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Updated: May 9, 2025
This was another détour, as it lay directly north of their route, but they wished to visit Kara-Korum, the celebrated capital of Tartary, where Rubruquis had been in 1254.
This does not signify, as asserted by Rubruquis, God! thou knowest it; nor, as supposed by Messerschmid, God have mercy on us. But its true import is, that Mani, who holds the flowers of the Lotus, and is the beginning and end of the higher Magic, may hear their prayers, be propitious to them, and render them happy.
He went through Bohemia, Poland, southern Russia, and the vast steppes of Turkestan, and found the Khan at Karakorum, in Mongolia. A few years afterwards William de Rubruquis a Fleming in this case, not an Italian was sent to visit the Mongol emperor by Louis IX. when he was in the East.
Forster conjectures that the original words of Rubruquis are here corrupted, and that this passage ought to have been "beyond Tangut," instead of beyond Tebet or Thibet; in which case, the countries of Langa and Solanga, may refer to that of the Lamuts and Solonians, the ancestors of the Mantschus or Mundschurians. Voy. and Disc. 108.
English translations of Rubruquis and Pordenone also appear as an appendix in Travels of Sir John Mandeville, edited by A. W. Pollard . Sir John Mandeville is worthless as an historical source, as his genuine material is all drawn from these sources and from Marco Polo, and there is no probability that he ever travelled in the East. His own additions are usually mendacious.
See, with Herodotus, young Greece spring up into life, or note with him how already the wondrous old Orient world is crumbling into giant decay; or go with Carpini and Rubruquis to Tartary, meet 'the carts of Zagathai laden with houses, and think that a great city is travelling towards you. 'Gaze on that vast wild empire of the Tartar, where the descendants of Jenghis 'multiply and disperse over the immense waste desert, which is as boundless as the ocean. Sail with the early Northern discoverers, and penetrate to the heart of winter, among sea-serpents and bears and tusked morses with the faces of men.
The immense wealth of those territories in gold, diamonds, pearls and spices had been vaunted in the narratives of Benjamin de Tudela, Rubruquis, Marco Polo and Mandeville.
VIII. Travels of John de Piano Carpini, in 1246 IX. Travels of W. de Rubruquis, about 1253 X. Travels of Haitho, Prince of Armenia, in 1254 XI. Travels of Marco Polo into China and the East; from A.D. 1260 to 1295 XII. Travels of Oderic of Portenau, in 1318 XIII. Travels of Sir John Mandeville, in 1322 XIV. Itinerary of Pegoletti, between Asof and China, in 1355
The threat of the Empire of Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century aroused the interest of Europe, and the bold friars, Carpini and Rubruquis, made their way to the centres of that barbaric sovereign's power in the remote East, and brought back stories of what they had seen; later the Poli, especially the great Marco, undertook still more daring and long-continued journeys, which made India and Cathay less unreal to Europeans, and stimulated the desire for further knowledge.
The obscurity of this passage is inexplicable. The departure of Rubruquis from the Court of Mangu-khan, and his journey by Saray and other places, to Tripoly in Syria.
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