It Stood In A Salty Plain, And Was
Without Walls, Though The Palace Had Walls Flanked By Towers.
The town was
large, had markets, madrasas - and baths.
It is usually identified with
Selitrennoye Gorodok, about 70 miles above Astrakhan." (Rockhill,
Rubruck, p. 260, note.) - H. C.]
Several sites exhibiting extensive ruins near the banks of the Akhtuba
have been identified with Sarai; two in particular. One of these is not
far from the great elbow of the Volga at Tzaritzyn: the other much lower
down, at Selitrennoye Gorodok or Saltpetre-Town, not far above Astrakhan.
The upper site exhibits by far the most extensive traces of former
population, and is declared unhesitatingly to be the sole site of Sarai by
M. Gregorieff, who carried on excavations among the remains for four
years, though with what precise results I have not been able to learn. The
most dense part of the remains, consisting of mounds and earth-works,
traces of walls, buildings, cisterns, dams, and innumerable canals,
extends for about 7-1/2 miles in the vicinity of the town of Tzarev, but a
tract of 66 miles in length and 300 miles in circuit, commencing from near
the head of the Akhtuba, presents remains of like character, though of
less density, marking the ground occupied by the villages which encircled
the capital. About 2-1/2 miles to the N.W. of Tzarev a vast mass of such
remains, surrounded by the traces of a brick rampart, points out the
presumable position of the Imperial Palace.
M. Gregorieff appears to admit no alternative. Yet it seems certain that
the indications of Abulfeda, Pegolotti, and others, with regard to the
position of the capital in the early part of the 14th century, are not
consistent with a site so far from the Caspian. 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.
The use of the latter name suggests the possibility that in the
Saracanco of Pegolotti the latter half of the name may be the Mongol
Kunk "Great." (See Pavet de Courteille, p. 439.)
Professor Bruun also draws attention to the impossibility of Ibn Batuta's
travelling from Astrakhan to Tzarev in three days, an argument which had
already occurred to me and been inserted above.
[The Empire of Kipchak founded after the Mongol Conquest of 1224, included
also parts of Siberia and Khwarizm; it survived nominally until
1502. - H. C.]
(Four Years of Archaeological Researches among the Ruins of Sarai [in
Russian] by M. Gregorieff [who appears to have also published a pamphlet
specially on the site, but this has not been available]; Historisch-
geographische Darstellung des Stromsystems der Wolga, von Ferd. Heinr.
Mueller, Berlin, 1839, 568-577; Ibn. Bat. II. 447; Not. et Extraits,
XIII. i. 286; Pallas, Voyages; Cathay, 231, etc.; Erdmann, Numi
Asiatici, pp. 362 seqq.; Arabs. I. p. 381.)
NOTE 2. - BOLGHAR, our author's Bolgara, was the capital of the region
sometimes called Great Bulgaria, by Abulfeda Inner Bulgaria, and stood a
few miles from the left bank of the Volga, in latitude about 54 deg. 54', and
90 miles below Kazan. The old Arab writers regarded it as nearly the limit
of the habitable world, and told wonders of the cold, the brief summer
nights, and the fossil ivory that was found in its vicinity. This was
exported, and with peltry, wax, honey, hazel-nuts, and Russia leather,
formed the staple articles of trade. The last item derived from Bolghar
the name which it still bears all over Asia. (See Bk. II. ch. xvi., and
Note.) Bolghar seems to have been the northern limit of Arab travel, and
was visited by the curious (by Ibn Batuta among others) in order to
witness the phenomena of the short summer night, as tourists now visit
Hammerfest to witness its entire absence.
Russian chroniclers speak of an earlier capital of the Bulgarian kingdom,
Brakhimof, near the mouth of the Kama, destroyed by Andrew, Grand Duke of
Rostof and Susdal, about 1160; and this may have been the city referred to
in the earlier Arabic accounts. The fullest of these is by Ibn Fozlan, who
accompanied an embassy from the Court of Baghdad to Bolghar, in A.D. 921.
The King and people had about this time been converted to Islam, having
previously, as it would seem, professed Christianity. Nevertheless, a
Mahomedan writer of the 14th century says the people had then long
renounced Islam for the worship of the Cross.
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