The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427

by Johannes Schiltberger

CHAPTER III.

[(1.)] “and the people he took away, and some he left in Greece.”—Baron Hammer points out, that Styrian historians have not noticed this fact, with which, in all probability, is connected the origin of certain Slave settlements in Asia Minor. M. Lamansky (O Slav. v. Mal. Asii) however, believes, they are of more ancient date.—Bruun.

[(2.)] “king-sultan.”—Schiltberger styles the sultan of Egypt, king-sultan, because, having the caliph at his court, he was considered as being at the head of all Mahomedan monarchs. The sultan at the period indicated was Barkok, the first of the dynasty of Circassian Mamelouks, if we except Bibars II, whose reign, 1309–1310, was of the shortest duration. Twenty years before his accession (1382), Barkok was carried as a slave into Egypt, from the Crimea, whither he had gone from his own native country in the Caucasus.—Bruun.

[(3.)] “king of Babylony.”—This king of Babylon was Ahmed, son of Oveis, son of the Jelarid Hassan the Great, the descendant of Abaka, the son of Houlakou, the son of Tuly, son of Jengiz Khan. Timour drove Ahmed from Baghdad, but he returned upon several occasions, notably in 1395, and remained until 1402. Previously to the battle of Nicopolis, Bajazet had written to tell him that, in his opinion, the expulsion of Timour was of greater moment than that of the Takfour, that is to say, of the Greek emperor (Hammer, Hist. de l’E. O., ii, 466, note xv).—Bruun.

[(4.)] “king of Persia.”—Even before the battle of Nicopolis, nearly the whole of Persia had been subjugated by Timour, and divided between his sons, Omar Sheykh and Miran Shah, and other amirs. The Shah Mansour, who had also appealed to Bajazet for succour, perished in 1393 at the battle of Sheeraz; the other princes of the house of Mouzzafer had been put to death, with the exception of Zein Alabin, and Shebel, the two sons of the shah Shoudia, who ended their days at Samarkand (Weil., Gesch. d. Chalifen, ii, 40); it is, consequently, somewhat puzzling to determine, to which sovereign of Persia the Christian captives were sent.—Bruun.

[(5.)] “White Tartary.”—According to Neumann, Schiltberger here seeks to distinguish the free Tatars from the Black Tatars, that is to say, the vanquished and paying tribute. Erdmann (Temud. d. U., 194), on the authority of Rashid uddin, considers that by White Tatars were meant the Turk tribes, who were afterwards known as Mongols, the Black Tatars being the real Mongols. He tells us, that after having subdued the White Tatars and other Turk people, the Black resumed their ancient name of Mongols, and extended their sway to Eastern Europe, including under the name of Tatars even the Turks in the West, with the exception of those by whom they were opposed in Asia Minor, and who afterwards became known in Europe as the Ottoman Turks.

This, however, does not explain to us where the White Tatars, repeatedly mentioned by Schiltberger, dwelt. We learn from him, first, that a powerful lord from their country was the son-in-law of Kady Bourhan uddin, sovereign of Sebaste, who was put to death by Kara Yelek or Oulouk, chief of the Turkomans of the White Sheep: secondly; that, having laid siege to the city of Angora, which belonged to Bajazet, they were forced to yield to him; and, thirdly, that at the battle of Angora, 30,000 of them went over to Timour, and were the cause of his gaining the day.

Taking into consideration these several facts, is it not possible, that the White Tatars of Schiltberger are to be identified with those of the White Horde of Eastern writers; the Blue, as they were sometimes alluded to by Russian annalists, perhaps because of their encampments on the shores of the Blue Sea, the Lake Aral? This Horde, as the patrimony of the elder branch of the house of Jujy, whose chief town was Ssaganak, near the upper Syr Darya, was dependent to a certain extent on the Golden Horde, ruled over by the descendants of Batou, the second son of Jujy. But this state of dependence was not of long duration, for towards the close of the 14th century, the famous Toktamish, a prince of the elder branch, succeeded in annexing the whole of the Golden Horde to his possessions, after having, with the assistance of Timour, rid himself of his uncle Ourous Khan. Having quarrelled with his protector, this ambitious man was under the necessity of courting the friendship of Bajazet, who was only too pleased to secure another ally against the threatening domination of the ruler of Jagatai; there is, therefore, nothing surprising in the fact of the sultan sending a certain number of Christian captives to Toktamish, were it only to console him for the unfortunate termination to his war with Timour in 1395. At all events, the partisans of Toktamish, who effected their escape under the leadership of Timour Tash, upon the defeat of the former near the banks of the Terek, were received by the sultan with open arms. Savelieff (Mon. Joud., 314) gives it as his opinion, that Timour Tash who held the Crimea under the suzerainty of Toktamish, was himself a member of the Jujy family; in which case the sovereign of Sebaste might well have given his daughter in marriage to him, without contracting a misalliance, and the very nature of this alliance, may have incited Timour Tash to treat his benefactor with ingratitude in laying siege to Sebaste, his whole household being in his suite, after the custom of the country. Having necessarily become reconciled with the sultan, he might easily have treated him with treachery at the battle of Angora, by passing over to the ranks of his countrymen; in such a case they would have obtained a victory, in consequence of defection amongst the Tatars in the service of Bajazet, as we are informed by Arabian authors, and not, as Persian and Turkish historians have imagined, through defection among “the Turk princes of Asia Minor”.

