From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Batuta  5/5
Date: 23 Jul 92 04:22:15 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


Travles of Ibn Batuta

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 :-)..

>From page 147

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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)
{Mine: 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 for now.
I might post it separately!

Continuing from Page 165..
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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

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, 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.
-- 

	mark	


   hubey@pilot.njin.net                   hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
 ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey                  hubey@logos.montclair.edu
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