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Cathay is the Anglicized version of "Catai", the name that was given to northern China by Marco Polo (he referred to southern China as Manji). "Catai" itself derives from the word Khitan, the name of a tribe ruling predominantly in Northern China during Polo's visits. Marco Polo (September 15, 1254, Venice, Italy; or Curzola, Venetian Dalmatia - now KorÄula, Croatia â January 8, 1324, Venice) was a Venetian trader and explorer who, together with his father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo, was one of the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China (which...
Manji is a Buddhist and Hindu symbol, usually representative of admirable qualities such as peace or intelligence or strength, depending on clockwise or counter-clockwise direction of the arms. ...
The Khitan, in Chinese Qidan (å¥ä¸¹ Pinyin: QìdÄn), were an ethnic group which dominated much of Manchuria and was classified in Chinese history as one of the Tungus ethnic groups (æ±è¡æ dÅng hú zú). They established the Liao dynasty in 907, which was then conquered in 1125 by the...
Etymological progression Below is a diagram showing the progression from Khitan to Cathay as the word travelled westward: Uyghurs (also called Uighurs, Uygurs, or Uigurs) (Chinese: 維吾爾 or 维吾尔 in pinyin: wéiwúěr) are a Turkic ethnic group of people living in northwestern China (mainly in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where they are the dominant ethnic group together with Han people), Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. ...
Kazan (Tatar Qazan, Ðазан, Russian ÐазанÑ) is the capital city of Tatarstan and one of Russias largest cities. ...
Historically, the term Tatar (or Tartar) has been ambiguously used by Europeans to refer to many different peoples of Inner Asia and Northern Asia. ...
Medieval Latin refers to the Latin used in the Middle Ages, after the fall of the Roman empire but before the rise of vernacular languages in the Renaissance. ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
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