(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.
[(11.)] “they suppose that a man struck by lightning is a saint.”—The “Starchas” or Tcherkess—Circassians—were known to Giovanni dal Piano di Carpine, Aboulfeda, Barbaro and others, and were more generally called Zikhes and Cossacks, two branches of that people. The proof of the identity of the Zikhes with the Cossacks or Tcherkess is to be found in Interiano (Ramusio edition, 196), who visited the country in 1502: “Zychi in lingua vulgare, greca et latina cosi chiamati, et da Tartari et Turchi dimandati Ciarcassi”. Their identity, however, is established in the present work, and therefore before the Italian’s travels; it being stated in chapter 56 that the Turks designate the “Sygun”—Zikhes—by the name of “Ischerkas”—Tcherkess. In the days of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (De Adm. Imp., c. 42), their territory extended along the Black Sea shore over a distance of three hundred miles, from the river Oukroukh (Kouban), which separated them from Tamatarcha (Taman), to the river Nicopsis at the frontier of Abhase, a country that reached to Soteriopolis situated in all probability where is now Pytzounda the ancient Pityus, to the north west of Soukhoum Kaleh, for it is stated by Codinus (Hieroclis Synecdemus, etc., 315) that Pityus was at one time called Soteropolis.
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.
[(12.)] “One is called Kayat, the other Inbu, the third Mugal.”—Considering the little care taken by Schiltberger and his transcribers to hand down to us proper and geographical names with sufficient exactness to enable us to prove their identity, it is no easy task to determine what were the “Kayat” and “Inbu” who, with the Mongols, formed the population of Great Tatary. Whatever the correct names, they were probably communicated to Schiltberger by the natives or their Mongol chiefs. The latter were able to distinguish from their own people, those who had retained for a longer period than others their hereditary chiefs under the suzerainty of the descendants of Jengiz Khan. The principal tribes were undoubtedly the Keraït and Uïgour, whose rulers, named Edekout, a name reminding us of the celebrated “Edigi” whom Schiltberger accompanied to Siberia, preserved their independence until the year 1328 (Erdmann, Temud. d. U. R., 245). Neumann asserts that two of the tribes named were the Kajat or Kerait, and the Uighur, a statement he leaves unsupported; we are therefore justified in assuming that reference is made rather to the Kaïtak and Jambolouk, two tribes the author must have had frequent opportunities of meeting.
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.