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.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
[(1.)] “Edil, which is a great river.”—The large river here called “Edil”, the Turkish for river, could have been no other than the Oxus or Amu-Darya. Orden cannot in any manner be identified with “Origens”, mentioned in chapter 25, where the author stayed when on his journey from Derbent to Joulad. That city of “Origens”, however, was also at an “Edil”, so that Schiltberger may possibly have confounded its name of Ornas, Arnatch, or Andjaz, with Ourjenj, equally situated on an “Edil” (in this instance not the Terek but the Oxus); the possessions of his iron lord extending from the neighbourhood of one river to that of the other.—Bruun.
[(2.)] “A city called Haitzicherchen, which is a large city.”—Hadjy-tarkhan was situated on the right bank of the Volga, a few miles above the modern Astrahan, and near Itil, capital of the kingdom of the Khozars, an ancient city that had already disappeared in the time of Rubruquis, 1253, when Hadjy-tarkhan itself, it would appear, had scarcely begun to exist. Ibn Batouta (1331) notes having sojourned at the last-named place upon the occasion of his journey from Soudagh to Saraï; and Pegolotti says that travellers tarried there when on their way to China. The name appears as Azitarcan in the Catalan atlas, 1375, in which work, and in the splendid map of the brothers Pizzigani, we also find “Civitat de ssara”, or “Civitas Regio d’Sara”, the city of New Sarai, destroyed by Timour, and mentioned by Schiltberger. Its ruins are still to be seen near the town of Tzaref on the Akhtouba, an arm of the Volga. There was, however, the other Saraï, spoken of by Aboulfeda, Ibn Batouta, and Pegolotti, the remains of which are visible, also on the Akhtouba, but at a distance of two hundred miles to the south of Tzaref, and near Seliterny-gorodok, where numerous coins of the khan Uzbek have lately been found by a professor of the University of Kazan. No such coins have ever been picked up at Tzaref, which is not surprising, seeing that it was Janibek, the son of Uzbek, who transferred his residence from Saraï to the new city of that name, as Colonel Yule has already shown in one of his notes to Marco Polo (i, 6), and as I have since sought to prove in an article that was published at Kieff in 1876 (Troudy 3go. Archeo. Syezda).
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.