Nomads beyond the Wall who ate only meat
Editorial contextBetween Cialis and the Chinese frontier, the account says, the country was notorious for Tartar raids: merchants scouted from the hills by day and travelled silently by night, and passed Muslim travellers who had been murdered for going alone. The Tartars rarely killed the settled locals, calling them their slaves and shepherds whose flocks they could seize. They refused grain and rice as fodder for animals, lived on meat including horse, mule and camel, and were said to live past a hundred.
although the Tartars rarely kill the local people themselves, saying that they are their slaves and shepherds, from whom they carry off flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. They themselves eat neither grain nor rice nor any other pulse, saying that this is fodder for beasts, not food for men; so they live on meat alone, and do not shrink from horses, mules or camels. And yet it is said that they live very long, often past a hundred years.
Working translation
Original wording
quanquam raro Tartari indigenas ipsos mactent, asserentes eos esse servos suos ac pastores, quibus arietum greges, & boum armenta eripiunt; sed neque frumento, neque oriza aliove legumine ipsi vescuntur, dicentes hoc iumentorum esse non hominum pabulum: sola igitur carne vesci solent, nec ab equis, mulis, aut Camelis abhorrent, & tamen fama est eos diutissime vivere, & fere annorum centum excedere senectutem.
About Tartars (Mongol nomads north and west of the Great Wall)
Keep in mind
Travellers' report passed through Isaac the Armenian and Ricci; the hundred-year lifespan is explicitly rumour ('fama est').
The scan is too rough to double-check this quote by machine. Compare it with the page.
Tartar raiders on the road to the Great Wall
Editorial contextThe Portuguese lay brother Bento de Goes travelled overland from India towards China in 1603 to 1605. On the last stretch he found the country between Cialis and the Chinese wall 'notorious for its Tartar raids': merchants crossed it by night in silence, and the bodies of lone Muslim travellers lay by the road. Goes adds a telling detail (in the sentence that follows this excerpt): the Tartars did not usually kill the local people, whom they treated as their servants and herdsmen and occasionally robbed of their flocks.
"The country between Cialis and the Chinese wall," Goes writes, "is notorious for its Tartar raids, so that traders always cross it in the greatest fear, sometimes even under cover of night and in the strictest silence. One often comes across the dead bodies of Mohammedans who have attempted the journey unaccompanied, though on the other hand the Tartars are not wont to kill the native population
About Tartars (Mongol and Turkic nomads of the steppe)
Keep in mind
Goes died in China in 1607; his account survives through Ricci's reworking of his notes, so the wording is Ricci's.
A wall of iron bricks bound with copper
Editorial contextSallam describes how the wall was built: foundations dug thirty cubits deep and laid in iron and copper, then two great jambs, all of iron bricks sheathed in copper, carrying a 120-cubit iron lintel. He credits the work to Dhu'l-Qarnayn, the Quran's 'two-horned' king, usually identified with Alexander. Nothing here is credited to the Turks.
The wall was built in the following way. First the ground was dug to a depth of 30 cubits and the foundations laid there, built of iron and copper up to ground level … The whole structure is made of iron bricks faced with copper, each a cubit and a half long and wide and 4 inches thick.
Working translation
Original wording
La muraille fut construite de la manière suivante. D'abord on creusa le sol jusqu'à une profondeur de 30 coudées et on y jeta les fondements qu'on construisit en fer et en cuivre jusqu'à ras de terre … Toute la construction se compose de briques de fer, revêtues de cuivre, dont chacune a une coudée et demie en long et en large sur 4 pouces d'épaisseur.
About Unnamed builders credited to Dhu'l-Qarnayn (Alexander)
Keep in mind
Sallam's account as dictated to Ibn Khurradadhbih; the 'history' of the building is legend.
Baptisms at Kamul, on a promise of no church taxes
Editorial contextIn an aside on church tithes, Marignolli recalls that at Kamul (Hami), where there were 'many Tartars and other nations', converts refused baptism until the friars swore they would never demand anything worldly from them afterwards. Once the friars promised, and even helped the poor from their own funds, crowds of men and women were baptised. He uses the story to argue against forcing tithes on new converts.
where at first the converts would not be baptised until we swore that we would extract nothing worldly from them after baptism, but would rather provide for the needy from our own; which we did, and so a multitude of the city, of both sexes, received baptism most willingly.
Working translation
Original wording
ubi primo conversi nolebant baptizari, donec juravimus, nihil temporale post baptismum extorquere ab eis, ymo de nostro indigentibus providere, quod & fecimus, sic multitudo civitatis utriusque sexus baptismum libentissime receperunt.
About Tartars and other peoples of Kamul
Keep in mind
The mention of Tartars at Kamul is on the previous page (n144); conversion numbers are the missionary's own claim.
