husband of Leon’s daughter Isabel (1224–1269); he was, however,
prudent enough to make an early submission to the Mongols, and
remained ever staunch to them, which brought his territory
constantly under the flail of Egypt. It included at one time all
Cilicia, with many cities of Syria and the ancient Armenia Minor,
of Isauria and Cappadocia. The male line of Rupen becoming extinct
in 1342, the kingdom passed to John de Lusignan, of the royal
house of Cyprus, and in 1375 it was put an end to by the Sultan of
Egypt. Leon VI., the ex-king, into whose mouth Froissart puts some
extraordinary geography, had a pension of 1000_l._ a year granted
him by our Richard II., and died at Paris in 1398.
The chief remaining vestige of this little monarchy is the
continued existence of a _Catholicos_ of part of the Armenian
Church at Sis, which was the royal residence. Some Armenian
communities still remain both in hills and plains; and the former,
the more independent and industrious, still speak a corrupt
Armenian.
Polo’s contemporary, Marino Sanuto, compares the kingdom of the
Pope’s faithful Armenians to one between the teeth of four fierce
beasts, the _Lion_ Tartar, the _Panther_ Soldan, the Turkish
_Wolf_, the Corsair _Serpent_.
(_Dulaurier_, in _J. As._ sér. V. tom. xvii.; _St. Martin, Arm._;
_Mar. San._ p. 32; _Froissart_, Bk. II. ch. xxii. _seqq._;
_Langlois, V. en Cilicie_, 1861, p. 19.)
NOTE 2.—“_Maintes villes et maint chasteaux_.” This is a constantly
recurring phrase, and I have generally translated it as here,
believing _chasteaux (castelli)_ to be used in the frequent old
Italian sense of a _walled_ village or small walled town, or like
the Eastern _Kala’_, applied in Khorasan “to everything—town,
village, or private residence—surrounded by a wall of earth.”
(_Ferrier_, p. 292; see also _A. Conolly_, I. p. 211.) Martini,
in his _Atlas Sinensis_, uses “_Urbes_, _oppida_, castella,” to
indicate the three classes of Chinese administrative cities.
NOTE 3.—“_Enferme durement_.” So Marino Sanuto objects to Lesser
Armenia as a place of debarkation for a crusade “_quia terra est
infirma_.” Langlois, speaking of the Cilician plain: “In this region
once so fair, now covered with swamps and brambles, fever decimates
a population which is yearly diminishing, has nothing to oppose
to the scourge but incurable apathy, and will end by disappearing
altogether,” etc. (_Voyage_, p. 65.) Cilician Armenia retains its
reputation for sport, and is much frequented by our naval officers
for that object. Ayas is noted for the extraordinary abundance of
turtles.
NOTE 4.—The phrase twice used in this passage for the _Interior_
is _Fra terre_, an Italianism (_Fra terra_, or, as it stands in the
Geog. Latin, “_infra terram Orientis_”), which, however, Murray
and Pauthier have read as an allusion to the _Euphrates_, an error
based apparently on a marginal gloss in the published edition of
the Soc. de Géographie. It is true that the province of Comagene
under the Greek Empire got the name of _Euphratesia_, or in Arabic
_Furátíyah_, but that was not in question here. The great trade
of Ayas was with Tabriz, _viâ_ Sivas, Erzingan, and Erzrum, as we
see in Pegolotti. Elsewhere, too, in Polo we find the phrase _fra
terre_ used, where Euphrates could possibly have no concern, as in
relation to India and Oman. (See Bk. III. chs. xxix. and xxxviii.,
and notes in each case.)
With regard to the phrase _spicery_ here and elsewhere, it should
be noted that the Italian _spezerie_ included a vast deal more than
ginger and other things “hot i’ the mouth.” In one of Pegolotti’s
lists of _spezerie_ we find drugs, dye-stuffs, metals, wax, cotton,
etc.