Note {1} — Chapter XVIII

Note 1.—Kaikhátú, of whom we heard in the Prologue (vol. i. p. 35), was the brother, not the uncle, of Arghún. On the death of the latter there were three claimants, viz., his son Gházán, his brother Kaikhátú, and his cousin Baidu, the son of Tarakai, one of Hulaku’s sons. The party of Kaikhátú was strongest, and he was raised to the throne at Akhlath, 23rd July 1291. He took as wives out of the Royal Tents of Arghún the Ladies Bulughán (the 2nd, not her named in the Prologue) and Uruk. All the writers speak of Kaikhátú’s character in the same way. Hayton calls him “a man without law or faith, of no valour or experience in arms, but altogether given up to lechery and vice, living like a brute beast, glutting all his disordered appetites; for his dissolute life hated by his own people, and lightly regarded by foreigners.” (Ram. II. ch. xxiv.) The continuator of Abulfaraj, and Abulfeda in his Annals, speak in like terms. (Assem. III. Pt. 2nd, 119–120; Reiske, Ann. Abulf. III. 101.)