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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
522 TRAVELS OF IBN BATUTA IN BENGAL, CHINA,
Borneo. The port of Tawalisi is called Kailvka in Lee's version, but no importance can be attached to this. (See Crawfurd's Diet. Ind. Islands, Articles, Soolo, Elephant, Kaili, Cowry; ditto Malay Diet. p. 72; Pauthier's Polo, p. 563).
We should not omit to call attention to a certain resemblance between the Tawâlisi of our author and the Thalamasin of Odoric.
NOTE H. (SEE PAGE 510.)
REGARDING THE HISTORY OF THE KHANS OF CHAGATAI.
In this passage Ibn Batuta appears to speak of Turkestan and Mawaralnahr as separate kingdoms. Whether he so intends or not it is the case that the CHAGATAI or Middle Empire of the Mongols was by this time divided ; and as I know no book that contains a coherent sketch of the course of events in that empire, I will here put together what I have gathered from such scattered sources as are accessible.
The tract assigned by Chinghiz, in the distribution of his provinces, to his son Chagatai, embraced Mawaralnahr and part of Khwarizm, the Uigur country, Kashgar, Badakhshan, Balkh, and the province of Ghazni to the banks of the Sindh;' or in modern geography, the kingdoms of Independent Tartary with the exception of Khiva or the greater part of it, the country under the Uzbeks of Kunduz, Afghanistan, and the western and northern portions of Chinese Turkestan, including Dsungaria. Bishbalik, north of the Thianshan, was at first the head quarters of the Khans, but it was afterwards transferred to Almalik.2
1 Defrémery's Extracts from Khondenir in Journal Asiatique, ser. iv, tom. xix, pp. 58 segq.
2 As early as the time of Chagatai himself, however, his summer camp was in the vicinity of Almalik. And when Hulagu was on the march from Karakorum to destroy the Assassins (A.D. 1254) the Princess Regent. Organah, widow of Kara Hulagu grandson and successor of Chagatai, came out from Almalik to receive him with due honour. Hence it would appear that Almalik was one at least of the capitals from a very early date. In the following century, about 1330-34, we find Ibn Batuta observing that it was the proper capital of the kings of this dynasty, and that one of the charges brought against the Khan Tarmashirin, which led to his supersession, was that he always remained in Mawaralnahr, and for four years running had not visited Almalik and the eastern dominions of his family. In the time of the immediate successors of Tarmashirin also, when Almalik was visited by the Archbishop Nicolas (about 1335-6), and by Marignolli (1341), it appears to have been the residence of the sovereigns of Chagatai (Quatremère's Rashid., p. 146 ; Ibn Bat., iii, 41; supra, pp. 172, 338).
It was during the government of the abovementioned Organah that Rubruquis passed through the country, and probably what he states of the region being called Organum originated in some misapprehension of this (see Rubr., p. 281).
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