Early Life
Rabban (Master) Bar Sauma was born c. 1220 in or near modern-day Beijing, known then as Zhongdu or Khanbaligh. According to Gregory Barhebraeus he was of Turkic Uyghur origin. Chinese accounts describe his heritage as Wanggu (Ongud), a tribe of Turkic origin classified as part of the Mongol Caste of the Yuan Dynasty. The name bar Ṣauma is Aramaic for "Son of Fasting" though he was born to a wealthy family. He was a follower of the Nestorian faith (see: Nestorianism in China), and became an ascetic monk around the age of 20 and then a religious teacher for decades.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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