Chapter Princes and Paradise: Rabban Sauma in the Western Mediterranean

Overview & Synopsis

This chapter is an analysis of the China-Mediterranean connection of the Nestorian monk Rabban Sauma, the first known Chinese-born person to visit the European Mediterranean, in the History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sauma, a Syriac work of unknown authorship about the Ilkhanate composed early in the fourteenth century. Born an Önggüd Turk in Beijing sometime between 1220 and 1230, Sauma and his pupil Mark left Khubilai Khan’s China for the Holy Land around 1275. They settled in the Ilkhanate when war re-directed them there. Early in 1287, the Ilkhan Arghun, seeking an alliance with Latin Europe against Islamic states, dispatched Rabban Sauma on a mission to the Latin West as his envoy. An abridged and redacted Syriac translation of Sauma’s now lost Persian account of his visit to Latin Europe survives in the History, and Sauma’s influence on the anonymous author in the composition of the historical work was significant. This chapter suggests that the China-Mediterranean connection of Sauma’s story in the book is centered on the imagination of political power within the framework of his journey. The History is a mirror of princes that projects good governance and enlightened civilisation onto the Latin European other as a lesson for the Ilkhans. From the Mongol elite to princes of the Latin West, the book delineates Sauma’s journey as a series of encounters with princes. And this engagement and study of power is inextricably bound up with the notion of the journey as a process of undergoing trial and attaining visionary fulfillment in the Chinese Buddhist tradition of travel. The European Mediterranean marks Sauma’s vision of benevolent rule, order, and paradise beyond a border of ordeal and death. The History holds up this vision of the European Mediterranean as a mirror to the princes of the Ilkhanate, a land the anonymous author saw beset by strife.