Chapter XXXVI

Although old Saraï was depopulated by the plague in 1347–48, and new Saraï was destroyed by Timour, both cities recovered from those calamities, and in the later map of the world, by Fra Mauro, they appear near a tributary on the left bank of the Volga, but at a considerable distance from each other. The northernmost is known to the Russians as Great Saraï.

Previously to selecting old Saraï for his residence, the khan Barka was at Bolgar, the ancient capital of the kingdom of the Bolgars on the Volga, which had been subdued in 1236 by his brother and predecessor Batou, the “terrible Batou” of the Russians, surnamed by the Tatars, Saïn—The Good. An indigent Russian village stands on the site of the city, in the midst of ruins which impress the traveller by their extent; an impression I received when engaged in the Fourth Archæological Congress (1877), the members of which started upon their excursion from Kazan, and descending the river to Spassky-zaton, visited the locality distant seven miles in a direct line from the river. Considering the importance of these ruins, the large extent of ground they cover, the prodigious quantity of ancient oriental coins and other antiquities that are being continually recovered; considering, also, the testimony of Arabian authors and travellers on the commercial relations of the ancient Bolgars of the Volga, the question has frequently arisen—Why should that people have preferred to establish themselves at so great a distance from the river, after the manner of the inhabitants of the “city of the blind”, instead of selecting a more advantageous site? The enigma has been solved by Professor Golovkinsky (Sur la formation permienne du bassin Kama-Volgien, etc., in the Mém. de la Soc. Minér. de St. Pétersbourg, tom. i; and Anciens débris de l’homme au Gouv^t. de Cazan, in the Travaux de la réunion des Natur. de Russie, St. Pétersbourg, 1868), formerly of the University of Kazan, now Rector of that at Odessa. The distinguished geologist shows, that the Volga and the Kama have been subjected to great changes in their course above their junction; that to a comparatively recent period, the eastern bank of the bed where the two rivers united, was close to the height upon which is the village of Bolgar, and that this ancient bed is to be traced to an arm of the Kazanka called the Boulak, and to the lake Kaban, both of which flow through the city of Kazan, and through a partly dried up marsh near the said village.—Bruun.

The Sibir of the Russians, known also as Isker, was situated on the Irtysh, ten miles from Tobolsk; it was the residence of the Shaïbani khans, and was taken in 1581 by a handful of Cossacks under their ataman Yermak, who, in his turn, was besieged by the Tatars, and lost his life in the river during a sortie (1584). His countrymen have erected a monument at Tobolsk in honour of this Russian Cortez.—Bruun.

(10A.) Sary kerman—Yellow Castle—was the name by which Cherson, near modern Sevastópol, was known to Eastern writers. Pope Clement I. was exiled by the Emperor Trajan to that part of the Tauric Chersonesus, and suffered martyrdom by being thrown into the sea. According to the legend, the sea receded upon every anniversary of the saint’s death, leaving the body exposed on the shore during the space of seven days, until in the 9th century, Cyril and Methodius the Apostles of the Slaves (the originators of the Slave alphabet), caused it to be interred at Cherson, whence the remains were subsequently removed to Kieff by the grand-prince Vladimir upon his conversion to Christianity.

The Church of Rome gives a different version of this legend, and maintains that the relics of the pontiff are preserved in the church of St. Clement on the Esquiline (The Crimea and Transc., i, 22, 98).—Ed.

The Abhases and the Tcherkess speak different dialects of the same tongue (Güldenstädt, Reisen durch Russl., i, 463). The former were converted to Christianity through the exertions of the emperor Justinian, about A.D. 550; but Christianity was spread among the Zikhes previously to this, and if many adopted the Mahomedan faith, proofs are not wanting that they did so from political motives and to please the Turks (Marigny, Voy. dans le pays des Tcherkesses, in Potocki, ii, 308). Their conversion to Christianity has never kept them from a love of pillage and the sale of their own children, as is reported of them by Schiltberger and confirmed by Marigny, who is unable to conceive how a people to whom freedom is the greatest boon could think of thus disposing of their own offspring.

Marigny also confirms the statement that thunder was held in great veneration by the Tcherkess. “They have no god of lightning”, says this author, “but we should deceive ourselves in supposing that they never had one. They hold thunder in great veneration, for they say it is an angel who strikes the elect of God. The remains of one killed by lightning are buried with the greatest solemnity, and whilst mourning his loss, relatives congratulate each other upon the distinction by which their family has been visited. When the angel is on his aerial flight, these people hurry out of their dwellings at the noise he makes; and should he not be heard for any length of time, they pray aloud entreating him to come to them.”—Bruun.

