(Fraehn, Ueber die Wolga Bulgaren, Petersb. 1832; Gold.  Horde, 8, 9, 423-424; Not. et Extr. II. 541; Ibn Bat. II. 398; Bueschings Mag. V. 492; Erdmann, Numi Asiat. I. 315-318, 333-334, 520-535; Niceph.  Gregoras, II. 2, 2.)

NOTE 3.—­ALAU is Polo’s representation of the name of Hulaku, brother of the Great Kaans Mangu and Kublai and founder of the Mongol dynasty in Persia.  In the Mongol pronunciation guttural and palatal consonants are apt to be elided, hence this spelling.  The same name is written by Pope Alexander IV., in addressing the Khan, Olao, by Pachymeres and Gregoras [Greek:  Chalau] and [Greek:  Chalaon], by Hayton Haolon, by Ibn Batuta Hulaun, as well as in a letter of Hulaku’s own, as given by Makrizi.

The war in question is related in Rashiduddin’s history, and by Polo himself towards the end of the work.  It began in the summer of 1262, and ended about eight months later.  Hence the Polos must have reached Barka’s Court in 1261.

Marco always applies to the Mongol Khans of Persia the title of “Lords of the East” (Levant), and to the Khans of Kipchak that of “Lords of the West” (Ponent).  We use the term Levant still with a similar specific application, and in another form Anatolia.  I think it best to preserve the terms Levant and Ponent when used in this way.

[Robert Parke in his translation out of Spanish of Mendoza, The Historie of the great and mightie kingdome of China ...  London, printed by I. Wolfe for Edward White, 1588, uses the word Ponent:  “You shall understande that this mightie kingdome is the Orientalest part of all Asia, and his next neighbour towards the Ponent is the kingdome of Quachinchina ... (p. 2).”—­H.  C.]

NOTE 4.—­UCACA or UKEK was a town on the right bank of the Volga, nearly equidistant between Sarai and Bolghar, and about six miles south of the modern Saratov, where a village called Uwek still exists.  Ukek is not mentioned before the Mongol domination, and is supposed to have been of Mongol foundation, as the name Ukek is said in Mongol to signify a dam of hurdles.  The city is mentioned by Abulfeda as marking the extremity of “the empire of the Barka Tartars,” and Ibn Batuta speaks of it as “one day distant from the hills of the Russians.”  Polo therefore means that it was the frontier of the Ponent towards Russia.  Ukek was the site of a Franciscan convent in the 14th century; it is mentioned several times in the campaigns of Timur, and was destroyed by his army.  It is not mentioned under the form Ukek after this, but appears as Uwek and Uwesh in Russian documents of the 16th century.  Perhaps this was always the Slavonic form, for it already is written Uguech (= Uwek) in Wadding’s 14th century catalogue of convents.  Anthony Jenkinson, in Hakluyt, gives an observation of its latitude, as Oweke