_ 336 _ the Turks will abandon Carahemite and ennoble and fortify it [Murfagum] again. Having paid one maidim per load (this is a coin worth a little more than half a vintern), which goes to a Kurdish Moor, captain of this land, we put up that evening in another village called Biçian, peopled by Kurdish Moors who live like those before,. Here the Venetian’s little black girl died. On the next day before dawn we left there and buried her a little farther on. Because I shrank back from her, the muleteers and Armenians laughed at me and mocked me, for, as mentioned earlier, throughout Persia, Armenia and Turkey no one flees from the plague. They neither close off cities or places, nor do they examine people who come from among those suspected of suffering from the plague as is done throughout Christendom. They do not apply remedies when it afflicts them, and say that it is better not to touch them, so that nearly all of them die like animals; and this is how they are in all other matters. They act in accordance with the blindness of their accursed sect; so that after she was buried, the muleteers and Armenians fought over her rags and clothes, all of which were not even worth two vintens. One of the Armenians, who was carrying for me on his beast some
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