The Mongols and the West by Peter Jackson

Author:Peter Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2018-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

The mechanics of Ilkhanid diplomacy

In their successive attempts to secure assistance from the Latin world, the Ilkhans took care to select personnel who would elicit the confidence of Western rulers and to impart a Christian complexion to their overtures.74 Rabban Ṣawma was only one of a number of Nestorian clerics who were included in Ilkhanid embassies: Solomon Arkaun (Mong. erkeʾün, ‘priest’), the bearer of Abaqa’s letter in 1268; ʿĪsā Kelemechi in 1285; and ‘Saabedin’, who accompanied Ṣawma in 1287 and who later visited Europe as part of the embassies of 1290 and 1302.75 But expatriate Franks also played an increasingly important role. The scribe and Latin interpreter (notarius … ac interpretes Latinorum) Richardus, who accompanied the possibly abortive embassy of 1262 and who subsequently drafted the report of Abaqa’s envoys to the Council of Lyons in 1274, may be identical with the Latin secretary whose temporary absence from court in 1267 had prevented the Ilkhan’s chancery from writing in Latin.76 In the previous twenty years, Genoese were especially prominent, like Tommaso Banchrinus (‘the Banker’) de’ Anfossi, who accompanied Arghun’s first mission in 1285, or Buscarello de’ Ghisolfi, a quiver-bearer (qorchi) in the Ilkhan’s guard (keshig), who brought Arghun’s letters of 1289 and 1290 and Ghazan’s of 1302. Öljeitü’s letter in 1307 was delivered by Tommaso Ugi of Siena, his ildüchi (‘sword-bearer’).77 Ghazan additionally sought to instil confidence into Western rulers by appointing to oversee the Christian resettlement of the Holy Land his Pisan agent Pericciolo (‘Isolo’, ‘Chol’) Bofeti da Anastasio, who carried his letter to King Henry of Cyprus and of whose existence the Papacy had been aware for several years, since Nicholas IV had addressed a letter to him as far back as 1289.78 When writing to Boniface VIII, Ghazan further induced the Nestorian Catholicus Yahballaha III and the Jacobite Patriarch Dionysius to send their own letters to the pope.79

During Abaqa’s reign, Ilkhanid embassies to Latin rulers were accompanied by the envoys of other Christian princes. His missions to Jaime I of Aragon in 1268–9, to Louis IX in 1269 and to the crusading army at Tunis in 1270 arrived with the ambassadors of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, whose illegitimate daughter was one of Abaqa’s wives,80 and his envoys joined the Council of Lyons not long after the delegation from Byzantium. Michael, who in the mid-1260s had been a client, rather, of the Golden Horde, was a recent addition to the Ilkhan’s orbit. It was perhaps hoped, by associating him with the Mongol mission, to enhance its Christian credentials, though the emperor, threatened by the plans of Louis’s brother, Charles of Anjou, to restore the Latin empire of Constantinople, had his own reasons for courting the French king, and Abaqa may well have been concerned also to register support for his father-in-law.81 In 1277, the Vassallis brought, in addition to Abaqa’s own letters, one for Edward I from the Ilkhan’s protégé, King Leo III of Lesser Armenia.82 In view of the fact that the kingdom of Lesser

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