Travels of Ibn Battuta
Travels of Ibn Batuta in Asia and Africa
The book: Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354.
Translated and selected by H.A.R. Gibb. Edited by Sir E. Denison
Ross and Eileen Power. Robert M. McBride & Company, New York 1929.
[Ibn Battuta was the Arab equivalent of Marco Polo. He traveled
around the world and has much to say about peoples of the world.]
A few lines from the Editors; "In his book he not only lays before us a faithful portrait of himself, with all his virtues and his failings, but evokes a whole age as it
were from the dead....It is impossible not to feel a liking for the character
it reveals, generous to excess, bold (did ever medieval traveller fear the
sea less?), fond of pleasure and uxorious to a degree, but controlled withal
by a deep vein of piety and devotion, a man with all the makings of a
sinner, and something of a saint."
Page 30
"...There was consequently less stigma attached to slavery, and
in no other society has there been anything resembling the system
by which, as has been shown in the preceding section, the white slaves came
to furnish the privilidged cadre whence the high officers of state,
commanders, governors, and at length even Sultans, were exclusively drawn.
The following story, told by a theologian of the third century, represents
without serious distortion the relation, as numerous parallels in Arabic
literature indicate, often existed between master, wife and slave.
I saw a slave-boy being auctioned for thirty dinars, and as he
was worth three hundred I bought him.? I was building a house at the time,
and I gave him twenty dinars to lay out on the workmen.? He spent ten on
them and bought a garment for himself with the other ten.? I said to him
"What's this?" to which he replied "Don't be too hasty; no gentleman
scolds his slaves."? I said to myself "Here have I bought the Caliph's tutor
without knowing it."? Later on I wanted to marry a woman unknown
to my cousin (i.e. my first wife), so I swore him to secrecy and gave
him a dinar to buy somethings, including some of the fish called
haziba? But he bought something else, and when I was wroth with him he
said "I find that Hippocrates disapproves of haziba."? I said to him "You
worthless fool, I was not aware that I had bought a Galen," and
gave him ten blows with the whip. But he seized me and gave me seven back
saying "Sir, three blows is enough as a punishment, and the seven I gave
you are my rightful retaliation."? So I made at him and gave him a cut
on the head, whereupon he went off to my cousin, and said to her "Sincerity
is a religious duty, and whoever deceives us is not one of us.? My master has
married and he swore me to silence, and when I said to him that my lady must be
told of it he broke my head."? So my cousin would neither let me into her
house nor let me have anything out of it, until at last I had to divorce
the other woman. After that she used to call the boy "The honest
lad," and I could not say a word to him, so I said to myself "I shall set him
free, and then I shall have peace." p. 123
[Note that he refers to today's Turks as Turkmen. You'll see that
when he crosses into the Black Sea steppes he'll call the Turkic
peoples of that region "Turks".]
At Ladhiqiya we embarked on a large galley belonging to the
Genoese, the master of which was called Martalmin, and set out for the country
of the Turks known as Bilad ar-Rum [Anatatolia], because it was in
ancient times their land. {1}? Later on it was conquered by the Muslims, but
there are still large numbers of Christians there under the government of
the Turkmen Muslims.? We were ten nights at sea, and the Christian
treated us kindly and took no passage money from us.? On the tenth we
reached Alaya where the province begins. This country is one of the best in the
world; in it God has united the good features dispersed thorughout other
lands. Its people are the most comely of men, the cleanest in their dress,
the most exquisite in their food, and the kindliest folk in creation.
Wherever we stopped in this land, whether at a hospice or a private house,
our neighbors both men and women(these do not veil themselves) came
to ask?after us.? When we left them they bade us farewell as though they
were our relatives and our own folk, and you would see the women
weeping. They bake bread only once a week, and the men used to bring us
gifts of warm bread on the day it was baked, along with delicious viands saying
"The women have sent this to you and beg your prayers." All the inhabitants
are orthodox Sunnis; there are no sectarians or heretics among them,
but they eat hashish [Indian hemp], and think no harm of it.
