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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

addition «where Alexander is said to have fought against Darius». But this also has a counterpart
if not in the usual text of Odoric, such as it is printed for instance by van den Wyngaert, at least
in the Italian Ms. of Florence, Bibl. Naz., sez. Palatina, No. 54 of Cordier's list (Y¹, ii, 60-61, 102,
338); it has many peculiar passages, the authority of which is not doubtful. There we read : «Then
I came to Persia, in the city which is called Taurisio, and on the way I passed the Red River (il fiume
Rosso), where Alexander routed Darius the King of Asia; and in that city we have two convents».
The Franciscans really had two convents in Tabrīz (cf. Golubovich, Bibl. Bio-bibl., ii, 265). The
Fiume Rosso, or Red River, is also mentioned by Pegolotti, and Yule was of opinion that it was
the Araxes (Arās > Rosso); but this is a certain error, and Cordier (Y¹, iii, 164) already remarked
that the river meant must be a tributary of the Araxes, the Qïzïl-čai (Turk., «Red Stream»), which
waters Ḫoi. There have been, and there are several Red Rivers in Persia, called Hula'an-murān
in Mongolian (cf. Quatremère, Hist. des Mongols, 96-97) or Surḫ-āb in Persian (cf. LS, 436, 439),
and there was even a quarter called Surḫ-āb either in Tabrīz itself or in its suburbs (cf. Le Strange,
Nuzhat-al-Qulūb, transl., 81-82). But, judging from Pergolotti's text, Cordier's identification
has much chance to be the correct one. Yet, in spite of the text, I very much doubt whether Odoric
located Darius's defeat at the Red River. The Italian Ms. of Florence is an uncouth piece of work;
and its statements, important as they are, cannot be taken at their face value. Odoric said that,
on the way to Tabrīz, he had crossed the Red River, but it must be at Tabrīz itself that he placed
the battle between Darius and Alexander. At any rate, Tabrīz is the place indicated by Fra Mauro,
whether his source be Odoric or not. This location must be connected, I think, with the mistaken
identification of Susa with Tabrīz. Although the decisive battle between Alexander and Darius had
been fought at Arbela in Mesopotamia, later Iranian tradition transferred it more to the south-east,
and Firdausī places it on the confines of Kermān. From the data in Odoric and Fra Mauro, it seems
that, perhaps on account of the popular Book of Esther, Susa had finally been adopted as being the
place of the encounter.

This also may explain why Polo places the battle in the north-eastern part of Ḫorāsān, and both
Odoric and Fra Mauro at Tabrīz; the location must be dependent on different locations of the Dry
Tree. It is true that Fra Mauro's map shows the Dry Tree in India, south of the Imaus; but this is
only because he was then drawing from another source than that to which he is indebted for his
notice on Tabrīz. Polo says that «people of the country» placed the battle at the Lone Tree or Dry
Tree, but that does not necessarily mean that he obtained that information on the spot; «people
of the country» may be the Christians in the Near East in general. Things look as though in Chris-
tian circles of the East, European as well as native (and Bar Hebraeus' mention of King John = Pres-
ter John betrays their reciprocal influence), the defeat of Darius had finally come to be located
at the Dry Tree, and the Dry Tree to be placed in the region of Susa. This would explain how some
should have discovered the Dry Tree at Tabrīz, because Tabrīz was identified with Susa, and Susa was
supposed to be the place of the battle between Darius and Alexander. As to Polo, all that he pro-
bably heard in the East was that Darius had been defeated at the Dry Tree. But he thought that the
Dry Tree was the same as the holy Oriental Plane of north-eastern Ḫorāsān of which he had made
his Lone Tree; and this is why he located in north-eastern Ḫorāsān the place where the Achaeme-
nid Empire met its end.