Chapter XXXVII

“Zechem” is to be identified with Jakam, governor of Syria, who revolted against Faradj. He was acknowledged as sultan in Syria, but succumbed in a war with Kara Yelek in 1405–06.

“Schyachin” is a name that slightly recalls to mind Sheykh Mahmoud, sultan in 1421; he was successor to the caliph Abbas al-mustein Billahy who reigned for a few months after the death of Faradj in 1412; but Sheykh Mahmoud died a natural death at an advanced age, and could not therefore have been the ruler whose execution Schiltberger describes so minutely, that he must have been a witness to his torments. None of Boursbaï’s predecessors—Ahmed, the eldest son of Mahmoud—Tater, an old Mamelouk—or Mohammed, the youngest son of Mahmoud, deposed by Boursbaï, met with the fate of “Schyachin”, a name intended perhaps for Azahiri, governor of Safad, who raised the standard of revolt at the very commencement of Boursbaï’s reign. He was deserted by his followers, and having surrendered was put to torture, 1422, perhaps enduring the sufferings to which “Schyachin” was subjected.—Bruun.

In a letter to Shah Rokh the son of Timour, in 833 of the Hegira, the sultan Boursbaï styles himself Lord of Jerusalem; possibly the sense of the passage turned by Schiltberger into “ain herr des obristen gots,” which, being an imitation of the Hebrew, was Hebrew to him.—Bruun.

Through some similar misconception, Boursbaï is made to boast of his relationship to the Virgin Mary, which could not have been the case either, seeing that she, in like manner, is venerated by Mussulmans.—Bruun.

“Talapharum” is the well-known Tell-el-Faras at the termination of Jabal-el-Heis, a spur of Jabal-el-Sheykh or Hermon.—Bruun.

There exists a tradition, that when upon his death-bed Mahomet recommended to the faithful the conquest of the Caucasus, a country he had ever held in special veneration, so that several Shyite sects place it, in point of sanctity, above the cities of Arabia (D’Ohsson, Des Peup. du Cauc., ii, 182). It is therefore not at all strange that the sovereignty over a region so specially blessed and in which the sultan himself was born, should have been included amongst his dignities, since he was entitled, in a measure, to consider the power of the founder of Alexandria to be his heritage.

Claiming the monarchy, as he did, over the forests of the Caucasus, the sultan naturally added thereunto his possession of Cappadocia, a portion of which did indeed belong to him, and wherein he had every right to situate Paradise. Mahomedans believe, as do Christians and Jews, that the Garden was in a beautiful land called Adn, watered by a marvellous river which was the source of the Euphrates, of the Tigris, the Jihoun (Pyramus of the ancients) and the Syhoun (Sarus), all in Cappadocia or in its immediate neighbourhood. Really, Boursbaï was no farther out in his calculations, than were those learned men who recognised the two last-named rivers in the Oxus and Jaxartes (Hammer), in the Araxes and Phasis (Brugsch), and even in the Volga and Indus (Raumer)—Bruun.

The sultan of Egypt is said to have styled himself “the guardian of the caves” (ein vogt der hellen), perhaps because the cavern was under his protection; but it is also possible that for “hellen” we should read Helle or Halle, the German for Hillah, on the site of ancient Babylon, and celebrated for such holy places in its neighbourhood as Kerbela and Mesjyd Ali, the Campo Santo to which the Shyites perform pilgrimages (Ritter, Die Erdkunde etc., ix, 842, 869, 955).—Bruun.

There is some difficulty in accounting for the sultan’s usurpation of the title of “the mighty emperor of Constantinoppel”. In his letter to Shah Rokh, alluded to in note 4, page 184, he wrote as follows: “The kings of the earth have come from all parts as the bearers of their homage. The King of Hormuz, the Sultan of Hisn, the son of Karaman; these princes, sovereigns of their countries, the Sultan of the revered city of Mecca, the Sultans of Yemen, of Magreb, and of Tekrour, the King of Cyprus, since dead, all have presented themselves at my Court”. This king of Cyprus, who was named John and died in 1432, was captured by the Egyptians on their expedition to the island in 1426, and being forced to acknowledge the suzerainty of the sultan, agreed to pay annual tribute to the amount of twenty thousand dinars, to enable him to obtain his freedom (Weil, Gesch. der Chal., v, 177). John II., emperor of Byzantium, sought, but in vain, to intercede for the king by entering into negociations with the sultan (ibid., 173), upon which occasion he may possibly have stooped to pay homage as others did, for he was not ashamed at another time to prostrate himself and kiss the Pope’s slipper. It is likely enough that he presented himself under the name of Tekrour, a country Silvester de Sacy is at a loss to determine. Tekrour, however, need not have been the name of a country at all, but a corruption of Takfour, a designation in the East for the emperor of Constantinople.