The city of Alaya is a large town on the seacoast.{2} It is
inhabited by the Turkmens, and is visited by the merchants of Cairo,
Alexandria, and Syria.? The district is well-wooded, and wood is exported from
there to Alexandrietta and Damietta, whence it is carried to the other
cities of Egypt.? There is a magnificent and formidable citadel, built
Sultan Ala ad-Din, at the upper end of town. The qadi of the town rode
out with me to meet the king of Alaya, who is Yusuf Bek, son of Qaraman,
bek meaning king in their language.? He lives at a distance of ten
miles from the city.? We found him sitting by? himself on the top of a
hillock by the shore, with the amirs and wazirs below him, and the troops on his
right and left. He has his hair dyed black. I saluted him and answered
his questions regarding my visit to his town, and after my withdrawal
he sent me a present of money. From Alaya I went to Antaliya [Adalia], a most beautiful city {3}. It covers an immense area, and though of vast bulk is one of the
most attractive towns to be seen anywhere, besides being exceedingly
populous and well laid out.? Each section of the inhabitants
lives in a separate quarter. The Christian merchants live in a quarter of
the town known as the Mina[the Port], and are surrounded by a wall, the
gates of which are shut upon them from without at night and during the
Friday service. {4}.? The Greeks, who were its former inhabitants, live
by themselves in another quarter, the Jews in another, and the king
and his court and mamluks in another, each of these quarters being walled
off likewise.? The rest of the Muslims live in the main city. Round
the whole town and all the quarters mentioned there is another great wall.
The town contains orchards and produces fine fruits, including an
admirable kind of apricot, called by them Qamar ad-Din, which has a sweet almond
in its kernel.? This fruit is dried and exported to Eqypt, where it is
regarded as a great luxury. We stayed here at the college mosque of the town, the principal of which was Shaykh Shihab ad-Din al-Hamawi. Now in all the lands
inhabited by the Turkmens in Anatolia, in every district, town and village,
there are to be found members of the organization known as the Akhiya or Young
Brotherhood. Nowhere in the world will you find men so eager to welcome
strangers, so prompt to serve food and to satisfy the wants of others, and so
ready to suppress injustice and to kill [tyrannical] agents of police and the
miscreants who join with them.? A Young Brother, or akhi in their language, is
one who is chosen by all members of his trade [guild], or the other young
unmarried men, or those who live in ascetic retreat, to be their leader. This
organization is known also as the Futuwa, or the Order of Youth.
The leader builds a hospice and furnishes it with rugs, lamps, and other
necessary appliances.? The members of his community work during the day to
gain their livelihood, and bring him what they have earned in the late
afternoon. With this they buy fruit, food, and the other things which the hospice
requires for their use. If a traveler comes to town that day they lodge him
in their hospice; these provisions serve for his entertainment as their
guest, and he stays with them until he goes away.? If there are no travelers
they themselves assemble to partake of the food, and having eaten it they sang
and dance. On the morrow they return to their occupations and bring their
earnings to their leader in the late afternoon.? The members are called fityan
(youths), and their leader, as we have said, is the akhi. {5}
FOOTNOTES: 1-5
[The spelling "Seljuk" is now preferred to the author's "Saljuq".
Seljuks of Rum are the Seljuk Turks of Anatolia. The "Rum"
reference is to the fact that Anatolia at that time was known to the Middle
Easterners as "Rome" i.e. Eastern Roman Empire.]
?
1. Bilad ar-Rum, literally "the land of the Greeks", though used
of the Byzantine territories generally, was applied more specially, to
the frontier province of Anatolia. After some temporary conquests in earlier
centuries, it had been finally overrun by the Saljuq Turks between 1071 and
1081. Down to the end of the thirteenth century, the whole peninsula, except those
sections which were held by the Christians (Byzantium, Trebizond, and Armenia) or the ruler of Iraq, owed allegiance to the Saljuq sultan of Konia, but from a little before 1300 it was parceled out between a score of local chiefs, whose territories were gradually absorbed into the Ottoman Empire.
