Now In The Year Of Christ
1200 He Sent An Embassy To Prester John, And Desired To Have His Daughter
To Wife.
But when Prester John heard that Chinghis Kaan demanded his
daughter in marriage he waxed very wroth, and said to the Envoys, "What
impudence is this, to ask my daughter to wife!
Wist he not well that he
was my liegeman and serf? Get ye back to him and tell him that I had
liever set my daughter in the fire than give her in marriage to him, and
that he deserves death at my hand, rebel and traitor that he is!" So he
bade the Envoys begone at once, and never come into his presence again.
The Envoys, on receiving this reply, departed straightway, and made haste
to their master, and related all that Prester John had ordered them to
say, keeping nothing back.[NOTE 2]
NOTE 1. - Temujin was born in the year 1155, according to all the Persian
historians, who are probably to be relied on; the Chinese put the event in
1162. 1187 does not appear to be a date of special importance in his
history. His inauguration as sovereign under the name of Chinghiz Kaan was
in 1202 according to the Persian authorities, in 1206 according to the
Chinese.
In a preceding note (p. 236) we have quoted a passage in which Rubruquis
calls Chinghiz "a certain blacksmith." This mistaken notion seems to have
originated in the resemblance of his name Temujin to the Turki
Temurji, a blacksmith; but it was common throughout Asia in the Middle
Ages, and the story is to be found not only in Rubruquis, but in the books
of Hayton, the Armenian prince, and of Ibn Batuta, the Moor. That cranky
Orientalist, Dr. Isaac Jacob Schmidt, positively reviles William
Rubruquis, one of the most truthful and delightful of travellers, and
certainly not inferior to his critic in mother-wit, for adopting this
story, and rebukes Timkowski - not for adopting it, but for merely telling
us the very interesting fact that the story was still, in 1820, current in
Mongolia. (Schmidt's San. Setz. 376, and Timkowski, I. 147.)
NOTE 2. - Several historians, among others Abulfaraj, represent Chinghiz as
having married a daughter of Aung Khan; and this is current among some of
the mediaeval European writers, such as Vincent of Beauvais. It is also
adopted by Petis de la Croix in his history of Chinghiz, apparently from a
comparatively late Turkish historian; and both D'Herbelot and St. Martin
state the same; but there seems to be no foundation for it in the best
authorities: either Persian or Chinese. (See Abulfaragius, p. 285;
Speculum Historiale, Bk. XXIX. ch. lxix.; Hist. of Genghiz Can, p. 29;
and Golden Horde, pp. 61-62.) But there is a real story at the basis of
Polo's, which seems to be this: About 1202, when Aung Khan and Chinghiz
were still acting in professed alliance, a double union was proposed
between Aung Khan's daughter Jaur Bigi and Chinghiz's son Juji, and
between Chinghiz's daughter Kijin Bigi and Togrul's grandson Kush Buka.
From certain circumstances this union fell through, and this was one of
the circumstances which opened the breach between the two chiefs.
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