The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 45

NOTE 4.--UCACA or UKEK was a town on the right bank of the Volga, nearly equidistant between Sarai and Bolghar, and about six miles south of the modern Saratov, where a village called _Uwek_ still exists. Ukek is not mentioned before the Mongol domination, and is supposed to have been of Mongol foundation, as the name Ukek is said in Mongol to signify a dam of hurdles. The city is mentioned by Abulfeda as marking the extremity of "the empire of the Barka Tartars," and Ibn Batuta speaks of it as "one day distant from the hills of the Russians." Polo therefore means that it was the frontier of the Ponent towards Russia. Ukek was the site of a Franciscan convent in the 14th century; it is mentioned several times in the campaigns of Timur, and was destroyed by his army. It is not mentioned under the form Ukek after this, but appears as _Uwek_ and _Uwesh_ in Russian doc.u.ments of the 16th century. Perhaps this was always the Slavonic form, for it already is written _Uguech_ (= Uwek) in Wadding's 14th century catalogue of convents. Anthony Jenkinson, in Hakluyt, gives an observation of its lat.i.tude, as _Oweke_ (51 40'), and Christopher Burrough, in the same collection, gives a description of it as _Oueak_, and the lat.i.tude as 51 30' (some 7' too much). In his time (1579) there were the remains of a "very faire stone castle" and city, with old tombs exhibiting sculptures and inscriptions. All these have long vanished.

Burrough was told by the Russians that the town "was swallowed into the earth by the justice of G.o.d, for the wickednesse of the people that inhabited the same." Lepechin in 1769 found nothing remaining but part of an earthen rampart and some underground vaults of larger bricks, which the people dug out for use. He speaks of coins and other relics as frequent, and the like have been found more recently. Coins with Mongol-Arab inscriptions, struck at Ukek by Tuktugai Khan in 1306, have been described by Fraehn and Erdmann.

(_Fraehn, Ueber die ehemalige Mong. Stadt Ukek_, etc., Petersb. 1835; _Gold. Horde_; _Ibn Bat._ II. 414; _Abulfeda, in Busching_, V. 365; _Ann.

Minorum_, sub anno 1400; _Petis de la Croix_, II. 355, 383, 388; _Hakluyt_, ed. 1809, I. 375 and 472; _Lepechin, Tagebuch der Reise_, etc., I. 235-237; _Rockhill, Rubruck_, 120-121, note 2.)

NOTE 5.--The great River Tigeri or Tigris is the Volga, as Pauthier rightly shows. It receives the same name from the Monk Pascal of Vittoria in 1338. (_Cathay_, p. 234.) Perhaps this arose out of some legend that the Tigris was a reappearance of the same river. The ecclesiastical historian, Nicephorus Callistus, appears to imply that the Tigris coming from Paradise flows under the Caspian to emerge in Kurdistan. (See IX.

19.)

The "17 days" applies to one stretch of desert. The whole journey from Ukek Bokhara would take some 60 days at least. Ibn Batuta is 58 days from Sarai to Bokhara, and of the last section he says, "we entered the desert which extends between Khwarizm and Bokhara, and _which has an extent of 18 days' journey_." (III. 19.)

CHAPTER III.

HOW THE TWO BROTHERS, AFTER CROSSING A DESERT, CAME TO THE CITY OF BOCARA, AND FELL IN WITH CERTAIN ENVOYS THERE.

After they had pa.s.sed the desert, they arrived at a very great and n.o.ble city called BOCARA, the territory of which belonged to a king whose name was Barac, and is also called Bocara. The city is the best in all Persia.[NOTE 1] And when they had got thither, they found they could neither proceed further forward nor yet turn back again; wherefore they abode in that city of Bocara for three years. And whilst they were sojourning in that city, there came from Alau, Lord of the Levant, Envoys on their way to the Court of the Great Kaan, the Lord of all the Tartars in the world. And when the Envoys beheld the Two Brothers they were amazed, for they had never before seen Latins in that part of the world.

And they said to the Brothers: "Gentlemen, if ye will take our counsel, ye will find great honour and profit shall come thereof." So they replied that they would be right glad to learn how. "In truth," said the Envoys, "the Great Kaan hath never seen any Latins, and he hath a great desire so to do. Wherefore, if ye will keep us company to his Court, ye may depend upon it that he will be right glad to see you, and will treat you with great honour and liberality; whilst in our company ye shall travel with perfect security, and need fear to be molested by n.o.body."[NOTE 2]

NOTE 1.--Hayton also calls Bokhara a city of Persia, and I see Vambery says that, up till the conquest by Chinghiz, Bokhara, Samarkand, Balkh, etc., were considered to belong to Persia. (_Travels_, p. 377.) The first Mongolian governor of Bokhara was Buka Bosha.

