Chapter XII: Regional Geography (1)

We shall not attempt the thankless and impossible task of giving a complete conspectus of Western regional lore in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This chapter, like its predecessors, consists largely of illustrative examples.

_GENERAL CHARACTER OF REGIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE PERIOD_

GEOGRAPHY OF TRADITION AND GEOGRAPHY OF OBSERVATION

We explained in the Introduction that there were two kinds of geographical information available in the Middle Ages—information derived from earlier literature and information derived from contemporary tradition and observation. In the period we are studying, these were found among men of very different interests and activities, and hence they usually failed to blend. It is true that now and then in a work of erudition of the time we come across a report of some original observation made by the writer himself or learned by him from a contemporary; but these data were seldom really assimilated into the body of the text, seldom used as a check on the assertions of older authorities. They seem to float like drops of oil on the deep, or shallow, waters of authoritative learning. Conversely, in works recording contemporary events—histories, chronicles, letters—we often come across facts and theories that were taken from older books; but these were infrequently subjected to critical examination in the light of contemporary knowledge. On the contrary, they were usually treated with indulgence or respect merely because they were old, even when observed phenomena seemed to prove them false.

In the present as in the foregoing parts of this book the attempt is made to distinguish between these two distinct types of geographical lore. For many regions the geographical ideas are indicated that were derived from Pliny, Solinus, Isidore, Bede, and other encyclopedists and that found expression in treatises like the _De imagine mundi_, the _Otia imperialia_, and the _Image du monde_. In contrast to these there is set forth the kind of information that was being gathered by contemporary eyewitnesses.

GRADATIONS OF ACCURACY OF KNOWLEDGE

Maps are sometimes drawn at the present day to show the state of progress of geographical knowledge. Upon these by various tints or shadings are indicated tracts that are accurately surveyed, partially surveyed, known only through route traverses, known only through reports from natives, or totally unknown. No such map could be constructed to show the character of regional knowledge in the Middle Ages, because our sources of information are not sufficiently complete and because the knowledge both actually and potentially available varied from country to country, from community to community, even from individual to individual. The printing press and facility of communication between the peoples of the world has rendered scientific knowledge or, at any rate, the possibility of obtaining scientific knowledge the common property of all modern civilizations. An Australian student, for instance, if he is willing to take the time and trouble, can learn through research virtually all that is known to Danish or Icelandic scholars about the geography of Greenland. In the Middle Ages, on the contrary, we may feel certain that the Danes and Norwegians had at hand much detailed information on Greenland and the Arctic shores of Europe that the Italian had no means whatever of obtaining. Correspondingly, the Italian trader of Genoa or Venice unquestionably knew a great deal about remote parts of Asia and North Africa that could never reach the ears of an author of a _De imagine mundi_ or of a Lambert of St. Omer, writing in quiet cloisters of France or Belgium.

Yet if, for these reasons, we cannot show on a map the gradations in the character and accuracy of Western geographical knowledge in the age of the Crusades, such gradations nevertheless existed. From the point of view of Western Europe as a whole they might be grouped in a broad way as follows. First there were the well-known regions about which knowledge was derived and kept fresh through active commercial, diplomatic, ecclesiastical, military, and scholarly enterprise. These regions may be said to have included most of Europe west of the Elbe and Hungary. They also included the overland routes to Constantinople, the shores of the Mediterranean, and the Holy Land. From the point of view of the Scandinavian peoples, who were great travelers, they took in not only the foregoing regions but also the Baltic coasts, southern Norway and Sweden, and Iceland. Beyond the bounds of the well-known areas lay a second group of areas about which a fair amount of reasonably trustworthy information was at hand, derived from one of three sources: (1) reports of occasional travelers; (2) more or less reliable hearsay; (3) classical descriptions drawn from literary sources. Much of Western Asia and North Africa fell within this category and, for the Scandinavians, Greenland. Beyond lay the third group of regions known only through the vaguest of rumors—the domains of fabulous monsters and legendary men. To some writers India was such a land, to others Russia and northern Scandinavia, to still others the legendary isles that lay concealed in the Western Ocean. Finally, beyond them came those regions lying without the known world, about which the men of the Middle Ages themselves would have acknowledged that they knew nothing: the austral continent, the countries of the antipodeans, _antoikoi_, _antichthones_, which have been discussed in an earlier chapter. No boundaries could be drawn setting off these various tracts from one another; the well-known shaded off imperceptibly into the less well-known, and the vaguely known merged into fairyland; within each well-known tract were islands of doubt and mystery, and fabulous stories were told of even the most commonplace features of the landscape.

_THE “OIKOUMENE” AS A WHOLE_

Before turning to the various regions of the known world—the _oikoumene_, as the Greeks called it; the _orbis terrarum_ or _habitatio_ of the Romans—something must be said concerning theories about the _oikoumene_ as a whole, about its center, and about Paradise and the four rivers of Paradise. It was usually supposed that the _oikoumene_ itself occupies a relatively restricted part of the surface of the globe. The words of Seneca to the effect that there is only a short distance from Spain to India imply that the known world must stretch out over much more than a half of the circumference of the sphere.[1175] Though these words were often read in our period, scant attention was paid either to them or to the Arabic interpretation of Aristotle’s similar theory until a later date. Roger Bacon’s specific explanation that the _habitatio_ extends around much more than half the earth’s circumference represents an opinion that was exceptional.[1176] The majority of the thinkers of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries who speculated on the subject at all were probably under the spell of the theory fostered by Macrobius, which made our habitable portion of the earth one of four similar regions separated from each other by two oceans.[1177] This undoubtedly was the view most widely accepted, but in addition the idea was perhaps already being propounded early in the twelfth century that the lands of the known world form merely a small portion of the surface of the terrestrial sphere emerging above the surface of a larger, enveloping sphere of water.[1178]

