when the Mongol army was first equipt for the conquest of Southern China, many officers took service therein from among the Uighurs, Persians, and Arabs, Kincha (people of Kipchak), the Asu and other foreign nations.  We find also, at a later period of the Mongol history (1336), letters reaching Pope Benedict XII. from several Christian Alans holding high office at the court of Cambaluc—­one of them being a Chingsang or Minister of the First Rank, and another a Fanchang or Minister of the Second Order—­in which they conveyed their urgent request for the nomination of an Archbishop in succession to the deceased John of Monte Corvino.  John Marignolli speaks of those Alans as “the greatest and noblest nation in the world, the fairest and bravest of men,” and asserts that in his day there were 30,000 of them in the Great Kaan’s service, and all, at least nominally, Christians.[1] Rashiduddin also speaks of the Alans as Christians; though Ibn Batuta certainly mentions the Aas as Mahomedans.  We find Alans about the same time (in 1306) fighting well in the service of the Byzantine Emperors (Muntaner, p. 449).  All these circumstances render Marco’s story of a corps of Christian Alans in the army of Bayan perfectly consistent with probability. (Carpini, p. 707; Rub., 243; Ramusio, II. 92; I.B. II. 428; Gaubil, 40, 147; Cathay, 314 seqq.)

[Mr. Rockhill writes (Rubruck, p. 88, note):  “The Alans or Aas appear to be identical with the An-ts’ai or A-lan-na of the Hou Han shu (bk. 88, 9), of whom we read that ’they led a pastoral life N.W. of Sogdiana (K’ang-chu) in a plain bounded by great lakes (or swamps), and in their wanderings went as far as the shores of the Northern Ocean.’ (Ma Twan-lin, bk. 338.) Pei-shih (bk. 97, 12) refers to them under the name of Su-te and Wen-na-sha (see also Bretschneider, Med.  Geog., 258, et seq.).  Strabo refers to them under the name of Aorsi, living to the north but contiguous to the Albani, whom some authors confound with them, but whom later Armenian historians carefully distinguish from them (De Morgan, Mission, i. 232).  Ptolemy speaks of this people as the ‘Scythian Alans’ ([Greek:  Alanoi Skythai]); but the first definite mention of them in classical authors is, according to Bunbury (ii. 486), found in Dionysius Periergetes (305), who speaks of the [Greek:  alkaeentes Alanoi]. (See also De Morgan, i. 202, and Deguignes, ii. 279 et seq.)

“Ammianus Marcellinus (xxxi. 348) says, the Alans were a congeries of tribes living E. of the Tanais (Don), and stretching far into Asia.  ’Distributed over two continents, all these nations, whose various names I refrain from mentioning, though separated by immense tracts of country in which they pass their vagabond existence, have with time been confounded under the generic appellation of Alans.’  Ibn Alathir, at a later date, also refers to the Alans as ‘formed of numerous nations.’ (Dulaurier, xiv. 455).