[254] I personally do not have the linguistic competence to attempt to read the inscription, and I have no access to the original paizi (which I believe is now in a museum in Inner Mongolia, near where it was found). R. Kauz, Aspects of the Maritime Silk Road: From the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea (Wiesbaden: Harrasso-witz, 2010), pp.87–88. Today, Han is used with the meaning ‘ethnic Chinese’, in distinction from the various ethnic minorities of China. Most extant weights and paizi do not have any Persian on them. 220 There were more groups of non-Muslim Semu ren than I have included in these counts. [73] A number of officials appointed to office in Zhending were Turkic. [19] This, then, is a clear example of Marco not following Persian practice. When the Jin soldiers saw these small crossbow bolts, they cried: ‘The Manzi are firing chopsticks at us!’[48] It seems likely that it became common for northerners from the Jin empire to refer, pejoratively, to southerners from the Song empire as Manzi. 141 A precise definition of ‘Persia’ still seems elusive today. Perhaps, if he did indeed learn at least some Chinese, he learned only the 'Phags-pa script for written Chinese. The pre-eminent status of the Uighurs was clearly stated by Qubilai Qa’an himself in 1270. [84] Indeed, the Yuan imperial family had marriage relations with Uighurs. It may be noted that there were a significant number of Uighurs in the Hexi region. It will only take a few minutes. Its precise importance must have varied over time, but, generally speaking, other languages were of higher status and more commonly used. Atlanta, GA 30332-0375, Georgia Institute of TechnologyNorth Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30332, M.S. The difference between Han ren and Nan ren was not based on geography, despite my translations, but on when the different groups had come under Mongol rule. He suggests that a substantial number of these people were moved eastwards by the Mongols to the region where Marco Polo came across the Argon, and that Marco heard ‘the name of the Mussulman Arγun settlers; but he knew also the Turkish word arγun used in the sense of half-breed, and applied it wrongly’. [70] For Marco to be able to make such a comparison would, of course, require him to have a good knowledge of Turkic. 283 Both Leslie, Islam, p.95, and Farquhar, Government of China, p.158n, took it to mean the Arabic script. I think that all versions of the letter issued by the Qa’an’s secretariat would have carried such a seal impression, without which they would have been regarded as of no validity. Canfield, Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective, p.9; on the boundaries of the Qarakhanid state at various times, see Kotchnev, ‘Les frontières du royaume des Karakhanides,’ pp.41–48. [158] The ambiguity of the word ‘Saracen’ is shown by what William of Rubruck says about the ‘Iron Gate’ (in the Caucasus), ‘which is on the route of all the Saracens coming from Persia and Turkey’. I've been studying English for 4 years.I think that besides memorizing new words and grammar, it's also very important to make native friends and to be genuinely interested in their cultures( so I will have the motivation to study in order to chat with you guys!). It would seem, then, that this entire region was clearly not Persian when William passed through it. Zhan Youliang 詹友諒) (Chengdu: Sichuan daxue chubanshe, 2003),Vol.1, p.41. [98] Marco also refers to the rebellious Chinese warlord, Li Tan 李璮, as ‘Liitan Sangon’. Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings. On the comparable, but earlier, Northern Song use of lu to refer to Khitans, see Tao Jing-shen, ‘Barbarians or Northerners: Northern Sung Images of the Khitans,’ in Rossabi, China Among Equals, p.72 (but note that some of Tao’s conclusions are invalidated by his failure to realise that texts in the Si ku quan shu 四庫全書 have been edited to remove pejorative references to Khitans and, especially, Jurchens, because of Manchu sensibilities). In reality, Marco Polo uses only a very few clearly Persian versions of Chinese place-names, and other Persian vocabulary. 98 There is a biography of Bayan in de Rachewiltz, et al. A recent article by Professor David Morgan has discussed this premise at some length, setting out what seems to be impressive evidence in its favour. An examination of this work shows that it provides very little support for the thesis that Persian was an important lingua franca in the Yuan empire. The bestiary was a popular genre of work in mediaeval Europe, especially during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 83 de Rachewiltz, ‘Turks in China under the Mongols,’ p.287; Golden, History of the Turkic Peoples, p.285; C.V. Findley, The Turks in World History (Oxford: University Press, 2005), p.87. 229 Liu Yingsheng, ‘A Lingua Franca,’ p.89n. Yet this is not the case. 131 John of Plano Carpini, ‘History of the Mongols,’ in The Mongol Mission, (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), p.59; original Latin text in Recueil de voyages et de m émoires , publiées par la Société de Géographie, Vol.4 (Paris: Arthus-Bertrand, 1839), p.750. Liu also claims that: He gives no evidence for these claims, which I consider to be overstated. This is not in any sense a Persian usage, however. [238] The Yuan emperor, after all, always claimed to be more than just the ruler of the Toluid Ulus in Mongolia and China. stream, http://multilingvanyelviskola.hu/; http://multilingva.hu/word-of-the-day/brook Qubilai replied: ‘This is Islamic law!’ and would not permit it.