The Voyages of Marco Polo. Марко Поло

Friars of the place a house of his in Soldachia, reserving life occupation to his own son and daughter, then residing in it. Probably this establishment already existed when the two Brothers went thither. (Elie de Laprimaudare, passim; Gold. Horde, 87; Mosheim, App. 148; Ibn Bat. I. 28, II. 414; Cathay, 231–33; Heyd, II. passim.)

      CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      HOW THE TWO BROTHERS WENT ON BEYOND SOLDAIA.

      Having stayed a while at Soldaia, they considered the matter, and thought it well to extend their journey further. So they set forth from Soldaia and travelled till they came to the Court of a certain Tartar Prince, BARCA KAAN by name, whose residences were at SARA[NOTE 1] and at BOLGARA [and who was esteemed one of the most liberal and courteous Princes that ever was among the Tartars.][NOTE 2] This Barca was delighted at the arrival of the Two Brothers, and treated them with great honour; so they presented to him the whole of the jewels that they had brought with them. The Prince was highly pleased with these, and accepted the offering most graciously, causing the Brothers to receive at least twice its value.

      [Illustration: Map to illustrate the Geographical Position of the CITY of

       SARAI]

      [Illustration: Part of the Remains of the CITY of SARAI near TZAREV North of the AKHTUBA Branch of the VOLGA]

      After they had spent a twelvemonth at the court of this Prince there broke out a great war between Barca and Aláu, the Lord of the Tartars of the Levant, and great hosts were mustered on either side.[NOTE 3]

      But in the end Barca, the Lord of the Tartars of the Ponent, was defeated, though on both sides there was great slaughter. And by reason of this war no one could travel without peril of being taken; thus it was at least on the road by which the Brothers had come, though there was no obstacle to their travelling forward. So the Brothers, finding they could not retrace their steps, determined to go forward. Quitting Bolgara, therefore, they proceeded to a city called UCACA, which was at the extremity of the kingdom of the Lord of the Ponent;[NOTE 4] and thence departing again, and passing the great River Tigris, they travelled across a Desert which extended for seventeen days' journey, and wherein they found neither town nor village, falling in only with the tents of Tartars occupied with their cattle at pasture.[NOTE 5]

      NOTE 1.— + Barka Khan, third son of Jújí, the first-born of Chinghiz, ruled the Ulús of Juji and Empire of Kipchak (Southern Russia) from 1257 to 1265. He was the first Musulman sovereign of his race. His chief residence was at SARAI (Sara of the text), a city founded by his brother and predecessor Bátú, on the banks of the Akhtuba branch of the Volga. In the next century Ibn Batuta describes Sarai as a very handsome and populous city, so large that it made half a day's journey to ride through it. The inhabitants were Mongols, Aás (or Alans), Kipchaks, Circassians, Russians, and Greeks, besides the foreign Moslem merchants, who had a walled quarter. Another Mahomedan traveller of the same century says the city itself was not walled, but, "The Khan's Palace was a great edifice surmounted by a golden crescent weighing two kantars of Egypt, and encompassed by a wall flanked with towers," etc. Pope John XXII., on the 26th February 1322, defined the limits of the new Bishopric of Kaffa, which were Sarai to the east and Varna to the west.

      Sarai became the seat of both a Latin and a Russian metropolitan, and of more than one Franciscan convent. It was destroyed by Timur on his second invasion of Kipchak (1395–6), and extinguished by the Russians a century later. It is the scene of Chaucer's half-told tale of Cambuscan:—

      "At Sarra, in the Londe of Tartarie, There dwelt a King that werried Russie."

      ["Mesalek-al-absar (285, 287), says Sarai, meaning 'the Palace,' was founded by Bereké, brother of Batu. It stood in a salty plain, and was without walls, though the palace had walls flanked by towers. The town was large, had markets, madrasas—and baths. It is usually identified with Selitrennoyé Gorodok, about 70 miles above Astrakhan." (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 260, note.)—H. C.]

      Several sites exhibiting extensive ruins near the banks of the Akhtuba have been identified with Sarai; two in particular. One of these is not far from the great elbow of the Volga at Tzaritzyn: the other 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 7–½ 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 2–½ 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. Yet 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 14th 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. Arabsháh 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 days, on the upper Akhtuba? Pegolotti 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 Yaik. But it was possibly the Upper or New Sarai on the Akhtuba. Ibn Batuta, marching on the frozen river, reached Sarai in three days 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 Kúnk "Great." (See Pavet 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 had 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 Archaeological 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]; Historisch- geographische Darstellung des Stromsystems der Wolga, von Ferd. Heinr. Müller, Berlin, 1839, 568–577; Ibn. Bat. II. 447; Not. et Extraits, XIII. i. 286; Pallas, Voyages; Cathay, 231, etc.; Erdmann, Numi Asiatici, pp. 362 seqq.; Arabs. I. p. 381.)

      NOTE 2.—BOLGHAR, our author's Bolgara, was the capital of the region sometimes called Great Bulgaria, by Abulfeda Inner Bulgaria, 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