[1] Other adventurers, such as Buscarello de Ghizolfi or Isol the Pisan, are known to have played similar roles at the Mongol court.
[3] Relations were quite warm: in 1307, the Pope named John of Montecorvino the first Archbishop of Khanbalik and Patriarch of the Orient.
[4] The embassy further promised the delivery of between 100,000 and 200,000 horses to the Crusaders upon their arrival in the Holy Land.
A memorandum drafted by the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers Guillaume de Villaret about military plans for a Crusade envisaged a Mongol invasion of Syria as a preliminary to a Western intervention (1307/8).
[6] A corps of Frank mangonel specialists is known to have accompanied the Ilkhanid army in the conquest of Herat in 1307.