Letter of Güyük Khan to Pope Innocent IV

John of Plano Carpini describes how the answer was drawn up at the khan’s camp on 11 November: the secretaries translated it to the friars phrase by phrase, the friars wrote it in Latin, and a copy was made “in Saracenic” so that someone in the West might be able to read it to the pope. The Latin version survives in the chronicle of Salimbene, who copied it from John. The “Saracenic” copy is the Persian document, which Cyrille Karalevskyj found in the Vatican archives in 1920 and Paul Pelliot published. It carries a heading in Turkic and the khan’s seal in Mongolian, and is dated to the last days of the month Jumada II of the year 644, which Pelliot converts to 3–11 November 1246.

The two versions agree in substance. Pelliot notes that the Latin names Poles, Moravians and Hungarians where the Persian has only Magyars and Christians. Where the Persian has “God” the Mongolian original, which is lost, will have had “Heaven”, in his judgment. The letter is evidence of how the Mongol court understood the pope’s approach: as an offer of submission that had yet to be made good. See Franciscan Envoys to the Mongols and the Church of Khanbaliq.