?
2. The port Alaya was constructed by one of the greatest of the Saljuq sultans of Rum, Ala ad-Din Kay-Qubad I (1219-37), and was renamed after him. To the Western merchants it was known as Candelor(from its Byzantine name kalon oros). Egypt, being notoriously deficient in wood, has always needed to import large quantities of it for the building of fleets, etc.
?
3. Adaliya, known to the Western merchants as Satalia, was the
most important trading station on the south coast of Anatolia, the Egyptian and
Cypriote trade being most active. The lemon is still called Addaliya in
Egypt.4. The closing of the city gates and exclusion of Christians at
night and during the hours of Friday service was observed until quite
recently in a number of places on the Mediterranean seaboard, such as Sfax,
probably as a measure of precaution against surprise attacks.
?
4. The history of the organizations called by the name of Futuwa
is still obscure. They appear first in the twelfth century in several
divergent forms, which can probably all be traced to the Sufis, or darwish
orders. The word futuwa, "manliness," had long been applied amongst the
latter in a moral sense, defined as "to abstain from injury, to give
without stint, and to make no complaint," and the patched robe, mark of a Sufi,
was called by them libas al-futuwa, "the garment of manliness."? It was applied
in a more aggressive sense among the guilds of "Warriors for the Faith,"
especially as the latter degenerated into robber bands, and it is in reference to the ceremony of admission into one such band at Baghdad in the middle of the twelfth century that trousers are first mentioned as the symbolic libas al-futuwa (Ibn al-Athir XI, 41). A few years later Ibn Jubayr found in Damascus an organization called the Nubuya, which was engaged in combatting the fanatical Shi'ite sects in Syria.? The members of the warrior guild, whose rule it was that no member should call for assistance in any misfortune that might befall him, elected suitable persons
and similarly invested them with trousers on their admission. In 1182 the Caliph an-Nasir, having been invested with the libas or trousers by a Sufi shaykh, conceived the idea of organizing the Futuwa on the lines of an order of Chivalry (probably on the Frankish model), constituted?himself sovereign of the order, and bestowed the libas as its insignia on the ruling princes and other personages of his time.? The
ceremony of installation? included the solemn putting-on of the trousers and
drinking
From the 'cup of manhood'(ka's al-futuwa), which contained not
wine but salt and water. The order took over from? its Sufi progenitors
a fictitious geneology back to the Caliph Ali, and continued to
exist for some time after the reign of nasir in a languishing state. The
Brotherhood which Ibn Batutta found in Konia, and which was distinguished
from the other guilds in Anatolia by its special insignia of the
trousers and its claim to spiritual descent from Ali was probablay a relic
of the order founded by the romantic Caliph. The remaining Anatolian
organizations seem to have been local trade-guilds with a very strong infusion
of Sufism, oddly combined with a political tendency towards local
self-government and the keeping in check of the tyranny of the Turkish sultans.
(See generally Thorning, Turkische Bibliothek, Band XVI (Berlin, 1913), and
Wacif Boutros Ghali, La Tradition Chevaleresque des Arabes (Paris, 1919),
pp.1-33).
?
