Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, an agent of the Bardi banking company of Florence, compiled his Pratica della mercatura around 1340: a handbook of weights, measures, coins, customs dues and routes across the Mediterranean and Black Sea world. Its first chapters give the overland route from Tana (Azov) through Astrakhan, Sarai, Urgench, Otrar and Almaliq to Cathay, with advice on interpreters, food, costs and paper money. Pegolotti gathered this from merchants who had used the road; there is no evidence he went himself. This corpus copy is the Italian text printed by G. F. Pagnini in Della decima, vol. 3 (1766), with poor OCR.
How they knew
Compiled from others
Who “Tartar” means here
The Mongol rulers and their men along the route: the 'Signore del Gattajo' (the Yuan emperor), the 'Signore de' Tartari' of Persia (the Ilkhan), and the 'Moccoli', Mongol armed men and brigands on the road.
Why read it
It shows the Tartar empires as merchants met them: a single long road, safe by night and day, with customs posts, paper money and a capital a hundred miles round.
Watch out
Secondhand trade knowledge, not a travel diary, so do not treat it as a personal journey. The 1766 OCR is badly garbled, and several Italian words have been restored from obvious misreadings.
Editorial contextCathay, Pegolotti explains, is a province of many towns, and its chief city, where merchants gather and do most of their business, is Cambalecco (Khanbaliq, the Yuan capital on the site of Beijing). He passes on the merchants' claim that the city is a hundred miles round and packed with people and houses.
Cathay is a province in which there are many towns and many villages; among them there is one, the chief city, where merchants resort … and this city is called Cambalecco. And the said city is a hundred miles round, and all full of people and houses
Working translation
Original wording
Il Gattajo si è una Provincia, dove à molte Terre, e molti Casali; infra l'altre si ha una, cioè la mastra Cittade, ove riparano mercatanti … la quale Cittade si chiama Cambalecco. E la detta Cittade gira cento miglia, ed è tutta piena di gente, e di magione
Francesco Balducci Pegolotti (ed. G. F. Pagnini, 1766)
Editorial contextAccording to merchants who had used it, the road from Tana to Cathay was perfectly safe by day and by night. The one risk was death: if a merchant died on the way, the lord of the land took everything he carried, unless a brother or close companion was there to claim it. On the same page Pegolotti advises hiring an interpreter and two servants who speak Cuman, the Turkic language of the steppe, and taking flour and salt fish for the journey, since meat is plentiful everywhere.
The road from Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, by day and by night, according to what the merchants say who have used it; except that if a merchant, going or coming, should die on the road, everything would belong to the lord of the country where he died, and the lord's officials would take it all
Working translation
Original wording
Il cammino d'andare dalla Tana al Gattajo è sicurissimo e di dì, e di notte secondo che si conta per gli mercatanti, che l'hanno usato: salvo se il mercatante, che va, o che viene, morisse in cammino, ogni cosa sarebbe del Signore del paese, ove morisse il mercatante, e tutto prenderebbono gli uficiali del Signore
Francesco Balducci Pegolotti (ed. G. F. Pagnini, 1766)
Editorial contextAll the silver merchants bring into Cathay, Pegolotti warns, is taken by the lord of Cathay into his treasury, and the merchants are given paper money in exchange: yellow paper stamped with the lord's seal. Everyone in the country must accept it, and he adds that prices are not raised because the money is paper. This is the Yuan paper currency that amazed European visitors.
All the silver that the merchants carry with them to Cathay, the lord of Cathay has taken for himself and put into his treasury, and to the merchants who bring it he gives paper money in exchange, that is, yellow paper stamped with the seal of the said lord
Working translation
Original wording
Tutto l'argento, che i mercatanti portano, e che va al Gattajo, il Signore del Gattajo lo fa pigliare per se, e mettelo in suo tesoro, e mercatanti che lui portano ne dà loro moneta di pappiero, cioè di carta gialla coniata della bolla del detto Signore
Francesco Balducci Pegolotti (ed. G. F. Pagnini, 1766)
Editorial contextListing the tolls on the road from Ayas in Lesser Armenia to Tabriz, the capital of the 'lord of the Tartars' in Persia, Pegolotti adds a last charge for the extortion of the 'Moccoli, that is, Tartar brigands' along the way. 'Moccoli' is the Italian merchants' form of 'Mongols', and he treats it as a plain synonym for Tartars. In the Cathay chapter he likewise warns that the road beyond Tana is full of Moccoli, 'that is, armed men'.
And for the extortion that the Moccoli, that is, Tartar brigands, practise along the road
Working translation
Original wording
E per forza che fanno i Moccoli, cioè Tartari Scherani per cammino
Francesco Balducci Pegolotti (ed. G. F. Pagnini, 1766)