THE “OIKOUMENE” DIVIDED INTO THREE PARTS

The writers of the Crusading age were unanimous in dividing the _oikoumene_ itself into three parts, Asia, Libya (or Africa), and Europe. Bernard Sylvester said: “In two parts the ether, and likewise in two parts the air, but in three parts you are to understand that the land is divided,”[1179] almost as if a tripartite division of the lands were in accord with a law of nature. This division was inevitable in view of what was known of the arrangement of lands and seas. Orosius,[1180] however, had spoken of certain writers who would split the known world in two, making Africa a part of Europe “because of its small size” and making Asia as large as Africa and Europe together. Those who had preferred to conceive of Africa as a separate continent, he had said, did so not on account of its size but because it is cut off from Europe by an arm of the sea. These words of Orosius were quoted by Otto of Freising[1181] and by Gervase of Tilbury.[1182] The theory that Asia is equal in size to Europe and Africa put together is reproduced by the author of the _De situ terrarum_,[1183] and upon it was based that symmetrical division of the world’s surface which we find depicted on the so-called T-O maps of the early Middle Ages.[1184]

Isidore of Seville drew largely from Orosius in writing his chapters on geography. Theoretically he accepted the tripartite division,[1185] but in his actual treatment of the countries of the world he appended a discussion of islands to his discussion of the continents. In this he was followed by the author of the _De imagine mundi_ and by many other writers of the time,[1186] all of whom declared that the earth’s surface is divided in three, but added chapters on the islands after their descriptions of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

_THE CENTER OF THE “OIKOUMENE”_

JERUSALEM AS THE CENTER

During the Middle Ages the idea that Jerusalem is at the center of the _oikoumene_ seems gradually to have gained ground. Arculf, a bishop of an unknown see in Gaul and pilgrim to the Holy Land, so described it as early as the close of the seventh century;[1187] but the tradition does not appear to have become established in the cartography of the West until the twelfth or even the thirteenth century.[1188] To place Jerusalem at the center was to recognize the preëminence given that city in Scripture, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament.[1189] It is natural for primitive peoples to think that the most holy of all places occupies a central position:[1190] the Greeks believed that either Delphi or Olympus was the navel of the earth;[1191] the Scandinavians thought the same was true of Asgard; the Hindus, of Mount Meru; the Babylonians, of Nippur.[1192] Gervase of Tilbury argues in a confused, semi-theological manner on the position of Jerusalem:[1193] Augustus, he believed, had thought that Judea was the heart of the earth because that Emperor had begun a survey of the provinces of the empire there; in addition, from texts of the Bible Gervase attempted to demonstrate that Jerusalem is halfway between the North and the South, that by “antithesis” it must be halfway between the East and the West, and consequently must be at the center of the known world.

THE EXACT POSITION OF THE EARTH’S CENTER

There seems to have existed in the minds of writers some confusion as to the exact spot that marks the navel of the earth. A map of the year 1110 identifies it with Mount Zion.[1194] The pilgrim Saewulf, who was in the Holy Land in 1102 and 1103, says:[1195] “At the head of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the wall outside, not far from the place called Calvary, is the place called Compas, which our Lord Jesus Christ himself signified and measured with his own hand as the middle of the world, according to the words of the Psalmist, ‘For God is my king of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.’ But some say that this is the place where our Lord Jesus Christ first appeared to Mary Magdalene, while she sought him weeping and thought he had been a gardener, as is related in the Gospels” (Thomas Wright’s translation).[1196]

In certain astronomical notes of the early twelfth century an anonymous writer (possibly Adelard of Bath) asserts that Mount “Amor reorum” is the center of the earth and that he proved this to be the case by experiment.[1197] It would seem that upon this mountain (possibly Mount Moriah) he hung a log, twelve cubits long by three in diameter, suspending it vertically in the air by means of a rope, and that at the time of the summer solstice he observed that the shadow of the log was directly beneath and circular in shape. This, he asserted, showed that Mount “Amor reorum” was the center of the earth. To clinch the veracity of his observation, he added that he had not been drinking wine and that his eyes were not satiated with sleep. Although the sun is not directly overhead at the summer solstice in Palestine, the same idea reappears in the _Otia imperialia_ of Gervase of Tilbury.[1198] Gervase seems to favor, as the center of the earth, the well where Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman.[1199] He adds that this well has the characteristic that philosophers attribute to wells on the Tropic of Cancer at Syene in Africa, that is to say, that the sun shines directly into it at the summer solstice every year.

_THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE_

PARADISE IN THE EAST

Most medieval maps include in the eastern part of the world a picture of the Terrestrial Paradise,[1200] surrounded by a high wall or mountain range and containing within it figures of Adam and Eve and the serpent[1201] (see above, Fig. 2, p. 69). “The first place in the East is Paradise, a garden famous for its delights, where man can never go, for a fiery wall surrounds it and reaches to the sky. Here is the tree of life which gives immortality, here the fountain which divides into four streams that go forth and water the world.”[1202] “Around Paradise extends a savage, trackless waste, infested with wild beasts and serpents.”[1203]

This was the orthodox medieval view, to be found in Peter Abelard’s commentary on the Works of the Six Days,[1204] in the _De situ terrarum_,[1205] and in the _Image du monde_.[1206] Gervase of Tilbury copies it word for word from the _De imagine mundi_[1207] but gives additional details in another connection,[1208]where he tells us that Paradise was the seat of the first of the four universal monarchies, that of Adam; that it was so called because of its delights, for “delight” is the meaning of the word “Eden,” and that the Garden makes a spot of marvelous deliciousness, separated from our inhabited earth by a long tract of land and sea and elevated so high that it reaches the sphere of the moon, so high that the waters of the Deluge failed to disturb it.[1209] Peter Lombard explained why it is thought that Paradise is in the East:[1210] Scripture, he said, teaches us that God made man outside of Paradise and placed him ready-fashioned in the Garden of Delights which had been planted by the divine power at the beginning of time (_a principio_). In an old translation, Peter explained, instead of this phrase, _a principio_, the words _ad Orientem_ were given, and consequently the earlier translator would have had us believe that Paradise was to be found in the eastern parts of the earth. Peter added that a long stretch of land and sea cut Paradise off from the regions inhabited by men and that it was situated on a height touching the circle of the moon’s orbit, whence it came about that the waters of the Deluge could not penetrate thither.

It was generally agreed that Paradise is in Asia,[1211] although this was not a universal belief. Hermann the Dalmatian in 1143 asserted that there was “no mean opinion” that Paradise lies beyond “Amphitrites,” the ocean which encircles the earth from north to south, and that indications of its presence had been found both to eastward and to westward.[1212] Gervase said that it could be forcibly argued that the Garden lies beyond the Torrid Zone and is inaccessible to man, though he did not commit himself either for or against this theory.[1213] Robert Grosseteste speaks of theologians who would place Paradise under the equator.[1214] Otto of Freising’s words[1215] also seem to imply indirectly that the Garden is not in Asia, for Otto tells us that Alexander the Great conquered the entire Orient from Scythia to the ends of the earth. The same idea may be gathered from the _De situ terrarum_,[1216] which places the Seres and not Paradise in the farthest East, and also from the cycle of romances of Alexander, which relate how the Macedonian hero conquered all those Oriental regions where Paradise was usually supposed to be. The _mappaemundi_ of Henry of Mayence[1217] and of Lambert of St. Omer[1218] place Paradise on an island beyond the easternmost limits of the habitable world; but St. Brandan found the Saint’s Land of Promise (probably no other than Paradise) far out in the Western Ocean.[1219] As a matter of fact there was no uniformity of opinion regarding the geographical position of the Happy Land: St. Augustine, whose works were read during our period, had even gone so far as to state that Paradise had no real existence at all but was merely an allegorical conception.[1220] A child is not worried about the latitude and longitude of fairyland, and the average man of the Middle Ages was just as little worried about the exact whereabouts of the Garden of Eden.

Nevertheless, in one version of the Romance of Alexander a logical outcome of the conqueror’s travels in the Far East was recognized. In the _Iter ad Paradisum_[1221] Alexander is actually brought to the gates of Paradise. When he had subjugated India he came to a broad river which he understood to be the Ganges; embarking with five hundred men on a ship that happened to be at hand, he arrived at the end of a month before an immense city surrounded by a wall on all sides. Here, after various adventures, he learned from a Jew that this city was the place where the souls of the just were sojourning until the Last Judgment or, in other words, that it was the Terrestrial Paradise.

JOURNEYS TO PARADISE

The _Iter ad Paradisum_ and the various versions of the legend of St. Brandan’s voyage are examples of a type of story very common in the Middle Ages, the story of actual journeys to Paradise by mortal men.[1222] Among these we should include the account of the visit there of Adam’s son, Seth, who brought back seeds from the tree of knowledge which were planted in Adam’s mouth after the latter’s death; the seeds ultimately sprouted into a great tree, the wood of which was used to make Christ’s cross.[1223] Tales were told of the sojourns of pious monks in Paradise and of how on their return to the homes of men they found that what had seemed only three days in the Garden of Delights was in reality a period of three hundred years. Godfrey of Viterbo in his _Pantheon_[1224] relates a tale of a hundred brothers who, like St. Brandan, made widespread explorations in the ocean before coming to Paradise, a golden mountain redolent with wonderful odors and adorned with an image of the Virgin and Child. Another story, dating from an earlier time but undoubtedly well known during our period, was that of the fabulous St. Macarius.[1225] Three brothers from a convent between the Tigris and Euphrates set out to find the place where “the earth joins the sky.” After crossing Persia they entered India—a land of wonders, of cynocephali and of pygmies, of serpents and of darkness. Here they came upon the altars set up by Alexander the Great to mark the limits of his wanderings,[1226] and beyond them reached miraculous countries filled with giants and birds that talked. At last, about twenty miles from the Terrestrial Paradise, they found Macarius, a man of hoary age, dwelling in a cave on friendly terms with two lions. Macarius told them a romantic story, in the course of which he described the wonders of Paradise but, alas, emphasized the fact that this long-sought-for garden was absolutely inaccessible to human beings.