p. 126
The day after our arrival at Antaliya one of these youths came
to Shaykh Shihab ad-Din al-Hamawi and spoke to him in Turkish, which I did
not understand at that time.? He was wearing old clothes and had a
felt bonnet on his head.? The shaykh said to me "Do you know what he is
saying?" "NO" said I "I do not know." He answered "He is inviting you and your
company to eat a m meal with him." I was astonished? but I said ""Very
well," and when the man had gone I said to the shaykh "He is a poor man, and is
not able to entertain us, and we do not like to a be a burden on him."? The
shaykh burst?out laughing and said? "He is one of the shaykhs of the Young
Brotherhood. He is a cobbler and a man of generous disposition. His
companions, about two hundred men belonging to differetn trades, have made him
their leader and have built a hospice to entertain their guests. All that they
earn by day they spend at night." After I had prayed the sunset prayer the same man came back for us and took us to the hospice. WE found [ourselves in] a fine building, carpeted with beautiful Turkish rugs and lit by a large number of handeliers
of Iraqi glass.? A number of young men stood in rows in the hall, wearing long mantles??and boots, and each had a knife about two cubits long attached
to a girdle around his waist. On their heads were white woolen bonnets, and
attached to the peak of these bonnets was a piece of stuff a cubit long and two
fingers breadth.? When they took their seats, every man removed his bonnet and set
it donw in front of him, and kept on his head another ornamental bonnet of
silk or other material.? In the centre of their hall was a a sort
of platform placed there for the visitors.? When we took our places, they
served up a great banquet followed by fruits and sweetmeats, after which they began to sing and dance.? We were filled with admiration and were greatly
astonished at their openhandedness and generosity.? We took leave of them at the
close of the night at left them in their hospice....
?
>From Burdur we went on to Sabarta [Isparta] and then to Akridur
[Egirdir], a great and populous town with fine bazaars. There is a lake with
sweet water here on which boats go in two days to Aqshahr and Baqshahr and
other towns and villages.? The sultan of Akridur is one of the principal rulers
in this country. He is a an of upright conduct.......
He sent some horsemen to escort us to the town of Ladhiq
[DEnizli], as the country is infested by a troop of brigands called Jarmiyan
[Kermian] who possess a town called Kutahiya......
As we entered the town we passed through a bazaar. Some men got
down from their booths and took our horses bridles, then some others
objected to their action and the altercation went on so long that some of
them?drew knives.? We of course did not know what they were saying and
were afraid of them, thinking they were brigands and that this was
their town.At length God sent us a man who knew Arabic and? he explained
that they were two branches of the "Young Brotherhood", each of whom wanted
to lodge with them.? We were amazed at their generosity.? It was decided
finally that they should cast lots, and that we should lodge with the winner.......
After receiving the sultan's gift we left for the city of Quniya [Konia].
It is a large town with fine buildings and has many streams an fruit
gardens. The streets are exceedingly broad adn the bazaars are
admirably planned with each craft in a bazaar of its own. It is said that
the city was built by Alexander.....
In this town is the mausoleum of the pious shaykh Jalal ad-Din [ar-Rumi], known as Mawlana ["Our Master"] {see below}. He was held in high esteem, and there is a brotherhood in Anatolia who claim spiritual affiliation with him and are? called after him the Jalaliya.?The story goes that Jalal ad-Din was in early life a theologian
and a professor. One day a? sweetmeat seller caem into the college-mosque with a tray of sweetmeats on his head and having given him a piece went out again.? The shaykh left his lesson to follow him and disappeared for some years.? Then he came back, but with a disordered mind, speaking nothing but Persian verses which no one could understand. His disciples wrote down his productions, which they collected into a book called The Mathnawi.? This book is greatly revered by the people of this country; they meditate on it, teach it and read it in their religious
houses on Thursday nights.? From Quniya we traveled to Laranda
[Karaman], the capital of the sultan of Qaraman. I met this sultan outside
the town as he was coming back from hunting, and on my dismounting to him,
he dismounted also.? It is the custom of the kings of this country to dismount
if a visitor dismounts to them.? This action on? his part pleases them and they
show him greater honour; if on the other hand he greets them while on
horseback they are displeased adn the visitor? forfeits their goodwill in
consequence.? This happened to me once with one of these kings.
After I had greeted the sultan we rode back to the town together, and he
showed me the greatest hospitality....
