CHAPTER V.

OF THE KINGDOM OF MAUSUL.

ON the frontier of Armenia towards the south-east is the kingdom of MAUSUL. It is a very great kingdom, and inhabited by several different kinds of people whom we

shall now describe.

First there is a kind of people called ARABI, and these worship Mahommet. Then there is another description of people who are NESTORIAN and JACOBITE Christians. These have a Patriarch whom they call the JATOLIC, and this Patriarch creates Archbishops, and Abbots, and Prelates of all other degrees, and sends them into every quarter, as to India, to Baudas, or to Cathay, just as the Pope of Rome does in the Latin countries. For you must know that though there is a very great number of Christians in those countries, they are all Jacobites and Nestorians; Christians indeed, but not in the fashion enjoined by the Pope of Rome, for they come short in several points of the Faith.'

All the cloths of gold and silk that are called Mosolins are made in this country; and those great Merchants called Mosolins who carry for sale such quantities of spicery and pearls and cloths of silk and gold, are also from this kingdom.❜

There is yet another race of people who inhabit the mountains in that quarter, and are called CURDS. Some of them are Christians, and some of them are Saracens; but they are an evil generation, whose delight it is to plunder merchants.*

[Near this province is another called MUS and MERDin, producing an immense quantity of cotton, from which they make a great deal of buckram and other cloth. The people are craftsmen and traders, and all are subject to the Tartar King.']

NOTE 1.-Polo could scarcely have been justified in calling MoSUL a very great kingdom. This is a bad habit of his, as we shall have to notice again. Badruddín Lúlú, the Atabeg of Mosul, had at the age of 96 taken sides with Hulaku, and stood high in his favour. His son Malik Sálih, having revolted, surrendered to the Mongols in 1261 on promise of life; which promise they kept in Mongol fashion by torturing him to death. Since then the kingdom had ceased to exist as such. Coins of Badruddin remain with the name and titles of Mangu Kaan on their reverse, and some of his and of other atabegs exhibit curious imitations of Greek art. (Quat. Rash. p. 389; Jour. As. IV. VI. 141.)

NOTE 2. The Nestorian Church was at this time and in the preceding centuries diffused over Asia to an extent of which little conception is generally entertained, having a chain of Bishops and Metropolitans from Jerusalem to Peking. The Church derived its name from Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was deposed by the Council of Ephesus in 431. The chief "point of the Faith" wherein they came short, was (at least in its most tangible form) the doctrine that in Our Lord there were two Persons, one of the Divine Word, the other of the Man Jesus; the former dwelling in the latter as in a Temple, or uniting with the latter "as fire with iron." Nestorin, the term used by Polo, is almost a literal transcript of the Arab form Nastúri. A notice of the Metropolitan sees, with a map, will be found in Cathay, p. ccxliv.

Játhalik, written in our text (from G. T.) Jatolic, by Fr. Burchard and Ricold Jaselic, is the title of the Patriarch, representing Katolikós. No doubt it was originally Gáthalik, but altered in pronunciation by the Arabs. The Nestorian Patriarch at this time resided at Baghdad. (Assemani, vol. iii. pt. 2; Per. Quat. 91, 127.)

The Jacobites, or Jacobins as they are called by writers of that age (Ar. Ya'kúbiy), received their name from Jacob Baradaeus, Bishop of Edessa (so called, Mas'udi says, because he was a maker of Barda'at or saddle-cloths), who gave a great impulse to their doctrine in the 6th century. They formed a church, which at one time spread over the East at least as far as Sijistán, where they had a see under the Sassanian Kings. Their distinguishing tenet was Monophysitism, viz., that Our Lord had but one Nature, the Divine. It was in fact a rebound from Nestorian doctrine, but, as might be expected in such a case, there was a vast number of shades of opinion among both bodies. The chief locality of the Jacobites was in the districts of Mosul, Tekrit, and Jazírah, and their Patriarch was at this time settled at the Monastery of St. Matthew, near Mosul, but afterwards, and to the present day, at or near Mardin. The Armenian, Coptic, Abyssinian, and Malabar

Churches all hold some shade of the Jacobite doctrine, though they have, except the last, Patriarchs apart.

(Assemani, vol. ii.; Le Quien, II. 1596; Mas'udi, II. 329-30; Per. Quat. 124-9.)

NOTE 3.-We see here that mosolin or muslin had a very different meaning from what it has now. A quotation from Ives by Marsden shows it to have been applied in the middle of last century to a strong cotton cloth made at Mosul. Dozy says the Arabs use Mauçili in the sense of muslin, and refers to passages in the 'Arabian Nights.' But do they indicate more than some texture? (p. 323). I have found no elucidation of Polo's application of mosolini to a class of merchants. But in a letter of Pope Innocent IV. (1244) to the Dominicans in Palestine, we find classed as different bodies of Oriental Christians, "Jacobitae, Nestoritae, Georgiani, Graeci, Armeni, Maronitae, et Mosolini." (Le Quien, III. 1342.)

...

