ABSTRACT
This passage bristles with problems, and Rubruck has in fact confused two quite distinct and unconnected persons. Coir stands for the Mongol gii.r ('entire', 'whole'), as encountered in the title Giir-khan adopted by the founder of the empire of the Qara-Khitan c. 1130: on this, seeK. H. Menges, 'Der Titel Kiir-Khin der Qara-Qytaj', Ural-Altaische ]ahrbii.cher, XXIV (1952), 84-8; Pelliot, Polo, pp. 225--6. The emergence of the Qara-Khitan, however, has nothing to do with the Frankish capture of Antioch, which occurred three decades earlier, in 1098. Pelliot therefore, in the course of a long note ('Melanges', pp. 55--65; briefly summarized in Recherches, p. 104), argued that Rubruck has confused Coirchan and a putative form Coirbahan under which he may have met with the Turkish atabeg of Mosul, Kiir-bogha (on whom see CHI, V. 109-10), sent by the Great Seljiik Sultan Berkyaruq to relieve Antioch in 1098: the two elements of this name are Turkish, kii.r ('brave') and bogha ('bull'). A different suggestion is advanced by L. N. Gumilev, Searches for an imaginary kingdom. The legend of the kingdom ofPrester John, tr. R. E. F. Smith (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 126-7. For him the link with Antioch is that its capture occurred at precisely the point when the
