CHINESE PORCELAIN IN WEST
however, holds that from the thirteenth century—i.e. the close of the Sung Dynasty and beginning of the Yuan—Chinese ware reached the Mediterranean shores of Africa. In support of this opinion he quotes various facts. Thus, in an Arabian manuscript contained in the National Library, it is recorded that, in 1171, the Emir Saladin made a present of forty pieces of porcelain to Nurredin. Again, in 1298, the celebrated traveller Marco Polo, referring to the inhabitants of Carajan and other subjects of the Great Khan, notes that they used strings of white "porcelain" as money, and subsequently goes on to describe how, at the chief town of the Chinese province of Fokien, fine porcelain was manufactured, and thence exported to all parts. The conclusion obviously suggested by the former statement is that shells are referred to; by the latter, that so long ago as the days of Marco Polo, the term porcelain had become applicable in its modern sense. Further, an Arabian, Ibn Batoutah, writing under date 1310, says:—"Porcelain is not made in China except at Tsuan-chow and Canton. It is manufactured with clay found in the mountains of the locality. This clay is inflammable like charcoal. The potters add to it a stone found in the neighborhood, burn the compound for three days, then throw water on it, and the whole becomes powder, or a clay which they ferment. That which has been fermented during an entire month gives the best porcelain; that which has been fermented for only ten days gives porcelain of inferior quality. Porcelain in China sells for the same price as, or even a lower price than, pottery with us. It is exported to India and other countries, even as far as the Maghreb"—
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