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

Qara Khitai

The Kara Khitai (known also as the Black Cathay) was established out of the ruins of the Chinese Liao Dynasty when, in 1124, some 200 followers of the Khitan imperial family escaped into Central Asia with their leader, Yeh-lü Ta-shih, fleeing from the Jurchen who had begun to make war on the Khitan in 1115. Within a few years, Yeh-lü Ta-shih successfully enlisted the support of a number of Turkish tribes in the area and established a formidable army.

The group's victory over the Seljuk Turks in 1141 was misunderstood in the Historia de duabus civitatibus as the deeds of an Eastern Christian potentate capable of uniting all of Christendom. This anecdote turned out not to refer to utopic Christians at all (nor Christians of any stripe), but to the Qara Khitai, led by the Buddhist (not Nestorian) Yeh-lü Ta-shih.

More specifically, Hugh's story refers to Yeh-lü Ta-shi and the Qara Khitai's 1141 defeat of Seljuk king Sanjar and his army at the Battle of Qatwan near Samarkand (not Ecbatana, as Hugh has it). Given the timing and location of this event, combined with the fact that the Qara Khitai were nominally Nestorian, it is reasonable to conclude that this event provided historians with a possible explanation for the beginning of the Prester John legend.

Traces of this historical battle also appear in Benjamin of Tudela's account of Kofar al-Turak, another early influence on the legend of Prester John. According to Brooks (pg. 77):

"Of interest to the discussion of the legend of Prester John is a passage in which Benjamin described a powerful king in the East. According to the narrative, the king’s name was Kofar-al-Turak, and this Asian king successfully destroyed the king of Persia. Benjamin claimed that Kofar-al-Turak’s forces 'slew many of the Persian army, and the king of Persia fled with only a few followers to his own country.' The account seems contemporaneous with the 1141 defeat by the Kara-Khitai of the Kara-Khanids, who were nominally vassals of the Seljuks. The idea that the forces of Islam could be defeated by conquerors from the East – especially if they were fellow Christians – no doubt was welcome news in Europe. The series of twelfth and thirteenth century papal and royal embassies to the Turkic nomads known collectively as the Mongols was in part due to the credence placed in the account of Benjamin of Tudela."

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The Two Cities, A Chronicle of Universal History De Duabus Civitatibus (1157-1158)

Inspired by civil unrest in Germany and written shortly after the fall of Edessa in 1143, Otto of Freising's Historia de duabus civitatibus has come to be known for providing an important early source on the figure of Prester John.

Oddly enough, this vital information is nothing more than an a recorded anecdote from 1145 that tells of a colleague of Otto's called Hugh of Jabala, a bishop from Lebanon, who was relaying news of a promising Nestorian Christian prince, Iohannes. This news as given in the presence of Pope Eugenius III at Viterbo.

According to Otto, widely reputed to be a trustworthy historian, this Iohannes, hailing from the distant East of the Magi, had recently conquered Persia and headed West to assist crusaders in their defense of the Holy Land. Unfortunately, Otto relates, a flooded Tigris River prevented him from aiding his Latin Christian brethren. As summarized by Slessarev (27-28):
He [i.e. Hugh] related also that not many years before a certain John, a king and priest who dwells beyond Persia and Armenia in the uttermost East and, with all his people, is a Christian but a Nestorian, made war on the brother kings of Persians and Medes, called Samiardi, and stormed Ekbatana (the seat of their kingdom).

When the aforesaid kings met him with an army composed of Persians, Medes and Assyrians a battle ensued which lasted for three days, since both parties were willing to die rather than turn in flight. Prester John, for so they are accustomed to call him... emerged victorious.

He said that after this victory the aforesaid John moved his army to the aid of the Church in Jerusalem. But that when he had reached the river Tigris and was unable to transport his army across that river by any evidence he turned towards the north... tarried there for several years... [and] was forced to return home.”

In analyzing the anecdote that arguably sparked the Prester John fever across Europe, Niayesh (p. 157) notes the structural "ambivalence" of Hugh's account, noting that his story was "caught half-way between the pagan past of classical authorities and the present of Christian Crusaders" insofar as Prester John is "made to fight the long extinct nations of the Medes and Assyrians, rather than directly facing contemporary 'Saracens.'