King Barac is Borrak Khan, great-grandson of Chagatai, and sovereign of the Ulus of Chagatai, from 1264 to 1270. The Polos, no doubt, reached Bokhara before 1264, but Borrak must have been sovereign some time before they left it.

NOTE 2.--The language of the envoys seems rather to imply that they were the Great Kaan's own people returning from the Court of Hulaku. And Rashid mentions that Sartak, the Kaan's amba.s.sador to Hulaku, returned from Persia in the year that the latter prince died. It may have been his party that the Venetians joined, for the year almost certainly was the same, viz. 1265. If so, another of the party was Bayan, afterwards the greatest of Kublai's captains, and much celebrated in the sequel of this book. (See _Erdmann's Temudschin_, p. 214.)

Marsden justly notes that Marco habitually speaks of _Latins_, never of _Franks_. Yet I suspect his own mental expression was _Farangi_.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW THE TWO BROTHERS TOOK THE ENVOYS' COUNSEL, AND WENT TO THE COURT OF THE GREAT KAAN.

So when the Two Brothers had made their arrangements, they set out on their travels, in company with the Envoys, and journeyed for a whole year, going northward and north-eastward, before they reached the Court of that Prince. And on their journey they saw many marvels of divers and sundry kinds, but of these we shall say nothing at present, because Messer Mark, who has likewise seen them all, will give you a full account of them in the Book which follows.

CHAPTER V.

HOW THE TWO BROTHERS ARRIVED AT THE COURT OF THE GREAT KAAN.

When the Two Brothers got to the Great Kaan, he received them with great honour and hospitality, and showed much pleasure at their visit, asking them a great number of questions. First, he asked about the emperors, how they maintained their dignity, and administered justice in their dominions; and how they went forth to battle, and so forth. And then he asked the like questions about the kings and princes and other potentates.

CHAPTER VI.

HOW THE GREAT KAAN ASKED ALL ABOUT THE MANNERS OF THE CHRISTIANS, AND PARTICULARLY ABOUT THE POPE OF ROME.

And then he inquired about the Pope and the Church, and about all that is done at Rome, and all the customs of the Latins. And the Two Brothers told him the truth in all its particulars, with order and good sense, like sensible men as they were; and this they were able to do as they knew the Tartar language well.[NOTE 1]

NOTE 1.--The word generally used for Pope in the original is _Apostoille_ (_Apostolicus_), the usual French expression of that age.

It is remarkable that for the most part the text edited by Pauthier has the correcter Oriental form _Tatar_, instead of the usual _Tartar_.

_Tattar_ is the word used by Yvo of Narbonne, in the curious letter given by Matthew Paris under 1243.

We are often told that _Tartar_ is a vulgar European error. It is in any case a very old one; nor does it seem to be of European origin, but rather Armenian;[1] though the suggestion of Tartarus may have given it readier currency in Europe. Russian writers, or rather writers who have been in Russia, sometimes try to force on us a specific limitation of the word _Tartar_ to a certain cla.s.s of Oriental Turkish race, to whom the Russians appropriate the name. But there is no just ground for this. _Tatar_ is used by Oriental writers of Polo's age exactly as Tartar was then, and is still, used in Western Europe, as a generic t.i.tle for the Turanian hosts who followed Chinghiz and his successors. But I believe the name in this sense was unknown to Western Asia before the time of Chinghiz. And General Cunningham must overlook this when he connects the _Tatariya_ coins, mentioned by Arab geographers of the 9th century, with "the Scythic or Tatar princes who ruled in Kabul" in the beginning of our era. Tartars on the Indian frontier in those centuries are surely to be cla.s.sed with the Frenchmen whom Brennus led to Rome, or the Scotchmen who fought against Agricola.

[1] See _J. As._ ser. V. tom. xi. p. 203.

CHAPTER VII.

HOW THE GREAT KAAN SENT THE TWO BROTHERS AS HIS ENVOYS TO THE POPE.