It is, nevertheless, no easy matter to reconcile this hypothesis with the statement made by Clavijo (Hakluyt Soc. Publ., 75). After alluding to the capture of Sebaste by Timour, the Spanish envoy continues:—“Before he arrived there, he met with a race called the White Tartars, who always wander over the plain; and he fought and conquered them, and took their lord prisoner; and took away as many as fifty thousand men and women with him. He then marched to Damascus,” etc., etc.

In another passage, he returns to the Tartaros Blancos subdued by Tamerlane, and says that they were encamped between Turkey (Asia Minor) and Syria. These White Tatars were evidently identical with the White Tatars of Schiltberger, who had nothing in common with the Tatars of the White Horde, frequently designated as being of “Great Tartary”. It may therefore be assumed that the White Tatars mentioned by both travellers, were Turkomans, inhabitants of the eastern parts of Asia Minor, whose descendants have to this day preserved the Mongol type, and the same mode of living as the White Tatars of Schiltberger and Clavijo (Viv. de Saint-Martin, Desc. de l’A. M., ii, 429). East Cilicia was at that time actually divided between two Turkoman dynasties, which had not been vanquished by the Ottoman arms; small states that had existed from the year 1378, the date at which the Lusignans, who had succeeded the Roupenian dynasty of Little Armenia in 1342, were expelled from Cilicia by the Baharite Mamelouks of Egypt. The one reigned at Marash, the other at Adana; the latter being known as the Ben Ramazan, the former as the Soulkadyr or Joulkadyr, the name by which Marash was afterwards known amongst Turkish geographers. Both dynasties were in existence until 1515, when they were subjugated by the sultan, Selim, and their territories incorporated with the empire (Viv. de Saint-Martin, Desc. de l’A. M., i, 529).

It would appear that the rulers of the White Tatars, alluded to by Clavijo, belonged to the family of the Joulkadyr. It was, at any rate, against that dynasty, Timour despatched a force after the capture of Sivas, to punish it for its hostility towards himself, when besieging that city (Weil., Gesch. d. Chalifen, v, 82); and the Mongols soon afterwards carried off all the herds belonging to a prince of this house, whose encampment was near Palmyra (ibid., 91). As was the case with the White Tatars of Clavijo, those mentioned by Schiltberger drew their rulers, at least in part, from princes of this house. It was Bajazet’s desire, that his son should marry the daughter of Nazr uddin Joulkadyr, who would not have been forgotten at the distribution of prisoners taken at Nicopolis. This Nazr uddin had received his fugitive relative, the son of Bourhan uddin, the brother-in-law, according to Schiltberger, of the ruler of the White Tatars. It appears to me that the seeming diversity in the statements made by various authors, with regard to the nationality of the troops who went over to Timour at the battle of Angora, is to be explained by admitting, that the Tatars who betrayed the cause of Bajazet, were Turkomans who acknowledged the authority of the Ben Ramazan and the Joulkadyr; that is to say, that their rulers were princes holding possessions in Asia Minor. Our author’s recital enables us to understand, why Oriental writers would seem to be at issue as to the nationality of the “Tatar Regiments” (Weil., Gesch. d. I. V., 437) which deserted their colours at the battle of Angora.—Bruun.

[(6.)] “Greater Armenia.”—Armenia proper is here called Greater, to distinguish it from the Lesser, which was understood to be the eastern part of Cappadocia, near the Euphrates. In the middle ages, the denomination Lesser Armenia included the whole of Cappadocia, inasmuch as it was inhabited by Armenians who had been expelled from their own country by the Seljouks and Turkomans (11th and 12th centuries). At a subsequent period, the Armenians occupied nearly the whole of Cilicia and the west of Syria, anciently called Commagen, and afterwards known as Euphrates. All these new acquisitions were included under the name of Lesser Armenia.—Bruun.