THE RIVERS OF PARADISE

The account of the four rivers of Paradise, like other passages in Scripture, was interpreted both allegorically and literally. In the religious art of our period these streams were often depicted in stone, glass, or miniature as symbolizing the four evangelists spreading the gospel throughout the world.[1227] Neckam, after mentioning Paradise and the rivers, goes on to explain that, just as the world is watered by the four streams, so “by the gift of the Holy Ghost the garden of the Holy Church is irrigated by the four virtues, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence.”[1228] Literal interpretation of the passage, on the other hand, would present difficulties to the modern hydrographer, but these difficulties were easily overcome in the Middle Ages by appeal to the familiar theory of subterranean watercourses.[1229]

The author of the _De imagine mundi_,[1230] copying from Isidore,[1231] makes the four rivers disappear into the ground, whence they spring forth in lands far distant; and some of the maps of our period represent all four rivers as rising from a central source within the Garden and vanishing into the earth at its walls or not far beyond. The Psalter map,[1232] on the other hand, shows no less than five rivers issuing from an aperture leading out of Paradise and spreading out like a fan over the interior of Asia. Abelard[1233] explains carefully that if we interpret the Bible correctly there can be but one river within Paradise, that this divides into four outside of the Garden, and that the names given to each of the four are applied to those parts only “which flow from their sources to the sea.” We may assume that he refers here to the portions of the rivers between points where they issue from their subterranean passages and their mouths. Some writers would seem to imply, Abelard continues, that we cannot take literally the words of the Bible because the sources of some of the four streams are known and those of others are not. But, he asks, may not those streams, whose sources are supposedly known, in reality arise elsewhere far away and pass through numerous countries before issuing forth to the knowledge of mankind? There is no question but that this is the case with many streams, as is shown, he adds, by the statement in Boethius’ _De consolatione philosophiae_ (a famous work of the sixth century much read throughout the Middle Ages) that “the Tigris and the Euphrates spring from one source.”

One version of the legend of Prester John informs us that the four rivers of Paradise all arise in a spring in the mountains of India and water the two Indias.[1234] Like most rivers of Prester John’s realm, they give forth quantities of gold and precious stones at regular intervals three times a year.

Discussion of the individual characteristics of each of the four rivers falls more logically with the treatment of the ideas concerning the countries through which they flow and will be reserved until later. In most of the geographical works of our period, however, the rivers receive special consideration immediately after the remarks on Paradise and before the description of the regions of Asia. Their unusual origin and character, as described in Scripture, entitled them to particular distinction: they were holy streams to Jew and Christian alike. It is, then, a peculiarly eloquent commentary on the paganism of Bernard Sylvester to find that he mentions and describes the Euphrates, Tigris, and Nile in his _De mundi universitate_[1235] without referring to Paradise in connection with any of these three streams. To his thinking they would seem to have occupied no higher or holier place among streams than Tiber, Rhone, or Seine.

_ASIA_

There are no more absorbing chapters in the history of geography than those connected with the growth of European knowledge of Asia in antiquity and during the Middle Ages [1236] and with its converse, the growth of Oriental knowledge of the Occident.[1237] Of late years the historical and archeological investigations of Albert von Le Coq, Sir Aurel Stein, Edouard Chavannes, Paul Pelliot, and Albert Herrmann have thrown a flood of light on the connections that existed in the earlier medieval period between eastern and western Asia. While these early connections may have brought some vague information regarding the Far East to the Byzantine world, they probably exerted almost no influence upon the conceptions of Asia prevalent in Western Europe before the middle of the thirteenth century.

THE OPENING OF ASIA IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

Relations between the Far East and Far West, however, were profoundly modified by certain events that took place during the first half of the thirteenth century. As a result of these events, Farther Asia for the first time in history was opened to Occidental travelers. Beginning with the year 1245 no inconsiderable number of European missionaries and traders made their way overland through the hitherto unknown heart of the continent and penetrated to the mysterious region of Cathay (China) at the ultimate point of the world. For somewhat more than a century the veil of the Extreme Orient was drawn aside, but drawn aside only again to be closed when the disruption of the Mongol empires and the rise of the Ottoman Turks barred the overland routes. It remained for Portuguese and Spanish seafarers of the great age of maritime exploration to rediscover the Far East. The history of the earlier relations of eastern and western Asia and of the opening of that continent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, falls outside our province and cannot be discussed in detail in the present volume. A few words, nevertheless, must be said on this subject in order that the traditional geographical lore of Asia in our period may be seen in its proper perspective.

THE MONGOL CONQUESTS

The events that led to the overland journeys sprang from the establishment of what was probably the most extensive military empire the world has ever known.[1238] Toward the end of the twelfth century, Temujin, chief of a small tribe dwelling near the headwaters of the Amur, consolidated his dominion over the neighboring Mongol peoples of the steppes north and northwest of China. Proclaimed “Chinkkis Khan” (Jenghiz Khan), or “Inflexible Emperor,” in 1206, he soon conquered northern China and turned his hordes to the west; Turkestan was subjugated, Persia was invaded, and in 1222–1224 a detachment overran southern Russia in the course of a great whirlwind raid that completely encircled the Caspian Sea. Jenghiz Khan died in 1227, but under his successors the wave of conquest swept still farther westward. Toward the close of the thirties the steppes of Russia were again overwhelmed, in 1240 Poland was devastated, and the Christian army of Henry of Silesia was defeated in 1241 at Liegnitz, near Breslau. Meanwhile another Mongol army was ravaging Hungary and had even driven the king of that country to seek refuge in an island off the Dalmatian coast. Relief to the stricken people of Central Europe came, however, in 1243 when news of the death of the Great Khan caused the invaders to withdraw to the plains of Russia, there to maintain their hold for many centuries to come.

