Cathay this period, many cartographers were placing Cathay on the Pacific coast, north of Beijing (Pekin) which was already well-known to Europeans. The borders drawn on some of these maps would first make Cathay the northeastern section of China (e.g. by Gerardus Mercator), or, later, a region separated by China by the Great Wall and possibly some mountains and/or wilderness (as in a by Jodocus Hondius, or a by John Speed). J. J. L. Duyvendak hypothesized that it was the ignorance of the fact that "China" is the mighty "Cathay" of Marco Polo that allowed the Dutch governor of East Indies
Cathay his "Book on the Administration of the State", apparently as two separate countries (presumably, referring to the Liao and Song Empires, respectively). The name's currency in the Muslim world survived the replacement of the Khitan Liao dynasty with the Jurchen Jin dynasty in the early 12th century. When describing the fall of the Jin Empire to the Mongols (1234), Persian history described the conquered country as "Khitāy" or "Djerdaj Khitāy" (i.e., "Jurchen Cathay"). The Mongols themselves, in their "Secret History" (13th century) talk of both Khitans and Kara-Khitans. In about 1340 Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, a merchant from Florence, compiled the