Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/740

716 PR ESTER JOHN just quoted (which evidently alludes to the vaunting epistle of 1165) hardly leave room for doubt that the pope supposed himself to be addressing the (imaginary) author of that letter. To whom the reports of Philip the physician in reality referred is a point that will be discussed below. We do not know how far the imaginations about Prester John retained their vitality in 1221, forty- four years after the letter of Pope Alexander, for we know of no mention of Prester John in the interval. But in that year again a rumour came out of the East that a great Christian conqueror was taking the hated Moslems in reverse and sweeping away their power. Prophecies current among the Christians in Syria of the destruction of Mohammed s .sect after six centuries of duration added to the excitement attending these rumours. The name ascribed to the con queror was David, and some called him the son or the grandson of Prester John of India. He whose conquests and slaughters now revived the legend was in fact no Christian or King David but the famous Jenghiz Khan. The delusion was dissipated slowly, and even after the great Tartar invasion and devastation of eastern Europe its effects still influenced the mind of Christendom and caused popes and kings to send missions to the Tartar hordes with a lingering feeling that their khans, if not already Christians, were at least always on the verge of conversion. Before proceeding farther we must go back on the bishop of Gabala s story and elucidate it as far as we can. The most accomplished of modern geographical antiquaries, M. d Avezac, first showed to whom the story must apply. The only conqueror whose career suits in time and approxi mates in circumstances is the founder of Kara-Khitai, which existed as a great empire in Central Asia during the latter two-thirds of the 1 3th century. This personage was a prince of the Khit&i or Khitaian dynasty of Liao, which had reigned over northern China and the regions beyond the Wall during a great part of the 10th and llth centuries, and from which came the name Khitai (Cathay), by which China was once known in Europe and still is known in Russia. On the overthrow of the dynasty about 1 125 this prince, who is called by the Chinese Yeliu Tashi, and who had gone through a complete Chinese education, escaped westward with a body of followers. Being well received by the Uighurs and other tribes west of the desert, subjects of his family, he gathered an army and commenced a course of conquest which eventually extended over eastern and western Turkestan. He took the title of Gur Khan or Kor Khan, said to mean " universal " or " supreme " khan, and fixed at Balasaghun, north of the T ian Shan range, the capital of his empire, which became known as that of Kara-Khitai (Black Cathay). In 1141 the assistance of this Khitaian prince was invoked by the shah of Kharezm against Sanjar, the Seljuk sovereign of Persia, who had expelled the shah from his kingdom and killed his son. The Gur Khan came with a vast army of Turks, Khitaians, and others, and defeated Sanjar near Samarkand (September 1141) in a great battle, which the historian Ibn al-Athir calls the greatest and most san guinary defeat that Islam had ever undergone in those regions. Though the Gur Khan himself is not described as having extended his conquests into Persia, the shah of Kharezm followed up the victory by invading Khorasan and plundering the cities and treasuries of Sanjar. In this event the defeat of Sanjar, whose brother s son, Mas iid, reigned over western Persia occurring just four years before the story of the Eastern conqueror was told at Rome to Bishop Otto, we seem to have the destruction of the Samiardi fratres or Sanjar brothers, which was the germ of the story of Prester John. There is no evidence of any profession of Christianity on the part of the Gur Khan, though it is a fact that the daughter of the last of his race is recorded to have been a Christian. The hosts of the Gur Khan are called by Moslem historians Ai-Turk-al-Kuffdr, the kafir or infidel Turks ; and we know that in later days the use of this term " kafir " often led to misapprehensions, as when Vasco da Gama s people were led to take for Christians the Banyan traders on the African coast, and to describe as Christian sovereigns so many princes of the farther East of whom they heard at Calicut. Of the rest of the accretions to the story little can be said except that they are of the kind sure to have grown up in some shape when once the Christianity of the conqueror was assumed. We have said that Prester John was a phantom ; and we know out of what disproportionate elements phantoms are developed. How the name John arose is one of the obscure points. Oppert supposes the title "Gur Khan" to have been con founded with Yukhanan or Johannes ; and of course it is probable that even in the Levant the stories of "John the patriarch of the Indies," repeated in the early part of this article, may have already mingled with the rumours from the East. The obvious failure in the history of the Gur Khan to meet all points in the story of the bishop of Gabala led Professor Bruun of Odessa to bring forward another candidate for identity with the original Prester John, in the person of the Georgian prince John Orbelian, the "sbasalar," or generalissimo under several kings of Georgia in that age. Space forbids our stating all the ingenious arguments and coincidences Avith which Professor Bruun supported his theory. Among other arguments he does show some instances, in documents of the loth century, of the association of Prester John with the Caucasus. In one at least of these the title is applied to the king of Abassia, i.e., of the Abhasians of Caucasus. Some con fusion between Abash (Abyssinia) and Abhas seems to be possibly at the bottom of the imbroglio. An abstract of Professor Bruun s argument will be found in the 2d edition of Marco Polo, vol. ii. pp. 539-542. We may quote here the conclusion arrived at in winding up that abstract. "Professor Bruun s thesis seems to me more than fairly successful in paving the way for the introduction of a Caucasian Prester John ; the barriers are removed, the carpets are spread, the trumpets sound royally, but the conquering hero comes not. He does very nearly come. The almost royal power and splendour of the Orbelians at this time is on record . . . (see St Martin, . Mem. sur I Armenie, ii. 77) . . . Orpel Ivane, i.e., John Orbelian, Grand Sbasalar, was for years the pride of Georgia, and the hammer of the Turks. . . . But still we hear of no actual conflict with the chief princes of the Seljukian house, and of no event in his history so important as to account for his being made to play the part of Presbyter Johannes in the story of the Bisbop of Gabala." As regards any real foundation for the title of " Pres byter " we may observe that nothing worth mentioning has been alleged on behalf of any candidate. When the Mongol conquests threw Asia open to Frank travellers in the middle of the 13th century their minds were full of Prester John ; they sought in vain for an adequate representative, nor was it in the nature of things that they should not find some repre sentative. In fact they found several. Apparently no real tradi tion existed among the Eastern Christians of such a personage ; the myth had taken shape from the clouds of rumour as they rolled westward from Asia. But the persistent demand produced a supply ; and the honour of identification with Prester John, after hovering over one head and another, settled for a long time upon that of the king of the Nestorian tribe of Kerait, famous in the histories of Jenghiz under the name of Ung or Awang Khun. We may quote an illustration from geographical analogy: "Pre-Columbian maps of the Atlantic showed an island of Brazil, an island of Antillia, founded who knew on what? whether on the real adventure of a vessel driven in sight of the Azores or Bermudas, or on mere fancy and fogbank. But when discovery really came to be undertaken, men looked for such lands and found them accordingly. And there they are in our geographies, Brazil and the Antilles." 1 In Piano Carpini s (1248) single mention of Prester John as tlie king of the Christians of India the Greater, who defeats the Tartars by an elaborate stratagem, Oppert recognizes Jalaluddi n of Kharezm and his brief success over the Mongols in Afghanistan. In the Armenian prince Sempad s account (1248), on the other hand, this Christian king of India is aided by the Tartars to defeat and harass the Saracens, and becomes the vassal of the Mongols. In the nar rative of William Rubruquis (1253), though distinct reference is made to the conquering Gur Khan under the name of Coir Cham of

1 App. to Marco Polo, 2d ed., ii. 543.