Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/59

Rh U B R U B 47 Christians, and it is alleged by Armenian writers that he had been brought up and baptized among the Russians. Rubruk 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, they travelled successively to the courts of Sartak and of Batu, respectively 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 of Sartak, July 31 ; begin journey from camp of Batu eastward across steppe, September 16 ; turn south-east, November 1 ; reach Talas river, 8; leave Cailac 1 (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, August 15. The camp of Batn was reached near the northernmost point of his summer marches, therefore about Ukek near SaratofF (see Marco Polo, Prol., 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-nur). 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 from that place, with the Ehangai Mountains between. This route is of course not thus defined in the narrative, but is a laborious deduction from the facts stated therein. The key to the whole is the description given of that central portion inter- vening 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 retraversing 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 Afajus (c. 1262) he cites the traveller repeatedly and copiously, describing him as "frater Wilhelmus quern dominus rex Frauciae misit ad Tartaros, Anno Domini 1253 .... qui perlustravit regiones orientis et aquilonis et loca in medio his annexa, et scripsit haec praedicta illustri regi ; quern 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 Pian 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. His language indeed is Latin of the most un-Ciceroniau 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 Ilubnik 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 Kubruk'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 in winter, our return in summer, and that by a way lying very much farthi-r 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 turgcmannus 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 of 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). B 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). 8 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 Yugura (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 their lines advance iipwards (329). The current money of Cathay is of cotton paper, a palm in length and breadth, and on this they print lines like those of Mangu Khan's seal: "imprimunt lineas sicut est sigillum Mangu " a remarkable expression. They write with a painter's pencil and combine in one character several letters, form- 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 candour far inferior to the 13th-century friar whom he maligns), simply because the evidence of the latter as to the Turkish dialect of the Uigurs traversed a pet heresy, long since exploded, which Schmidt enter- tained, viz., that the Uigurs were by race and language Tibetan. 8 The narrative of Rubruk, after Roger Bacon's copious use of it, seems to have dropped out of sight. It has no place in the famous collections of the 14th century, nor in the earlier Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, which gives BO many others of the Tartarian ecclesiastical itineraries. It first appeared imperfectly in Hukluyt (1600), as we have mentioned. But it was not till 1839 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 forth by M. D'Avezac, with the assistance of two young scholars, since of high distinction, viz., Francisqtie-Michel and Thomas Wright. But there is no commentary, such as M. D'Avezac attached, in his own incomparable fashion, to the edition of Friar John of Pian Carpine in the same volume ; nor has there ever been any properly annotated edition of a traveller so worthy of honour. Richthofen in his China, i. 602-604, has briefly but justly noticed the narrative of Rubruk. A French version with some notes, issued at Paris in 1877, in the Bibliotheque Orientate Elzevirienne, if named at all, can only be mentioned as beneath contempt. The 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, Ueber Rubrufs Reise (Berlin, p. 93), extracted from vol. xx. of the Ztschr. Geog. Soc. Serf., and has greatly profited by it in the revision of the article in proof.) (H. 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, of 4 "Ego enim percepi postea, quando incepi aliquantulum intelligere idioma, quod quando dicebam unum ipse totnm aliud dicebat, secundum quod e_i occurrebat. Turn, videns periculum loquendi per ipsum, elegi magis tacere ' (248-249) 6 The page references in the text are to D'Avezac's edition of the Latin (see below). 6 The Bashkirds now speak a Turkish dialect ; but they are of Finnish race, and it is quite possible that they then spoke a language akin to Magyar. Ihere is no doubt that the Mussulman historians of that age identified the Hungarians and the Bashkirds (e.g., see extracts from Juvainl and Rashiduddin in App to D'Ohsson's Hist, des Mongols, ii. 620-623). The Bashkirds are also constantly coupled with the Majar by Abulghazi. See Fr. tr. by Desmaisons, pp. 19, 140, IftO 189 7 Asp = Equut. Aspara is 'often mentioned by the historians of Timur and his successors ; its exact place is uncertain, but it lay somewhere on the Dr F. Schmidt thinks this identification impossible ; but one of his rcasons- viz., that Equius was only one day from Cailac appears to be a imsapprehensioi f th s e ee e ^Fortchungen im Gebiete der Votter Mittel-Asient. St Petersburg, 1824, pp. 90-93.