A meeting between King Edward I of England and Rabban Bar Sauma, a monk & diplomat from China who visited 13th-century Europe: http://www.aina.org/books/mokk/mokk.htm#c48 …pic.twitter.com/EJ3K1bZosz
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A meeting between King Edward I of England and Rabban Bar Sauma, a monk & diplomat from China who visited 13th-century Europe: http://www.aina.org/books/mokk/mokk.htm#c48 …pic.twitter.com/EJ3K1bZosz
A detail from Andrea di Bonaiuto's fresco 'The Way of Salvation/The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant', c. 1365–8, with the figures at the centre identified by Jacques Paviot as an English knight of the Garter talking to a Mongol: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Way-of-salvation-church-militant-triumphant-andrea-di-bonaiuto-1365.jpg …pic.twitter.com/RrpXUG8BmV
A 15th-century image of James of Ireland and Odoric of Pordenone in Sumatra in the 1320s, from BnF Français 2810, f.104r; they subsequently travelled to China, where they stayed for 3 years before returning back to Europe: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52000858n/f213.item …pic.twitter.com/oWbuDbwghs
'The Eastern Parts of the World Described', by Odoric of Pordenone, 1330: https://archive.org/stream/cathaywaythither02yule#page/96/mode/2up …pic.twitter.com/sG4X7PRLGm
Matthew Paris's 13th-century account of the capture of an Englishman who acted as envoy for the Mongols during their European invasion c.1241 is also interesting—he had lost everything gambling at Acre, Israel, and then travelled east & joined the Mongols: http://www.caitlingreen.org/2018/03/an-eleventh-century-chinese-coin.html …pic.twitter.com/F4PZu2BVKD
The tombstone of Katerina Ilioni, daughter of the Genoese merchant Domenico Ilioni, dated 1342 and found at Yangzhou, China: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:YangzhouKatarinaVilioniTomb1342.jpg …pic.twitter.com/STBXISNnvT
For interest, a distribution map of Chinese late 10th- to 15th-century qingbai ware in Arabia and East Africa; fragments of Chinese qingbai ware have been found in a 14th-century context at Winchester: http://journals.openedition.org/afriques/1836 pic.twitter.com/Y49TdoMXsK
Worth noting that around 2,000 Northern Song coins are recorded from sites west of Sri Lanka too; I've mapped them here based primarily on Cribb & Potts 1996, with additions.pic.twitter.com/3q77htBlta
Some recent finds of 11th-century Chinese coins reported from Ethiopia & Zanzibar: https://www.academia.edu/5999530/Identification_of_a_Chinese_coin_found_in_Kuumbi_Cave_Zanzibar_by_prof._Felix_Chami … & https://www.academia.edu/2566792/Northern_Song_coin_finds_in_Harla_Ethiopia_point_to_newly_found_silk_routes_from_China_to_the_Horn_of_Africa … &https://www.academia.edu/8407965/A_second_Chinese_North_Song_coin_from_Kuumbi_Cave_Tanzania_is_identified …
A bright red silk cover from the medieval skull reliquary of King Eric IX of Sweden, believed to be made from Chinese silk: http://www.glossa.fi/mirator/pdf/i-2015/themedievalskullrelic.pdf …pic.twitter.com/6tXtpnlYro
The Gaignères-Fonthill vase, an early 14th-century Chinese porcelain vase that seems to have arrived in Europe during the medieval period: https://jekely.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/note-on-fonthill-vase.html …pic.twitter.com/FiP0J4Gskx
For more on finds of Chinese pottery in medieval European contexts, including late 14th-century Winchester, see David Whitehouse, 'Chinese porcelain in medieval Europe', Medieval Archaeology, 16 (1972): http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-769-1/dissemination/pdf/vol16/16_063_078.pdf …pic.twitter.com/kgCBLn1fUG
This is fascinating! A 10th-century Chinese coin found in Bulgaria: https://twitter.com/lubo_ac23/status/1013425029030273024 … :)
Another fantastic journey into the past. Thank you so much. We hear so much about Marco Polo but hear so little of these other epic journeys
I find the Englishman who became the Mongol envoy to Europe particularly fascinating! :)
Yes, what a story he could have told! I'm surprised nobody has novelized it
There was a psuedohistorical 'non-fiction' but wildly speculative version a couple of decades back, bit nothing else so far as I'm aware!
Have you read Raoul McLaughlin's books, The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes and The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean? You've really gotten me interested in the subject. I shiver thinking of that remote Roman outpost in the Red Sea
Yes, it really is a most fascinating topic! :)
I understand the book 1421 has been roundly debunked, but what do you think? (When I was young the theory that a meteor in the Gulf of Mexico killed the dinosaurs was also roundly debunked by scholars.)
It's not something I'd be tempted to cite, I fear :-/ But there's certainly plenty of evidence for Chinese pottery and coins in East Africa and Arabia, for example :)
For example, a distribution map of Chinese late 10th- to 15th-century qingbai ware in Arabia and Africa: http://journals.openedition.org/afriques/1836 pic.twitter.com/jxBsbQmRG4
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