RABBAN BAR SAUMA (fl. 1280-1288), Nestorian travel ler and diplomatist, was born at Peking about the middle of the 13th century. He started on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and travelling by way of Tangut, Khotan, Kashgar, Talas in the Syr Daria valley, Khorasan, Maragha and Mosul, arrived at Ani in Armenia. Warnings of the danger of the routes to southern Syria turned him from his purpose; and his friend Rabban Marcos suggested Bar Sauma's name to Arghun Khan, sovereign of the Ilkhanate or Mongol-Persian realm, for a European embassy, then contemplated, to conclude an anti-Muslim alliance with the chief States of Christendom. Bar Sauma set out in 1287, with Arghun's letters to the Byzantine emperor, the pope and the kings of France and England. He went first to Constantinople, then to Rome. The papacy being then vacant, a definite reply to his proposals was postponed, and Bar Sauma passed on to Paris, where he visited Philip IV. In Gascony he met King Edward I. of England, probably at Bordeaux. On returning to Rome, he was
cordially received by Pope Nicolas IV., who gave him communion on Palm Sunday, 1288, allowed him to celebrate his own Euchar ist in the capital of Latin Christendom, commissioned him to visit the Christians of the East, and entrusted to him the tiara which he presented to Mar Yaballaha. His narrative is of unique interest as giving a picture of mediaeval Europe at the close of the crusading period, painted by a keenly intelligent, broad minded and statesmanlike observer.
See J. B. Chabot's translation and edition of the Histoire du Patriarche Mar Jabalaha III. et du moine Rabban Cauma (from the Syriac) in Revue de l'Orient latin, PP. 566-610; 1894, PP. 235-300; 0. Raynaldus, Annales Ecclesiastici (continuation of Baronius), A.D. 1288, SS. XXXV.-XXXVi. ; 1289, S. lxi. ; C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography (1897, etc.) ii. 15, ; iii. 12, 189-190,