Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/309

297 ARGOUN, KHAN OF PERSIA. 297 scarcely received from the Grand Khan Kublai the con- firmation of his power than he resolved to attack the Mussulmans, with the design, according to the historians of the epoch, of getting himself baptized at Jerusalem, as soon as he should have made himself master of it. He also, guiding himself in all things by the example of his father, Abaga, restored the churches that Ahmed had destroyed ; and he put to death a great number of the Mussulmans, and declared war against the Sultan of Egypt. The kings of Armenia and Georgia came to his court, and the Christians of the East renewed their solicitations that he would rescue the Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. It was probably at their suggestion that he wrote to Pope Honorius IY. a letter, the contents of which are not easy to make out, although a Latin translation of it has been preserved ; many of the peculiarities of the Mongol style are trace- able in this as in other documents of a similar nature ; but the translator appears to have understood Mongol rather better than he did Latin, and has made so many mistakes that it is scarcely intelligible. Such as it is, however, it serves, as Abel Remusat has observed, to confirm the existence of the original in the Tartar language, for it is an almost literal translation from it. The very barbarism of the expressions and the blunders of which it is full, afford the best proof of its authenti- city, and it is not impossible to any one acquainted with the events to which it alludes, and the relation therein indicated, to discover from it some curious particulars. Argoun first makes mention of the good will entertained by the Mongols, from the time of Tchinguiz-khan, " their first Father, for the Pope, the most serene King of the Franks, and the most serene King Charles of Anjou, and