'Mayst thou never know happiness': where the Nogais got their name
Editorial contextEuropean books said the Nogai horde was named after a Tatar general called Nogai. Xavier collected the Nogais' own traditions, which say nothing of such a general and derive the name from 'neogai', a curse on their hard wandering life. He prefers the Nogai version, arguing that a people so proud of their ancestry would have remembered a founder.
their chronicles allege that the name of the nation is derived from neogai (which may be translated by the phrase, mayst thou never know happiness), and that it was bestowed on them in their old country, on account of their precarious and vagabond life.
About Nogais
Keep in mind
A folk etymology; modern historians generally connect the name with the 13th-century Mongol commander Nogai, the view Xavier rejects.
How a raider carried off his captives
Editorial contextRiding with the khan's army on its last great slave raid into Russian New Serbia, de Tott watches a single Tartar manage a whole captured family and flock: children in a sack at the saddle, the girl in front, the mother behind, the father and son on led horses. He admires the skill but calls the scene an image of 'avarice' and 'the most cruel injustice'. He reckons about 20,000 captives were taken.
Five or six slaves, of different ages, sixty sheep, and twenty oxen, the prize of a single man, do not embarrass him. The children, with their heads peeping out of a sack, hanging by the pummel of the saddle; a young girl sitting before, leaning on her left hand; the mother behind on the crupper, the father on a led horse, the son upon another
About Crimean and Nogai Tatars (Krim Giray's army)
Continue in this sourceBaron de Tott's memoirs of the Crimean Tatar court1750 to 1779 · 15 passagesA Nogai village built on a Mennonite plan
Editorial contextNear the Mennonite colonies on the Molochna, Haxthausen visited a Nogai Tatar village that looked 'perfectly German'. The Mennonite farmer Johann Cornies had persuaded the formerly nomadic Nogais to build this way and, Haxthausen was told, had already settled 17,000 of them. Solid houses with chimneys, poplars, gardens and Mennonite ploughs had replaced the old steppe life.
The houses in this village were all built with regularity and solid structure ; they had chimneys and enclosed courtyards. In front of the house-doors generally stand two poplars, with small flower-beds on each side ; in the gardens I noticed a great many fruit-trees, and in the courtyard ploughs, harrows, and carts of Mennonite construction
About Nogai Tatars
Keep in mind
The figure of 17,000 settled Tatars was told to him, not counted.
'To us he has given wheels'
Editorial contextDescribing the Nogais before their settlement in villages, Xavier says a family could pack wife, children and goods into its felt-covered wagon (araba) within an hour and roll off towards the horizon. He quotes a Nogai saying that sums up the old nomad view of the world: God gave wheels to them and houses and ploughs to others.
Such is the order established by God himself," cried the Nogai, " to us he has given wheels, to other nations fixed dwellings and the plough."
About Nogais
Continue in this sourceThe Hommaire de Hells in the Caspian steppes and the Crimea1838 to 1841 · 17 passagesPortable Nogai huts of twigs and felt
Editorial contextReuilly describes the seven or eight thousand Nogais roaming between the Berda and the Molochna. Their round huts, about eight feet across, have a wicker wall and dome covered with rush mats and brown felt, a smoke-hole and a tiny door; the furniture is a few cushions, a low table, pots and dishes. He adds that they were starting to build fixed houses and farm.
They encamp themselves in little cabins of felt; their tents, according to Thunmann, are a kind of portable huts, of a circular form, of about eight feet in diameter, made of lath-work or hurdles of twigs, about the size of a thumb, forming a sort of wall about four feet in height, upon which rests a dome or roof of the same structure
About Nogai Tatars (remnant of the Kuban Tatars)
Keep in mind
The tent description is taken from Thunmann's earlier book, not Reuilly's own observation.
The price of a Nogai bride
Editorial contextAmong the Nogais a groom never saw his bride before the wedding and bargained with her family for her price. Xavier gives the going rates: four or five hundred rubles and a couple of score cows for a handsome girl of good family, less for widows. On the same page he adds that Crimean mountain Tatar and Kalmyk wives cost less and were bought by poorer men.
A handsome girl of good family costs four or five hundred rubles, besides a couple of score of cows and a few other beasts. Young widows are cheaper, and old women are to be had for nothing. The bride's price is paid on the spot by the wooer
About Nogais
Keep in mind
Written from outside and with some disdain; how widely these prices applied is not stated.
The Nogais: a splinter of the Golden Horde
Editorial contextCrossing the Nogai steppe she explains the horde's name: the Nogais split from the Golden Horde under a leader called Nogai, which, she suggests, let them escape Timur's destruction of the Horde in the 1380s and 1390s. She adds that Russian rule has greatly changed them since earlier travellers' accounts.
The Nogay Tartars, who have wandered for some ages in this desert (a part of the primitive or little Scythia of the ancients), were originally a subdivision of the famous golden horde placed in the Kaptchak by the conqueror Zingis Chan, (properly Tschinghis), who, on some quarrel among themselves, separated from the main body of their nation, under a chief or general named Nogay
About Nogai Tatars
Continue in this sourceMaria Guthrie's letters from a tour of the Crimea1795 to 1796 · 15 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.
The Nogays, a wandering horde made to settle
Editorial contextHolderness explains who the Nogay Tatars were: the old nomads of 'Nogay Tatary', who had roamed the steppes north of Crimea with tents, flocks and herds for ages. By her time the Russian government had gathered them into villages and pushed them to farm, though they still preferred grazing and horses.
The Nogay Tatars, if not the original inhabitants of the country, at least wandered over the immense Stepps of New Russia, with their tents, flocks, and herds, at the time of the Russian Conquest, and for ages before: this remnant of the Nomades of Nogay Tatary, are now collected together in a number of villages
About Nogay Tatars
Keep in mind
On the next page she describes the Nogays' moral character in very hostile terms, reflecting settler prejudice.