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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
41
MA1:CO POLO PROL.
6
I,
1i
elbow of the Volga at Tzaritzyn : the c ther much lower down, at Selitrennoyé 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 71 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 22 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. Vet 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 hi, th century, are not consistent with a site so far from the Caspian. Moreover, F. H. Müller 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. Arabshóh 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 Selitrennoyé Gorodok, and that the New Sarai of Janibek was established by him, or by his father Uzbeg in his latter clays, on the upper Akhtuba ? Iegolotti 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 Vaik. But it was possibly the Upper or New Sarai on the Akhtuba. Ibn Bati.ita, marching on the frozen river, reached Sarai in three d 'vs 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.
The use of the latter name suggests the possibility that in the Saracanco of Pegolotti the latter half of the name may be the Mongol KZínk " Great." (See Pavel de Courteille, p. 439.)
Professor Bruun also draws attention to the impossibility of Ibn Batuta's travelling from Astrakhan to Tzarev in three days, an argument which bad already occurred to me and been inserted above.
[The Empire of Kipchak founded after the Mongol Conquest of 1224, included also parts of Siberia and Khwarizm ; it survived nominally until 1502.—H. C. ]
(Four Years of Archceolo,çical•Researches among the Ruins of Sarai [in Russian] by M. Gregorieff [who appears to have also published a pamphlet specially on the site, but this has not been available] ; Historisclz-g-eog;-aphische Darstellung des Stromsystems der I Volt a, von Ferd. Heinr. 1t77iller, Berlin, 1839, 568-577 ; Ibn. Bat. IL 447 ; Not. et Extraits, XIII. i. 2S6 ; Pallas, Voyages ; Cathay, 231, etc. ; Erdinann, 11'uzni Asiatici, pp. 362 set»! ; Arabs. I. p. 381.)
No'rE 2.—BOLGIIAR, Our author's Bolgara, was the capital of the region sometimes called Great Bulgaria, by Abulfeda Inner Bzí/garza, and stood a few miles from the left bank of the Volga, in latitude about 54° 54', and 90 miles below Kazan. The old Arab writers regarded it as nearly the limit of the habitable world, and told wonders of the cold, the brief summer nights, and the fossil ivory that was found in its vicinity. This was exported, and with peltry, wax, honey, hazel-nuts, and Russia leather,
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