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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
ro
I\TRODÜCTION
of Scanderoon to the Amur and the Yellow Sea. The
The various vast empire which Chinghiz had conquered still owned ATl
sovereongoign- a nominally supreme head in the Great Kaan,* but
ties in Asia
and Eastern practically it was splitting up into several great monar-
Europe. chies under the descendants of the four sons of Chinghiz,
Juji, Chaghatai, Okkodai, and Tuli ; and wars on a vast scale
were already brewing between them. Hulaku, third son of
Tuli, and brother of two Great Kaans, Mangku and Kúblái, had
become practically independent as ruler of Persia, Babylonia,
Mesopotamia, and Armenia, though he and his sons, and his
sons' sons, continued to stamp the name of the Great Kaan
upon their coins, and to use the Chinese seals of state which he
bestowed upon them. The Sel j ukian Sultans of Iconium,
whose dominion bore the proud title of Rúm (Rome), were now
but the struggling bondsmen of the Ilkhans. The Armenian
* We endeavour to preserve throughout the book the distinction at was made in the age of the Mongol Empire between Khán and Kaán ~u~.ti and Uo jIj as
written by Arabic and Persian authors). The former may be rendered Lord, and was applied generally to Tartar chiefs whether sovereign or not ; it has since become in Persia, and especially in Afghanistan, a sort of " Esq.," and in India is now a common affix in the names of (Musulman) Hindustanis of all classes ; in Turkey alone it has been reserved for the Sultan. Kaán, again, appears to be a form of Khákán, the Xayávos of the Byzantine historians, and was the peculiar title of the supreme sovereign of the Mongols ; the Mongol princes of Persia, Chaghatai, etc., were entitled only to the former affix (Khán), though Kaán and Khakán are sometimes applied to them in adulation. Polo always writes Kaan as applied to the Great Khan, and does not, I think, use Khan in any form, styling the subordinate princes by their name only, as Aron, Alan, etc. 11kkan was a special title assumed by Huláku and his successors in Persia ; it is said to he compounded from a word Il, signifying tribe or nation. The relation between Khan and hhakán seems to be probably that the latter signifies "Khán of Kháns," Lord of Lords. Chinghiz, it is said, did not take the higher title ; it was first assumed by his son Okkodai. But there are doubts about this. (See Quatremère's Rashid, pp. io seqq., and Pavel de Courteille, Dict. Turk-Oriental.) The tendency of swelling titles is always to degenerate, and when the value of Khan had sunk, a new form, Khán-khánán, was devised at the Court of Delhi, and applied to one of the high officers of state.
[Mr. Rockhill writes (Rubruck, p. 108, note) : " The title Khan, though of very great antiquity, was only used by the Turks after A.D. 560, at which time the use of the word Khatun came in use for the wives of the Khan, who himself was termed Ilkhun. The older title of Shan pi did not, however, completely disappear among them, for Albiruni says that in his time the chief of the Ghuz Turks, or Turkomans, still bore the title of Jenzcyeh, which Sir Ilenry Rawlinson- (Proc. R. G. S., v. 15) takes to be the same word as that transcribed Shan yii by the Chinese (see Clz'ien Han slut, Bk. 94, and Chou shu, Bk. 50, 2). Although the word Klzakkan occurs in Menander's account of the embassy of Zemarchus, the earliest mention I have found of it in a Western writer is in the Chronicon of Albericus Trium Fontium, where (571), under the year 1239, he uses it in the form Cacanus. "—Cf. Terrien de Lacoupefie, Khan, Khakan, and other Tartar Titles. Lond., Dec. 1888.—H. C.]
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