Mirabilia Descripta

1. In Persia, however, I saw a very marvellous thing: to wit, that in Tabriz, which is a very great city, containing as many as two hundred thousand houses, dew never falls from heaven; nor doth it rain in summer as in most parts it doth, but they water artificially everything that is grown for man's food. There also, or thereabouts, on a kind of willows, are found certain little worms, which emit a liquid which congeals upon the leaves of the tree, and also drops upon the ground, white like wax; and that excretion is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.

2. There we have a fine-enough church, and about a thousand of the schismatics converted to our faith, and about as many also in Ur of the Chaldees, where Abraham was born, which is a very opulent city, distant about two days from Tabriz.

3. Likewise also at Sultania we have five hundred, or five hundred and fifty. This is eight days' distant from Tabriz, and we have a very fine church there.

4. In this country of Persia are certain animals called onagri, which are like little asses, but swifter in speed than our horses.

5. This Persia is inhabited by Saracens and Saracenized Tartars, and by schismatic Christians of divers sects, such as Nestorians, Jacobites, Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, and by a few Jews. Persia hath abundance of silk, and also of ultramarine, but they wot not how to prepare it.