonging to the Greeks [14].
In the city of Naxuam I met a Catalan friar, of the order of Predicants,
named Barnard, who lives with a friar of the Holy Sepulchre, resident in
Georgia, and possessing extensive lands there.
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