A Proposal for the Identity of the Inner Asian City of Ornas (Hornach) Mentioned in Thirteenth-Century Latin Sources

Abstract

Ornas (also Hornach) appears in the mentions of several Latin authors in the mid-thirteenth century as an important city deep in Asia that had been conquered by the Mongols. There have been several past suggestions by scholars for its identity; the scattered mentions of Ornas (Hornach) have been variously suggested to refer to Tana, Otrar, or Konye-Urgench. The present paper argues that these references, though confused on matters of geography since the Western European authors were writing about largely unknown regions that they did not personally visit, are typically references to the city of Konye-Urgench. The Latin authors’ descriptions of its fall to the Mongols unquestionably draw parallels with Middle Eastern, Rus’, Chinese, and Mongol accounts. This paper argues that the Latin references to Ornas’ proximity to a nearby sea are related to the Aral Sea which had southerly stretches very close to Konya-Urgench as is indicated, for instance from Russian survey maps of the nineteenth century. This identification allows us to place John of Plano Carpini’s description of the fall of Ornas within a larger, cohesive narrative which, though confused on points, offers insights on the fall of the Khwarazmian Empire in the early 1220s.