These visitations of the Tatars, as the Mongols were called, took Europe unaware. “Barely a rumour” of the invasion of Russia in 1222 had “reached western Europe,” writes Rockhill,[1239] “and contemporary writers have left us but few brief references to it.” The first full description of the Tatars is given in Matthew Paris’ _Chronica maiora_[1240] for the date 1240, the following extracts of which, as translated by Rockhill, are worth quoting: “That the joys of mortal men be not enduring, nor worldly happiness long lasting without lamentations, in this same year (i.e. 1240) a detestable nation of Satan, to wit, the countless army of the Tartars, broke loose from its mountain-environed home, and piercing the solid rocks (of the Caucasus), poured forth like devils from the Tartarus, so that they are rightly called Tartari or Tartarians. Swarming like locusts over the face of the earth, they have brought terrible devastation to the eastern parts (of Europe), laying it waste with fire and carnage.... They are inhuman and beastly, rather monsters than men, thirsting for and drinking blood, tearing and devouring the flesh of dogs and men, dressed in ox-hides, armed with plates of iron, short and stout, thickset, strong, invincible, indefatigable, their backs unprotected, their breasts covered with armour.... They are without human laws, know no comforts, are more ferocious than lions or bears, have boats made of ox-hides, which ten or twelve of them own in common: they are able to swim or to manage a boat, so that they can cross the largest and swiftest rivers without let or hindrance, drinking turbid or muddy water when blood fails them (as beverage).... They know no other language than their own, which no one else knows; for until now there has been no access to them, nor did they go forth (from their own country); ... They wander about with their flocks and their wives, who are taught to fight like men.... It is believed that these Tartars, of cursed memory, are of the ten tribes who, having forsaken the Mosaic law, followed after the golden calves, and whom Alexander the Macedonian endeavoured at first to shut up in the rugged mountains of the Caspians with bitumen-covered rocks.[1241] When he saw that the undertaking exceeded the power of man, he invoked the might of the God of Israel, and the tops of the mountains came together, and an inaccessible and impassable place was made.... It is written in sacred history that they shall come out toward the end of the world, and shall make a great slaughter of men. There arises, however, a doubt whether the Tartars now coming from there be really they, for they do not use the Hebrew tongue, neither do they know the laws of Moses, nor have they laws, nor are they governed by them....”

Despite the impression of extreme ferocity reflected in this passage, after the warlike ardor of conquest had somewhat subsided, the Mongols showed themselves not intolerant in their attitude toward strangers and not unreceptive of foreign influence. The immediate result of their withdrawal from Hungary to Russia and the consequent removal of the direct menace to Central Europe was the dispatch of Christian ecclesiastics as ambassadors to the Mongol lords. Rumors had come to Europe that these nomads from the Far East were monotheists, and hope sprang up that they might be converted to Roman Catholic Christianity and used to offset the reviving Moslem power menacing the Christian states of the Holy Land.[1242] The origin of the rumors which gave rise to this elusive hope is to be sought in the fact that the Nestorian form of Christianity had been firmly established among some of the Mongol tribes north of the Great Wall of China and was represented even in their ruling dynasty. Furthermore, these rumors seemed to confirm and be confirmed by the reports that had been in circulation since the twelfth century of the existence of a great Christian kingdom of Prester John in the remote interior of Asia.[1243]

THIRTEENTH-CENTURY JOURNEYS

The journeys of the diplomatic missions sent out by Pope Innocent IV and by Louis IX, King of France, in 1245 and the years immediately following have often been described.[1244] The Pope’s envoy, John of Pian de Carpine,[1245] and Louis’ representative, William of Rubruck,[1246] reached the Mongol capital at Karakorum, near Lake Baikal, and on their return wrote graphic narratives of their journeys, which have been preserved and which give full account of the Tatars and their customs. Many of the observations made by John of Pian de Carpine and by Simon of St. Quentin (who took part in an expedition under Friar Ascelin, or Anselm, sent by the Pope to a Mongol ruler in Persia in 1247) are included in the _Speculum historiale_ of Vincent of Beauvais.[1247] The geographical information acquired by Rubruck, although it was ignored by other writers of the period, found its way to Roger Bacon, who incorporated much of it in the _Opus majus_.[1248]

The way shown by Pian de Carpine and Rubruck was soon followed by Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, whose incentive was commercial, and by their far more famous son and nephew, Marco.[1249] Marco Polo’s amazing wanderings were succeeded by the journeys of others, among them the wonderful missionary enterprises of John of Monte Corvino, Riccold of Monte Croce, and Orderic of Pordenone. The story of these and other travels of the period,[1250] fascinatingly told in the third volume of Beazley’s _Dawn of Modern Geography_, falls far beyond the limits of our subject. Suffice it to remark, however, that the wanderings of the adventurous traders and friars were generally forgotten in the West during the centuries that followed and were largely ignored, even in the literature of the time itself. Marco Polo was branded as an impostor, and the traditional lore of eastern Asia that had come down from the days of the Roman Empire, together with its accretions of legend and romance, was held to be more worthy of credence than the observations of eyewitnesses. We must now turn to this traditional lore as expressed in the writings of the time of the Crusades.

THE GREAT MOUNTAIN SYSTEM OF ASIA

Asia, the author of the _De imagine mundi_[1251] tells us, quoting from Isidore,[1252] derived its name from a queen of that name.

