The younger Markos was eventually elected Yahballaha III, Patriarch of the Church of the East and later suggested his teacher Rabban Bar Ṣawma be sent on another mission, as Mongol ambassador to Europe. The elderly monk met with many of the European monarchs, as well as the Pope, in attempts to arrange a Franco-Mongol alliance. The mission bore no fruit, but in his later years in Baghdad, Rabban Bar Ṣawma documented his lifetime of travel. His written account of his journeys is of unique interest to modern historians, as it gives a picture of medieval Europe at the close of the Crusades, painted by a keenly-intelligent, broadminded, and statesmanlike observer.