428 REPOl-iT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



translated by the Abbe Reuaudot, of a service of china-ware, consisting 

 of forty pieces of different liiuds, sent with other presents to Nur-ed- 

 din, theKaliph of Syria, by his lieutenant, Saladin (afterwards the hero 

 of the Crusades), soon after his conquest of Syria, in the year of the 

 Hegira 567 (A. D. 1188). " This," says Mr. A. W. Franks in the cata- 

 logue of his own collection, now in the British Museum, " is the first 

 distinct mention of porcelain out of China " ; but, in common with other 

 writers on the subject, he refers the date of the present to 1171, 

 though that year appears not to correspond with the Mohammedan 

 date mentioned in the original text. 



From Chinese sources (the Ming-sMh, or History of the Ming Dynasty, 

 and the Hsi-yangch'ao-kung-tien-lu, or Records of Tribute Missions 

 from the West), we learn that the famous eunuch Chengho carried 

 Chinese arms as far as Ceylon during the reign of Yunglo (1403 to 

 1425) ; that under his successor in 1430 the same eunuch and an asso- 

 ciate envoy, Wang Ching-hung, were sent on a mission to Hormuz and 

 sixteen other countries, and that Chengho dispatched some of his sub- 

 ordinates on commercial ventures to Calicut, on the coast of Malabar, 

 and even as far west as Djiddah, the port of Mecca. " En 1431 ou 

 1432," says Heyd,* "on y vit meme arriver plusieurs jonques chinoises 

 qui n'avaient pas trouve a ecouler leurs marchandises a Aden dans de 

 bonnes conditions. On les y re9ut avec empressement dans I'espoir que 

 leur visite serait le debut d'un traffic avec la Chine." The expedition 

 was evidently a large one, and one of its objects was commercial in- 

 tercourse, porcelain being specially mentioned among the articles with 

 which the vessels were freighted. Porcelain had, however, reached 

 these countries at a far earlier date. Marco Polo, traveling in 1280? 

 mentions the trade in this ware from Quinsai, the present Hangchou, 

 and from Zaituu, a poit on the Fukien coast, which has been identified 

 with Ch'iianchou (better known as Chinchew) by Klaproth and other 

 writers, whose view has been adopted by Colonel Yule in his magnifi- 

 cent edition of that famous traveler's voyages, and with Changchou 

 and its port, Geh-Kong (a short distance south from Chinchew, and 

 inland), by Mr. George Philips, of Her British Majesty's consular service 

 in China. And Ibu Batuta, an Arabian traveler, who wrote in 1310, 

 states distinctly that "Porcelain in China is worth no more than pot- 

 tery is with us; it is exported to India and other countries, from which 

 it is carried even to our own land Maghreh,^^ L e., the sunset, the name 

 given by the Arabs to all that part of Africa which lies to the west of 

 Egypt. 



ROUTE FOLLOWED. 



Chinese history fully confirms the above statement, and, indeed, shows 

 that this commerce had already long existed at the time Ibn Batuta 



* "Historie du commerce du Levant" (VoL li, p. 445), quoting Quatremere's "M.6- 

 moiresur rfigypte" (Vol. ii, p. 291). 



