William of Rubruck

[citation needed] William's was the fourth European mission to the Mongols: previous ones had been led by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and Ascelin of Lombardia in 1245 and André de Longjumeau in 1249.

Five weeks later, after the departure from Sudak, he reached the encampment of Batu Khan, Mongol ruler of the Kipchak Khanate and Volga River region.

William and his travelling companions set off on horseback on 16 September 1253 on a 9,000-kilometre (5,600 mi) journey to the court of the Great Khan at Karakorum in modern-day Mongolia.

[3] William's account provided an extensive description of the city's walls, markets and temples, and the separate quarters for Muslim and Chinese craftsmen among a surprisingly cosmopolitan population.

Among the Europeans he encountered were the nephew of an English bishop, a woman from Lorraine who cooked William's Easter dinner, and Guillaume Boucher, a French silversmith who was making ornaments for the Khan's women and altars for the Nestorian Christians.

After spending two weeks in late September with Batu Khan, and Christmas at Nakhchivan in present-day Azerbaijan, he and his companions reached the County of Tripoli on 15 August 1255.

[12] Roger Bacon, William's contemporary and fellow-Franciscan, cited the traveller copiously in his Opus Majus, and described him as "Brother William through whom the lord King of France sent a message to the Tartars in 1253 AD ...who traveled to regions in the east and north and attached himself to the midst of these places, and wrote of the above to the illustrious king; which book I carefully read and with his permission expounded on".

[10] Russian poet Nikolay Zabolotskiy wrote in 1958 the long poem "Rubruck in Mongolia" ("Рубрук в Монголии").

[13] A critical edition of the complete Latin text prepared by the French historian Francisque Michel and the English antiquarian Thomas Wright was published in 1839.