AHMAD was a native of Fenaket (afterwards Shah-Rukhia), near the Jaxartes, and obtained employment under Kublai through the Empress Jamui Khatun, who had known him before her marriage.  To her Court he was originally attached, but we find him already employed in high financial office in 1264.  Kublai’s demands for money must have been very large, and he eschewed looking too closely into the character of his financial agents or the means by which they raised money for him.  Ahmad was very successful in this, and being a man of great talent and address, obtained immense influence over the Emperor, until at last nothing was done save by his direction, though he always appeared to be acting under the orders of Kublai.  The Chinese authorities in Gaubil and De Mailla speak strongly of his oppressions, but only in general terms, and without affording such particulars as we derive from the text.

The Hereditary Prince Chingkim was strongly adverse to Ahmad; and some of the high Chinese officials on various occasions made remonstrance against the Minister’s proceedings; but Kublai turned a deaf ear to them, and Ahmad succeeded in ruining most of his opponents. (Gaubil, 141, 143, 151; De Mailla, IX. 316-317; D’Ohsson, II. 468-469.)

[The Rev. W. S. Ament (Marco Polo in Cambaluc, 105) writes:  “No name is more execrated than that of Ah-ha-ma (called Achmath by Polo), a Persian, who was chosen to manage the finances of the Empire.  He was finally destroyed by a combination against him while the Khan was absent with Crown Prince Chen Chin, on a visit to Shang Tu.”  Achmath has his biography under the name of A-ho-ma (Ahmed) in the ch. 205 of the Yuen-shi, under the rubric “Villanous Ministers.” (Bretschneider, Med.  Res. I. p. 272.)—­H.  C.]

NOTE 3.—­This term Bailo was the designation of the representative of Venetian dignity at Constantinople, called Podesta during the period of the Latin rule there, and it has endured throughout the Turkish Empire to our own day in the form Balios as the designation of a Frank Consul. [There was also a Venetian bailo in Syria.—­H.  C.] But that term itself could scarcely have been in use at Cambaluc, even among the handful of Franks, to designate the powerful Minister, and it looks as if Marco had confounded the word in his own mind with some Oriental term of like sound, possibly the Arabic Wali, “a Prince, Governor of a Province,... a chief Magistrate.” (F.  Johnson.) In the Roteiro of the Voyage of Vasco da Gama (2nd ed.  Lisbon, 1861, pp. 53-54) it is said that on the arrival of the ships at Calicut the King sent “a man who was called the Bale, which is much the same as Alquaide.”  And the Editor gives the same explanation that I have suggested.

I observe that according to Pandit Manphul the native governor of Kashgar, under the Chinese Amban, used to be called the Baili Beg. [In this case Baili stands for beileh.—­H.  C.] (Panjab Trade Report, App. p. cccxxxvii.)