The first Chinese person whom we know to have traveled to Europe arrived in 1287. Bar Sauma was a Chinese-born, ethnically-Turkic, Christian monk and an agent of two different Mongol empires. His travels from Beijing to Paris were missions both religious and geopolitical. He makes a terrific NPC and a great complication for politically-oriented adventures.
The Kickstarter for my next full RPG, Ballad Hunters, is still on schedule for March! You can read more about it here! I’m also doing a monthly design diary leading up to the Kickstarter. The second entry, about changing GUMSHOE’s point economy for shorter adventures is here, while the first entry is here.
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Image credit: Justin Kunimune and cmglee. CC BY-SA 4.0 license
Bar Sauma was born around 1225, at the time of the death of Genghis Khan, in the world the great conquerer had made. Though born in China, Bar Sauma’s ancestry was not Han Chinese but Ongud. They were a nomadic Turkic people that had converted to Christianity in the 1100s. They were members of the Church of the East, a division of Christianity that no longer exists. Though not populous, the Church of the East was at the time the largest division of Christianity by land area, with members as far afield as Syria, Mongolia, China, and India. It had certain theological differences from the Catholic and Orthodox churches that mean it’s often called “Nestorian”: a reference to a late antique Christian heretic variant that some argue was not actually applicable to the Church of the East.
The Onguds joined the Mongol Empire early and voluntarily. Because they belonged to a religion with a holy book, many were literate. This made them valuable to the Mongols as administrators. Mongol rulers sent Onguds throughout the empire to staff their courts. Bar Sauma’s family was sent to China, where they joined the tiny Christian minority that had been present there since 635. Sauma thus grew up in an environment full of international influences: Mediterranean (via Christianity), Mongol, Ongud, and Chinese.
Bar Sauma was a monk and a hermit. His parents had wanted him to be an administrator in the style of Chinese scholar-gentlemen, but he refused. After 27 years of seclusion and private devotion in northern China, around age 50, Bar Sauma set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The Mongol emperor of China, Kublai Khan, sponsored the pilgrimage as part of a PR blitz to show how supportive he was of all of China’s cultural and religious communities.
By this point, there was no longer just one Mongol Empire. There were four, all ruled by different descendants of Genghis Khan. The Ilkhanate ruled Persia and much of the Middle East. The Golden Horde ruled what is today Russia. The Chagatai Khanate ruled Central Asia. The fourth and greatest of the Mongol Empires was based in China. It’s usually called the Yuan Dynasty. The other three empires ostensibly owed allegiance to the branch of the family that ruled China, but in practice all four empires were autonomous.
Bar Sauma’s trip was thus taking him out of Yuan China and into the Ilkhanate. The trip was long and arduous, but he was able to rest and resupply in Church of the East communities along the route. On the way to the Holy Land, Sauma took a detour to visit Baghdad, where the Church of the East was headquartered. The towns around Baghdad were dotted with holy places where important moments in the history of the Church of the East occurred.
In 1280, Sauma found that travel farther west was blocked. Jerusalem was not ruled by the Ilkhanate but by Egyptians: the Mamluk Sultanate. The Mamluks had not only blocked the Ilkhanate’s attempts to conquer North Africa, they’d actually pushed the Ilkhanate out of important land near the Mediterranean, including Jerusalem. The Mamluks were not admitting pilgrims from the Ilkhanate.
The head of the Church of the East, called the grand metropolitan, encouraged Sauma not to return to China, but to remain in the Ilkhanate. The grand metropolitan’s motivation was political. Sauma’s pilgrimage had been sponsored by the great Kublai Khan, who was ostensibly the boss of the Ilkhan (the ruler of the Ilkhanate). Sauma’s association with Kublai Khan was convenient. The grand metropolitan sent Sauma to the Ilkhan to ask that the Ilkhan grant the grand metropolitan special favors. The grand metropolitan’s plan worked. The Ilkhan granted the favors. Doing so was an easy way for the Ilkhan to make a show of honoring his nominal superior in Beijing without actually giving up any authority.
(It was in this time that Sauma was given the ecclesiastical title “Rabban,” and you’ll usually see him referred to not by his name, Bar Sauma, but by his title, Rabban Sauma.)
A year later the grand metropolitan died. The new grand metropolitan was, conveniently, another Ongud and Sauma’s best friend. Sauma settled down to a monastic life near Baghdad, acting as a close advisor to the new grand metropolitan.
The Ilkhanate during this period was in a bit of a pickle. It was at on-again, off-again war not only with the Mamluks, but with two of the other Mongol empires: the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate. The Ilkhan needed allies. Crusaders were a likely possibility. There had already been numerous diplomatic missions between the kingdoms of Europe and the Ilkhanate, trying to coordinate a combined attack on the Mamluks. None had actually accomplished anything. Everyone agreed an alliance against the Mamluks made sense, but there was always some more immediate concern that took precedence. In 1287, the ruling Ilkhan, Arghun Khan, was ready to try again.
Arghun Khan wanted his envoy to be a Christian clergyman. It would make good optics. So he asked the grand metropolitan to recommend a diplomat. The grand metropolitan picked Sauma. Sauma was excited to go. He still hadn’t been to Jerusalem, and visiting the religious sites of Europe would be the next best thing. He was bound for Constantinople, Naples, Rome, Paris, and perhaps London.
