text: In May 1254, during his stay among the Mongols, William entered into a famous competition at the Mongol court, as the khan encouraged a formal theological debate between the Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims, in order to determine which faith was correct, as determined by three judges, one from each faith. A Chinese person participated with William in the competition.
  Roger Bacon, William's contemporary and fellow-Franciscan, cited the traveller copiously in his Opus Majus, and described him as "Brother William through whom the lord King of France sent a message to the Tartars in 1253 AD...who traveled to regions in the east and north and attached himself to the midst of these places, and wrote of the above to the illustrious king; which book I carefully read and with his permission expounded on". After Bacon, however, William's narrative seems to have dropped out of sight until Richard Hakluyt's 1599 publication.
  Russian poet Nikolay Zabolotskiy wrote in 1958 long poem "Rubruck in Mongolia" ("Рубрук в Монголии").
  Editions
  The Latin text of an incomplete manuscript containing only the first 26 chapters, together with an English translation by Richard Hakluyt, was published in 1599. A critical edition of the complete Latin text prepared by the French historian Francisque Michel and the English antiquarian Thomas Wright was published in 1839. An English translation by William Woodville Rockhill, The Journey of William of Rubruk to the Eastern Parts, was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1900, and an updated translation by Peter Jackson in 1990.