The reference to "Mawlana" [or "Mevlana" in Turkish] is to the great poet and Sufi Rumi.
page 131
We then entered the territories of the king of Iraq, visiting Aqsara [Akserai]
where they make sheeps wool carpets which are exported as far as India,China,
and the lands of the Turks, and journeyed thence through Nakda [Nigda] to
Qaysariya, which is one of the largest towns in the country.? In this town
resides one of the Viceroys's khatuns, who is related to the king of Iraq and
like all the sultna's relatives has the title of Agha which means Great. We
visited her and and she treated us courteously, ordering a? meal to be
served for us and when we withdrew sent us a horse with a saddle
and bridle and a sum of money. At all these towns we lodged in a convent
belonging to the Young Brotherhood.? It is the custom in this country that in
towns that?are n not theresidence of a sultan one of hte Young Brothers acts
as governor, exercising the same authority and appearing in public
with the same retinue as the king.....
We journeyed thence to Amasiya, a large and beautiful town with
broad streets, Gumish [Gumush Khanah], a populous town which is visted by
merchants from Iraq and Syria and has silver mines, Arzanjan where Armenians
form the greater part of the population and Arz ar-Rum.? This is a vast
town but is mostly in ruins as a result of civil war between two Turkmen
tribes. We lodged there at the convent of the "Young Brother" Tuman, who is
said to be more than a hundred and thirty years old.....
We journeyed next to Bursa [Brusa], a great city with fine
bazaars and broad streets, surrounded by orchards and running springs.? Outside it
are two thermal establishments, one for men and the other for women, to
which patients come from the most distant parts.? They lodge there for three
days at a hospice which was built by one of the Turkmen kings.? In this
town I met the pious Shaykh Abdullah the Egyptian, a traveller, who went all
round the world, except that he never visited China, Ceylon, the West or
Spain or the Negrolands, so that in visiting these countries I have surpassed
him.? The sultan of Bursa is Orkhan Bek, son of Othman Chuk. {Mine: It
seems that the founder of the Ottoman Empire was a little guy!}..
He is the greatest of? the Turkmen kings and the richest in wealth, lands and military forces, and posesses nearly a hundred fortresses which he is continually visiting for inspection and putting to rights.
He fights with the infidels and besieges them.? It was his father who captured Bursa from the Greeks and it is said that he besieged Yaznik [Nicaea] for about twenty years, but died before it was taken.....
We set out next morning and reached Muturni [Mudurlu] where we
fell in with a pilgrim who knew Arabic.? We besought him to travel with us to
Qastamuniya which is ten days' journey from there...He turned out to be a
wealthy man, but of base character....We put up with him because of our
difficulties in not knowing Turkish, but things went so far that we used to say
to him in the evenings "Well, Hajji, how much have you stolen today ?" He would
reply "So much" and we would laugh and make the best of it.? We came next
to the town of Buli, where we stayed at the convent of the Young Brotherhood.
What an excellent body of men these are, how nobleminded, how unselfish
and full of compassion for the stranger, how kindly and affectionate they
are to him, how warm their welcome to him !? A stranger coming to them is
made to feel as though he were meeting the dearest of his own folk. Next morning
we traveled on to Garadi Buli, a large and fine town situated on a plain,
with spacious streets and bazaars, but one of the coldest in the
world.? It is composed of several different quarters, each inhabited by
different communities, none of which mixes with any of the others......
We sent on through a small town named Burlu to Qatamuniya, a very
large.....
?
>From Qastamuniya we traveled to Sanub [Sinope], a populous town
combining strength with beauty.....
We stayed at Sanub about forty days waiting for the weather to
become favorable for sailing to the town of Qiram.{Mine: Crimea} Then
we hired a vessel belonging to the Greeks.....At length we did set
sail....We made for a harbour called Karsh [Kerch], intending to enter it....
The place was in the Qipchaq desert[steppe] which is green and
verdant, but flat and treeless.? There is no firewood so they make fires
of dung...
The only method of travelling in this desert is in waggons; it
extends for six months' journey, of which three are in the territories of
Sultan Muhammad Uzbeg.? The day after our arrival one of the merchants
in our company hired some waggons from the Qipchaqs who inhabit this
desert, and who are Christians and we came to Kafa, a large town extending
along the sea-coast, inhabited by Christians, mostly Genoese, whose
governor is called Damdir [Demetrio].....
