Crim, the old city that gave the Crimean Tatars their name
Editorial contextCrim had a very old, high wall and many ancient mosques inside and outside the town with Arabic ('Chaldaic') inscriptions carved in large stones. Tatar and Turkish residents told him their ancestors remembered that Persians had once lived there, and that it had been the leading workshop of the mechanical arts. The ruins showed a once famous city, and he notes that the Tatars are now commonly called 'Crimean' after it.
For very many ancient Muslim temples or shrines, with Chaldaic characters cut into rather large stones, are seen not only in the city itself but beyond it. Quite a few Turkish or Tartar inhabitants, though fewer Greeks, report that their forefathers constantly remembered that the city was once inhabited by a people of Persians, and was once an outstanding and almost the chief workshop of the mechanical arts. ... From this place the Tartars are now commonly called Crimean.
Working translation
Original wording
Nam templa seu delubra antiqua Mahometica non solùm in Ciuitate ipsa, verùm & vltra ciuitatem plurima admodũ cum Characteribus Chaldaicis in grãdioribus saxis excisis conspiciuntur. Turcę seu Tartari nõ pauci admodũ incolę, Gręci tamen rariores hoc referũt, quod maiores sui constanter meminerint, eã ciuitatem à Persarum olim gente inhabitatam, præstantem ac primariam ferè officinam Mechanicarum artium quondam eam extitisse. … Tartari ab eo loco Crimenses vulgò nunc appellantur.
About Crimean Tatars; 'Persians' of local tradition
Keep in mind
The 'Persian' founders are local oral tradition; 'Chaldaic' is Broniewski's word for Arabic script.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR garbled); long s normalized.
Eski-Krim: from 'Cimmerium' to a wretched market town
Editorial contextPeyssonnel identifies the town the Tatars call Eski-Krim ('Old Crimea') with Ptolemy's Cimmerium and argues that its name, which the Tatars gave to the whole peninsula, is Cimmerium disfigured. Now only a miserable market town, it seemed to have once been large and flourishing, with monuments from remote antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Genoese period.
The town that the Tartars today call Eski-Krim is certainly the ancient Cimmerium of Ptolemy … its name Krim, which is also that of the peninsula of Crimea, is plainly the word Cimmerium … disfigured by the Tartars. This town, now no more than a wretched market town, appears once to have been large and flourishing. There are still several monuments of remote ages, of the Middle Ages and of the Genoese period.
Working translation
Original wording
La Ville appellée aujourd'hui par les Tartares Eski-Krim, est certainement l'ancienne Cimmerium de Ptolémée … son nom de Krim, qui est aussi celui de la presqu'Isle de Crimée, est visiblement le mot Cimmerium … défiguré par les Tartares. Cette Ville qui n'est plus qu'un misérable Bourg, paroît avoir été autrefois vaste & florissante. Il y a encore plusieurs monumens des siècles reculés, du moyen âge & du temps des Génois.
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
Peyssonnel lived in Crimea but does not say he saw these ruins. His Cimmerium etymology is a guess; Eski-Krim is the medieval Solkhat or Qirim, the Golden Horde's seat in Crimea, and Qirim is usually explained from Turkic.
City, castle, palace: the merchants' town vocabulary
Editorial contextThe glossary gives, column by column, Latin, Persian and Cuman words for places. A city (civitas) is 'saar' or 'chent' in Cuman, a castle is 'kalaa', a palace is 'saray', and a house is 'eu' (ev). The words for city, castle and palace are loans from Persian and Arabic (shahr, qal'a, saray), next to the Turkic 'kent' and 'ev'. The Italian merchants clearly needed these words for dealing with towns in the Horde's lands.
city: (Persian) shahr / (Cuman) shahr or kent; castle: (Persian) qal'a / (Cuman) qal'a; village: (Persian) deh / (Cuman) qala; palace: saray / saray; house: (Persian) khana / (Cuman) ev.
Working translation
Original wording
ciuitas ghachar saar ul chent castrum kala kalaa casale de gala palacium saray saray domus ghana eu
About Cumans (Qipchaqs) of the Golden Horde
Keep in mind
The modern equivalents in the translation are the usual identifications of these spellings; the scribe's spellings are Italian.
Checked against the page image; 'ul' is the manuscript's abbreviation for Latin 'vel', 'or'.
Crimea's ruined Greek cities with a thousand churches
Editorial contextMichalo says the Crimea was once so densely peopled by Greeks that single cities had a thousand churches, and that some cities, though ruined, still show by their walls and ruins how grand they were: Solkhat (called Krym by the Muscovites and once Theodosia by the Greeks) and old Chersonesos (Korsun), where the Rus' were baptised. He is clear about who built them: the Greeks, not the Tatars, who came later as settlers.
And even now some cities there, though ruined, show by the size of their circuits and of their ruins that they were once splendid, above all the one we call Solkhat, the Muscovites Krym, and the Greeks once called Theodosia, and the ancient metropolis of Korsun, which first gave baptism to the Ruthenian people
Working translation
Original wording
Atque nunc etiam urbes ibi nonnullae quamvis pessundatae, amplitudine tamen ambituum suorum & ruinarum, superbae olim fuisse apparent, & praesertim quae a nobis Solhoth; a Moscis Krym; a Graecis Theodosia appellabatur quondam, & metropolis vetusta Korsunij, quae genti Ruthenorum princeps dedit baptisma
About Crimean Tatars; earlier Greek Christian inhabitants
Keep in mind
Michalo confuses Solkhat (Staryi Krym) with Theodosia (Kaffa); the 'thousand churches' is a traditional boast he repeats ('it is recorded').