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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
4
MARCO POLO B00ó I.
Having now told you about the Lesser Hermenia, we
shall next tell you about Turcomanla.
NOTE I.—The Petite I.Lerilzenie of the Middle Ages was quite distinct from the Armenia Minor of the ancient geographers, which name the latter applied to the western portion of Armenia, west of the Euphrates, and immediately north of
Cappadocia.
But when the old Armenian monarchy was broken up (1079-8o), Rupen, a kinsman of the Bagratid Kings, with many of his countrymen, took refuge in the Taurus. His first descendants ruled as barons, a title adopted apparently from the Crusaders, but still preserved in Armenia. Leon, the great-great-grandson of Rupen, was consecrated King under the supremacy of the Pope and the Western Empire in i 198. The kingdom
was at its zenith under Iletum or Hayton I., husband of Leon's daughter Isabel (1224-1269) ; he was, however, prudent enough to make an early submission to the Mongols, and remained ever staunch to them, which brought his territory constantly under the flail of Egypt. It included at one time all Cilicia, with many cities of Syria and the ancient Armenia Minor, of Isauria
and Cappadocia. The male line of Rupen becoming extinct in 1342, the kingdom passed' to John de I,usignan, of the royal house of Cyprus, and in 1375 it was put an end to by the Sultan of Egypt. Leon VI., the ex-king, into whose mouth Froissart puts some extraordinary geography, had a pension of ioo0l. a year granted him by our Richard II., and died at Paris in 1398.
The chief remaining vestige of this little monarchy is the continued existence of a Catlzolicos of part of the Armenian Church at Sis, which was the royal residence. Some Armenian communities still remain both in hills and plains ; and the former, the more independent and industrious, still speak a corrupt Armenian.
Polo's contemporary, Marino Sanuto, compares the kingdom of the Pope's faithful Armenians to one between the teeth of four fierce beasts, the Lion Tartar, the Panther Soldan, the Turkish Wolf, the Corsair Serpent.
(Dulaurier, in J. As. sér. V. tom. xvii. ; St. Martin, Arm. ; Mar. San. p. 32 ; Froissart, Bk. II. eh. xxii. segq. ; I an; Lois, V. en Cilicie, 1861, p. 19.)
NOTE 2.--` ` 1llaintes villes et maint chasteaux." This is a constantly recurring phrase, and I have generally translated it as here, believing clzasteaux (castelli) to be used in the frequent old Italian sense of a walled village or small walled town, or like the Eastern Kala', applied in Khorasan " to everything—town, village, or private residence—surrounded by a wall of earth." (Ferrier, p. 292 ; see also A. Conolly, I. p. 21 i.) Martini, in his Atlas Si,zensis, uses " Urbes, oppzda, castella," to indicate the three classes of Chinese administrative cities.
Coin of King Hetum and his Queen Isabel.
,r.
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NOTE 3.—` ` Enferme dztrenzent." So Marino Sanuto objects to Lesser Armenia as a place of debarkation for a crusade " quia terra est inyr;na." Langlois, speaking of the Cilician plain : " In this region once so fair, now covered with swamps and brambles, fever decimates a population which is yearly diminishing, has nothing to
oppose to the scourge but incurable apathy, and will end by disappearing altogether," etc. ( Voyage, p. 65.) Cilician Armenia retains its reputation for sport, and is much frequented by our naval officers for that object. Ayas is noted for the extraordinary abundance of turtles.
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