At The Straits Leading Into The Great Sea, On The West Side, There Is A
Hill Called The FARO.
- But since beginning on this matter I have changed
my mind, because so many people know all about it, so we will not put it
in our description, but go on to something else.
And so I will tell you
about the Tartars of the Ponent, and the lords who have reigned over them.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CONCERNING THE TARTARS OF THE PONENT AND THEIR LORDS.
The first lord of the Tartars of the Ponent was SAIN, a very great and
puissant king, who conquered ROSIA and COMANIA, ALANIA, LAC, MENJAR, ZIC,
GOTHIA, and GAZARIA; all these provinces were conquered by King Sain.
Before his conquest these all belonged to the Comanians, but they did not
hold well together nor were they united, and thus they lost their
territories and were dispersed over divers countries; and those who
remained all became the servants of King Sain.[NOTE 1]
After King Sain reigned King PATU, and after Patu BARCA, and after Barca
MUNGLETEMUR, and after Mungletemur King TOTAMANGUL, and then TOCTAI the
present sovereign.[NOTE 2]
Now I have told you of the Tartar kings of the Ponent, and next I shall
tell you of a great battle that was fought between Alau the Lord of the
Levant and Barca the Lord of the Ponent.
So now we will relate out of what occasion that battle arose, and how it
was fought.
NOTE 1. - +The COMANIANS, a people of Turkish race, the Polovtzi[or
"Dwellers of the Plain" of Nestor, the Russian Annalist] of the old
Russians, were one of the chief nations occupying the plains on the north
of the Black Sea and eastward to the Caspian, previous to the Mongol
invasion. Rubruquis makes them identical with the KIPCHAK, whose name is
generally attached to those plains by Oriental writers, but Hammer
disputes this. [See a note, pp. 92-93 of Rockhill's Rubruck. - H.C.]
ALANIA, the country of the Alans on the northern skirts of the Caucasus
and towards the Caspian; LAC, the Wallachs as above. MENJAR is a subject
of doubt. It may be Majar, on the Kuma River, a city which was visited
by Ibn Batuta, and is mentioned by Abulfeda as Kummajar. It was in the
14th century the seat of a Franciscan convent. Coins of that century, both
of Majar and New Majar, are given by Erdmann. The building of the
fortresses of Kichi Majar and Ulu Majar (little and great) is ascribed in
the Derbend Nameh to Naoshirwan. The ruins of Majar were extensive when
seen by Gmelin in the last century, but when visited by Klaproth in the
early part of the present one there were few buildings remaining.
Inscriptions found there are, like the coins, Mongol-Mahomedan of the 14th
century. Klaproth, with reference to these ruins, says that Majar merely
means in "old Tartar" a stone building, and denies any connection with the
Magyars as a nation. But it is possible that the Magyar country, i.e.
Hungary, is here intended by Polo, for several Asiatic writers of his
time, or near it, speak of the Hungarians as Majar. Thus Abulfeda speaks
of the infidel nations near the Danube as including Aulak, Majars, and
Serbs; Rashiduddin speaks of the Mongols as conquering the country of the
Bashkirds, the Majars, and the Sassan (probably Saxons of Transylvania).
One such mention from Abulghazi has been quoted in note 2 to ch. xxii.; in
the Masalak-al-Absar, the Cherkes, Russians, Aas (or Alans), and
Majar are associated; the Majar and Alan in Sharifuddin. Doubts indeed
arise whether in some of these instances a people located in Asia be not
intended.[1] (Rubr. p. 246; D'Avezac, p. 486 seqq.; Golden
Horde, p. 5; I.B. II. 375 seqq.; Buesching, IV. 359; Cathay, p.
233; Numi Asiatici, I. 333, 451; Klaproth's Travels, ch. xxxi.; N. et
Ex. XIII. i. 269, 279; P. de la Croix, II. 383; Rein. Abulf. I. 80;
D'Ohsson, II. 628.)
["The author of the Tarikh Djihan Kushai, as well as Rashid and other
Mohammedan authors of the same period, term the Hungarians Bashkerds
(Bashkirs). This latter name, written also Bashkurd, appears for the
first time, it seems, in Ibn Fozlan's narrative of an embassy to the
Bulgars on the Volga in the beginning of the 10th century (translated by
Fraehn, 'De Bashkiris,' etc., 1822).... The Hungarians arrived in Europe
in the 9th century, and then called themselves Magyar (to be pronounced
Modjor), as they do down to the present time. The Russian Chronicler
Nestor mentions their passing near Kiev in 898, and terms them Ugry. But
the name Magyar was also known to other nations in the Middle Ages.
Abulfeda (ii. 324) notices the Madjgars; it would, however, seem that he
applies this name to the Bashkirs in Asia. The name Madjar occurs also
in Rashid's record. In the Chinese and Mongol annals of the 13th century
the Hungarians are termed Madja-rh." (Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. pp.
326-327.) - H.C.]
ZIC is Circassia. The name was known to Pliny, Ptolemy, and other writers
of classic times. Ramusio (II. 196 v) gives a curious letter to Aldus
Manutius from George Interiano, "Della vita de' Zychi chiamati
Circassi," and a great number of other references to ancient and
mediaeval use of the name will be found in D'Avezac's Essay, so often
quoted (p. 497).
GOTHIA is the southern coast of the Crimea from Sudak to Balaklava and the
mountains north of the latter, then still occupied by a tribe of the
Goths. The Genoese officer who governed this coast in the 15th century
bore the title of Capitanus Gotiae; and a remnant of the tribe still
survived, maintaining their Teutonic speech, to the middle of the 16th
century, when Busbeck, the emperor's ambassador to the Porte, fell in with
two of them, from whom he derived a small vocabulary and other
particulars.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 244 of 360
Words from 248168 to 249167
of 370046
