Rabban Bar Sauma
The younger Markos was eventually elected Yahballaha III, Patriarch of the Church of the East and later suggested his teacher Rabban Bar Ṣawma be sent on another mission, as Mongol ambassador to Europe.
His written account of his journeys is of unique interest to modern historians, as it gives a picture of medieval Europe at the close of the Crusades, painted by a keenly-intelligent, broadminded, and statesmanlike observer.
[8] They traveled by way of the former Tangut country, Khotan, Kashgar, Taraz in the Syr Darya valley, Khorasan (now Afghanistan), Maragha (now Azerbaijan) and Mosul, arriving at Ani in the Kingdom of Georgia.
Warnings of danger on the routes to southern Syria turned them from their purpose,[3] and they traveled to Mongol-controlled Persia, the Ilkhanate, where they were welcomed by Patriarch Denha I of the Church of the East.
It was Arghun's desire to form a strategic Franco-Mongol alliance with the Christian Europeans against their common enemy, the Muslim Mamluk Sultanate at Cairo.
A few years later, the new patriarch Yahballaha III suggested his former teacher Rabban Bar Ṣawma for the embassy, to meet with the Pope and the European monarchs.
In 1287, the elderly Bar Sauma embarked on his journey to Europe, bearing gifts and letters from Arghun to the Eastern Roman emperor, the Pope, and the European kings.
[16] He traveled overland through Armenia to either the Empire of Trebizond or through the Sultanate of Rum to the Simisso[17] on the Black Sea, then by boat to Constantinople, where he had an audience with Andronicus II Palaeologus.
Edward responded enthusiastically to the embassy, but ultimately proved unable to join a military alliance due to conflict at home, especially with the Welsh and the Scots.
Upon returning to Rome, Bar Sauma was cordially received by the newly elected Pope Nicholas IV, who gave him communion on Palm Sunday, 1288, allowing him to celebrate his own Eucharist in the capital of Latin Christianity.
[20] The delivered letters were in turn answered by Arghun in 1289, forwarded by the Genoese merchant Buscarello de Ghizolfi, a diplomatic agent for the Il-khans.
It was probably during this time that he wrote the account of his travels, which was published in French in 1895 and in English in 1928 as The Monks of Kublai Khan, Emperor of China or The History of the Life and Travels of Rabban Sawma, Envoy and Plenipotentiary of the Mongol Khans to the Kings of Europe, and Markos Who as Mar Yahbh-Allaha III Became Patriarch of the Church of the East in Asia, translated and edited by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge.
