ANDREW OF LONGJUMEAU (Longumeau, Lonjumel, etc.), a French Dominican, explorer and diplomatist. He accom panied the mission under Friar Ascelin, sent by Pope Innocent IV. to the Mongols in 1247; at the Tartar camp near Kars he met a certain David, who next year (1248) appeared at the court of King Louis IX. of France in Cyprus. Andrew, who was now with St. Louis, interpreted to the king David's message, a real or pretended offer of alliance from the Mongol general, Ilchikdai (Ilchikadai), and a proposal of a joint attack upon the Islamic powers for the conquest of Syria. In reply the French sovereign despatched Andrew as his ambassador to the great Khan Kuyuk; with Longjumeau went his brother, a monk, and several others— John Goderiche, John of Carcassonne, Herbert "le sommelier," Gerbert of Sens, Robert a clerk, a certain William, and an unnamed clerk of Poissy.
The party set out about Feb. 16 1249, with letters from King Louis and the papal legate, and rich presents, including a chapel tent, lined with scarlet cloth and embroidered with sacred pic tures. From Cyprus they went to the port of Antioch in Syria, and thence travelled for a year to the khan's court, going ten leagues a day. Their route led them through Persia, along the southern and eastern shores of the Caspian (whose inland char acter, unconnected with the outer ocean, their journey helped to demonstrate), and probably through Talas, N.E. of Tashkent. On arrival at the supreme Mongol court-either that on the Imyl river (near Lake Ala-kul and the present Russo-Chinese frontier in the Altai), or more probably at or near Karakorum itself, S.W. of Lake Baikal-Andrew found Kuyuk Khan dead, poisoned, as the envoy supposed, by Batu's agents. The regent-mother, Ogul Gaimish (the "Camus" of Rubruquis), seems to have re ceived and dismissed him with presents and a letter for Louis IX., the latter a fine specimen of Mongol insolence. But it is certain that before the friar had quitted "Tartary," Mangu Khan, Kuyuk's successor, had been elected.
Andrew's report to his sovereign, whom he rejoined in 1251 at Caesarea in Palestine, appears to have been a mixture of history and fable; the latter affects his narrative of the Mongols' rise to greatness, and the struggles of their leader, evidently Jenghiz Khan, with Prester John; it is still more evident in the position assigned to the Tartar homeland, close to the prison of Gog and Magog. On the other hand, the envoy's account of Tartar man ners is fairly accurate, and his statements about Mongol Christi anity and its prosperity, though perhaps exaggerated (e.g., as to the Boo chapels on wheels in the nomadic host), are based on fact. Mounds of bones marked his road, witnesses of devastations which other historians record in detail ; he found Christian prison ers from Germany in the heart of "Tartary" (at Talas) ; the ceremony of passing between two fires he was compelled to observe, as a bringer of gifts to a dead khan, gifts which were of course treated by the Mongols as evidence of submission.
We only know of Andrew through references in other writers; see especially William of Rubruquis in Recueil de voyages, iv. (Paris, 1839), pp. 261, 265, 279, 296, 31o, 353, 37o; Joinville, ed. Francisque Michel (1858, etc.) , pp. 142, etc. ; Jean Pierre Sarrasin, in same vol., pp. ; William of Nangis in Recueil des historiens des Gaules, xx. 359-67 ; Remusat, Memoires sur les relations politiques des princes chretiens . . . avec les . . . Mongols (5822, etc.), p. 52.
(C. R. B.)