Note {3} — Chapter XXXIV
Henry Yule translation
Note 3.—A giraffe—made into a seraph by the Italians—had been frequently seen in Italy in the early part of the century, there being one in the train of the Emperor Frederic II. Another was sent by Bibars to the Imperial Court in 1261, and several to Barka Khan at Sarai in 1263; whilst the King of Nubia was bound by treaty in 1275 to deliver to the Sultan three elephants, three giraffes, and five she-panthers. (Kington, I. 471; Makrizi, I. 216; II. 106, 108.) The giraffe is sometimes wrought in the patterns of mediæval Saracenic damasks, and in Sicilian ones imitated from the former. Of these there are examples in the Kensington Collection.