The homage of the ruling powers on earth, did not suffice to satisfy the despot Boursbaï, for his ambition wafted him to the skies (“the lord [of the places] where Enoch and Helyas are buried”), the place of sepulture, say the Mahomedans, of their prophets Enoch, and Elias the protector of travellers, and who is believed by the Jews to have been borne away to heaven (D’Ohsson, l. c., i, 51, 111).

Another title, though less bombastic, is still more puzzling, unless “Kaylamer” is to be identified with the fortress of Kalamil visited in 1221 by Willbrand of Oldenburg (Viv. de Saint-Martin, Desc. de l’A. M., i, 488), after leaving Mamistra (Mopsvesta of the ancients, Mimistra of the Byzantines, the actual Missis). When upon this journey, Willbrand left on his right hand a place called the King’s Black Castle, an indication that conducts us with Saint-Martin to the defile known to the ancients as the Pylæ Armeniæ or Pylæ Ciliciæ, now called Demyr Kapou by the Turks; evidently the same locality as that noticed by Marino Sanudo (Liber Secret. Fidel., etc., 221—Pauthier, Marco Polo, cxxxii, 1). “Tartari autem sequenti anno (1260) violenter irrumpentes, ceperunt Alapiam, Harem, Hamam, Calamelam et Damascum.” The fortress of Calamela being included among the chief cities in Syria, it is to be inferred that its strategical and commercial importance had greatly increased during the half century that transpired after Willbrand’s visit. Nor does Calamila seem to have escaped the notice of Italian navigators, for the name, slightly varied, appears in the hydrographic charts of the 14th century. In the Catalan atlas, 1375, for instance, Caramila is evidently the same as the Cramela spoken of by the author of Liber Secretorum Fidelium, etc., who observes that it stood on the site of ancient Issus, the gulf of this city being marked on the chart, “golfo de Cramela”. At that time, Cramela divided the possessions of the sultan of Egypt from those of the king of Armenia; and considering its importance, the sultan may not have disdained to style himself amir of Calamila, transformed by Schiltberger into “Amorach of Kaylamer”.

The next name, “Galgarien”, is undoubtedly intended for Khozary or Gazary, described by Marino Sanudo (Kunstmann, Stud. über M. S. 105) as Galgaria, a dependancy of the Tatars, inhabited by “Gothi et aliqui Alani”. It was a Genoese possession in the Crimea, whence was carried on a large export trade, chiefly in slaves to Alexandria, where many afterwards became men of note; but Khozary was a dependancy of Kiptchak, a name that signifies—hollow tree—the distinctive title immediately following that of “the mighty emperor of Galgarien” as “the Lord of the withered tree”. The rulers of Kiptchak, or khans of the Golden Horde, were long bound by the strictest ties of friendship to the sultans of Egypt, and as zealous followers of Mahomet, were not likely to question their right to hold the first place among the monarchs of Islam.

That the high position attained by those sultans did not influence them against according their protection to Christian potentates, is evident from the intimate relations that existed between themselves and the kings or emperors of Abyssinia, among whom should certainly be included “Prester John, in enclosed Rumany”.

