Mediaeval researches from eastern Asiatic Sources: fragments towards the knowledge of the geography and history of central and western Asia from the 13th to the 17th century in 2 Vols

Reissue of the 1888 edition. 2 volumes. 8vo, original cloth 227 x 145mm. ppxii,334 & x,352, an extended tinted map of this part of Asia and one folded chinese mediaeval map. Tr¸bner's Oriental Series. 1: Notes on Chinese Medieval Travellers to the West. 2: Notices of the Medieval Geography and History of Central and Western Asia. 3: Explanation of a Mongol-Chinese Medieval Map of Central and Western Asia. 4: Chinese Intercourse with the Countries of Central and Western Asia during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. In the first of the four papers Bretschneider provides excerpts from five Chinese thirteenth-century narratives including the account of mongol Hulagu's expedition to Western Asia between 1253 and 1259, and the story of the King of Little Armenia Haithon's journey to Mongolia in 1254-55. The second paper gives a sketch of the records of Mohammedan authors of the Mongol invasions of Persia, Russia, Poland, Hungary and Germany. The medieval map of Asia discussed in the third paper represents the three Mongol empires west of China, governed by the descendants of Genghis Khan, and was possibly executed in China about 1330. The fourth paper dvelves on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and specifically the Mongols and the Oirats as depicted in the Ming shu. Bretschneider was a Russian sinologue living in Peking, and had access to sources of materials inaccessible to most European scholars The same Emile Bretschneider author of the History of European botanical discoveries in China (1898) and Botanicon Sinicum (1882/96).