The great system of mountains which runs eastward through the heart of the continent—the Caucasus, the ranges of northern Persia, the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas—was well known to the Greek geographers, and the men of our time had acquired some hazy notions about it through reading Orosius and Isidore.[1253] Gervase of Tilbury,[1254] copying Orosius,[1255] tells how the Caucasus, joined by the “Imabus” (Imaus), divides India from Scythia and extends the entire length of Asia as far east as the Seric Ocean, though bearing different names in its eastern parts. Several of the maps show a straight range of mountains running east and west across the continent and labeled with various names (Taurus, Caucasus, Ceraunius, Paropamisus).[1256] The Jerome map[1257] reveals, on the other hand, many mountains in Asia but does not make them continuous.

According to the _De imagine mundi_, the Caucasus divides the countries of southern from those of northern Asia. Among the former were India, Parthia, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, reaching in a straight line from the Far East to the Mediterranean.[1258] Egypt, which was regarded as belonging to Asia by the Greek geographers and by Isidore, was held to adjoin Palestine on the west, and to be part of this southern tier of countries. North of the Caucasus were the lands of the Seres, Bactria, Hyrcania, and Scythia, in the east, and in western Asia, Armenia, the country of Mount Ararat, Cappadocia (“where mares conceive through the wind alone and give birth to foals that live only three years”), and finally Asia Minor, almost completely surrounded by the sea.[1259]

THE LAND OF THE “SERES”

At the eastern end of Asia, Gervase, following the Roman geographers, had placed the Seres on the shores of an ocean named after them.[1260] “Seres” was a classical designation of the people of China in so far as that country was the terminus of the overland route toward the Far East described by Pliny and Ptolemy. Beyond vast solitudes, the former had said,[1261] you come to this remote land, where the people comb silk from the trees; though they carry on an extensive trade in this commodity, they avoid all personal dealings with strangers (whose commercial morality must have been high) by leaving the silk on the banks of streams to be picked up by those who wish to procure it. Solinus [1262] copied Pliny’s account, but Isidore,[1263] followed by the author of the _De imagine mundi_,[1264] gives us less detail, merely stating that Seres is a city of the East, from which were named the Seric region, the people, and a kind of cloth. Pausanias first among classical writers had understood that silk comes from a worm. The silk manufacture was introduced into the Byzantine Empire in 552 A. D., and it may well be from Byzantine sources that there originated the more or less correct understanding of its production revealed in the _Letter of Prester John_,[1265] where we are informed that the salamander is a worm which makes a sort of capsule (_pellicula_) around him, “as do the other worms that make silk.”

CHINA

If the land of the Seres lay at the end of the overland route eastward, the sea route ended, according to the _Periplus of the Erythraean Sea_, at the land of “Thin” (China), and according to Ptolemy’s _Geography_ at the country of the “Sinae.”[1266] Here we have the first use in the West of the word “China,” knowledge of which had probably reached the Occident through Arabic channels, though not until the sixteenth century was it recognized that the land of the “Seres” (Cathay) and “China” were the same.[1267] An indication of the Ptolemaic “Sinae” is found in Plato of Tivoli’s translation of Al-Battānī’s _Astronomy_:[1268] here a branch of the Indian Ocean is described as reaching to the furthest point of India where lies “Thiema” (China).

Benjamin of Tudela also speaks of the country of “Zin,” or China, in the uttermost East near the reputed Sea of Nikpa, where violent and stormy winds blow—possibly the typhoons of Far Eastern waters. Ships carried into this sea by the winds stick fast there; their supplies of food give out, and the crews often die of starvation. In order to avoid this fate, some of the men, armed with knives, throw themselves into the sea and are carried to shore in the talons of an enormous bird, the griffon. By slaying the griffon with their knives they are able to escape.[1269] This story reminds us, on the one hand, of Western reports of the congealed sea[1270] and, on the other, of Arabic tales of the Rukh, which reappear in Marco Polo’s travels.[1271]

INDIA

_Subdivisions_

More abundant and somewhat more accurate information was to be had regarding India. This name was applied loosely to cover all of Farther Asia: the anonymous report of the visit of the Patriarch John of India to Rome in 1122 calls India the ultimate border of the world. The Pseudo-Abdias[1272] had quoted “certain historiographers” as asserting that there are three Indias, the first facing Ethiopia, the second facing the country of the Medes, and the third occupying the end of the earth, with the realm of darkness on one side and the ocean on the other. The threefold division of India was found on many of the maps.[1273] It was adopted by Ordericus Vitalis in his _Historia ecclesiastica_.[1274] It undoubtedly inspired the declaration in the _Letter of Prester John_[1275] that that potentate rules over the “three Indias,” and probably with it in mind Gervase of Tilbury[1276] spoke of “India superior,” where St. Bartholomew, “India inferior,” where St. Thomas, and “India meridiana,” where St. Matthew preached. On the other hand, there is evidence of a twofold division of India in the _Elysaeus_[1277] account of Prester John’s kingdom. The broad and loose medieval usage of the term “India” is especially well shown in the _Image du monde_, where it comprises not only what we now know as Hindustan but also Persia.[1278]

Limiting ourselves to the narrower definition of India, the tract between the Himalayas and the ocean, let us see what was believed to exist there.

