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| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
5. ACHBALUCH 9
be regretted that they should have caused hesitation in B1, 437. « Achbaluch » is the pure Turkish Aq-baliq, and means « White City » (baliq, bully, is not Mongolian in spite of Yl, II, 14, and Ch, II, 162, 163). YULE'S opinion about the names given by the Mongols to Imperial residences is devoid of significance (in spite of STRAHLENBERG ; cf. Y, u, 35) , but the same author uses a more solid argument when he remarks that the Mongol equivalent of Aq-balïq would be Gayàn-baiyasun, and that Raidu-'d-Din speaks of «Chaghan Balghasun which the Chinese call Jintsinfu». In favour of the equivalence of the last form to Chên-ting-fu (Chêng-ting-fu ), YULE quotes the
itinerary copied by Mir `IzzET ULLAH in 1812, which gives (JRAS, No. xiv [1847], 308) «Jig zing
fu », corrected by YULE to « Jingdzinfu ». This has to be abandoned. The itinerary of
1812 gives only modern forms, although the copy is very faulty, and we must almost certainly
read s Jingdingfu. But the text, or rather the texts, of Ragidu-'d-Din remain, and I can
quote four different passages, in Bl, u, 216 (where the form a. Jindin-fu of his two mss. has
been arbitrarily altered to Ling-din-fu by the editor), in Ragidu--'d-Din's «Life» of Chinghiz-
khan (Ber, III, 21, 29 ; Persian text, 33, 47, « Cayan-balyasun, which in the language of the
Chinese is called » ; the Chinese parallel texts of the campaign mention here
Chên-ting-fu), and finally in Ragid's unpublished « History of China », a manuscript translation of which I owe to the kindness of Dr. R. LEVY. We should expect Ding-din-fu or Jindin-fu in all passages of Ra"sid ; but Ragid, owing to different sources, has often two spellings, one more scientific, the other more popular. It is possible that the t- of ting, heard of course by the Mongols as a sonant, had received a spirant palatalization, somewhat analogous to the one which, out of Chin. JA 3- ting-tzû, «knob of official cap », has given to-day Jingzâ in Turks and in Mongolian.
Säh-Rûh's envoys passed in 1420 through)li which has been read « Sadinfur » and corrected
into «Sadinfu»; REINAUD and YULE (cf. Y, I, 278, 285) long ago proposed to see here also Chêngting-fu. The Sad often renders a palatal -, there is no vowel written in the first syllable, and I think the real reading is very probably J:° Sindin-fu = Chên-ting-fu.
In Bl, II, 448, 449, Ragidu-'d-Din mentions ).4 *Sämkä (?)- [or *gämkä-]bahadur in
connection with Cayän-baiyasun; Sämkä(?)-bahadur seems to be an epithet of Xc Shih
T'ien-tsê (BL0cHET's attempts to explain this last purely Chinese name through Mongolian and Manchu are futile), although I find no trace of it in Shih Tien-tsê's biography ( YS, 155, 4 b-7 a; T'u Chi, 78, 1-6). It is perfectly true that Shih Tien-tsê was early in command at Chên-ting, where he came back to die in the beginning of 1275 ; but Raid is mistaken when he gives at this point his account of the submission of Cayän-baiyasun under Mongka.
RAMUSIO , our only source here, writes « Achbaluch ». Now, Fra Mauro, in 1459, mentions
on his map a city «Hacbaluch» near a city «Zouza» (Zu, 36 ; HALLBERG, 224, 236, where «Gouza» is not the form actually given on the map ). « Hacbaluch » is certainly a wrong form of «Achbaiuch », and it cannot be an abbreviation for «Acbaiuc Mangi », since « Acbaluc Mangi » is also mentioned by Fra Mauro. But, if we note that « Zouza » is very near the abnormal forms « Gouza » and
Çonça ?» peculiar to R and Z respectively for « Giogiu », the inference may be drawn that Fra Mauro knew, among others, a manuscript of Polo very close to the one which gave to RAMUSIO his «Achbaiuch» and which is also represented, in an abridged form, by Z.
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