Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

47
R U B — K U B
Christians, and it is alleged by Armenian writers that he had been
brought up and baptized among the Russians.
Rubrak and his party landed at Soldaia, or Sudak, on the
Crimean coast, a port which was then the chief seat of the com¬
munication between the Mediterranean states and what is now
southern Russia. Equipped with horses and carts for the steppe,
thev travelled successively to the courts of Sartak and ot Eatu,
resnectively on the hither and further banks of the Volga, bandied
from one to the other, and then referred to the Great Khan him¬
self an order involving the enormous journey to Mongolia, the
actual travelling of the party from the Crimea to the khan s court
near Karakorum cannot have been, on a rough calculation, less
than 5000 miles, and the return journey to Ayas in Cilicia would
be longer by 500 to 700 miles. The chief dates to be gathered from
the narrative are as follows :-embark on the Euxine, May 7, 1253 ;
reach Soldaia, 21 ; set out thence, June 1 ; reach camp ot Sartak,
July 31 ' begin journey from camp of Batu eastward across steppe,
Sentember 16 ; turn south-east, November 1 ; reach lalas Gvei,
8 • leave Cailac1 (south of Lake Balkash), 30 ; reach camp of
Great Khan, December 27 ; leave camp of Great Khan on or
about July 10, 1254; reach camp of Batu again, September 16 ;
leave Sartak’s camp, November 1 ; at the Iron Gate (Derbend)
13 • Christmas spent at Nakhshivan (under Ararat) ; reach An¬
tioch (from Ayas, via Cyprus), June 29, 1255 ; reach Tripoli,
^^Thefcatnp of Batu was reached near the northernmost point of
his summer marches, therefore about Ukek near Saratofi (see
Narco Polo, Frol., chap. iii. note 4). Before the camp was left
they had marched with it five weeks down the Volga. The point
of departure would lie on that river somewhere between 48 and 50
N lat. The route taken lay eastward by a line running north of
the Caspian and Aral basins ; then from about 70° E. long, south
(with some easting) to the basin of the Talas river ; thence across
the passes of the Kirghiz Ala-tau and south of the Balkash Lake
to the Ala-kul and the Baratula Lake (Ebi-niir). From this the
travellers struck north across the Barluk, or the Orkochuk
Mountains, and thence, passing south of the modern Kobdo, to
the valley of the Jabkan river, whence they emerged on the plain
of Mongolia, coming upon the Great Khan’s camp at a spot ten
days’ journey from Karakorum and bearing in the main south fiom
that place, with the Khangai Mountains between.
This route is of course not thus defined in the narrative, but is
a laborious deduction from the facts stated theiein. The key to
the whole is the description given of that central portion inter-
veiling between the basin of the Talas and the Lake Ala-kul,
which°enables the topography of that region, including the passage
of the Hi, the plain south of the Balkash, and the Ala-kul itself,
to be identified past question.2
The return journey, being made in summer, after retraversmg
the Jabkan valley,3 lay much farther to the north, and passed
north of the Balkash, with a tolerably straight course probably,
to the mouths of the Volga. Thence the party travelled south by
Derbend, and so by Shamakhi to the Araxes, Nakhshivan, Erzingan,
Sivas, and Iconium, to the coast of Cilicia, and eventually to the
port of Ayas, where they embarked for Cyprus and Syria. St
Louis had returned to France a year before.
We have alluded to Roger Bacon’s mention of Friar William of
Rubruk. Indeed, in the geographical section of the Opus Majus
(c. 1262) he cites the traveller repeatedly and copiously, describing
him as “frater Wilhelmus quem dominus rex Franciae misit ad
Tartaros, Anno Domini 1253 .... qui perlustravit regiones
orientis et aquilonis et loca in medio his annexa, et. scripsit haec
praedicta illustri regi; quem librum diligenter vidi et cum ejus
auctore contuli” {Opus Majus, ed. Jebb, 1733, pp. 190-191). Add
to this William’s own incidental particular as to his being (like
his precursor, Friar John of Rian Carpine, see vol. v. p. 132) a
very heavy man {ponderosus valde), and we know no more of his
personality except the abundant indications of character afforded
by the story itself. These paint for us an honest,, pious, stout¬
hearted, acute, and most intelligent observer, keen in the acquisi¬
tion of knowledge, the author in fact of one of the best narratives
of travel in existence. Flis language indeed is Latin of the most
un-Ciceronian quality,—dog-Latin we fear it must be called ; but,
call it what we may, it is in his hands a pithy and transparent
medium of expression. In spite of all the difficulties of communi-
1 Cailac, where Rubruk halted twelve days, is undoubtedly the Kayalik of the
historians of the Mongols, the position of which is somewhat indefinite. The
narrative of Rubruk shows that it must have been near the modern Kopal. .
2 See details in Cathay and the Way Thither, pp. ccxi.-ccxiv., and. Schuyler s
Turkistan, i. 402-405. Mr Schuyler points out the true identification of
Rubruk’s river with the Hi, instead of the Chu, which is a much smaller stream;
and other amendments have been derived from Dr F. M. Schmidt (see below). .
