| INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 401 comrade engaged a certain Hajji who could speak Arabic as servant and interpreter. They found that he cheated them frightfully, and one day, provoked beyond measure, they called out to him, " Come now, Hajji, how much hast thou stolen to day ?" The Hajji simply replied, " So much," naming the amount of his plunder. " We could but laugh and rest content," says our traveller. . He then crossed the Black Sea to CAFFA, chiefly occupied, as he tells us, by the Genoese (Janwiya), and apparently the first Christian city in which he had found himself, for he was in great dismay at the bell-ringing. He went on by KRIM (or Solghat) and Azov to MAJAR, a fine city on a great river (the Kuma), where he was greatly struck by the consideration with which women were treated by the Tartars ; as if, in fact, creatures of a higher rank than men. From this he proceeded to the camp of Sultan Mahomed Uzbek, Khan of Kipchak, then pitched at BISHDAGH, a thermal spring, apparently at the foot of Caucasus.' He was well received by the Khan, and obtained from him a guide to conduct him to the city of BOLGHAR, which he was anxious to visit in order to witness with his own eyes the shortness of the northern summer night.' He was desirous also to go north from Bolghar to the Land of Darkness, of which he had heard still more wonderful things ; but this he gave up on account of the many difficulties, and returned to the sultan's camp, which he then followed to HAJ-TARKHAN (Astracan). One of the wives of Mahomed Uzbek was a Greek princess of Constantinople, whom the traveller calls the IKhccticn or Lady Beyâhin (Plzilumema ? or Iolanthe ? At iii, 10, it is written 1 This place, according to Defrémery (Journ. As., July-Sept. 1850, p. 159), still exists as Besh Tau, and was visited by Klaproth. 2 Bolghar, sometimes called Bolar, is in nearly the latitude of Carlisle. It stood near the left bank of the Atil or Wolga, about fifty miles above the modern Simbirsk and ninety miles south-west of Kasan. It was sometimes the residence of the khans of Kipchak. There was still a village called Bolgari on the site when Pallas wrote ; and there are a considerable number of architectural remains. On these Hammer Purgstall refers to Schmidt's "Architektonische Umrisse der Ruinen Bolgars, 1832" (Pallas, Fr. Trans., year II, i, 217; Gesch. der Gold. Horde, p. 8; Reinaud's Abulfeda, ii, p. 81.) 26 | |
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