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0355 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 355 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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158. CINGHIS   339

the other sons of Chinghiz-khan and of their descendants lay in other parts of the cemetery; they were in other regions, and that is what Raid really meant to say. The fact is well known, even in the case of Tului's lineage, for his son Hülägü and Hülägü's successors were all buried in Persia. Persian texts speak more than once of the « yorûq (or Oil)) of Sultâniya » or of the « gorûq of Aryùn », the latter one being the place where the ilkhan Aryun was buried (cf. Not. et Extr., XIV, I, 65). Plan Carpine knew of only two Mongol cemeteries (Wy, 44), one for the Emperors and the great leaders, to which they were carried, when possible, wherever they might have died, the other for the many (multi) Mongols who had been killed in Hungary. Plan Carpine, who did not go farther east than Qara-qorum, speaks of the Imperial tombs only from hearsay, and unduly extends the number and the quality of their occupants. But he passed by the cemetery of the princes killed in Hungary; he even entered its precincts unwittingly, and had a narrow escape from the keepers (clearly the Turk. gorugci, Mong. gorigci; Qorigci occurs as the name of an individual in BI, II, 331). RISCH (Johann de Plano Carpini, Leipzig, 1930, 86) expressed the opinion that the cemetery was probably in Hungary. This is certainly an error. Plan Carpine's journey, either way, did not take him to Hungary; moreover, his account implies that the cemetery was in the hands of the Mongols, and the Mongols has vacated Hungary long before 1245-1246. The cemetery must have lain somewhere between Kiev and the Volga. On the other hand, it is clear that the Mongols would bring back from Hungary to southern Russia only the bodies of their higher leaders, probably even only of the princes. I have no information on the tombs of the members of the branch of jöci, but they must have been buried in the basin of the Volga. The tombs of those of the Ca; atai branch are surely to be looked for in the region of the Ili and of both Turkestans, and Qaidu, a grandson of Ögödäi (see « Caidu ») was buried in the mountains between the Cu and the Ili (cf. BARTHOLD, 12 Vorlesungen, 186). According to Rasidu-'d-Din, Ögödäi's branch was not represented among the Chinghiz-khanids buried at the Yäkä-qoriq; this would exclude Ögödäi and Güyük and is in contradiction with the Chinese authorities, according to which both those Emperors, like Chinghiz-khan himself, were buried in the « Ch'i-lien Valley ». It is not clear, however, that Rasidu-'d-Din was entirely wrong. The ordo of a defunct Emperor used to be at no great distance from his tomb, and we know that after Güyük's death, his ordo remained in the region of the Emil (east of Lake Balkash) ; Rubrouck saw it there (Wy, 240). Moreover, the conditions which followed Güyük's death at the time of the regency of his widow, O; ul-gaimis, in the region of the Emil make it quite probable that the body of the defunct Emperor was carried from the valley of the Urungu to the Emil and not to north-eastern Mongolia. As to Qubilai and his line, they are in one case said by Raid to have been buried at the Yäkäqoriq, and in the two other texts above, as well as in another which will be dealt with farther on, the same historian seems to exclude them, or at least Qubilai himself, from the list. I shall revert to this point later.

In all the texts quoted above, Rasidu-'d-Din locates the Yäkä-qoriq at the « Bûrgan-galdûn ». The names is well known. It is the Burqan-qaldun of the Secret History (§§ 1, 5, 9, 89, 97, etc.), of the Altan tobci (GoMBOEV, 48-9 «Burgan-yaldun »; 120, misread «Burhan-galdan ») and of «Sanang Setsen » (SCHMIDT, 57, 59). «Burgin-gal-düt », in PALLAS'S translation of another late Mongol chronicle (Sammlungen historischen Nachrichter, 1, 21), is merely a faulty reading of the

22.