3 So the present writer interprets what Rubruk says:—“Our going was m
winter, our return in summer, and that by a way lying very much farther north,
only that for a space of fifteen days’ journey in going and coming we followed a
certain river between mountains, and on these there was no grass to be found
except close to the river.” The position of the Chagan Takoi or upper Jabkan
seems to suit these facts best; but Mr Schuyler refers them to the upper Irtish,
and Dr F, Schmidt to the Uliungur.
cation, and of the badness of his turgemannus or dragoman,4 he
gathered a mass of particulars, wonderfully true or near the truth,
not only as to Asiatic nature, geography, ethnography, and
manners, but as to religion and language. Of his geography a
good example occurs in his account ot the Caspian (eagerly caught
up by Roger Bacon), which is perfectly accurate, except that he
places the hill country occupied by the Mulahids, or Assassins, on
the eastern instead of the southern shore. He explicitly corrects
the allegation of Isidore that it is a gulf of the ocean.: non est
verum quod dicit Ysidorus nusquam enim tangit oceanum,
sed undique circumdatur terra ” (265).5 Of his interest and acumen
in matters of language we may cite examples. The language of
the Pascatir (or Bashkirds) and of the Hungarians is the same, as
he had learned from Dominicans who had been among them (274).®
The language of the Ruthenians, Poles, Bohemians, and Slavonians
is one, and is the same with that of the Wandals, or Wends (275).
In the town of Equius (immediately beyond the Hi, perhaps
Aspara)7 the people were Mohammedans speaking Persian, though
so far remote from Persia (281). The Yugurs (or Uigurs) of the
country about Cailac (see note above) had formed a language and
character of their own, and in that language and character the
Nestorians of that tract used to perform their office and write their
books (281-2). The Yugurs are those among whom are found the
fountain and root of the Turkish and Comanian tongue (289).
Their character has been adopted by the Moghals. In using it
they begin writing from the top and write downwards, whilst line
follows line from left to right (286). The Nestorians say.their
service, and have their holy books, in Syriac., but know nothing of
the language, just as some of our monks sing the mass without
knowing Latin (293). The Tibet people write as we do, and
their letters have a strong resemblance to ours. The Tangut
people write from right to left like the Arabs, and then lines
advance upwards (329). The current money of Cathay is of cotton
paper, a palm in length and breadth, and on this they pi hit lines
like those of Mangu Khan’s sealimprimunt lineas sicut est
si "ilium Mangu ”—a remarkable expression. They write with a
painter’s pencil and combine in one character several letteis, foim-
ing one expression :—“faciunt in una figura plures literas compre-
hendentes unam dictionem,”—a still more remarkable utterance,
showing an approximate apprehension of the nature of Chinese
writing (329). .
Yet this sagacious and honest observer is denounced as an
ignorant and untruthful blunderer by Isaac Jacob Schmidt (a man
no doubt of useful learning, of a kind rare in his day, but narrow
and wrong-headed, and in natural acumen and candoui far infciioi
to the 13th-century friar whom he maligns), simply because the
evidence of the latter as to the Turkish dialect of the Uiguis
traversed a pet heresy, long since exploded, which Schmidt enter¬
tained, viz., that the Uigurs were by race and language libetan.
The narrative of Rubruk, after Roger Bacon’s copious use of it, seems to have
dronned out of sight. It has no place in the famous collections of the 14th
century, norm th? earlier Speculum Hntoriale of Vincent of Beauvais, which
gives so many others of the Tartarian ecclesiastical itineraries. st aUe?cog
imnerfectlv in Hakluyt (1600), as we have mentioned. But it was not till 1861
that any proper edition of the text was published. In that year the Recueil de
Voyages of the Paris Geographical Society, vol. iv.,.contained a thorough edition
of the Latin text, and a collation of the few existing MSS., put foith. by. M.
D’Avezac, with the assistance of two young scholars, since of high distinction,
viz, Francisque-Michel and Thomas Wright. But there is no
ns M TV Avezac attached, in his own incomparable fashion, to the edition of i^nar
John of Pian Carpine in the same volume ; nor has there ever been any propeily
annotated edition'of a traveller so worthy of honour fchthofen in his
i 602-G04 has briefly but justly noticed the narrative of Rubiuk. A rtench
version with some noytes, issued^t Paris in 1877, in the
Elzevirienne, if named at all, can only be mentioned as
task is one which the present writer has long contemplated, but now with but
slender hope of accomplishment. (Since this was in type the writer has received
from Dr. Franz Max Schmidt an admirable monograph by him, 7
Reise (Berlin, p. 93), extracted from vol. xx. ot the Ztschr. Geog. Soc. lierl md
has greatly profited by it in the revision of the article in proof.) . y•)
RUBY. This name is applied by lapidaries and jewellers
to two distinct minerals, which may be distinguished as
the true or Oriental ruby and the spinel ruby.. The
former is a red variety of corundum or native alumina, ot
4 “ Fco enim nercepi pos'ea, quando incepi aliquantulum intelligere idi®™^
nnod nuando dicebam unum ipse totum aliud dicebat, secundum quod ei
occurrebat. Turn, videos periculum loquendi per ipsum, elegi magis tacere
(258The9)page references in the text are to D’Avezac’s edition of the Latin (see
^The Bashkirds now speak a Turkish dialect; bu^ Aj ^"j^^here
and it is quite possible that ttiey then spoke a language akin to Magyar t here
is no doubt that the Mussulman historians of that a8® t0
and the Bashkirds (e.g., see extracts from Juvami and Rashiduddin in App. to
ranhWs dei Mongols, ii. 620-623). The Bashkirds are also constantly
coupled* withthe Air by Abulghazi. See Fr. tr. by Desmaisons, pp. 19, 140,
187’lTP=Eguus. Aspara is'often mentioned by the historians of Tmmr and his
successors ; its exact place is uncertain, but it ^YU0”®^® “/^“^asons-
nr F Schmidt thinks this identification impossible , but one ot ms reasons
viz.fthat Equius was only one day from Cailac-appears to be a misapprehension
0{ShlTLschungen im Gehiete der Vdlker Mittel-Asiens, St.
Petersburg, 1824, pp. 90-93.