Pier Giorgio Borbone

This book tells a story of serendipity. Two Christian monks left China about 1274, headed to Jerusalem. Travelling on an itinerary similar to that Marco Polo had taken, they reached Iran, ruled by a Mongol dynasty, the Ilkhans. There, what they never had expected happened: one of them, Mark by name, was elected Patriarch of the Church of the East (with the name Yahballaha), while the other, Rabban Sauma, was sent as ambassador to the pope and the courts of France and England by the Mongol Ilkhan Arghun. From Rabban Sauma’s report of his embassy, and the two monk’s memories of their journey from China to Mesopotamia, an anonymous author compiled a biography of Sauma and Mark. He interspersed their report and memories with a narrative about "the occurrences of their time - what happened to them, through them or because of them, relating everything just as it happened”. The result was a chronicle entitled "History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sauma”, a rich and lively testimony of a time of unprecedented interconnectedness in the history of Eurasia at the epoch of the Mongol Empire.

Edited, translated, and annotated by Pier Giorgio Borbone

History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sauma

Mauro Tosco

Alessandro Mengozzi

From the table of contents: (73 contributions)E. Albrile, Il silenzio degli dei. Ermetismo, etnobotanica e altri mitiM. G. Amadasi Guzzo, Un'iscrizione fenicia da IbizaW. Arnold, Uber die Herstellung von Seide in Antiochien. Ein Text im arabischen Dialekt der Nus.ayrier von Yaqt.uA. Avanzini, To accompany a recently published Sabaic text: Historical and grammatical remarksS. Baldi, L'esperanto e la lingua hausaV. Barandovska-Frank, Internaciaj lingvoj en interretoF. Bellino, David Morkos frate della Custodia di Terra Santa e professore di arabo nella Torino dell'OttocentoJ. Blau, Some reflections on the disappearance of cases in ArabicP. Giorgio Borbone, L'autore della "Storia di Mar Yahballaha e di Rabban Sauma"R. Borghero, Some features of the North Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialect of AshithaA. Boucherit, De esperanto a espoir: remarques lexicalesE. Braida - S. Destefanis, L'alchermes: liquore cremisi o vermiglio? Divagazioni storico-etimologiche sull' origine di un coloreF. B. Chatonnet - A. Desreumaux - A. Binggeli, Un cas tres ancien de garshouni ? Quelques re. exions sur lemanuscrit BL Add. 14644V. Brugnatelli, Come si concludeva il poema di Aqhat

Pier Giorgio Borbone

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