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.
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