Chinggis Khan's law set above Islam
Editorial contextIbn Arabshah says Timur spoke Persian, Turkish and Mongol but no Arabic, and held to the 'Chinggis Khan rules' (the yasa), treating them like branches of Islamic law. So, he says, did all the Chaghatay, the people of the Dasht, Cathay and Turkestan, whom he calls rabble. For this reason, he adds, leading jurists declared Timur an unbeliever.
He held to the rules of Chinggis Khan, which are like the branches of jurisprudence in the Islamic faith … And so do all the Chaghatay and the people of the Dasht, Cathay and Turkestan, that rabble: all of them put the rules of the accursed Chinggis Khan ahead of the rules of Islam.
Working translation
Original wording
وكان معتقدا للقواعد الجنكيزخانيه وهي كفروع الفقه من الملة الاسلاميه … وكذلك كل الجغتاي واهل الدشت والخطا وتركستان اولئك الطغام كلهم يمشون قواعد الملعون جنكيزخان على قواعد الاسلام
About Timur, the Chaghatay, the people of the Dasht (Golden Horde Tatars)
Keep in mind
Religious polemic. It shows that Chinggisid law still mattered in Muslim Central Asia c.1400, but the tone is hostile.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR of this print is garbled); vowel marks and the asterisk dividers of the rhymed prose omitted.
The Great Khan sunk by enemy swimmers
Editorial contextHayton's account of the death of the Great Khan Mongke: besieging an island in the sea of Cathay, he was sunk when the clever local people sent swimmers under his ship to bore holes in its hull until it filled and he drowned. The Kohler edition notes that a French manuscript garbled the Latin word for sponge-divers into 'spiongeorges'.
he went by sea into the kingdom of Cathay, and as he was besieging an island which he wanted to take by sea, the people of that land, who are very ingenious, sent swimmers, and they went under the ship in which Mango Can was
Working translation
Original wording
entra par mer au roiaume de Cathaï, e come il assegast une isle, laquele il voloit prendre par mer, la gent de cele terre, qui sont molt engignous, manderent homes noeors, e ceaus entrerent desouz le vaissel où Mango Can estoit
About Mongke Khan and the Tartars
Keep in mind
Not true as told: Mongke died in 1259 during a land siege in Sichuan, reportedly of illness or a wound.
Gog and Magog beyond the mountains, fires in the night
Editorial contextThis page is not by Nieuhof but from Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata, bound into Ogilby's English volume. Kircher quotes an Arabic geographer on the cities of Gog and Magog beyond an unclimbable snowy mountain: people who climb it rarely return, and those who do report many fires at night. Kircher then fits this to the Great Cham's empire and Prester John.
On the other side of the Mountain are many Cities of Jagog and Magog. And it often happened, that the Inhabitants of this Region, out of a certain curiosity, ascend some part of it … but many never return … some that have return'd safe, relate, that in the Region on the other side of the Mountain in the night season, are many fires
About Gog and Magog, identified with the Great Cham's realm
Keep in mind
Not part of Nieuhof's text; a learned legend passed through several books.