NOTE 4.-"The Curds," says Ricold, "exceed in malignant ferocity all the barbarous nations that I have seen. They are called Curti, not because they are curt in stature, but from the Persian word for Wolves. . . . They have three principal vices, viz., Murder, Robbery, and Treachery." Some say they have not mended since, but his etymology is doubtful. Kúrt is Turkish for a wolf, not Persian, which is Gurg; but the name (Karduchi, Kordiaei, &c.) is older, I imagine, than the Turkish language in that part of Asia. Quatremère refers it to the Persian gurd, "strong, valiant, hero." As regards the statement that some of the Kurds were Christians, Mas'udi states that the Jacobites and certain other Christians in the territory of Mosul and Mount Judi were reckoned among the Kurds. (Not. et Ext. XIII. i. 304.)

NOTE 5. This passage is notable as being the only one, so far as I know, of those peculiar to Ramusio among the printed texts, which is found in a known MS. It occurs in a Latin MS. of 1401, which belonged to the late Sign. Cicogna at Venice. The word rendered buckrams is there Bocharini, for which Ramusio, as in all passages where other texts have Bucherami and the like, puts Boccassini. I see both Bochayrani and Bochasini coupled, in a Genoese fiscal statute of 1339, quoted by Pardessus. (Lois Maritimes, IV. 456.)

MUSH and MARDIN are in very different regions, but as their actual interval is only about 120 miles, they may have been under one provincial government. Mush is essentially Armenian, and, though the seat of a Pashalik, is now a wretched place. Mardin, on the verge of the Mesopotamian Plain, rises in terraces on a lofty hill, and there, says Hammer, "Sunnis and Shias, Catholic and Schismatic Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Chaldaeans, Sun-, Fire-, Calf-, and Devil-worshippers dwell one over the head of the other." (Ilchan. I. 191.)

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE GREAT CITY OF BAUDAS, AND HOW IT WAS TAKEN.

BAUDAS is a great city, which used to be the seat of the Calif of all the Saracens in the world, just as Rome is the seat of the Pope of all the Christians. A very great river flows through the city, and by this you can descend to the Sea of India. There is a great traffic of merchants with their goods this way; they descend some eighteen days from Baudas, and then come to a certain city called KISI, where they enter the Sea of India. There is also on the river, as you go from Baudas to Kisi, a great city called BASTRA, surrounded by woods, in which grow the best dates in the world.'

In Baudas they weave many different kinds of silk stuffs and gold brocades, such as nasich, and nac, and cramoisy, and many another beautiful tissue richly wrought with figures of beasts and birds. It is the noblest and greatest city in all those regions.+

Now it came to pass on a day in the year of Christ 1255, that the Lord of the Tartars of the Levant, whose name was Alaü, brother to the Great Kaan now reigning, gathered a mighty host and came up against Baudas and took it by storm." It was a great enterprise! for in Baudas there were more than 100,000 horse, besides foot soldiers. And when Alau had taken the place he found therein a tower of the Calif's, which was full of gold and silver and other treasure; in fact the greatest accumulation of treasure in one spot that ever was known. When he beheld that great heap of treasure he was astonished, and, summoning the Calif to his presence, he said to him; "Calif, tell me now why thou hast gathered such a huge treasure? What didst thou mean to do therewith? Knewest thou not that I was thine enemy, and that I was coming against thee with so great an host to cast thee forth of thine heritage?

Wherefore didst thou not take of thy gear and employ it in paying knights and soldiers to defend thee and thy city?"

The Calif wist not what to answer, and said never a word. So the Prince continued, "Now then, Calif, since I see what a love thou hast borne thy treasure, I will e'en give it thee to eat!" So he shut the Calif up in the Treasure Tower, and bade that neither meat nor drink should be given him, saying, "Now Calif, eat of thy treasure as much as thou wilt, since thou art so fond of it; for never shalt thou have aught else to eat!”

So the Calif lingered in the tower four days, and then died like a dog. Truly his treasure would have been of more service to him had he bestowed it upon men who would have defended his kingdom and his people, rather than let himself be taken and deposed and put to death as he was. Howbeit, since that time, there has been never another Calif, either at Baudas or anywhere else."

Now I will tell you of a great miracle that befel at Baudas, wrought by God on behalf of the Christians.

NOTE 1. This form of the medieval Frank name of BAGHDAD, Baudas, is curiously like that used by the Chinese historians, Paota (Pauthier; Gaubil), and both are probably due to the Mongol habit of slurring gutturals (see Prologue, ch. ii. note 3).

NOTE 2. Polo is here either speaking without personal knowledge, or is so brief as to convey an erroneous impression that the Tigris flows to Kisi, whereas three-fourths of the length of the Persian Gulf intervene between the river mouth and Kisi. The latter is the island and city of KISH OF KAIS, about 200 miles from the mouth of the Gulf, and for a long time one of the chief ports of trade with India and the East. The island, the Cataca of Arrian, now called Ghes or Kenn, is singular among the islands of the Gulf as being wooded and well supplied with fresh water. The ruins of a city exist on the north side. According to Wassáf, the island derived its name from one Kais, about the 10th century, the son of a poor widow of Siraf (then a great port of Indian trade on the northern shore of the Gulf), who on a voyage to India made a fortune precisely as Dick Whittington did. The proceeds of the cat were invested in an establishment on this island. Modern attempts to rationalize Whittington may surely be given up! It is one of the tales which, like Tell's shot, the dog Gellert, and many others, are common to