JOHN, PRESTER Priest John"), the supposed Christian king and priest of a moll awal kingdom in the interior of Asia, the locality of which was vague and undefined, In the Ilth anti 12th ,centuries, the Nestorian missionaries penetrated into eastern Asia. and made many converts among the Keraeit, or Krit Tartars, including. according to report, the khan or sovereign of the tribe, Ung (or Ungh) Khan, who resided at Kar akorum, and to whom the afterwards celebrated Genghis Khan was tributary. This name the Syrian missionaries translated by analogy with their :own language, convert ing (Thy into "Jachanan" or "John," and rendering Khan by In their reports to the Christians of the West, accordingly, their royal convert figured as at once a priest and thirsoveieign of a rich and magnificent kingdom. Genghis Khan having thrown off his allegiance, a war ensued, which ended in the defeat and death of 15ng Khan in 1202; but the tales of his piety and magnificence long survived, and not only furnished the material of numberless mediaeval legends (which may be read in Asse mani's lleViotheca 0i-47141218, III. ii. 484), but supplied the occasion of several of those missionary expeditions from western Christendom, to which we owe almost all our knowledge of mediaeval eastern geography. The reports regarding Ung Khan, carried to Europe by the Armenian embassy to Eugene III.. created it most profound impres sion; and tue letters addis!ssed LI his Imams, but drawn up by the Nestorian missiona ries, to the pope, to the kings of France and Portugal, and to the Greek emperor, impressed all with a lively hope of the speedy extension of the gospel in a region hith erto regarded as hopelessly lost to Christianity. They are printed in Assemani's BIM%
othew Orientalis. The earliest mention of Prester John is in the narrative of the Fran ciscan father, John who was sent by pope Innocent IV. to the court of Bata Khan of Kiptehak, the grandson of Genghis Khan. Father Carpini supposed that Prester John's kingdom lay still further to the east, but he did not prosecute the search. This was reserved for a member of the Mlle order, father Rubruquis, who was sent as a missionary into Tartary by St. Louis, and having reached the camp of Bata Khan, was by him sent forward to Karakorum, the seat of the supposed Prester John. He failed, however, of his hope of finding such a personage, the khagan of Karakorum,. Manga. being still an unbeliever; and Iris intercourse with the Nestorian missionaries, whom he found established there, satisfied him that the accounts were grievously exag gerated. His narrative, which is printed in Purchas's Cot/seam, is one of the most interesting among those of the medieval travelers. Under the same vague notion of the existence of a Christian prince and a Christian kingdom in the east, the Portuguese sought for traces of Prester John in their newly-acquired Indian territory in the 15th century. A similar notion prevailed as to the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia, which, in the hope of finding Prester John, was visited so late as the reign of John II. of Por tugal -95) by Pedro Covilbam and Alfonzo di Payva. the former of whom mar ried and settled in the country. See an essay on this head in Ritter's Erdkund4; also Oppert's Der Frieder Jokannes (1864, 2-d ed. 1870).