great kingdom, and the greatest and fairest city in those parts, but the Tartars have now made it a wilderness.  There were formerly eight hundred churches [13] of the Armenians here, which are now reduced to two very small ones, in one of which I held my Christmas as well as I could, with our clerk Gosset.  Next day the priest of this church died, and a bishop with twelve monks came from the mountains to his funeral, for all the bishops of the Armenians are monks, and likewise most of those belonging to the Greeks [14].

In the city of Naxuam I met a Catalan friar, of the order of Predicants, named Barnard, who lives with a friar of the Holy Sepulchre, resident in Georgia, and possessing extensive lands there.  We were detained in Naxuam by the snow, till the 6th January 1255, and came in four days to the country of Sabensa, a Curdish prince, heretofore powerful, but now tributary to the Tartars, who destroyed all his warlike stores.  Zacharias, the father of Sabensa, possessed himself of all the country of the Armenians, from whence he drove out the Saracens.  In this country there are many fine villages of true Christians, having churches like those of Europe; and every Armenian has in his house, in an honourable place, a wooden hand holding a cross, before which a lamp continually burns; and that which we do by holy water, they do with frankincense, which they burn every evening through every corner of the house, to drive away evil spirits.  I eat with Sabensa, and both he and his wife did me great reverence.  His son Zachary, a wise and comely young man, asked me if your majesty would, entertain him; for though he has plenty of all things, he is so uneasy under the Tartar dominion, that he would rather retire to a strange country, than endure their violent exactions.  These people say they are true sons of the church, and if the Pope would send them aid, they would bring all the neighbouring nations under subjection to the church of Rome.

From Naxuam we travelled in fifteen days into the country of the soldan of Turkey, to a castle called Marseugen, inhabited by Armenians, Curgians, and Greeks, the Turks only having the dominion.  From that place, where we arrived on the first Sunday of Lent, till I got to Cyprus, eight days before the feast of St John the Baptist, I was forced to buy all our provisions.  He who was my guide procured horses for us, and took my money for the victuals, which he put into his own pocket; for when in the fields, he took a sheep from any flock he saw by the way, without leave or ceremony.  In the Feast of the Purification, 2d February, I was in a city named Ayni, belonging to Sabensa, in a strong situation, having an hundred Armenian churches, and two mosques, and in it a Tartar officer resides.