Perhaps because he was eager to prove himself as a conqueror, and thus to establish his reputation as a "true" Mongol, Kublai had been attempting to subdue Japan since 1266. In the meantime, he had won control of Korea in 1273. A year later, a force composed of some 29,000 Mongol, Chi-
Rabban Bar Sauma
Many people know about visits to China by medieval European travelers, the most famous of whom was Marco Polo; much less well known were travelers from the East who went to Europe. Among these, perhaps the most notable example was Rabban Bar Sauma (ruh-BAHN BAR sah-OO-muh; c. 1220-1294).
Bar Sauma came from the Uighur (WEE-gur), a Turkic nation under the rule of the Mongols. He was born in Khanbalik, and embraced Nestorianism, a branch of Christianity that had split from the mainstream Christian church in a. d. 431. Since that time, Nestorianism had flourished mainly in the East.
At the age of twenty, Bar Sauma became a Nestorian monk and began to preach the Christian message, attracting many followers. Among these was a young man named Mark. The latter accompanied Bar Sauma when, at about the age of fifty-five, he made a pilgrimage or religious journey to Jerusalem.
They went with the blessing of Kublai Khan, and met with the catholicos,
The leader of the Nestorian church, in what is now Iran. He in turn sent them as ambassadors to the Il-Khan, a relative of Kublai Khan who ruled Persia. Later Mark became a bishop, and when the catholicos died, he took his place.
A new leader of the Il-Khanate in 1284 wanted European help against the Muslim Arabs of the Middle East, and he sent Bar Sauma westward to seek their aid. Bar Sauma departed from what is now Iraq in
1287, and as he later wrote in the record of his travels, he visited the Byzantine Empire before arriving in Italy. There he hoped to meet with the pope, leader of the Catholic Church, but the old pope was dead and he had to wait for the election of a new one.
While he waited, Bar Sauma traveled throughout Western Europe, visiting parts of Italy and France. Back in Rome in
1288, he met the new pope, Nicholas IV, who expressed an interest in joining the Il-Khan in a war against the Muslims. This never happened, but Bar Sauma (who died in 1294 in Baghdad, now a city in Iraq) helped open the way for more travelers between East and West.
Nese, and Korean soldiers crossed the Korean Strait to Japan, but a storm destroyed many of their boats, and the surviving troops headed back to China.
At the same time, Kublai faced a threat on his western border from his cousin Khaidu (KY-du), ruler of the Chagatai
Khanate. Not only did Khaidu's rivalry force Kublai to devote troops to defending the western frontier of his empire, it also ended any illusions Kublai may have had concerning a great Mongol alliance. Clearly the realms won by his grandfather would never again be a single entity with a single ruler, and no doubt this fact made Kublai all the more determined to conquer Japan for himself.
English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) immortalized Kublai Khan in his poem of the same name written in 1816. Drawing by J. Kayser.
After the Japanese murdered two of his ambassadors in 1279, Kublai sent some 150,000 troops to Japan. In August 1281, a typhoon— that is, a great storm on the Pacific Ocean—struck the Mongol ships and killed more than half of their fighting force. The Japanese praised the typhoon as a gift from the gods, and the loss was a devastating blow to the Mongols: clearly if was possible for them to lose, and indeed they would get considerably more experience at losing in coming years.
The 1280s saw a failed campaign in Annam and Champa, which constituted what is now Vietnam; and in 1290, Tibet revolted against Mongol rule. The Mongols put down the rebellion, but only at a great cost, and in 1293 they failed to conquer the island of Java in modern-day Indonesia.
World History
