Rabban Bar Sauma

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Rabban Bar Sauma (fl. 1280 - 1288), was a Nestorian traveller and diplomatist, who was born at Beijing about the middle of the 13th century, of Uyghur origin.

While still young, he started on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and travelling by way of the former Tangut country, Khotan, Kashgar, Talas in the Syr Dana valley, Khorasan, Maragha and Mosul, arrived at Ani in Armenia. Warnings of the danger of the routes to southern Syria turned him from his purpose; and his friend and fellow-pilgrim, Rabban Marcos, becoming Nestorian patriarch (as Mar Yaballaha III) in 1281, suggested Bar Sauma's name to Arghun Khan, sovereign of the Ilkhanate or Mongol-Persian realm, for an embassy to Europe, then contemplated.

The purpose of this was to conclude an anti-Muslim alliance, especially against the Mameluke power, with the chief states of Christendom. On this embassy Bar Sauma started in 1287, with Arghun's letters to the Byzantine emperor, the Pope and the Kings of France and England. In Constantinople, he had an audience with Andronicus II Palaeologus; he gives an enthusiastic description of Hagia Sophia. He next travelled to Rome, where he visited St Peter's, and had prolonged negotiations with the cardinals. The papacy being then vacant, a definite reply to his proposals was postponed, and Bar Sauma passed on to Paris, where he had an audience with the King of France (Philip the Fair).

In Gascony he apparently met the King of England (Edward I) at a place which seems to be Bordeaux, but of which he speaks as the capital of Alanguitar (i.e. Angleterre). On returning to Rome, he was cordially received by the newly elected Pope Nicholas IV, who gave him communion on Palm Sunday, 1288, allowed him to celebrate his own Eucharist in the capital of Latin Christianity, commissioned him to visit the Christians of the East, and entrusted to him the tiara which he presented to Mar Yaballaha.

His narrative is of unique interest as giving a picture of medieval Europe at the close of the Crusading period, painted by a keenly intelligent, broadminded and statesmanlike observer.

References

J. B. Chabot's translation and edition of the Histoire du Patriarche Mar Jabalaha III. et dumoine Rabban Cauma (from the Syriac) in Revue de l'Orient latin, 1893, pp. 566-610; 1894, pp. 73-143, 235-300
Odericus Raynaldus, Annales Ecclesiastici (continuation of Baronius), AD 1288, fxxxv.xxxvi.; 1289, lxi
Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum, v. 169, 196, 170-173
C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, ii. 15, 352; iii. 12, 189-190, 539-541.

Rabban Bar Sauma's travel narrative has been translated into English twice:

James A. Montgomery, History of Yaballaha III, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927)
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, (London: Religious Tract Society, 1928).

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