chapter 56
that the Turks designate the “Sygun”—Zikhes—by the name of “Ischerkas”—Tcherkess. In the days of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (_De Adm. Imp._, c. 42), their territory extended along the Black Sea shore over a distance of three hundred miles, from the river Oukroukh (Kouban), which separated them from Tamatarcha (Taman), to the river Nicopsis at the frontier of Abhase, a country that reached to Soteriopolis situated in all probability where is now Pytzounda the ancient Pityus, to the north west of Soukhoum Kaleh, for it is stated by Codinus (_Hieroclis Synecdemus_, etc., 315) that Pityus was at one time called Soteropolis.
The Abhases and the Tcherkess speak different dialects of the same tongue (Güldenstädt, _Reisen durch Russl._, i, 463). The former were converted to Christianity through the exertions of the emperor Justinian, about A.D. 550; but Christianity was spread among the Zikhes previously to this, and if many adopted the Mahomedan faith, proofs are not wanting that they did so from political motives and to please the Turks (Marigny, _Voy. dans le pays des Tcherkesses_, in Potocki, ii, 308). Their conversion to Christianity has never kept them from a love of pillage and the sale of their own children, as is reported of them by Schiltberger and confirmed by Marigny, who is unable to conceive how a people to whom freedom is the greatest boon could think of thus disposing of their own offspring.
Marigny also confirms the statement that thunder was held in great veneration by the Tcherkess. “They have no god of lightning”, says this author, “but we should deceive ourselves in supposing that they never had one. They hold thunder in great veneration, for they say it is an angel who strikes the elect of God. The remains of one killed by lightning are buried with the greatest solemnity, and whilst mourning his loss, relatives congratulate each other upon the distinction by which their family has been visited. When the angel is on his aerial flight, these people hurry out of their dwellings at the noise he makes; and should he not be heard for any length of time, they pray aloud entreating him to come to them.”—BRUUN.
(11A.) The Tcherkess, which include the Natouhaïtz, Shapsoughy, Abadzehy, Abhase and other tribes, were known to Strabo and Procopius as persistent slave dealers and pirates, occupations which, according to the records of every age, they pursued unceasingly until the complete subjugation and annexation of their country by Russia in 1863. Dubois de Montpéreux (_Voy. autour du Caucase_, etc., i, 258) says, writing in 1839, that even under the suzerainty of Russia the Abhases would not give up the nefarious traffic which embraced, under certain circumstances, the sale of a son or daughter or sister; and so lately as 1856, Oliphant (_Trans.-Cauc. Campaign_, 125) found that the Abhases indulged chiefly in the plunder of human beings. “Seizing the handsomest boys and the prettiest girls, they would tear them shrieking from their agonised parents, and swinging them on their saddle-bow, gallop away with them through the forest, followed by the cries and execrations of the whole population.”
The custom of placing the dead upon trees is practised at the present time in Abhase, where they are suspended in coffins to the branches, which creak as they are swayed by the wind, and produce melancholy noises (_The Crimea and Transc._, ii, 136).—ED.
(12.) “One is called Kayat, the other Inbu, the third Mugal.”—Considering the little care taken by Schiltberger and his transcribers to hand down to us proper and geographical names with sufficient exactness to enable us to prove their identity, it is no easy task to determine what were the “Kayat” and “Inbu” who, with the Mongols, formed the population of Great Tatary. Whatever the correct names, they were probably communicated to Schiltberger by the natives or their Mongol chiefs. The latter were able to distinguish from their own people, those who had retained for a longer period than others their hereditary chiefs under the suzerainty of the descendants of Jengiz Khan. The principal tribes were undoubtedly the Keraït and Uïgour, whose rulers, named Edekout, a name reminding us of the celebrated “Edigi” whom Schiltberger accompanied to Siberia, preserved their independence until the year 1328 (Erdmann, _Temud. d. U. R._, 245). Neumann asserts that two of the tribes named were the Kajat or Kerait, and the Uighur, a statement he leaves unsupported; we are therefore justified in assuming that reference is made rather to the Kaïtak and Jambolouk, two tribes the author must have had frequent opportunities of meeting.
In Masoudi’s time, the Kaïtak or Kaïdak inhabited the northern slopes of the Caucasus towards the Caspian Sea. There, also, Aboulfeda placed them, and there they are to this day. We have seen how futile were their endeavours to oppose Timour upon his last expedition against Toktamish, and that Romanists and Christians of other denominations soon afterwards introduced themselves amongst them; but that they had not discontinued their evil practices is proved by the bitter experience of the Russian merchant Nikitin, who was plundered when shipwrecked on their coast in 1468. It was in vain that he sought to recover his property, even though he appealed to Shirvan Shah, brother-in-law to Ali Bek their prince (Dorn, _Versuch einer Gesch. der Schirwan-Sch._, 582). The Kaïtak were a people of sufficient importance to have attracted the notice of Schiltberger, when he passed through their territory on his way from Persia to Great Tatary.
