Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West

Toward the end of the thirteenth century, at about the time Marco Polo was being received by the great Khubilai Khan, a Nestorian Christian monk from China called Rabban Sauma was making the reverse journey from the Mongol capital (what is now Beijing) to Jerusalem. Upon reaching Baghdad—the first traveler to arrive from China—Sauma learned that his pilgrimage could not be fulfilled because of Islamic control of the Holy Land. In Voyager from Xanadu, Morris Rossabi traces Sauma’s trans—Eura...