Armenia in whose time Marco Polo set out on his travels in Asia; and it was through his means that the Western kings became acquainted with the Tartar dynasty at Samarcand and its tendencies to favour Christianity. For the Tartar rulers during this period were far from being committed to Islam; they received and favoured missions and protected Christian doctrines in a liberal fashion, without understanding them or finally committing themselves[1]. Hayton may possibly have the credit of having stirred up the Mongols against the Khalifate of Bagdad, which Hulaku brought to an end in 1259. The alliance with the Tartars brought down the Sultan of Egypt on Armenia; and, after the capture of Antioch, Hayton resigned his throne and retired to a monastery, where he took the name of Macarius, and died soon after. His brother, the constable of Armenia, Sempad, Sembat, or Sinibald, was the author of an Armenian chronological history of authority. A better known person, also of the royal house, was the monk Hayton, who about the year 1305 wrote a history called the Flower of the Histories of the East. Hayton's career is curious. He had been lord of Gorigos, or Corycus, on the Mediterranean coast, and had both fought in Palestine and negotiated among the Tartars, where the Armenian princes were constantly tantalised with the hope of converting the khans. About 1290 he went to Cyprus and became a Præmonstratensian canon, as Brother Antony. From Cyprus he turned westward and came to France, where the Pope was. It was at Poictiers that he dictated his history, which accordingly was written in Latin. It has been printed both in Latin and in a French translation of the same century, but contains more about the Tartars than about the Franks. It is not improbable that to Hayton's influence we may trace some of the interest shown in Armenia by Edward I and Edward II.
- ↑ Mosheim in his 'Historia Tartarorum' has collected all the notices accessible in his time of the attempts to convert the Tartars, which for a long time had a show of success. After dallying with Christianity, the Khans seem to have become finally Mahometan and hostile at the beginning of the 14th century. But the subject, since the publication of the Armenian authorities, has become susceptible of much more elucidation.