Sauma’s time in Constantinople accomplished little. The Byzantine Emperor, Andronikos I Komnenos, was impressed by the enthusiasm Sauma displayed while visiting the city’s churches and relics. But Andronikos had other problems. The Golden Horde was at his back door. A closer relationship with the Ilkhanate would anger the Russian Mongols. Better, Andronikos felt, to remain neutral in the feud between those two Mongol empires.
Naples, too, had more pressing concerns. The 20-year War of the Sicilian Vespers occupied the Neapolitans. Indeed, during his brief stay, Sauma watched the Battle of the Counts from the roof of the home he was staying in. Sauma’s diary recounts his surprise that neither side targeted civilians in the battle. Sauma had spent almost his whole life in Mongol-ruled dominions, and Mongol armies frequently practiced total war. Medieval European armies were hardly paragons of restraint, but by Mongol standards they were kindly enough for Sauma to document his surprise.
In Rome, Sauma was supposed to convince the pope to send another crusade to the Holy Land. Sauma was disappointed to learn, when he arrived, that Rome was between popes and the cardinals were in no great hurry to pick a new one. Sauma’s arrival was an entertaining distraction from the cutthroat internal politics of papal succession. The cardinals were very curious to learn about the Church of the East, of which they knew almost nothing, and Sauma diplomatically elided over the major theological differences between their two churches.
Paris seemed to go well. King Phillip the Fair loved the idea of a new crusade, and promised to participate. It would not happen; France would be kept busy by territorial disputes with Aragon, England, Flanders, and the Holy Roman Empire. Sauma and the king happily nerded out at one another about churches and holy relics for a month, but that was as far as their relationship went. Sauma was particularly impressed by the University of Paris. While Sauma’s adoptive home of Baghdad had a university, such institutions did not exist in his native China.
A trip to London did not prove necessary; King Edward I was visiting Bordeaux. He had been a crusader and told Sauma he was eager to do it again. But he too would never fulfill that promise, kept busy by matters closer to home.
Sauma, of course, had no way to know his crusade wouldn’t happen. He’d received the endorsement of two kings! So it was back to Rome. A new pope had been chosen (Nicholas IV), and it was up to Sauma to convince him to launch this crusade and coordinate it with the Mongol Ilkhanate. This was the spring of 1288, and Sauma spent Easter and Holy Week as a guest of the pope. He was very excited to observe the relevant Catholic rituals, and the court encouraged him to share his own rituals with them. The pope even gave Sauma a great many religious relics to take back to the Ilkhanate. Nonetheless, Nicholas IV declined to call for another crusade. He had his own political ambitions, and they did not align with the Ilkhan’s.
Sauma made it back to the Ilkhanate with his news. The Mongol emperor saw the mission as a success. Sure, the pope had declined to call for a crusade, but the kings of France and England were onboard, weren’t they? Sauma wrote a book in Persian about his experiences. That original text is lost, but a translation in Syriac (the church language of the Church of the East) was discovered in 1887, though the original translator omitted much.
Sauma makes a great NPC. He’s a grumpy old ex-hermit who’s figured out how to turn a business trip into a sightseeing expedition. He’s really into religious relics and has a big personal stash, which in any setting with holy magic means he’s a force to be reckoned with.
I’ve long written about using material on the blog as complications: inserting something new that turns a straightforward problem into a messy one. Sauma is a complication. You’re in a city trying to do something when this foreigner shows up from incredibly far away, representing someone powerful from a second place that’s also far away (but not as far). He starts talking to people and distracting them with messages from his boss. Other people are trying to get his attention when you’re trying to get their attention. Anytime you go somewhere interesting, he’s already there snapping photos with his polaroid camera. And when he realizes that the people he came to meet are too distracted with their own problems to commit to whatever he’s proposing, he might deviate from history and start trying to solve those problems using his patron’s immense wealth. In so doing, he creates more problems than he solves.
For a more straightforward plot hook, Sauma the weary world-traveler might appeal to you to smuggle him into your setting’s equivalent of Jerusalem: the place he wanted to visit in the first place, but has always been blocked from visiting. He’s come so far and waited so long, and it’s galling that he still hasn’t been there. Whether you help him or not, and however an attempt shakes out, there will be consequences for the party’s relationships with multiple nations.
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Sing and fight magical folk ballads in 1813 England and Scotland! Ballad Hunters is the sequel to Shanty Hunters, winner of a 2022 Ennie Award (Judge’s Choice) and nominee at the Indie Groundbreaker Awards for Most Innovative and Game of the Year. And it’s coming to Kickstarter in March!
The game has:
– Investigative adventures centered around the lyrics of traditional British ballads
– Simple, story-driven rules inspired by the GUMSHOE engine
– A historical setting that is grim but hopeful
– Magic where characters make ballad verses come to life
You can download the free early-access version of the game from DriveThruRPG or Google Drive.
The final game will be published by Pelgrane Press, the people behind 13th Age and GUMSHOE games like Trail of Cthulhu, Swords of the Serpentine, and The Yellow King. You can read more about it on their website and sign up to be notified when it’s available for purchase by putting yourself on my mailing list.
Sources:
Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West by Morris Rossabi (1992/2010)
A 1928 translation of the incomplete Syriac translation: https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sauma.html