Whilst in those parts, the author must have spent some time amongst the Nogaï of the tribes of Jambolouk or Yembolouk, as they are designated by Thunmann (Büsching, _Gr. Erdbeschr._, iv, 387), and who were so named because their earliest settlements were near the Jem or Yemba which flows into the Caspian. It was only towards the close of the 18th century that they moved to the western shores of the Sea of Azoff, where they met with other Nogaï, at a time that the territory was being annexed to the Russian empire. The wandering life of these Tatars, and their frequent internecine divisions, justify us in assuming that in Schiltberger’s time the greater number, if not the whole of the Jambolouks, had moved their encampments in a westerly direction, and this explains why the Tatar duke met by De Lannoy (_Voy. et Ambass._, 40) in 1421, who lived on the ground with all his people, was named Jambo. It was in the power of the descendants of that duke to remove to any other more convenient site; it is, therefore, very possible, that the fortress and town of Yabou, ceded in 1517 by the Crimean Khan to Sigismund of Poland, together with other places on the Dnieper, may have belonged to him (_Sbornyk_ by Prince Obolensky, i, 88). I feel that we are at liberty to infer from these several facts that the “Inbu” were Tatars of the Jambolouk Horde.—BRUUN.
(13.) “and has daily twenty thousand men at his court.”—In writing after his own fashion the native name of Fostat as “Missir”, erroneously called Old Cairo by Europeans (Abd-Allatif, _S. de Sacy edition_, 424), Schiltberger imagined that the name was equally applicable to Cairo, because at that period the two towns had largely extended towards each other, so as to form one city. De Lannoy (_Voy. et Ambass._, 80) distinguishes Cairo from Fostat or Misr, which he calls Babylon, a name it had received in consequence of the settlement there of a Babylonian colony in the reign of Cambyses (Noroff, _Pout. po Yeghyptou_, i, 154). Even now the Copts include a part of Cairo and of Fostat under the name of Boblien—Little Babylon—the new Babylon of the writers of the middle ages, who took it upon themselves to bestow on the sovereigns of Egypt the title of Sultan of Babylon, and some of whom, Arnold of Lubeck for instance (_Geschichtschr. der Deutsch. Vorzeit._, etc., xiii _Jahrhund._ iii, 283), have even confounded the Euphrates with the Nile. De Lannoy assists us in a measure to discern the error into which Schiltberger has fallen ... “est à-sçavoir que le Kaire, Babillonne et Boulacq furent jadis chascune ville à par lui, mais à présent s’est tellement édiffiée, que ce n’est que une mesme chose, et y a aucune manière de fossez entre deux plas sans eaue, combien qu’il y a moult de maisons et chemins entre deux, et peut avoir du Kaire à Babillonne trois milles et de Boulacq au Kaire trois mille.” Noroff considered Boulak to be the Egyptian Manchester, because of the manufactories established there by Mehemet Ali. The population of the three towns was quite in proportion to their extent, and certainly so continued until about twenty years before De Lannoy’s arrival, when it decreased; indeed it is stated by Aboul-Mahazin, that Egypt and Syria had fallen preys to every sort of calamity during the reign of Faradj, 1399–1412. Apart from the Mongol invasion and incessant civil war, those countries were assailed by the European maritime powers, and visited by plague and famine, so that the population was reduced by one-third.
There was a time when it was generally believed that the people in Cairo could not be numbered, because it was considered the most populous city in the world, with more inhabitants than all Italy contained, the vagabonds it sheltered sufficing to fill Venice! In saying this, Breidenbach (Webb, _A Survey of Egypt and Syria_, etc.) does not fail to observe: “Audita refero—neque enim ipse numeravi.” Schiltberger may have thought the same, when he computed the streets in “Missir” to be as numerous as were the houses in Caffa; and this he did that his readers might be the better able to judge of the difference between the two cities.
That the sultan’s suite consisted of twenty thousand men is most probable, allusion being made to the dwellers in the citadel. Thus, De Lanuoy:—“est ledit chastel moult grant comme une ville fermée, et y habite dedens avecq le soudan grant quantité de gens, en espécial bien le nombre de deux mille esclaves de cheval qu’il paye à ses souldées comme ses meilleurs gens d’armes à garder son corps, femmes et enffans, et autres gens grant nombre.”
In 1778, thirty thousand people lived in the citadel, one half of that number being troops (Parsons, _Travels in Asia and Africa_, etc., 382).—BRUUN.
(14.) “no person can be made king-sultan unless he has been sold.”—The Mamelouk militia, formed, as the name indicates, of old slaves, arrogated to themselves the right of elevating to the throne one of their own number, upon the death of the sultan. See De Lannoy (83).—BRUUN.
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