CHAPTER XXXV.
[(1.)] “Great Tartaria.”—The details entered into by Schiltberger in this chapter, demonstrate that he includes in Great Tatary the possessions of the three branches of the Jujy. First, the Ordou Itchen or the White Horde, who were the successors of the eldest son of Jujy. Secondly, those of the Golden Horde, the successors of Batou, the second son; and, Thirdly, those of Shaïban, the fifth son, who, in recompense for his brilliant services during Batou’s campaign in Russia, received from the Ordou Itchen some territories near the Ural for his summer encampment; and for his winter use, those near the Syr Darya, that is to say, the actual steppe of the Kirghis, so that the domains of the Shaïbani separated the Golden Horde from the White Horde. Their dominions afterwards extended northwards, when they nominated khans to Siberia.—Bruun.
(1A.) “Tartaria” and “Tartaren”, as the names are spelled throughout the text, are substituted in these Notes by Tatary and Tatars, it is hoped on fair grounds. Professor Nève asserts (Exposé des Guerres de Tamerlan, etc.: d’après la Chronique Arménienne inédite de Thomas de Medzoph, 24) that Tatar is the term employed by Armenian chroniclers, and he names no exceptions; and is not her ancient literature one of the several excellencies of which Armenia may be justly proud? A note by Dr. Smith in Gibbon (Rise and Fall, etc., iii, 294) shows how the Tatars became accidentally named Tartars, through an exclamation of St. Louis of France, although it must be admitted that according to other authors, the use of the word Tartar, in Western Europe, is of earlier date; and Genebrard states (Lib. Heb. Chro. Bib., i, 158) that Tatar, which in the Hebrew and Syriac signifies abandoned, deserted, should more correctly be written without an r. The Russians, whose pronunciation of these words is, for obvious reasons, entitled to every consideration, speak of Tatáry’ya-Tatary—and Tatáry—Tatars—unquestionably the sound uttered by the various people themselves, claiming the distinctive appellation, whether on the banks of the Volga, in South Russia, the Crimea, or in the steppes and lowlands of Transcaucasia, as the writer of this note is prepared to testify. The Russian word Tatarui, or Tatars, says Ralston (Early Russian History, 198, wherein is cited F. Porter Smith’s Vocab., etc., 52), modified in Western Europe by a reference to Tartarus into Tartars, is now generally applied by Russian writers to what used to be the Turkish subjects of the Mongol Empire. It is said to be a corruption of Tah-tan, the name under which the Mongols were anciently known to the Chinese. Morrison writes Tătă as Chinese for Tartars.
Colonel Yule (Marco Polo, i, 12) calls attention to an article in the Journal Asiatique, ser. v, tom. xi, 203, to show that the name Tartar is of Armenian rather than of European origin, whilst admitting that Tatar was used by Oriental writers of Polo’s age, exactly as Tartar was then, and is still, used in Western Europe as a generic title for the Turanian hosts who followed Chingis and his successors; but he believes that the name in this sense was not known in Western Europe before the time of Chingis.
In Howorth’s History of the Mongols, 1877 (the one volume as yet published), a ponderous book of 743 pages, replete with the most erudite information, but unhappily unprovided with any guide to its contents, will be found at page 700, a long note, in which admission is made that the word Tartar has given rise to much discussion; and whilst the Russian and Byzantine authors, the Bohemian chronicler Dalemil, Ivo of Narbonne, and Thomas of Spalatro, are cited in favour of the use of Tatar, other authorities are quoted to establish a respectable pedigree for Tartar.—Ed.
[(2.)] “Seat him on white felt, and raise him in it three times.”—The raising to the White Felt is similarly described by Giovanni dal Piano di Carpine (Recueil de Voy. et de Mém., etc.). Vambery (Trav. in Central Asia, 356) says that the being raised to the White Felt is still the exclusive privilege of the gray-beards of the tribe of Jagatai, and that the custom is kept up at the investiture of the khans of Khokand.—Ed.