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The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

Unc Khan

Unc Khan, alternately known as Ong Khan, Toghril, Tooril Khan, and King John was the Khereid ruler in the late 12th/early 13th centuries. The title unc is the Mongol form of the Chinese honorific wang meaning 'universal' (Hamilton, p. 248).

Reportedly a Nestorian Christian– although according to Bar Hebraeus' Chronicon Syriacum, a lapsed one– Unc Khan was killed by his blood brother and subordinate, the soon-to-be Genghis Khan, who was acting on rumors that a jealous Unc was planning to kill him.

This is the same figure known in other mid-thirteenth century texts as King David, son of Prester John.

Unc Khan figures in a number of Prester John narratives, including the Historia Tartarum (c. 1246), the Chronicon Syriacum, Marco Polo's Travels,

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Chronicon Syriacum
Makhtbhanuth Zabhne (c. 1258-1286)

Bar-Hebraeus's Chronicle, written in Syriac, aspires to narrate world history from Creation until the current day, in two books (concerning secular and sacred history, respectively).

In the Chronicon Syriacum, which concerns civil and political history, Bar-Hebraeus records an occurrence in the early eleventh century that connects to the legend of Prester John. According to the Chronicon the Mongol Keraits of the East Steppe adopted Nestorian Christianity in 1007. This is significant insofar as the early European legends speaking of a powerful Indian prince John cast this figure too as Nestorian and it was not known at that time whether or not Nestorian Christianity had spread that far east.

Bar-Hebraeus then goes on to mention that it was a King David who, as chief of these same Keraits, was defeated in 1202 by Genghis Khan, who was once King John's vassal. The Syriac documentation of this events matches those of western authors, including the narrative of Marco Polo's journey. There, however, King David/Prester John is known as Ong Khan.

From Silverberg:
How are we to account for William’s [of Rubruck] linking of Togrul and Kuchluk the Naiman (‘King or Presbyter John’)? They were in fact not brothers, nor of the same tribe, nor of the same generation, nor could Togril, who died in 1203, possibly have succeeded to the throne of Kuchluk, who outlived him by sixteen years. A clue to the source of his error can be found in the Chronicon Syriacum of the Syrian cleric Gregory Abulfaraj Bar-Hebraeus, who lived from 1226 to 1286: speaking of the conversion of the Keraits to Christianity, he notes that in the time of the Mongol dominion they were ruled by an ‘Ung Khan who is called Malik Yuhanna,’ that is, ‘King John.’

See Brewer (pp. 169-170) for the English translation of the account of Prester John in the Chronicon.
Cyclopaedia Written by Ephraim Chambers and first published in 1728, this first English encyclopedia provides a view on the Prester John legend.

Chambers' entry on Prester John can be see in much the same form in Johann Lorenz von Mosheim's An Ecclesiastical History (1741), associating Prester John with Unc Khan.
Historia Tartarorum Ecclesiastica Published in Germany in 1741, Johann Lorenz von Mosheim's Historia Tartarorum Ecclesiastica is very much similar to Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia before him and Patrick Nisbet in his An Abridgment of Ecclesiastical History (1776) after.

Von Mosheim describes the emergence of Prester John in the Mongol era, following the death of "Coiremchan, otherwise called Kencham":
it was invaded, with such uncommon valour and success, by a Nestorian priest, whose name was John, that it fell before his victorious arms, and acknowledged this warlike and enterprising presbyter, as its monarch. This was the famous Prester John, whose territory was, for a long time, considered by the Europeans as a second paradise, as the seat of opulence and complete felicity. As he was a presbyter before his elevation to the royal dignity, many continued to call him presbyter John, even when he was seated on the throne but his kingly name was Ungchan (qtd. in Brewer, p. 261)
He then retells the oft-repeated story of King David, Prester John's son, and the former's defeat at the hands of Genghis Khan.

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