dresses himself to them for aid and protection. The fourth is the office of the posts, and there the head of the news department has his seat.'
At the sixth .gate of the palace is stationed the king's body guard, with its chief commandant. The eunuchs are at the seventh gate. They have three platforms, the first of which is for the Abyssinians, the second for the Hindus, the third for the Chinese. Each of these three classes has a chief, who is a Chinese.
When we arrived at the capital Khanbalik, we found that the KA,n was absent, for he had gone forth to fight Firuz, the son of his uncle, who. had raised a revolt against him in the territory of KARAKORAM and BISHBALIGH, in Cathay.' To reach those places from the capital there is a distance to be passed of three months' march from the capital through a cultivated country. I was informed by the Sadr-ul-Jihdn, Burhânuddin of Sagharj, that when the KAn assembled his troops, and called the array of his forces together, there were with him one hundred divisions of horse, each composed of 10,000 men, the chief of whom was called Amir Titm1n or lord of ten thousand.3 Besides these the immediate followers of the sultan and his household furnished 50,000 more cavalry. The infantry consisted of 500,000 men. When the emperor had marched, most of the amirs
1 In the whole of this description, with its Persian technicalities, it is pretty clear that Ibn Batuta is drawing either on his imagination, or (more probably) on his recollections of the Court of Dehli, and hence we have the strongest ground for suspecting that he never entered the palace of Peking, if indeed he ever saw that city at all. In iii, 295, he has told us of an office at the Court of Dehli which bore the name of Mustakhraj, the business of which was to extort unpaid balances by bastinado and other tortures.
2 Karakoram, the chief place successively of the Khans of Kerait, and of the Mongol Kâns till Kublai established his residence in China. Bishbâlik (i.e. " Pentapolis") lay between Karakoram and A lm alik ; and had anciently been the chief seat of the Uigur nation. It is now, according to Klaproth, represented by Urumtsi.
3 Turnan. See supra, p. 117.
IIIFカラー高解像度