[308]. Coins of the Yuan empire often bear inscriptions in Mongolian written with the 'Phags-pa script, which occasionally appears on coins of other Qanates. Indeed, it has been suggested that the New Persian language developed at least partly under Turkic influence. This claim is based on poor evidence, all of which has been shown in this paper to be either invalid or, at best, of very dubious value. He suggests that the word-order is that of Chinese. 74 I. de Rachewiltz, ‘Turks in China Under the Mongols: A Preliminary Investigation of Turco-Mongol Relations in the 13th and 14th Centuries,’ in ed. They were not Mongols, of course: the Mongols were the highest-ranked group, the privileged conquerors, at the top of the social scale in the Mongol empire. In 1221, when Jin armies invaded the Song empire, the Song town of Qizhou 蘄州 (in modern Hubei province, just north of the Yangtze River) came under siege. Matthieu d’Édesse, Chronique, (962–1136) (Paris: Durand, 1858), p.306. Lacerating the face as a sign of mourning was very distinctively a Turkic custom. [43] It seems, however, that I have failed to convince Professor Morgan,[44] so I shall return to this question shortly. 3 The original Lingua Franca was a language used in the eastern and southern Mediterranean region as a medium of principally oral communication, from the time of the Crusades until the early twentieth century. Persian is a language that has its roots going all the way back to c. 3000 BCE. 123 On the Turkicisation of Central Asia, and the absorption by the Turks of other ethnic groups, who became Turkic speakers, see Golden, History of the Turkic Peoples, especially pp.152–53, on the Turks and trade; and pp.164–65, on the absorption by the Uighurs of eastern Iranians and Tokharians. He uses the Mongolian word, ‘Nangiyas’,[49] several times,[50] and a third expression, ‘Machin’. It appears that New Persian never penetrated far along the ‘Silk Road’. 2 P.B. The sources say that it was set up for the study and teaching of the ‘Istifi’ (Yisitifei 亦思替非, 伊斯提费) script. Chinese, Mandarin Language Partners - Online Language Exchange - Members Search Results Click on a name for more information or to contact the member. [322] More to the point, it is by no means the only Chinese source for the period. 271 Vardanyan, ‘Coins With the Inscription “Ulugh Mangyl Ulūs (Ulūsh) Bek”,’ pp.13, 19–20. [317] Various dialects of Turkic, most of them mutually intelligible, became the common language of a wide belt of country, from the Tarim Basin all the way to Anatolia and the northern shores of the Black Sea. [194] Many of his descendants also served the Mongols, for several generations. 143 de la Vaissière says that there was Sogdian ‘colonization’ of Semirechye, towards the Issyk Kul; see Sogdian Traders, pp.114–16. [121] Olschki also says, however, that, in the fourteenth century, ‘the Turkish dialect of the Comans … was, … together with Persian, the language spoken or understood throughout the Tartar empire from Persia to Cathay’. 267 This is the first paizi described in Hugejiletu Sarula, Basibazi Mengguyu wenxian huibian, pp.455–57. 11 P. Pelliot, ‘Kao-Tch’ang, Qoco, Houo-Tcheou et Qarâ-Khodja,’ Journal Asiatique, 10.19 (1912): 579–603, at p.592. 207 S.N.C. According to Fragner, while Persian became the principal language of administration in the Ilkhanate, the rulers of the Jochid Ulus ‘preferred Qipchaq Turki’. Indeed, the term Huihui is a variant of the Chinese transcription of the ethnonym ‘Uighur’. 116 On the failure to distinguish differences among Muslims, see M. Rossabi, ‘The Muslims in the Early Yuan Dynasty,’ in ed. Huang no doubt felt that he had dealt with the question, in one of his Chinese-language publications, discussing the inscriptions on weights. D.J. 294 Liu apparently took the character fu 复 to mean ‘again’, which is possible, but in this case it clearly means ‘in addition’; the National Institute was not re-established, but was established in addition to the National College. For Marco’s probable knowledge of Turkic, there is not only the evidence of a few place-names in China that are given in his book in their Turkic form, but also other Turkic vocabulary. Marco uses this name for the city only once, however, when it is first mentioned in his book. [27] A derivation from Chang’an is also unsatisfactory, however, as ‘Quen’ cannot readily be related to ‘Chang’. As has been seen above, the administration of the appanage of Qubilai Qa’an’s mother had been partly staffed by Turks. 32 E. de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p.22. 316 Golden, History of the Turkic Peoples, p.292. The Yuan shi records that ‘people from the Hexi 河西 region,[213] Muslims, Uighurs, and so on’, could hold offices up to the rank of darughachi (overseer, or imperial agent) of a Myriarchy (Wanhufu萬户府), in the same way as the Mongols, whereas Jurchens and Khitans were subject to the restrictions on holding high office that were imposed on the Han ren. [270] These coins were struck at mints in Transcaucasia and Iranian Azerbaijan, including Tabrīz, possibly at the behest of Baiju, the Mongol commander in that area.