When that Prince, whose name was CUBLAY KAAN, Lord of the Tartars all over the earth, and of all the kingdoms and provinces and territories of that vast quarter of the world, had heard all that the Brothers had to tell him about the ways of the Latins, he was greatly pleased, and he took it into his head that he would send them on an Emba.s.sy to the Pope. So he urgently desired them to undertake this mission along with one of his Barons; and they replied that they would gladly execute all his commands as those of their Sovereign Lord. Then the Prince sent to summon to his presence one of his Barons whose name was COGATAL, and desired him to get ready, for it was proposed to send him to the Pope along with the Two Brothers. The Baron replied that he would execute the Lord's commands to the best of his ability.

After this the Prince caused letters from himself to the Pope to be indited in the Tartar tongue,[NOTE 1] and committed them to the Two Brothers and to that Baron of his own, and charged them with what he wished them to say to the Pope. Now the contents of the letter were to this purport: He begged that the Pope would send as many as an hundred persons of our Christian faith; intelligent men, acquainted with the Seven Arts,[NOTE 2] well qualified to enter into controversy, and able clearly to prove by force of argument to idolaters and other kinds of folk, that the Law of Christ was best, and that all other religions were false and naught; and that if they would prove this, he and all under him would become Christians and the Church's liegemen. Finally he charged his Envoys to bring back to him some Oil of the Lamp which burns on the Sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem.[NOTE 3]

NOTE 1.-- + The appearance of the Great Kaan's letter may be ill.u.s.trated by two letters on so-called Corean paper preserved in the French archives; one from Arghun Khan of Persia (1289), brought by Buscarel, and the other from his son Oljaitu (May, 1305), to Philip the Fair. These are both in the Mongol language, and according to Abel Remusat and other authorities, in the Uighur character, the parent of the present Mongol writing.

Facsimiles of the letters are given in Remusat's paper on intercourse with Mongol Princes, in _Mem. de l' Acad. des Inscript._ vols. vii. and viii., reproductions in J. B. Chabot's _Hist. de Mar Jabalaha III._, Paris, 1895, and preferably in Prince Roland Bonaparte's beautiful _Doc.u.ments Mongols_, Pl. XIV., and we give samples of the two in vol. ii.[1]

NOTE 2.--"The Seven Arts," from a date reaching back nearly to cla.s.sical times, and down through the Middle Ages, expressed the whole circle of a liberal education, and it is to these Seven Arts that the degrees in arts were understood to apply. They were divided into the _Trivium_ of Rhetoric, Logic, and Grammar, and the _Quadrivium_ of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music, and Geometry. The 38th epistle of Seneca was in many MSS. (according to Lipsius) ent.i.tled "_L. Annaei Senecae Liber de Septem Artibus liberalibus._" I do not find, however, that Seneca there mentions categorically more than five, viz., Grammar, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, and Arithmetic. In the 5th century we find the Seven Arts to form the successive subjects of the last seven books of the work of Martia.n.u.s Capella, much used in the schools during the early Middle Ages. The Seven Arts will be found enumerated in the verses of Tzetzes (_Chil. XI._ 525), and allusions to them in the mediaeval romances are endless. Thus, in one of the "Gestes d'Alexandre," a chapter is headed "_Comment Aristotle aprent a Alixandre les Sept Arts._" In the tale of the Seven Wise Masters, Diocletian selects that number of tutors for his son, each to instruct him in one of the Seven Arts. In the romance of _Erec and Eneide_ we have a dress on which the fairies had portrayed the Seven Arts (_Franc. Michel, Recherches_, etc. II. 82); in the _Roman de Mahommet_ the young impostor is master of all the seven. There is one mediaeval poem called the _Marriage of the Seven Arts_, and another called the _Battle of the Seven Arts_. (See also Dante, _Convito_, Trat. II. c. 14; _Not. et Ex._ V., 491 seqq.)

NOTE 3.--The Chinghizide Princes were eminently liberal--or indifferent-- in religion; and even after they became Mahomedan, which, however, the Eastern branch never did, they were rarely and only by brief fits persecutors. Hence there was scarcely one of the non-Mahomedan Khans of whose conversion to Christianity there were not stories spread. The first rumours of Chinghiz in the West were as of a Christian conqueror; tales may be found of the Christianity of Chagatai, Hulaku, Abaka, Arghun, Baidu, Ghazan, Sartak, Kuyuk, Mangu, Kublai, and one or two of the latter's successors in China, all probably false, with one or two doubtful exceptions.

[1] See plates with ch. xvii. of Bk. IV. See also the Uighur character in the second _Paza_, Bk. II. ch. vii.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Great Kaan delivering a Golden Tablet to the Brothers.

From a miniature of the 14th century.]