Even the somewhat contemporaneous historical details do not, in actuality, herald a Christian savior of western Europe. Although this rumor spawned the centuries-long belief in an Eastern potentate capable of uniting Christendom, the initial account of an Eastern anti-Islamic leader was later understood to refer to the deeds of the Qara Khitai, a nomadic Chinese tribe descending from Manchuria. Significantly, this battle took place in Samarkand, not Ecbatana, as Hugh reports.

Nevertheless, despite historical mistranslation and Iohannes's failure to reach even Byzantium, this rumor helped set in motion, for many Europeans, a belated recognition of the world beyond the Tigris.

Brewer edits and translates the relevant passages of the chronicle (pp. 43-45).
Yeh-lu Ta-shih The leader of the nomadic remnant of the Western Liao dynasty known as the Kara Khitai, Yeh-lü Ta-shi was one of the early historical personages misunderstood to be Prester John.

As Silverberg (p. 11) recalls, Yeh-lü Ta-shi was a descendent of the first Khitan Emperor of China. After escaping to central Asia in 1124 with about 200 followers following the collapse of the Liao Dynasty, Yeh-lü Ta-shi was able to establish a new kingdom by winning the support of local Turkish tribes. His 1141 victory over the Seljuk Turks was subsequently mistranslated into a victory of eastern Christians over a formidable Muslim army at a time when western Europe desperately needed a sign of hope after a streak of failed crusading ventures.

During this process of mistranslation, Yeh-lü Ta-shih morphed into an early model for later stories about Prester John. According to Hugh of Jabala's anecdote, recorded in Bishop Otto of Friesing's universal history, a certain Nestorian king called Presbyter Iohannes had defeated a large Muslim army in Ecbatana [note: this actually happened in Samarkand] and had plans to continue to Jerusalem, if not thwarted by an inability to cross the Tigris River. This story turned out to be a mutated retelling of lead of the Qara Khitai Yeh-lü Ta-shi's defeat of Seljuk Sultan Sanjar, though there are several important differences.

First, as Silverberg (pg. 12) points out, Yeh-lü Ta-shi was known to have received "a classical academic Chinese education" and is not known in any Chinese historical text to have been a Christian.

Second, Although he and his army did defeat the Seljuks in 1141, this battle occurred near Samarkand (modern Uzbekistan), not some 2,000 km west in Ecbatana (modern Iran), as Hugh of Jabala reports. Yeh-lü died in either 1143 or 1144 having not traveled much further west than Samarkand.
Samiardi Although initially unclear, the reference to this unfamiliar "Samiardi" must refer in some distorted way to the Seljuk Sanjar whose army was defeated at Qatawan (near Samarkand) by the somewhat Nestorian Kara Khitai in 1141.

The conflation that produced "Samiardi" from Sanjar has received multiple explanations by students of the Prester John legend.

Silverberg (p. 12) points out that some manuscripts of Otto's text use "Saniardi," a plural form of Sanjar, which, given the Seljuk custom of cooperative rule among brothers, provides a somewhat plausible explanation for the mutation "Samiardi."

Niayesh (p. 157) adds, "[a]s for the mysterious name of John's kingly adversaries, the 'Samiardi', it recalls the Persian 'Smerdis', name of the murdered brother of Cambyses, son and heir to Cyrus the Great." Given that Cyrus the Great destroyed Ecbatana, reputed site of the Christian victory over a Muslim army in Hugh of Jabala's narrative, nearly 1800 years before Hugh reports the battle there, Niayesh puzzles over the way that this version of Prester John "is made to fight the long extinct nations of the Medes and Assyrians, rather than directly facing contemporary 'Saracens.' "
Continuatio Admontensis According to Brewer (p. 275), the late 12th century Continuatio Admontensis includes "a short notice of Prester John seemingly sources from Otto of Freising," noting that, in 1141, "Prester John, King of India and Armenia, fought with the two brother kings of the Persians and the Medes, and defeated them" in the year 1141, the same as the Battle of Qatwan.

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