The people of Zorzania are Christians, observing the same rites with others, and wear their hair short like the western clergy.  There are many cities, and the country abounds in silk, of which they make many fine manufactures.  Moxul or Mosul, is a province containing many sorts of people; some are called Arahi, who are Mahometans; others are Christians of various sects, as Nestorians, Jacobites, and Armenians; and they have a patriarch stiled Jacolet, who ordains archbishops, bishops, and abbots, whom he sends all over India, and to Cairo, and Bagdat, and wherever there are Christians, in the same manner as is done by the pope of Rome.  All the stuffs of gold and silk, called musleims, are wrought in Moxul[3].  In the mountains of this country of Diarbekir, dwelt the people called Curds, some off whom are Nestorians or Jacobites, and other Mahometans.  They are a lawless people, who rob the merchants that travel through their country.  Near to them is another province called Mus, Meridin, or Mardin, higher up the Tigris than Mosul, wherein grows great quantities of cotton, of which they make buckrams[4] and other manufactures.  This province is likewise subject to the Tartars.  Baldach, or Bagdat, is a great city in which the supreme caliph formerly resided, who was pope of all the Saracens.  From this city it is counted seventeen days journey to the sea; but the river Tigris runs past, on which people sail to Balsora, where the best dates in the world grow, but in the passage between these; two cities there lies another named Chisi.  In Bagdat are many manufactures of gold and silk, and damasks and velvets with figures of various creatures; in that city there is a university, where the law of Mahoment, physic, astronomy, and geomancy are taught; and from it come all the pearls in Christendom.

When the Tartars began to extend their conquests, there were four brothers who possessed the chief rule; of whom Mangu, the eldest, reigned in Sedia[5].  These brethren proposed to themselves to subdue the whole world, for which purpose one went to the east, another to the north, a third to the west, and Ulau or Houlagu went to the south in 1250, with an army of an hundred thousand horse, besides foot.  Employing stratagem, he hid a great part of his force in ambush, and advancing with an inconsiderable number, enticed the caliph to follow him by a pretended flight; by this means he took the caliph prisoner, and made himself master of the city, in which he found such infinite store of treasure, that he was quite amazed.  Sending for the caliph into his presence, he sharply reproved him, that, possessing such riches, he had not employed them in providing soldiers to defend his dominions; and commanded him to be shut up in the tower where his treasure was placed, without any sustenance.