Names and places inThe Journal of William of Rubruck
Who and where you hear about in William of Rubruck's account: 11 places, 14 people, 6 peoples and 3 terms, each with the name it goes by today, in the order the narration reaches them.
Places
Pontus
Black Sea
The Black Sea — the 'sea of Pontus,' which the Bulgarians called the Great Sea. Rubruck sailed across it from Constantinople to the Crimea to begin his land journey.
Gasaria
Crimea
The Latin name for the Crimean peninsula (from the Khazars who once held it), projecting into the Black Sea. Rubruck began his overland route across its base.
Soldaia
Sudak
A Crimean port (modern Sudak) facing Sinope across the Black Sea, where the merchants of Constantinople traded for the furs and slaves of the steppe. Rubruck landed here to start overland.
Tanais
Don
The river Don, which the medieval world took as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Rubruck crossed it among the camps of the Alans and Comans.
Greater Bulgaria
Volga Bulgaria
Volga Bulgaria, the Muslim Bulgar kingdom on the middle Volga (around modern Tatarstan) — the original homeland from which, Rubruck notes, the Bulgarians of the Danube had come. The Mongols had recently subjugated it.
Etilia
Volga
The Volga — 'the largest river I ever beheld' — which Rubruck calls by its old Turkic name Etil. Batu's people pastured along its lower course, and Rubruck crossed it on the way east.
Caspian
The Caspian Sea, which Rubruck correctly argues is a landlocked lake — contradicting Isidore and the geographers who made it a gulf of the northern ocean.
Kara-Kitay
Qara Khitai
The 'Black Cathay' — the Qara Khitai (Western Liao) of Central Asia, a Buddhist Khitan state overrun on the eve of Genghis' rise. Rubruck ties it to the Prester John legend through its khans.
Caracarum
KarakorumХархорум
Karakorum, the Mongol Empire's capital on the Orkhon in central Mongolia, where Rubruck wintered at Möngke's court. He describes its two quarters — one of Muslim traders, one of Cathayan craftsmen — and its mix of churches, mosques, and temples.
Cailac
Qayaliq
A market town in the Ili valley of Jetisu (in present-day southeastern Kazakhstan) where Rubruck halted for a fortnight. Here he first saw a Buddhist temple and described its monks and idols.
Kathay
Cathay (North China)In 1 other book ›
Cathay — northern China, then ruled by the Mongols. Rubruck reports its people as skilled craftsmen who write with a brush and pay in paper money, and rightly guesses they are the 'Seres' of the ancient silk trade.
People
Louis
King Louis IX of France (later canonised as Saint Louis), who was on crusade in the Holy Land when he sent Rubruck eastward. The whole journal is addressed to him as a long letter of report.
Sartach
SartaqСартах
Sartaq, son of Batu, whose reputation as a Christian convert was a chief reason Louis sent Rubruck to him. Rubruck found the rumour overstated — Sartaq kept Nestorian priests but made no open profession of faith.
Baatu
Batu KhanБат ханIn 1 other book ›
Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis and ruler of the Mongols' western wing — the realm on the Volga steppe that became the Golden Horde. Rubruck had to seek his leave before being sent on to the Great Khan; his camp was a moving city of felt tents.
Friar Bartholomew
Bartholomew of Cremona
Bartholomew of Cremona, the fellow Franciscan who travelled with Rubruck as his companion. Too weak to face the return journey, he stayed behind at Karakorum when Rubruck started home.
Mangu-khan
Möngke KhanМөнх хаанIn 1 other book ›
Möngke Khan, grandson of Genghis and the fourth Great Khan (reigned 1251–1259), who received Rubruck at Karakorum and staged the famous interfaith debate between Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists at his court.
Zagathai
A Mongol commander, a kinsman of Batu, who governed a district north of the Caucasus and helped pass the friars along the road. Not to be confused with Genghis' son Chagatai, whose name the spelling resembles.
