Tabriz (Tauris, Susis)

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"Tauris (Tabriz), the chief city of Azerbaijan, was the capital of more than one dynasty, and throughout the middle ages a chief point of contact and trade between the Latin and Oriental worlds. It has been identified not only with Shushan of Esther, and the Achmetha of the Apocrypha, but with the northern Ecbatana and half a dozen other ancient cities of fame. Rawlinson, however, considers it not to be older than the third century (Chardin, Amsterd., 1735) i, 258; Journ. Asiat. S. ii, iv, 117; J. R. G. S., x, 109). [The destruction of Baghdad by Hulaku made Tabriz the great commercial and political city of Asia, and diverted the route of Indian products from the Mediterranean to the Euxine.] There are now no traces of magnificence at Tabriz, though it was still in splendour in the seventeenth century (see note in Jordanus, p. 7). Tauris was made the See of a Roman bishop (William, de Cigiis) in 1329, and a successor [Franc. Cinquinus] is traced as late as the following century [1380-84] (Le Quien)."

- Odoric of Pordenone, The Eastern Parts of the World Described by Friar Odoric the Bohemian, of Friuli, in the Province of Saint Anthony, trans. and ed. by Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, in Cathay and the Way Thither, Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, Vol. II (London, 1916; repr. 1998), Chapter 2, note 4, pp. 102-103.