It is now generally admitted that Marco Polo, with his usual good faith, stated the precise truth in affirming that in his time, one George, a descendent of Prester John, became the governor of a province as a vassal of China. This prince professed the Roman Catholic faith, instead of Nestorianism as did his grandfather Ovang Khan, chief of the Keraits, and not, as Oppert has sought to prove (Der Presb. Johannes in Sage und Gesch., etc., Berlin, 1864) of the Gour Khan of the Karakhitaians mentioned by Rubruquis. In either case it is pretty certain that so soon as European intercourse with the interior of Asia decreased, the existence of a Christian state on the Nile, to the south of Egypt, became more generally known; a state to which Haythoun, the Armenian historian, had already directed the Pope’s attention (De Tartaria, c. 57, apud Webb, A Survey of Egypt and Syria, etc., 394), and it thereafter became the custom to metamorphose the Christian monarch of the Nubians and Abyssinians into Prester John. Like Schiltberger, De Lannoy (Voy. et Ambass., 93) knew of no other Prester John, and far from admitting his dependance on the sultan, a condition to be inferred by the title of protector attributed to the latter by Schiltberger, the knight implies that it was rather the sultan who was in a state of dependance on Prester John, in whose power it lay to “destourber le cruschon” of the Nile, which he certainly would have done, but for the fear of victimising the many Christians in Egypt.

In another chapter, De Lannoy terms these Christians “Christians of the girdle”, a name that was applied, says his commentator (Webb), in consequence of a law promulgated A.D. 856 by the caliph Motonakek, which prescribed that Jews and Christians should wear a broad leathern girdle. It appears, however, that in course of time the Nestorians and Jacobites also became subject to the same law, and this accounts for the expression, “Prester John, in enclosed Rumany”, which, if intended for Abyssinia, a country mistaken by Marco Polo and De Lannoy for that of the Brahmins, would indicate that the former was inhabited by the Christians of the girdle. (De Lannoy styles the primate of the Copts, the primate of India.) That they were believed to be in Abyssinia is proved in the following lines from Juan de la Encina’s narrative of his journey to Jerusalem in the year 1500.

This author evidently confounds the Georgians with the Abhases and the latter with the Abyssinians, as had frequently been done before him. In quoting from documents preserved among the archives at Königsberg, a letter from Conrad of Jungingen, Grand-Master of the Teutonic Order, dated January 20, 1407, and addressed to Prester John, “regi Abassiæ”, Karamsin (Hist. de Russie, iii, 388), observes, that the superscription applies to the king of Abhase in the region of the Caucasus, and not to the king of Abyssinia. We read, likewise, in the chronicle of Alberic (Rel. de Jean du Plan de Carpin, 161) that the legate Pelagius “misit nuntios suos in Abyssiniam terram et Georgianorum, qui sunt viri catholici”.

The friendship that existed between the “negus christianissimus” and the sultan was certainly but rarely interrupted, probably because they sympathised in each other’s apprehensions; but the sentiments entertained by Boursbaï towards the caliph, must have been of a different nature, so that he may have taken upon himself to borrow the title of “guardian of Wadach”, or Baghdad.—Bruun.

By another decree, promulgated in the early part of his reign, the sultan Boursbaï abolished the ancient custom which required that the ground should be kissed by all who were admitted to his presence; and it was thenceforth ordained, that according to the rank of the person introduced, so his hand or the hem of his garment should be kissed. But he was soon persuaded to resort to the old usage, except that instead of kissing the ground with the mouth, those presented were to touch the ground with the hand, which was then to be kissed. Schiltberger could not have been in Egypt before the abolition of the above ridiculous and barbarous custom, in the first year of Boursbaï’s reign; but there were no doubt numerous instances in his day of obsequious courtiers and other parasites who did actually kiss the ground. The ceremonial and etiquette observed at the presentation and reception of ambassadors, was in accordance with the customs of the Turks and Tatars upon such occasions.

The little bell for post-horses was introduced by the Mongols into Russia, and having been in use on post-roads ever since the time of their domination, has substituted the horn of the French and German postillion.—Bruun.

Khalil Daheri (Quatremère, i, 55, note 77), an Arabian writer of the 15th century, reports that Belbeis, Salehieh, Katia, and Varradeh or Barideh, were the pigeon-post stations on the road to Syria. According to Makrizi (ibid., 56), Varradeh was distant eighteen miles from Alarih. Query? Fort Arich or el-Arich in Lower Egypt, where the French capitulation was signed in 1800. Aboul-Mahazin declares that Bir al-Kady—The Kady’s well—must have marked the limits of Syria and Egypt.

Another Arabian writer (Abd-Allatif, S. de Sacy edition, 43) calls Alarich, Alaris—changed by the bishop of Lubeck, as his German editors believe, into Ahir, a name almost to be identified with “Archey”, one of the principal pigeon stations.—Bruun.