Chapter XCIV: Section I: Introduction

Haitho, or Hatto, was the son of Livon, or Leon II., nephew of Haitho I., king of Armenia Minor, in Lesser Asia. At the demise of his father, he refused to accept of the crown, which he resigned in favour of his brother Thores or Theodore; but assisted him and his son and successor, Leon III., in all the wars and troubles in which they were engaged during many years. During the reign of his father in 1254, accompanied by his wife and child, he travelled to the court of Mangu-khan, the great sovereign of the Tartars or Mongals, for the purpose of obtaining an abatement of the tribute which had been imposed by these conquerors upon his country, and appears to have been successful in his negotiations. His journey into the east took place in the same year in which Rubruquis was on his return; and while at the court or leskar of Sartach, he was of material service to two of the attendants of Rubruquis, who had been left at that station; and who but for his interference must have perished by famine, or would have been reduced to slavery. Forster asserts that Haitho met with Rubruquis, who was then on his return home; but we have already seen, in the account of the travels of Rubruquis, that the two travellers did not meet.

In the year 1305, when he must have become very old, Haitho became a monk of the Praemonstratensian order at Episcopia in Cyprus. He afterwards went to Poitou in France, where he dictated in French to Nicholas Salconi, a history of the events which had occurred in the east from the first commencement of the conquests of the Tartars or Mongals, including the reigns of Zingis-khan and his successors, to Mangu-khan inclusively; and a particular narrative of the history of his own country, Armenia Minor, from the reign of Haitho I. to that of Leon II. both inclusive. This account Salconi translated into Latin in 1307, by order of the reigning Pope.

The travels of Haitho being perfectly contemporary with those of Rubruquis, are not sufficiently interesting to be here inserted; and the historical part of his relations have no connection with the plan of this work, which it would swell beyond due bounds: But the following brief account of his geographical description of the east, as it existed in the thirteenth century, and as abstracted by J. R. Forster, in his Voyages and Discoveries in the North, have been deemed worthy of insertion, together with the observations or commentaries of that ingenious author.

[1] Forst. Hist. of Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 113.