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Document Details :

Title: Deux inscriptions funéraires turques nestoriennes de la Chine Orientale
Author(s): HAMILTON, James , NIU, Ru-ji
Journal: Journal Asiatique
Volume: 282    Issue: 1   Date: 1994   
Pages: 147-164
DOI: 10.2143/JA.282.1.2006119

Abstract :
In the present study are edited for the first time two Nestorian tombstone inscriptions in Turkish of the Mongol period from Eastern China. The first inscription, written in Syriac and Turkish Uyghur script on a large brick, was found in 1983 or 1984 on a mountain slope some 350 kilometres north-east of Peking. It marks the grave of a certain Yawnan or Jonas, head of the local government and commander of auxiliary troops, who died in 1253 at the age of 71. He belonged most likely to the Turkish Öngüt tribe, predominant in the region and long converted to Nestorianism. The second inscription, engraved in Turkish Uyghur script on a diorite tombstone, was found in 1941 in the city wall of the town of Quan-zhou, also known as Zaïton in the Mongol period, on the southeastern coast of China. It marks the grave of a certain Princess Martha, wife of the Nestorian ärkägün or archpriest, who died in the year 1331, if our interpretation of man as an element of the kinčuman series is correct.

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