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Lien Sung (1310-1381); Yuan Shih
(History of the Mongol dynasty)
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Taken from; W.W.Rockhill; Toung Pao 1914
(Ch 14) On 1st moon 24th year an envoy from Kulam, Pu-liu-wen-nai by name, and others were received in audience, and in the third moon the envoy from Ma'bar presented the Emperor with a strange animal like a mule, but mottled black and white, it was called a a-t'a-pi.
(Ch 15) In 1288 a mission is said to have arrived at court from Ma'bar, and in 1289 we read of Ma'bar presenting the Emperor with two zebra's and in the 8th moon of 1290 another envoy came to court from the same country and presented the emperor with two piebald oxen and a t'u-piao (lynx?). Note that the piebald oxen need to have been African buffaloes as other animals would not have done as a present for the emperor.
These and many other visits of foreign envoys to the court of the Chinese emperor were a result of the diplomatic missions of Yang Tingbi. Shen Fuwei in his Cultural flow between China and the outside world p 158 has the following to say about it: After capturing Quanzhou, the Yuan emperor dispatched envoys oversees ten times. Yang Tingbi was sent in 1280 and 1282 to Quilon in Malabar, receiving promises of support from Egyptian traders and Muslim Chieftains, and went on to Kenya. By 1286, ten states in Malaya, Sumatra, India and Africa had sent envoys back. Rockhill who published the text concerned of the Yuan Shih in Toung Pao 1914 has no mention of the envoy going to Kenya. He gives the list of the ten states that sent envoys back. But all places he locates in Asia I will give the list: In the 9th moon of the 23th year chih-yuan (1286) on the day yi-ch'ou being the first day of the moon, Ma-pa-erh (Ma'bar), Hsu-men-na (Mangalore), Seng-ki-li (Abulfeda's Shinkali now Cranganore), Nan-wu-li, Ma-lan-tan (Abulfeda's Malifattan), Na-wang (Nilawar), Ting-ko-erh (north east of Sumatra), Lai-lai (on Sumatra), Ki-lan-i-tai, Sa-mu-tu-la (Sumatra), ten kingdoms in all, each of which had sent either a son or a younger brother of its ruler with a letter to the emperor, were received in audience and presented articles of tribute. Rockhill however had some doubt about the identification of some of the places.