_Facts Known About India_

A few facts were known, many half-facts, and a great many more fables. This knowledge and misinformation was based to a very large extent on classical authority, for little new had been learned about these parts of the world since the days of Pliny. First let us examine the facts and half-facts.[1279] It was known that much of India lies beyond the tropic so that the shadows fall south in summer and north in winter. It was known that a giant range of mountains encloses India on the north, and perhaps there was a hint of familiarity with the Himalayan forests in the old story of trees so lofty that they touch the skies. It was likewise known that the Ganges takes its rise in the mountains to the north and is joined by many streams. According to Isidore, who was followed by the _De imagine mundi_, Peter Abelard, Gervase of Tilbury, Peter Comestor, and a host of other plagiarizers,[1280] the Ganges is no other than the Pison, one of the rivers of Paradise, which springs from Mount Orcobares and flows eastward to the ocean. Peter Comestor explains[1281] that “Phison” may mean “flock,” because ten rivers join to make this stream,[1282] an interpretation in which we see perhaps a reflection of the true characteristics of the great stream of India, so strikingly different from the other three “rivers of Paradise” by reason of its multitude of tributaries. The same idea, or possibly even a suggestion of the Ganges delta with its many outlets, is found in the _Letter of Prester John_[1283] where the river Ydonus is mentioned as one of the streams of Paradise, flowing across a pagan province of the realm of the great Christian potentate and spreading its branches throughout the entire area. The “Ydonus” doubtless means the Pison, or Ganges. It was also known in the time we are studying that there are other mighty rivers of India, among them the Indus, sweeping into the ocean.[1284] Likewise it was appreciated that India supports an immense population and enormous riches; that many of the people are Brahmins—though little enough was understood about their religion; and that some of them practiced the custom of suttee, which prescribed that wives burn themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands.

Benjamin of Tudela acquired (probably in Mesopotamia) some information about Khulam, or Quilon, a great medieval seaport on the Malabar coast. He comments briefly on the honesty and dark complexions of the natives, the intense heat of the summer, the practices connected with the cultivation of pepper, the customs of embalming the dead, and the superstitions of sun worship.[1285]

_Marvels of India_

But India was above all else a land of marvels (Fig. 8). Here were pygmies who fight with storks and giants who combat with griffons; here were “gymnosophists” who contemplate the sun all day, standing in the hot rays first on one leg and then on the other; here were men with feet turned backward and eight toes on each foot; _cynocephali_, or men with dogs’ heads and claws, who bark and snarl; people whose women give birth to but one child and that one with white hair; races whose hair is white in youth but turns dark with age; one-eyed men; people who shade themselves from the sun by lying on their backs and holding up a single huge foot (_skiapodes_); persons who live on the smell of food alone; headless men with eyes in their stomachs; forest peoples with hairy bodies, dogs’ teeth, and terrific voices; and a variety of horrible non-human monsters combining the parts of several animals.[1286]

These marvels and more still are related by nearly all the Western writers of our period who concern themselves with India and the Orient. They originated, as we have seen, early in classical times. Collected by Ctesias,[1287] Pliny, Solinus and others, they were passed on to our age, when we find them faithfully retold by the author of the _De imagine mundi_, by Gervase of Tilbury, by Rudolf of Hohen-Ems,[1288] and in the _Image du monde_. They made their way into the Romance of Alexander as exemplified by the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ and the _Letter from Alexander to Aristotle_. In short, the “marvels of India” were a stock feature of medieval geography.[1289] They figure on maps and in miniatures and even in architectural sculpture—a _skiapod_ helps adorn the façade of Sens cathedral.

Two mythological personages and one historical character, the story of whose exploits became mythological in the Middle Ages, were supposed to have visited India. These were Bacchus (Liber Pater), Hercules, and Alexander the Great. The Altar of Liber and the Column of Hercules are shown on the Psalter map in the region between the Red Sea and Paradise.[1290] On the Jerome map of Palestine two columns mark the ultimate limits of the journeys of Alexander and of Hercules.[1291] _The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle_ mentions the miraculous trees of the sun and moon, which spoke oracular words to the Macedonian conqueror and figured widely in the medieval geography of the Far East, appearing prominently on many of the maps.[1292]

_Legend of St. Thomas in India_

Though classical antiquity was the main source of medieval knowledge and fancy concerning India, it was not the only source. The mysterious Ophir, whence came the gold and jewels of Solomon, was placed in India on the Lambert map [1293] and on the Jerome map of the world.[1294] There also early came into existence a well-rooted idea that this country was the home of a large and flourishing Christian colony. The origins of the latter belief are to be found in reports which had filtered through to Europe at an early date of St. Thomas the Apostle’s preaching of the gospel in India and of the existence of Nestorian Christianity in southern Hindustan.[1295] The story of St. Thomas contains some elements of geographical interest.[1296] Christ was said to have sold Thomas to the merchant Habban in order that he might be taken to India to convert the people. Once arrived there by ship, having landed at a port of Sandaruk, or Andrapolis, he succeeded in gaining for the Christian religion the king, Gundophorus, and his brothers. The saint built for the king a palace in heaven. According to the original story, this palace was not a real structure but merely the symbol of a heavenly habitation for the monarch. As the legend was subsequently developed, St. Thomas was represented as an architect whom Gundophorus summoned to his court to build an actual dwelling, and one of the miracles by which the saint succeeded in converting the Indian potentate to Christianity was his almost instantaneous construction of the palace. The legend then proceeds to relate how St. Thomas was conducted by one Siphorius to the kingdom of a certain Mazdeus, of his martyrdom at the hands of the latter, and of the subsequent removal of his body to Edessa in Syria.