(11A.) The Tcherkess, which include the Natouhaïtz, Shapsoughy, Abadzehy, Abhase and other tribes, were known to Strabo and Procopius as persistent slave dealers and pirates, occupations which, according to the records of every age, they pursued unceasingly until the complete subjugation and annexation of their country by Russia in 1863. Dubois de Montpéreux (Voy. autour du Caucase, etc., i, 258) says, writing in 1839, that even under the suzerainty of Russia the Abhases would not give up the nefarious traffic which embraced, under certain circumstances, the sale of a son or daughter or sister; and so lately as 1856, Oliphant (Trans.-Cauc. Campaign, 125) found that the Abhases indulged chiefly in the plunder of human beings. “Seizing the handsomest boys and the prettiest girls, they would tear them shrieking from their agonised parents, and swinging them on their saddle-bow, gallop away with them through the forest, followed by the cries and execrations of the whole population.”

The custom of placing the dead upon trees is practised at the present time in Abhase, where they are suspended in coffins to the branches, which creak as they are swayed by the wind, and produce melancholy noises (The Crimea and Transc., ii, 136).—Ed.

In Masoudi’s time, the Kaïtak or Kaïdak inhabited the northern slopes of the Caucasus towards the Caspian Sea. There, also, Aboulfeda placed them, and there they are to this day. We have seen how futile were their endeavours to oppose Timour upon his last expedition against Toktamish, and that Romanists and Christians of other denominations soon afterwards introduced themselves amongst them; but that they had not discontinued their evil practices is proved by the bitter experience of the Russian merchant Nikitin, who was plundered when shipwrecked on their coast in 1468. It was in vain that he sought to recover his property, even though he appealed to Shirvan Shah, brother-in-law to Ali Bek their prince (Dorn, Versuch einer Gesch. der Schirwan-Sch., 582). The Kaïtak were a people of sufficient importance to have attracted the notice of Schiltberger, when he passed through their territory on his way from Persia to Great Tatary.

Whilst in those parts, the author must have spent some time amongst the Nogaï of the tribes of Jambolouk or Yembolouk, as they are designated by Thunmann (Büsching, Gr. Erdbeschr., iv, 387), and who were so named because their earliest settlements were near the Jem or Yemba which flows into the Caspian. It was only towards the close of the 18th century that they moved to the western shores of the Sea of Azoff, where they met with other Nogaï, at a time that the territory was being annexed to the Russian empire. The wandering life of these Tatars, and their frequent internecine divisions, justify us in assuming that in Schiltberger’s time the greater number, if not the whole of the Jambolouks, had moved their encampments in a westerly direction, and this explains why the Tatar duke met by De Lannoy (Voy. et Ambass., 40) in 1421, who lived on the ground with all his people, was named Jambo. It was in the power of the descendants of that duke to remove to any other more convenient site; it is, therefore, very possible, that the fortress and town of Yabou, ceded in 1517 by the Crimean Khan to Sigismund of Poland, together with other places on the Dnieper, may have belonged to him (Sbornyk by Prince Obolensky, i, 88). I feel that we are at liberty to infer from these several facts that the “Inbu” were Tatars of the Jambolouk Horde.—Bruun.

There was a time when it was generally believed that the people in Cairo could not be numbered, because it was considered the most populous city in the world, with more inhabitants than all Italy contained, the vagabonds it sheltered sufficing to fill Venice! In saying this, Breidenbach (Webb, A Survey of Egypt and Syria, etc.) does not fail to observe: “Audita refero—neque enim ipso numeravi.” Schiltberger may have thought the same, when he computed the streets in “Missir” to be as numerous as were the houses in Caffa; and this he did that his readers might be the better able to judge of the difference between the two cities.

That the sultan’s suite consisted of twenty thousand men is most probable, allusion being made to the dwellers in the citadel. Thus, De Lanuoy:—“est ledit chastel moult grant comme une ville fermée, et y habite dedens avecq le soudan grant quantité de gens, en espécial bien le nombre de deux mille esclaves de cheval qu’il paye à ses souldées comme ses meilleurs gens d’armes à garder son corps, femmes et enffans, et autres gens grant nombre.”

In 1778, thirty thousand people lived in the citadel, one half of that number being troops (Parsons, Travels in Asia and Africa, etc., 382).—Bruun.