We hired a waggon and traveled to the town of Qiram, which forms
part of the territories of Sultan Uzbeg Khan and has a governor called
Tuluktumur ...
He was on the point of setting out for the town of Sara, the
capital of the Khan, so I prepared to travel along with him and hired
waggons for this purpose.? These waggons have four large wheels and.....on
the waggon is put a light tent made of wooden laths ....and it has grilled
windows so that the person inside can see without being seen.? One can
do anything one likes inside, sleep, eat, read or write during the march...
At every halt the Turks loose their horses, oxen and camels and
drive them out to pasture at liberty, night or day, without shepherds or
guardians. This is due to the severity of their laws against theft.? Any
person found in posession of a stolen horse is obliged to restore in with nine
others; if he cannot do this, his sons are taken instead, and if he has no
sons he is slaughtered like a sheep.? They do not eat bread nor any solid
food, but prepare a soup with kind of millet, and any meat they may have
is cut into small pieces and cooked in this soup. Everyone is given his share
in? a plate with curdled milk and they drink it, afterwards drinking curdled
mare's milk which they call qumizz.? They also have a fermented drink
prepared from the same grain, which they call buza [beer] and regard it as lawful
to drink....
The horses in this country are very numorous and the price of them is
negligible.? A good one costs a dinar of our money.? The livelihood of the
people depends on them, and they are as numerous as sheep in our
country, or even more so.? A single Turk will posess thousands of horses.
They are exported to India in droves of six thousand or so....
>From Azaq {Azov} I went on to Majar, travelling behind the amir
Tuluktumur. It is one of the finest of the Turkish cities and is situated on
a great river{22}.
..A remarkable thing which I saw in this country was the respect
shown to women by the Turks, for they hold a more dignified position than
the men. The first time that I saw a princess was when, on leaving Qiram,
I saw the wife of the amir in her waggon.? The entire waggon was covered
with rich blue woolen cloth, and the windows and doors of the tent were open.
With the princess were four maidens, exquisitely beautiful and richly
dressed, and behind her were a number of waggons with maidens belonging to her
suite. When she came near the amir's camp she alighted with about thirty of
the maidens who carried her train..When she reached the amir, he rose before
her and sat her beside him, with the maidens standing around her.? Skins of
qumizz were brought and she, pouring some into a cup, knelt before him and
gave it to him afterwards pouring out a cup for her brother.? Then the amir
poured a cup for her and food was brought in and she ate with him.? He then gave
her a robe and she withdrew.? I saw also the wives of the merchants and
commonality.? One of them will sit in a waggon which is being drawn by horses,
attended by three or four maidens...
The windows of the tent are open and her face is visible for the
Turkish women do not veil themselves.? Sometimes a woman will be
accompanied by her husband and anyone seeing him would take him for one oher
servants; he has no garment other than a sheep's woold cloak and a high cap
to match.
NOTES:
22. The ruins of Majar (now Burgomadzhari) lie on the Kuma river
S.W. of Astrakhan, 110 kilometeres N.E. of Georgiewsk, at 44.50 N., 44.27
E. The Qipchaqs [Kipchaks] also known as Kumans/Cumans in the West
are known as the Polovtsy in the Russian chroniclers and history.
The famous Russian myth The Tale of the Host of Igor is about
Igor's war against the Kipchaks. He's now around the Caucasus in Russia. He calls the people which are now called Tartars, Turks, whereas before in Anatolia, he
called the people today called Turks, Turkomans! How names change :-)..
page 147
We then prepared for the journey to the sultan's camp, which was
four day's march from Majar in a place called Bishdagh, which means "Five
mountains" {23}.? In these mountains there is a hot spring in
which the Turks bathe, claiming that it prevents illness....
