The rise and rule of Tamerlane. By Beatrice Forbes Manz. (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilisation.) pp. xi, 227, 4 maps. Cambridge etc., Cambridge University Press, 1989. £25.00.

Abstract

second). Moreover, Van den Wyngaert was unaware of the existence of a quite different report of the mission, drawn up by a Franciscan in Silesia in the summer of 1247, while Carpini's party was still on its way back through Eastern Europe. This, the so-called "Tartar Relation", contains certain passages found in the two standard versions but also incorporates a wealth of other material, apparently dictated by Carpini's companion Benedict. The need for a new, and better annotated, edition of the Ystoria has accordingly been felt for some years. It has now been met through the strenuous efforts of Italian scholars, and two in particular. Maria Cristiana Lungarotti provides an authoritative survey of the two recensions, and has produced the Italian translation; Enrico Menesto is responsible not simply for the edition but also for an exhaustive examination of the manuscript tradition and a well-rounded biography of Carpini. The superiority of the new edition over that of Van den Wyngaert lies primarily in Menesto's punctuation, which is often more helpful in determining the sense, and in his choice of readings, of which notable examples are hyrcum (III, 23), where Van den Wyngaert quite unwarrantably read hercium; Sarruyur (V, 70) instead of Sariemiur for the tribal name Sari-Uighur, and the disappearance of the ludicrous Divult (IX, 298) which Van den Wyngaert adopted from the Cambridge manuscript in place of Om.il (Emil, in Dzhungaria). Other welcome improvements relate to the names of members of the Mongol imperial dynasty listed in chapter V: Tanuht (Tangut) for the Thaube of the 1929 edition; Thuatemyr (To'a-temur) for Chuacenur; Seroctan (Sorqoqtani) for Sorocan; and Buygel (not, as assumed in the notes at p. 445, Tangut again, but Bochek) for Dinget. A few misprints should be noted: forpurificati (III, 172) readpurificari; for videtur (V, 104), videntur; for lorica (VI, 31), loricas; and for crebas (VI, 104), crebras. The other contributions are perhaps a trifle disappointing in comparison. The historical introduction by Luciano Petech is wide-ranging; but it fails to take account of the more recent work on the Mongols (the spectre of the "lost opportunity" of a Mongol-Western alliance in 1248 and 1260, for example, still rattles its chains at pp. 34, 37-8, 41). And while the notes, by Paolo Daffina, are largely excellent, some questions certainly call for further discussion. Three examples will suffice. (1) The traditional identification of the place Ornas (V, 321) with Urgench is tentatively endorsed by Daffina (pp. 449-51), who might have appealed, incidentally, to the description of the Khwarazmshah as soldanus de Hornach found in the report of the Hungarian Dominican Julian. Yet Carpini's Ornas lay not on the Amu but on the SIr-darya, and one manuscript reads Orpar: is it possible, therefore, that a metathetical form of Utrar is intended? (2) Carpini's precursores (VI, 92) are not tamachis (p. 463), since these were permanent garrison troops: the more likely equivalence is with alginchis (" spies ", " scouts ": see, e.g., Secret History of the Mongols, §123). (3) Daffina (p. 468) rightly links Cosmir (VII, 103) with the Keshimir of the Secret History, but his identification with Kashmir may well be groundless, since the context in both cases suggests a region much further north and the eleventh-century writer Mahmud Kashgharl mentions a separate locality Keshimir in "the land of the Turks" (see Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, I, p. 242). In any case, he is incorrect in stating that the Mongols had not as yet conquered Kashmir, which according to Rashld al-DIn had been occupied for six months in c. 1236 (Die Indiengeschichte, ed. and tr. Karl Jahn, Vienna, 1980, tr. p. 56; J. A. Boyle, The successors of Genghis Khan, London and New York, 1971, p. 55).