Coiat
A Nestorian of great influence at the court of Sartaq, who handled the friars on their arrival and presented them and their books and vestments before the prince.
Prester John
The legendary Christian priest-king said to rule a vast realm in the East. Rubruck pours cold water on the tale — 'ten times more is reported than is true' — tracing it to garbled news of the Nestorian Kerait and Naiman khans of the steppe.
Vut-khan
Ong Khan (Toghrul)Ван хан
Ong Khan (Toghrul), the Kerait ruler beyond the Kara-Khitai mountains — the powerful Christian-leaning prince later remembered in Europe as 'Prester John.' Genghis first served and then overthrew him. Rubruck retells the tangled legend.
Friar Andrew
Andrew of Longjumeau
Andrew of Longjumeau, the Dominican who had led King Louis' earlier embassy to the Mongols. His mission's awkward outcome shadowed Rubruck's own reception.
Zingis
Genghis KhanЧингис хаанIn 7 other books ›
Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, whose grandsons Batu and Möngke ruled the lands Rubruck crossed. Rubruck records garbled tales of his rise from among the Tartar herdsmen.
William Bouchier
Guillaume Boucher
A goldsmith from Paris, taken captive at the sack of Belgrade and carried east, who worked for the Mongol court at Karakorum. He built the celebrated silver drinking-tree fountain — serpents pouring wine, mare's milk, and mead, an automaton angel trumpeting above — at the Great Khan's palace.
Theodolus
An impostor who passed himself off as a clerk named Raimund. He attached himself to an earlier French mission and intrigued his way across Asia with false claims of an embassy, until he was unmasked — a cautionary figure in Rubruck's tale.
Sergius
An Armenian monk who set himself up as a holy man at Möngke's court, claiming visions and cures. Rubruck, who saw through his theatrics, paints him as a vain charlatan whom 'all follow as flies do honey.'
Peoples
Tartar
ТатарIn 4 other books ›
The name Europeans gave the Mongol conquerors — partly from a subject tribe, the Tatars, and partly from a grim pun on Tartarus, the classical hell. Rubruck notes that the people call themselves not Tartars but Moal.
Saracens
MuslimsIn 1 other book ›
The medieval European term for Muslims (also rendered 'Mahometans'). Rubruck found them keeping the markets and trading quarters across the Mongol lands, from the Crimea to Karakorum.
Comani
CumansIn 1 other book ›
The Cumans (Kipchaks), the Turkic nomads who ranged the steppe between the Don and the Volga before the Mongol conquest. Their grass plain, Comania, gave Rubruck the first leg of his road; he describes their burial mounds along the way.
Moal
MongolsМонголIn 2 other books ›
Rubruck's spelling of 'Mongol' — the people's own name for themselves, as against the European 'Tartar.' One rich Moal, he writes, might own two hundred carts to carry his felt tents and chests.
Alani
Alans
The Alans, a Christian people of the north Caucasus (ancestors of the Ossetians) who held out against the Mongols in their mountains. Rubruck met Alan envoys at the Khan's court.
Jugurs
UyghursУйгур
The Uyghurs, a settled Turkic people of the oases whose alphabet the Mongols adopted to write their own language. Rubruck notes their script and their mix of Nestorian, Buddhist, and other faiths.
Terms
Cosmos
kumisайраг
Fermented mare's milk — the staple drink of the steppe, known today as kumis (Mongolian airag). Rubruck gives Europe its first close account of how it is churned and drunk, and of the stronger distilled 'black cosmos' kept for lords.
Nestorians
Eastern Christians of the Church of the East, held heretical in Rome for their teaching on Christ's two natures. Spread along the trade roads deep into Asia, they were the Christians Rubruck met at every Mongol court — though he judged them ignorant and lax.
Tuinians
Buddhists
Rubruck's name (from a word for their priests) for the Buddhists — the 'idolaters' whose temples, shaven monks, idols, and chanted prayer-formula ('On mani baccam') he was the first European to describe at first hand.
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