Thereupon the mahalla approached (the name they give to it is the
ordu) {Ordu==Army} and we saw a vast town on the move with all its
inhabitants, containing mosques and bazaars, the smoke from the
kitchens rising in the air (for they cook while on the march), and horse
drawn waggons transporting them.? On reaching the encampment they took
the tents off the waggons and set them upon the ground, for they were very
light, and they did the same with the mosques and shops......
I had heard of the city of Bulghar {25} and desired to visit it,
in order to see for myself what they tell of the extreme shortness of the
night there...I returned from Bulghar with the amir whom the sultan had sent
to accompany me...and came to the town of Hajj Tarkhan [Astrakhan].
It is one of the finest cities, with great bazaars, and is built on the river
Itil [Volga], which is one of the great rivers of the world. In the winter it
freezes over and the people travel on it in sledges...
Ibn Batuta's account of travel to Constantinople is skipped.
Page 165
On reaching Astrakhan where we had parted from Sultan Uzbeg, we
found that he had moved and was living in the capital of his kingdom....On the
fourth day we reached the city of Sara, which is the capital of the
sultan{37}.? We visited him, and after we had answered his questions about our
journey and the king of the Greeks and his city he gave orders for our
maintenance and lodging.? Sara is one of the finest of towns, of immense extend
and crammed with inhabitants, with fine bazaars and wide streets.? We rode
out one day with one of the principal men of the town, intending to make a circuit
of the place and find out its size.? We were living at one end of it and we
set out in the morning, and it was after midday when we? reached the other. One
day we walked across the breadth of the town, and the double journey, going and
returning, took half a day, this too through a continuous line of houses,
with no ruins and no orchards.? It has thirteen cathedral and a large number
of other mosques.? The inhabitants belong to? diverse nations; among them
are the Mongols, who are the inhabitants and rulers of the country and
are in part Muslims, As [Ossetes], who are Muslims, and Qipchaqs[Turks],
Circassians, Russians,and Greeks, who are all Christians.? Each group lives
in a separate quarterwith its own bazaars. Merchants and strangers from Iraq,
Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, live in a quarter surrounded by a wall, in
order to protect their property.
FOOTNOTES:
23.? Beshtaw, one of the foothills of the Caucasus, is a wooded
hill rising to a height of nearly 1,400 metres, just north of Pyatigorsk,
about 35 kilometres S.W. of Georgiewsk.
[ The author makes a mistake here. Pyatigorsk means exactly "Besh
Tau" or "Besh Dagh" i.e. Five Mountains]
25. Bulghar, the ruins of which lie on the left bank of the Volga
just below the junction of Kama, was the capital of the medieval kingdom of
Great Bulgaria [Turkish], annexed by the Mongols in the thirteenth
century. It possessed great commercial importance as the distributing centre
for Russian and? Siberian products. It is difficult to understand
however, how Ibn Battuta could have made the journey from Majar to
Bulghar, some 800 miles, in ten days!
37. There were two cities of "Sarray in the land of Tartarye",
which were successively the capital of the Khans of the Golden Horde; Old
Sarai, situated near the modern village of Selitrennnoe, 74 miles above
Astrakhan, and New Sarai, which embraced the modern town of Tsarev, 225
miles above? Astrakhan. Sultan Muhammad Uzbeg moved the capital from Old Sarai
about this period, most probably a few years before.? Ibn Batuta's
description agrees best with New Sarai, ruins of which extend over a distance of
more than forty miles, and cover an area of over twenty square miles. (See
F. Balodis, in Latvijas Universitates Raksti (Acta Universitatis Latviensis,
XIII (Riga, 1926), pp. 3-82.
As can be seen Sarai was a great city for its time. Today
there are few people who know anything about it and there are
even history-buffs and historians who try to convince people
that the area was nothing but semi-savage and uncivilized and
that the Turco-Mongols created nothing and destroyed everything.
How many people will a city of 20 square miles hold ? Does
anyone have a guess ? I really don't know.No wonder there's a re-appraisal of Mongol history. Some notes on this can be found in another article on the Mongols from a book by Halperin.
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