Abstract
Echoes and rumors of the Qara-khitai exploits reached the Frankish Crusaders in the Levant, who, through a bit of creative phonetics, interpreted the ruler’s title, Gür-khan, as “Prester John” (Syriac: Yuhanan) and developed the myth of a Christian king from the East who would come to join forces with them in the Holy Land and help to crush Islam there.1 This myth was to persist for nearly two centuries, as the persona of Prester John came optimistically to be associated with a succession of Turkish or Mongolian steppe figures having Christian connections.
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Notes
See Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans, London: Faber and Faber, 1971, pp. 29–40.
Ghiyas al-din Muhammad Khwand Amir, Habīb al-siyār, tr. W.M. Thackston, Cambridge, MA: Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 1994, vol. 1, p. 14. According to de Rachewiltz, Küchlük was born a Christian but converted to Buddhism at the instigation of his wife (de Rachewiltz, op. cit., pp. 49–50).
Morris Rossabi, “The Muslims in the Early Yüan Dynasty,” in John Langlois, ed., China under Mongol Rule, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 261.
Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan, Berkeley and Los Angeles: UC Press, 1988, p. 7.
Owen and Eleanor Lattimore, Silks, Spices and Empire, New York: Dell, 1968, p. 68.
Ata Malik Juvaini, Tārīkh-i Jahān-Gushā, tr. J.A. Boyle, History of the World-Conqueror, 2 vols., Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958, vol. 1, 246; Boyle, Successors, pp. 176–177.
Peter Jackson and David Morgan, eds. and trans., The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, London: Hakluyt Society, 1990, p. 42.
Leonardo Olschki, Guillaume Boucher: A French Artist at the Court of the Khans, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1946, pp. 33–37.
E.A. Wallis Budge, tr., The Monks of Kublai Khan, London: Religious Tract Society, 1928, p. 223. Juzjani states that Baghdad was betrayed by Shi’is in the service of the caliph (Juzjani, op. cit., pp. 1228–1252).
Jean Richard, “La conversion de Berke et les débuts de l’islamisation de la Horde d’Or,” Revue des études islamiques 35 (1967), pp. 173–184.
William Adam, “De modo sararcenos extirpandi,” ed. Ch. Kohler, in Receuil des historiens des Croisades, Documents Arméniens, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902, vol. 2, p. 530, cited in DeWeese, Islamization, p. 141.
Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960, pp. 195, 198.
James Montgomery, tr., The History of Yaballaha III, New York: Columbia University Press, 1927, pp. 8–9.
On him see J.A. Boyle, ed., Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 376–379, 380, 382–384. Rashid al-din says of Nawruz’s earlier rebellion that “because of Nauruz, much damage was done [in Khurasan] and many Muslims were killed” (Boyle, Successors, p. 141).
John of Marignolli, in Christopher Dawson, ed., The Mongol Mission, London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955, pp. 224–225.
Francis Rouleau, “The Yangchow Latin Tombstone As a Landmark of Medieval Christianity in China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 17/3–4 (1954), pp. 346–365.
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© 2010 Richard Foltz
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Foltz, R. (2010). Ecumenical Mischief. In: Religions of the Silk Road. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230109100_6
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