National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

284. MENGIAR

*megia* TA¹, TA³ *mengiar* F, L, Z

YULE (*Y*, II, 491-492) has hesitated between a city of Maǰar of which I shall speak later, and the
Hungarians or Magyars, called by the latter name by mediaeval Oriental and Far-Eastern writers.
This second equivalence is accepted doubtfully in *RR*, 426, and without reservation in *B*¹, 445.
I think it is impossible. Although Polo knew of course the European name of the Hungarians,
one could be tempted to admit his abnormal use of the Oriental name as long as the name of «Lac»,
which precedes it, was supposed to be Wallachia [Walachia?]. But since we know now that «Lac»
applies to the Lezghians of the Caucasus (see «Lac»), the whole list concerns Southern Russia and
the Caucasus, and Hungary is excluded.

YULE's alternative identification with the city of Maǰar has been accepted by BRETSCHNEIDER
(*Br*, II, 328, with a strange slip about the Franciscan annalist Wadding being a traveller of the
14th cent.). This city was visited by Ibn Baṭṭūṭah; it has had two slightly different locations, Maǰar
and New Maǰar; Abū-'l-Fidā speaks of it as Kūmmāǰar (II, II, 283), probably to be understood as
«Māǰar of the Kūm (Kuma)». The Russian Grand-Duke Michael, executed by order of Ūzbāg-
khan of the Golden Horde in 1319, was buried in «Moǰarī» (*Br*, I, 328). The ruins of Maǰar, near
Georgievskiĭ, have been visited by GMELIN and KLAPROTH. KLAPROTH has said that *maǰar*, in
«old Tartar», meant a stone building, and has denied any connection between the name of the
city and that of the Magyars as a nation. But I find *maǰar* nowhere with the meaning given by
KLAPROTH. RADLOV (IV, 2050) registers only Maǰar as the Turkish name of the Hungarians, and
adds that *maǰar* means a «wagon» in Turkish of the Crimea; but this meaning is evolved from
the name of the nation, just as *qasaq*, the name of a sort of wagon in the Mongolian text of the
*Secret History of the Mongols*, must be derived from the name of the Qazaq (a name thus more
ancient than is supposed generally). It is possible, although by no means certain, that the name
of Maǰar is a survival of the old stay of the Magyars in the East before their migration. I wish only
to point out that Abū-'l-Fidā writes Māǰār for the name of the Hungarians in present Hungary (II,
I, 80), but Kūmmāǰar (with short final *-a-*) for the city of Maǰar (II, I, 324). As to his Northern
Maǰyariyah (or Maǰyīrīyah?), it is certainly, as YULE has suspected, an erratic form of the name of the
«Bashkir» (also Bačγīrd, etc.), the «Great Hungary» of mediaeval travellers.

YULE has already said, on the faith of a name «Mager» in Wadding, that Maǰar had been the
seat of a Franciscan convent in the 14th cent. (*Y*, II, 491; *Y*¹, III, 84). We can now give more
precision. A Franciscan list of 1320 registers two monasteries in «Cummageria» of the «custody»
of Sarai; a list of 1334 places them at «Maieria»; a list of 1390 knows only one, at «Mager»; an
archbishop «Maieriensis», in Tartary (a Franciscan named *Joannes Speculi*) is known in 1363
(GOLUBOVICH, *Bibl. bio-bibl.*, II, 266, 559). Father GOLUBOVICH (II, 553, 558) has looked for
these convents on the Taman peninsula of the sea of Azov; but YULE was once more right, and his
identification is confirmed by «Cummageria», evidently the Kūmmāǰar of Abū-'l-Fidā. It is