FIG. 8—Two sections from the Hereford map to illustrate the marvels of
India. (From the reproduction accompanying Miller, _Mappaemundi_,
vol. iv, 1896.)

In this first section are shown, among others, a _skiapod_, or
sunshade-footed man (to the left), and _cynocephali_, or men with
dogs’ heads.
]

FIG. 8 (second section)—In this section is shown a _mantichora_, or
beast with a man’s head and a lion’s body.
]

The stories of St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew were often retold during our period, notably, for instance, in the _Historia ecclesiastica_ of Ordericus Vitalis.[1297] The Osma Beatus map[1298] shows heads representing the twelve apostles in the various countries of the world; that of St. Thomas is placed in India (see Fig. 4, p. 123, above). The unknown writer of the _Letter of Prester John_ was undoubtedly familiar with the legend of St. Thomas, because he makes Prester John’s palace correspond exactly to the palace built by the saint.[1299] This legend was a favorite subject for representation in the sculptures of cathedrals and stained glass windows of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[1300]

_Visit of Patriarch John of India to Rome_

Belief in the existence of a large Christian population in Asia was reënforced by an obscure event that took place in Rome in 1122. We have an anonymous account[1301] of the visit of a certain Patriarch John of India in that year and of the stupendous sensation which it created in the Roman curia and throughout the whole of Italy. The narrator informs us that in the course of countless ages no native was ever known to have come from those distant and barbaric Oriental regions, nor had any one ever before been seen in Italy who had actually been there.[1302] The purpose of the patriarch’s visit to the West originally was to procure at Byzantium the pallium and the confirmation of his office, which he had recently assumed on the death of his predecessor. At Byzantium, however, being told that Rome was in reality the capital of the world,[1303] he proceeded thither along with some homeward-bound Roman ambassadors and while in Rome gave a lecture about his native country before the papal curia. The principal city, he said, was Hulna, on the river Pison, one of the four rivers of Paradise; the city was of huge size, surrounded by gigantic walls and inhabited by faithful Christians. Outside the walls there was a mountain encircled by a very deep lake and on the top of the mountain was situated the Church of St. Thomas. Surrounding the lake were twelve monasteries erected in honor of the twelve apostles. The Church of St. Thomas was inaccessible except once a year, when the waters of the lake disappeared, allowing pilgrims to approach. The Patriarch John then went on to explain in considerable detail the marvels and miracles connected with the church.

We should be inclined—and justifiably—to reject the story of Patriarch John’s visit as wholly fanciful, did it not seem to be confirmed by a letter[1304] to a certain Count Thomas written by Odo, abbot of St. Remi in Rheims (1118–1151), who happened to be in Rome at the time John was there. The report of Odo about this event was probably not derived from the anonymous account, from which it differs in several minor details. Among other matters, according to Odo, John speaks of a river, not a lake, surrounding the shrine of St. Thomas and of how its waters diminished as a result of drought and became passable to a boy of seven years during eight days before and eight days after the festival of the apostle. The whole clergy and (Christian) people of India were said to gather here on this occasion.

We shall see shortly that these stories contributed to the formation of the curious medieval belief in the existence of a great Christian kingdom in the heart of Asia. First, however, we must consider what notions were current regarding the seas and islands to the south of India and the vast tracts to the northward beyond the Himalayan barrier.

INDIAN OCEAN

A very brilliant feature on the maps of our period is the Red Sea, almost invariably colored red. This name was given to the entire Indian Ocean, and the red color was applied to the Persian Gulf as well as to the “Arabian Gulf,” or Red Sea proper. The name “Indian Ocean” was also occasionally used, as, for example, on the Jerome map of the East.[1305]

The Greeks had acquired some fairly correct information about the northwestern shores of the Indian Ocean and had heard vague rumors of the great peninsula and islands east and south of India: Malaya, Ceylon, Sumatra. Confused reports of the geography of Taprobane, or Ceylon, are found in classical works as far back as the time of the expedition of Alexander. Pliny, Solinus, Ptolemy, and others described Taprobane in some detail but exaggerated its dimensions to enormous proportions. Pomponius Mela had spoken of the islands of Chryse, lying off the eastern promontory of Asia, and Argyre, off the mouth of the Ganges. Perhaps these represented some vague knowledge of the Andamans or Nicobars or the Malay Peninsula; and certainly we recognize the last-named in the Aurea Chersonesus of Ptolemy.

_Islands of the Indian Ocean_

Some relics of this classical knowledge of Indian seas and isles was retained in the Middle Ages. Isidore[1306] had spoken of “Chrisa” and “Argare” as full of gold and silver and perpetually blooming flowers, with mountains of gold guarded by dragons and griffons. This account found its way into the _De imagine mundi_[1307] and was copied by Gervase of Tilbury;[1308] the islands themselves, together with the “Island of the Sun” of Pliny, Mela, Solinus, and others, figured on many contemporary maps.[1309] Orosius had said that in Taprobane there were ten cities.[1310] Isidore, whom Gervase of Tilbury copied, added that the dimensions of the island were 875 by 625 miles, that it has two summers and two winters each year, and that the vegetation always remains green.[1311] Solinus had described[1312] Taprobane as being divided in two by a river; one half, he said, was full of wild beasts, but the other was inhabited by men. This division of the island is perpetuated on the Henry of Mayence,[1313] Jerome,[1314] Hereford,[1315] and Ebstorf maps.[1316]

_Al-Battānī on the Indian Ocean_