VII

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

"The teacher of that ecclesiastical [one] is not. And the building of the pillars as we hoped and the cedars: and we descended to Seleucia and our Seleucia: and this is what our education has changed.

"This will be Mar Yahballaha, and the savior will be in our days and the Syriac scribes: that there is no more ancient work: and that his power is God, he becomes that: and many saw [it] and for our children it will be."

"And the news of Mar Yahballaha our glorious education that came in that and the sons (of the death of my lord to Barhebræus Abu al-Faraj Bar Hebraeus: that the letter of the student in Tammuz, year 1286 to our Lord) in that of the Eastern cities: that he turned so that we would not go out to the sky, and even that we would not go out [to] life . . . and the story of our new education of God and the Syrians of our city of China."

The work that we are publishing sheds great light on the history of Christianity in China and Persia, as well as on the history of the Mongol kings in the XIIIth century; it follows the Syriac Chronicle of Barhebræus.

Sauma, born in Beijing, received the habit and the monastic tonsure at the hands of Mar Guiverguis, Archbishop of China, and seven years later, he left his native city to become a hermit.

Marcus, born in 1244 in Kaoscheng, followed the example of Raban Sauma, and, after three years of novitiate, received the monastic tonsure at the hands of the Archbishop Mar Nestorius. Raban Sauma and Raban Marcus, after having lived for some time