Moreover, F. H. Mueller
States That The Site Near Tzarev Is Known To The Tartars As The "Sarai Of
Janibek Khan" (1341-1357).
Now it is worthy of note that in the coinage of
Janibek we repeatedly find as the place of mintage, New Sarai.
Arabshah
in his History of Timur states that 63 years had elapsed from the
foundation to the destruction of Sarai. But it must have been at least 140
years since the foundation of Batu's city. Is it not possible, therefore,
that both the sites which we have mentioned were successively occupied by
the Mongol capital; that the original Sarai of Batu was at Selitrennoye
Gorodok, and that the New Sarai of Janibek was established by him, or by
his father Uzbeg in his latter days, on the upper Akhtuba? Pegolotti
having carried his merchant from Tana (Azov) to Gittarchan (Astrakhan),
takes him one day by river to Sara, and from Sara to Saracanco, also
by river, eight days more. (Cathay, p. 287.) In the work quoted I have
taken Saracanco for Saraichik, on the Yaik. But it was possibly the Upper
or New Sarai on the Akhtuba. Ibn Batuta, marching on the frozen river,
reached Sarai in three days from Astrakhan. This could not have been at
Tzarev, 200 miles off.
In corroboration (quantum valeat) of my suggestion that there must have
been two Sarais near the Volga, Professor Bruun of Odessa points to the
fact that Fra Mauro's map presents two cities of Sarai on the Akhtuba;
only the Sarai of Janibeg is with him no longer New Sarai, but Great
Sarai.
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