SUNG AND YUAN WARES
The keramic annals of the Yuan dynasty may be concluded by noting that opportunities for the westward export of the products of Chinese kilns continued much as before "The Mongol rulers" (according to Dr. Hirth's "Ancient Chinese Porcelain") were masters of Bagdad as well as of Peking, and constant intercourse took place through Central Asia between the east and west of that gigantic empire. The journeys of Marco Polo and Ibn Batuta bear witness to the continuance of the sea trade between the coast of China and Arab provinces. Batuta states distinctly, as regards porcelain, that 'it is exported to India and elsewhere, passing from country to country till it reaches us in Morocco.' The Chinese themselves, during the Mongol period, were pervaded by a desire to extend their power by maritime warfare, and whatever may have been the success of Kublai Khan's expeditions against Japan, Java, and other southern islands, they show that maritime enterprise had not declined among his subjects on the coast of China." This state of warlike effervescence was not particularly well suited to the circulation of the products of peace, but the fact that Bagdad and Peking were ruled by the same sceptre, is in itself sufficient to indicate that Chinese wares must have found their way westward in considerable quantities.
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