In Persia, he observed, where there was a busy market for transporting horses for sale in India, people in many districts were “brutal and bloodthirsty . . . forever slaughtering one another.” But they left merchants and travelers alone, because they themselves lived in terror of the Mongols, who imposed “severe penalties upon them.”16 In China, where paper money was used, the advanced attitude to macroeconomics meant the Great Khan “has more treasure than anyone else in the world.”
