Cathay large Christian population, while the Jesuits in China had not found any Christians there. In retrospect, the Central Asian Muslim informants' idea of the Ming China being a heavily Christian country may be explained by numerous similarities between Christian and Buddhist ecclesiastical rituals – from having sumptuous statuary and ecclesiastical robes to Gregorian chant – which would make the two religions appear externally similar to a Muslim merchant. This may also have been the genesis of the Prester John myth. To resolve the China-Cathay controversy, the India Jesuits sent a Portuguese lay brother, Bento de Góis on an overland expedition
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