The City of Light

Rating:
Summary: It appears David Selbourne was duped by a forged manuscript!
Review: It appears that David Selbourne was duped by a forged manuscript! The book has been suppressed in the USA. Scholar Abulafia has condemned the book in The Times of London from conextual evidence (eg mellah means ghetto in Moroccan but is a later word than the book). It is still a good read.

Rating:
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: A Fraud?
Review: This book is now available in a (delayed) American edition (currently in paperback), in which modern Chinese scholarship is used to reply to some of the criticism directed against it by Westerners. They find some puzzles, and probable errors made by a foreigner, but nothing to suggest a modern fraud. They seem willing to accept it as an authentic account of southern China by a foreigner, describing events shortly before the arrival of Marco Polo in the following of the Mongol (Yuan) conqueror.

Curiously, Frances Wood, whose "Did Marco Polo Go to China?" argues that the Venetian merchant stayed in western Asia, and got all his information from others, who left no record of their adventures, seems to have joined in denouncing Jacob of Ancona as a fabrication, even though this must have seemed like manna from heaven for her theory.

The supposedly convincing argument that the use of the term "mellah" for "Jewish Quarter" in Muslim lands is anachronistic depends on accepting one version of the etymology and history of the word. It is, however, less than completely certain; Roger Le Tourneau, in "Fez in the Age of the Marinides" (English translation 1961), reviewed the complicated evidence, and suggested that the consensus might be wrong.

From a Jewish perspective, I can accept Jacob of Ancona as a plausible figure (and perhaps more typical than Selbourne, to judge from his notes, realizes). The combination of length and literary quality in a memoir seems unusual for the period, but the translator reports omitting some sections at the end, and felicitous translation can add charm without being unfaithful. Some medieval writings *are* inordinately long -- and long-winded! Jacob's report of debates with Chinese officials leaves me wondering if both his contacts and his discussions were really on such a high level (especially with both sides using some sort of "trade speech"), but self-congratulatory memoirs are not a modern invention.

On the basis of Chinese reactions, I am prepared to accept the work as authentic, although not completely reliable as a record of fact (is anything?). If it is a fraud -- and only an examination of the manuscript seems likely to prove it -- its creator would surely have been better rewarded by emulating Eco's "Name of the Rose," and publishing it as historical fiction of a high order.

Rating:
Summary: Many indications that this is largely a 20th Century work
Review: This volume starts out as a plausable enough chronicle of a Jewish merchant from Italy who travels to China and so on, but very quickly it becomes apparent that this is just the setting for a series of philosophical debates that the merchant partakes in with other groups in the "City of Light".

It is written like no other narrative from the past I have seen and is quite long as well. Although I am no expert on that time and place, and there are none who truly are, what really makes it suspect is the fact that most of the work fails to give details of how people lived and what things were like at that time and place and instead concentrates on the dialogues that he is invited to and partakes in. And all of the matters that they discuss are those that would preoccupy the mind of a person in the late 20th Century. Which either means that people in the 13th Century had identical problems to those we have today, or that this was written by someone in the late 20th Century. He even forsees the Holocaust at one point.

There is nothing that would secure it as authentic and many indications that this is largely a 20th Century work, enough to make it well accepted as a forgery until proven otherwise (which I never expect to happen). As for what it contains and the value of its philosophical debates, it offers nothing in the way of secure arguments, unless you already accept the Jewish religious teachings as a source of unchallenged wisdom. It also was rather long without adding much. It might have been better to publish this as a modern philosophical novel, which would have permitted it to be a better novel, without attempting to mislead scholars, that can cause trouble for years. Although I realize that from a publishing standpoint, it gets more attention to claim authenticity.

Also, he (Selbourne) clips off the return journey, which might have been one of the only authentic parts in the book. I paid full price for this book when it was first published and I consider it was not worth it.