Published in London in 1689 under the name 'Heliogenes de L'Epy, Doctor of Philosophy', and said in its preface to be translated from a French original. The narrator, born near Lyons, tells of a childhood shipwreck, travels through Greece and Turkey, and a journey across the Caspian 'to see Tartary, of which Country there has been so little said'. The heart of the book is a long description of Heliopolis, a round city of learned sun-honouring philosophers living under the protection of the 'Great Kam'. The corpus copy is a microfilm scan (Early English Books) with very poor OCR.
How they knew
Legends
Who “Tartar” means here
Tartary is a vague, far-off land reached across the Caspian. 'Tartarians' are the peoples surrounding the imaginary city, and 'wild Tartars' are huntsmen met on the road; the 'Great Kam' is their overlord.
Why read it
A rare seventeenth-century English example of a gleaming, domed, classical city placed in Tartary, useful for seeing how an imaginary 'great city of Tartary' could enter print long before modern theories.
Watch out
The author's name ('Sun-born') and his City of the Sun mark this as an imaginary voyage in the utopian tradition, not a travel record, though the preface insists it is true; the catalogue keeps its status open. The OCR is badly broken; check every quote against the page image.
Heliopolis: a round city in Tartary with streets like Amsterdam
Editorial contextFrom the top of a column like London's Monument, the narrator surveys Heliopolis. It is round, about three miles across, ringed by a moat fed by rivers, with no building over two storeys. It has three wards named after the Sun, the Council and the Schools, and wide, clean, straight streets like Amsterdam's, lined with trees and flushed by running water.
It is divided into three Quarters or Wards, of which the first in the heart of the City, derives its name from the Sun; the second from the Council; and the third from the Schools. The Streets are wide, clean and streight, like those of Amsterdam
Lead domes, gilded cupolas and three classical orders
Editorial contextThe book dresses its Tartar city in the European classical style of its own day: porticos on pillars and pilasters of the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders in the three wards, house roofs of lead shaped like domes with gilded copper cupolas, and at the centre a temple 'like the Pantheon at Rome'. It is a European architect's dream set in Tartary, not a description of anything built there.
The Roof of these Portico's is supported by Pillars without, and Pilasters within … The Doors and Windows observe the same Symmetry. The tops of their Houses are cover'd with Lead, in a Figure of a Duomo
Editorial contextThe book explains how its peaceful city survives among the Tartars: the Great Kam admires the citizens' honesty and lets them live in peace, and in return they send him a volunteer regiment of 300 young men. That service, the author says, is how they learn the 'Tartarian Language' needed for trade at their fair.
Now altho' they lye surrounded by the Tartarians, yet are they not at War with any body : For the Great Kam, who has always had a high esteem for them, by reason of their Integrity, permits them to live in Peace and Tranquillity one among another.
Why can't there be another Heliopolis, in Tartary?
Editorial contextIn his preface the author answers readers who doubted his story. Many cities share a name, he argues (two Frankforts, two Lyons, two Chalons), so why deny that besides Heliopolis in Egypt there could be the one he describes in Tartary? He also compares his doubters to those who laughed at the idea of the Antipodes before Columbus.
Why must it be deny'd, but that besides Heliopolis in Egypt, there may be that other of which I have given the Relation in Tartary.
'Heliogenes de L'Epy', preface (English translation, 1689)