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February 26, 2004
Rabban Bar Sauma
This is the first I have read of Rabban Bar Sauma, a Mongolian Christian and "reverse Marco Polo" who travelled west to the Holy Land as Polo was on his way east to Beijing. Polo met Kublai Khan while Sauma received the Eucharist from the pope. Perhaps most interesting is a history that might have been.
In 1287 Iran's Mongolian ruler tapped Sauma to lobby Europe's kings for help in conquering the Middle East. Sauma shared mass with Edward I of England, visited King Philip IV in Paris, and stayed at the Vatican. His descriptions of Italy still resonate: It "resembled paradise; its winter was not [too] cold, and its summer not [too] hot. Green foliage is found therein all the year round."
Yet he failed to broker a deal between Europe and the Mongols and returned to Baghdad, where he died in 1294. "If Sauma had been successful, history would have been very different," says Jack Weatherford of Macalester College. "Europe would have ruled Jerusalem and Egypt, and they would not have sailed around looking for a new trade route," he says. In other words, no Vasco da Gama, no Columbus--and a world as strange to us as Europe appeared to Sauma.
Yet he failed to broker a deal between Europe and the Mongols and returned to Baghdad, where he died in 1294. "If Sauma had been successful, history would have been very different," says Jack Weatherford of Macalester College. "Europe would have ruled Jerusalem and Egypt, and they would not have sailed around looking for a new trade route," he says. In other words, no Vasco da Gama, no Columbus--and a world as strange to us as Europe appeared to Sauma.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at February 26, 2004 10:23 AM