IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
582 194. CURMOS
BRETSCHNEIDER. It is the brief notice on e ; Yang Ch'u's embassy, which, in 1307, brought
back to g .6k f Hu-lu-mu-ssû, Hormuz, the mission sent by Ghazan to China nine years
before (see « Cagan »).
As long as the Ilkhans remained on the throne in Persia, it seems that Hormuz was considered in China as belonging to them, and no diplomatic intercourse took place. Even Chinese traders must have taken small notice of the place, since there is no paragraph on it in the Tao-i chih-lio, written in 1349-1350. Hormuz comes to the front in Chinese texts only in the first half of the 15th cent.; its first embassy arrived at the Court of the Ming in 1414 (cf. Br, II, 132-135; TP, 1933, 243, 431-440; 1934, 296, 308; add. WANG Ch'i's Hsü Wên-hsien t'ung-k'ao, 236, 13 b; and his Pai-shih hui-pien, quoted by T'u Chi, 160, 23 b). The wrong distinction
between a kingdom of 4l . jr Hu-lu-mo-ssû and a kingdom of V 41. -flj: , , Hu-lu-mu-ên,
due to a corruption of ru ssû into én, seems to occur first in the Ming i-t'ung chih of 1461, 90, 23, and was taken over by HUANG Hsing-tsêng in his Hsi-yang ch'ao-kung tien-lu, and by CHÊNG Hsiao in his Wu-hsüeh pien (68, 40 a) as well as in the independent edition of his Huang-Ming ssû-i k'ao (Kuo-hsiieh wên-k'u ed., 128); the author of the Huang-Ming hsiangksü lu (5, 22 a) felt doubtful about it, and it was dropped from the Ming shih (326, 5-6). An additional proof that no embassy from Hormuz came in 1405 is provided by the fact that, according to the Huang-Ming hsiang-hsü lu, this embassy brought an ostrich, and Yung-lo ordered Chin Yu-tzû to extoll the bird in an ode; now, this ode is given in the Shu-yü chou-tzü lu, 9, 7-8, and it is dated 1419.
The main interest of the Chinese texts is to establish that the king whose embassy, arriving in 1433, must have been sent in 1432, was Saifu-'d-Din. From `Abdu-'r-Razzaq, we know that the king reigning in 1442 was Fabru-'d-Din Tûrân-"sah. Both fall within a period for which TEIXEIRA'S translation of the Chronicle gives no information (cf. SINCLAIR, loc. cit., 188-189).
The king of Hormuz acknowledged Portuguese suzerainty in 1507, and Albuquerque finally conquered the island in 1515 (not « 1509 » as in Br, II, 132, nor « 1510 » as in Y, I, 121). With the help of a British naval force, Sah `Abbas took it from the Portuguese in 1622 (not « 1621 » as in EI), and removed the trade to the near place on the mainland which had been known as Gombroon and which was henceforth called Bändär `Abbàsi, « Port of [Sâh] 'Abbas » (cf. HobsonJobson2, s. v. « Gombroon »).
The name of Hormuz has long survived in the West as the designation of a textile : It. ormesino, ermesino, armesino, Port. armezim, French armoisin, armosin, Engl. armesie, armosyn, armozeen, ormesine. It was a light plain taffeta, generally black, of both western and eastern manufacture (cf. KARABAEK, in Mitteil. d. K. K. Oesterr., Mus. f. Kunst u. Ind., vii, [1879], 304-305; LOKOTSCH, No. 1596; GAY, Vocabulaire archéologique, I, 71; Hobson-Jobson2, s. v. « Ormesine »; DALGADO, Glossârio Luso-Asidtico, I, 57; LUDWIG, in Italien Forschungen, I [Berlin, 1906], 297, 372; BOXER, Jan companie, 184). The various forms of the word betray the influence first of the mediaeval transcriptions of « Hormuz », and later of the Portuguese transcriptions beginning with a-.
In the Introduction to the present notes, I have discussed the reasons which may have induced the Polos, once at Hormuz, to abandon their original scheme of reaching Qubilai's dominions by sea.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.