WITH COVERAGE OF THE MONGOLS and MARCO POLO
C2017 Oxford University Press
I confess, I saw that this book, which came from the history - genealogy department of my library, had pictures of artifacts (including clay monkeys from Yotkan that are sexually explicit and probably used to enhance fertility), a burial called the Niya coffin, in which a man who died of knife wounds and his smothered wife, dating 3rd or 4th century CE, were buried together and the garments they wore survive in color, an ancient Buddhist Stupa (that barely looks like Buddha), and other items that are from archeological digs, and I wanted to read it from cover to cover. It has translated poetry, letters, Hebrew prayers, and is also about religion, the spread of Buddhism for instance. There pictures of silk fabric fragments that help you understand the designs that people were able to produce hundreds of years ago.
I will probably have to order this book back in to do so; I found myself unable to concentrate and give it the time it deserves. I decided to focus on the routes called "the grasslands" . one of which went from Europe (Vienna) and seems to go through upper Hungary or lower Poland on today's map.
In college I took a literature course that focused on Crusades era travelers including Marco Polo, John of Plano (also called John Plano Carpini0, and other very early manuscripts (that were in translation to English). I was also aware that the travels of Marco Polo are suspect. There are a lot of maps in this book and on page 392 there are several routes on a grasslands map, including those used by William of Rubruck, Rabban Sauma, Ibn Buttuta (another person whose writing we read in the course), as well as Marco. Rabban left France, further west.
The grassland routes went through Eurasia into the Mongol empire that had been unified in 1206 by Genghis (Chinggis is his Mongolian name) and this way the travelers bypassed the mountains and the deserts to the south. (Sounds like the way to go to me.)
On page 394 it says that after Genghis died it was his son, Ogodei, who led armies to victory over Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Kiev, and Hungary, creating the largest continuous empire in world history. (Other Silk Road routes took travelers through India as well.) This expansion took place during the era of Christianity called the second crusades which began in 1100 when the pope called upon European Christians to travel to the Holy land to capture Jerusalem from the Islamic rulers. According to author Valerie Hansen, the Pope hoped an alliance with the Mongols would be helpful.
Now what surprised me was learning that THERE WERE ALREADY CHRISTIAN MONGOLS! "The East Syriac Christan Church, based in Iraq, had sent Uighur speaking missionaries into Mongol territories before 1200, and they had one converts, particularly among the Ongut tribe, and some Mongols from the Kereyit and Naiman tribes converted after 1206." Some of Ghengis' descendants married these Mongol Christians! "The Europeans also believed that a mythic Christian ruler named Prester John ruled somewhere in Asia..." (I've heard of Prester John before, and I believe that he remains a mystery and may have always been a myth.)
This was also the era in which SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI started the Franciscan order!
Somehow, knowing that brought the whole Mongol conquest and the founding of Hungary into historical perspective of me, and didn't seem so long ago anymore.
Pope Innocent IV sent John of Plano Carpini (Giovanni del Plan di Carpini) to the khans court in Mongolia, or tried to... Carpini carried a letter. I recall from my college class that this man was portly, his bones ached, he was about 60, and the trip was hard on him. He spoke Latin and French only, so he took along a man named Benedict who knew Russian and Polish... I suppose that must have helped for some of the trip! On the way the letter was translated at the camp of Batu, a Mongol prince.
The translation was from Latin to Russian, Russian to Persian, and Persian to Mongolian. (Page 396) Who knows how the communication had altered?
Carpini and his companion covered 3000 miles in three and a half months, and I don't want to ruin this rich story for you, but it would be some time before they were able to deliver that letter.
It wouldn't be called the Silk Road if there were not a lot of silk and other beautiful fabrics worn, made into tents, and used for trade. Gifts were expected. Gold and Silver were in abundance through plunder. The merchants they encountered included Austrians, Poles, Greeks... (So, while people back home feared the Mongols, the merchants apparently knew enough about their culture to be able to trade with them.)
I'll leave my brief version of just one of the amazing stories in this book here. Whenever I read about the Mongols and the Silk Road, the merchants moving along the routes, I often think about what we are learning about the migration of our DNA through thousands of years.
So, though I have yet to read this book cover to cover, I do recommend it highly!
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