Ten minutes, a pipe and a spoonful of coffee
Editorial contextAt a khan in Pharsalus Clarke watched 'Tartar' couriers change horses. Each squatted against the wall for about ten minutes, smoked hard, gulped a spoonful of muddy coffee, said 'God be praised' and rode on, travelling night and day. Clarke says no couriers in the world could match their endurance, and that Europeans travelling alone in Turkey disguised themselves in their dress.
the Tartar squats (for it cannot be called sitting) with his back against the wall, supporting himself upon the soles of his feet, and inhaling rapidly the fumes of his pipe upon his lungs; sending it back in curling volumes through his nostrils. Then, if he can procure about as much muddy coffee as would fill the bowl of a table-spoon, he utters his Alhandilla! (God be praised !)
About Ottoman couriers ('Tartars')
Continue in this sourceClarke's travels: the Greek and Balkan volume1800 to 1801 · 7 passagesA queen's travelling mosque, left at the border
Editorial contextIbn Battuta escorted Uzbek Khan's Byzantine wife on a visit to her father in Constantinople. Like her husband, she carried a mosque (evidently a tent) that was set up at every halt for daily prayers. At the first Byzantine fortress she left it behind, and from then on, he says with some dismay, the call to prayer stopped and wine appeared at her table.
The Queen had with her a mosque, which she set up at every stage, just as her husband used to do. In this she had daily prayers. She left it, however, at the fortress. After this the office of the Moazin ceased : wine was brought into the banquet and of this she drank.
About Golden Horde; Byzantine princess Bayalun
Continue in this sourceIbn Battuta's travels, in Samuel Lee's 1829 abridged translation1325 to 1354 · 17 passagesUnrobbed mounds, unlike those of Tartary
Editorial contextOn the plain near Larissa Clarke saw many large tumuli in good condition, some with shepherds' huts built on top. He notes that, unlike the mounds of 'Tartary', they did not seem to have been dug open for treasure. The steppe kurgans were well known for being plundered for their gold.
They did not seem to have been opened and ransacked for the hidden treasure which it is possible some of them contain, as it has often happened in Tartary ; but, upon some of them, small huts had been constructed, as dwellings for the shepherds.
About (ancient Greek mound builders; comparison with the steppe)
Continue in this sourceClarke's travels: the Greek and Balkan volume1800 to 1801 · 7 passagesWhere the Dobruja Tatars came from
Editorial contextSchlözer tells how the Tatars, after wasting Russia, had settled on the steppe on both sides of the Dnieper and ruled Podolia through their baskaks (governors), until Grand Duke Olgerd of Lithuania beat three Tatar khans at Siniawoda (the Blue Waters) and cleared them from the land as far as Ochakiv. The survivors, he says, settled on the Dobruja plains by the Danube, where their descendants still remembered that the Lithuanians had driven their ancestors out of Podolia. Olgerd's nephews then built castles in the freed land.
Those who escaped the sword then settled on the Dobruja plains on the Danube, where their descendants … still know that their forefathers were driven out of Podolia by the Lithuanians.
Working translation
Original wording
Die dem Schwerdt entflohen, ließen sich hierauf in den Dobruczer Ebenen an der Donau nieder, wo ihre Nachkommen … auch noch wissen, daß ihre Vorfahren durch die Littauer aus Podolien vertrieben worden.
About Golden Horde Tatars of Podolia; the Dobruja Tatars
Keep in mind
Schlözer keeps his chronicle source's date of 1331; the battle of the Blue Waters is now usually dated 1362. The Dobruja tradition is reported, not checked.