In 1438, Ulugh Mohammed, cousin of Toka Timur,
younger son of Juji, transformed this country into the khanate of Kazan,
which survived till 1552. It had probably been the capital of the Golden
Horde before Sarai.
With reference to the early Christianity of the Bulgarians, to which Yule
refers in his note, the Laurentian Chronicle (A.D. 1229), quoted by
Shpilevsky, adduces evidence to show that in the Great City, i.e.
Bulgar, there were Russian Christians and a Christian cemetery, and the
death of a Bulgarian Christian martyr is related in the same chronicle as
well as in the Nikon, Tver, and Tatischef annals in which his name is
given. (Cf. Shpilevsky, Anc. towns and other Bulgaro-Tartar monuments,
Kazan, 1877, p. 158 seq.; Rockhill's Rubruck, Hakl. Soc. p. 121, note.)
- H. C.]
The severe and lasting winter is spoken of by Ibn Folzan and other old
writers in terms that seem to point to a modern mitigation of climate. It
is remarkable, too, that Ibn Fozlan speaks of the aurora as of very
frequent occurrence, which is not now the case in that latitude. We may
suspect this frequency to have been connected with the greater cold
indicated, and perhaps with a different position of the magnetic pole.
