Glazed tiles and mosaic on a khan's tomb
Editorial contextPallas describes the finest building at the Selitrennoye ruins as a khan's family mausoleum with a prayer house above, its foundation walls two fathoms high. The brickwork was the most elegant he had seen among any Tartar ruins, set with glazed tiles in green, yellow, white and blue, with stucco flowers, shell-work and mosaic panels. He adds that whole cargoes of its bricks had been carried off to build Astrakhan.
In the whole brickwork, which consists of beautiful broad squares, disposed in the most regular manner, there is a degree of taste and elegance of which I have no where seen an instance among the ruins of the Tartars. The outside of the walls is not only embellished in all the interstices between the bricks with glazed earthen ornaments, of a green, yellow, white, and blue colour,
About Golden Horde Tartars (a khan's family)
Mortar harder than the bricks
Editorial contextAt Tsarevy Pody ('the royal residence') on the Akhtuba, Pallas examined a flat vaulted tomb mound inside a sandstone wall. The vaults were of six layers of square bricks joined with a grey cement so hard that the bricks broke before the mortar did. He analysed it as lime, powdered charcoal and ground sandstone, and wondered whether sour milk, plentiful among a pastoral people, had been mixed in.
It has, however, acquired such a solid consistence, that it is easier to break the well-burnt bricks, than to separate the mortar. This grey cement appears to be a mixture of unslacked lime, pulverized charcoal, and pounded sandstone, instead of the sand used for building.
About Mongol Tartar princes of the Golden Horde
Keep in mind
The sour-milk idea on the next page is his own guess.
Madzhary: streets of tombs, not a town
Editorial contextOn the Kuma River Pallas visited the famous ruins of Upper Madzhary. In 1780 there were still thirty-two buildings, but settlers had since carted away the fine bricks. The ruins stood in rows, which made 'the ignorant' think they were the streets of a large town; Pallas concludes it was a great cemetery of domed sepulchral mosques. (Madzhar is now known to have been a Golden Horde trading town of the 1300s.)
…they have formerly stood in rows; a circumstance that has induced the ignorant to suppose they were the streets of a large town. But, upon close investigation, it appears that this place was a famous cemetry appropriated to persons of distinction;
About a Muslim people 'perhaps of Tartar origin'
Keep in mind
His 'cemetery, not a town' verdict reflects his view that nomads did not build towns.
Felt huts that ride on carts
Editorial contextThe Nogais, Pallas says, live in small felt huts four to five and a half arshines across that cannot be taken apart; two men lift the whole hut onto a two-wheeled cart to move it. The next page adds that the huts have a smoke-hole cover worked by a cord and are lined with reed mats, and that the Nogais must buy hazel poles from the Crimean mountain Tatars because the steppe has no timber. A footnote compares them to the ancient 'wagon-dwellers' of the Sea of Azov.
The Nagays, as well as their kinsmen near the Lines of Caucasus, and the Akhtouba, live in small huts constructed of felt, the largest of which are from about four to five and a half arshines in diameter, and, like those of the Kundure Tartars, cannot be taken to pieces, but are placed by two men upon a carriage, and thus removed from one place to another.
About Nogai Tatars
The khan's palace at Bakhchysarai
Editorial contextPallas walks the reader through the Crimean khans' palace, which he calls a jumble of dwellings and offices round several courtyards. Upstairs the rooms are Turkish in style, with carpets, divans, wall paintings and stained glass, partly redone in European taste for Catherine the Great's visit in 1787. He notes the rose garden and fountain, the decayed harem, and a cage-like kiosk where the khan kept his falcons.
The apartments and galleries above-stairs, are decorated totally after the Turkish manner, with carpets and divans, or low sofas, oriental landscapes, clumsy paintings on the walls, artificial flowers, chimney-pieces, and stained glass windows. The alterations we noticed in some of these apartments, were made for the reception of the Empress in 1787,
About Crimean Tatars (the Giray khans)
Mountain houses half dug into the rock
Editorial contextPallas describes the Tatars of the southern Crimean valleys, a mixed people other Tatars scorn as 'Tat'. Their houses are built against steep slopes, half excavated from earth or rock, with only the front raised in rough stone, under flat earth roofs. On the page before he says the steppe Tatars, lacking stone, build with unbaked clay bricks like the people of Bukhara.
Their houses, or huts, are partly formed under ground; being generally constructed against the steep precipices of mountains, one half excavated from the earth, or rock, and only the front raised with rough stones; having at the same time flat roofs covered with earth.
About Crimean mountain Tatars (called 'Tat' by other Tatars)
Stone statues on the burial mounds
Editorial contextAlong the Tashla Pallas saw the rough-hewn stone statues that stand on burial mounds across the steppe from the Kuban to the Dnieper, always facing east. From their dress and faces he judged that a people related to the Mongols made them. In a footnote on the next page he quotes Rubruck, who credited them to the Cumans, and argues that different monuments on the steppe came from different nations. (Most are now thought to be Cuman (Polovtsian) work of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries.)
If we may judge from the costume and form of the face, they uniformly appear to have been made by a people related to the Mongolians, who formerly inhabited those countries. … All these statues are erected on moderately large sepulchral hills, and their faces are exposed towards the East.
About a people 'related to the Mongolians'
A bride for forty mares
Editorial contextAmong the Nogais, Pallas reports, the bride price (kalym) paid to a rich bride's father is forty mares, two horses fully harnessed, a suit of armour, a gun and a sabre. They live mainly on horse meat and mare's milk 'like the ancient Mongoles', a diet the Crimean Tatars have given up, and keep a love of wandering.
Conformably to the usage of all Asiatic nations, a Kalim or marriage portion, which, with the opulent, consists of forty mares, two horses completely caparisoned, a suit of armour, a gun, and a sabre is, on the celebration of the nuptials, delivered to the father of the bride. Their food, like that of the ancient Mongoles, consists principally of horse-flesh and mares' milk;
About Nogai Tatars
Painted wagons for the women
Editorial contextPallas notes that each wealthy Tartar family on the lower Volga keeps two tents, one for guests and one for the women, and one or more covered two-wheeled chariots painted in various colours, with a chest of best clothes on the front. The women ride in them on migrations, drawn by oxen, while carts called araba carry the tents and chests.
…each wealthy Tartar family commonly has two tents, one for the reception of their visitors, and the other appropriated to their females. … they usually have one or more covered two-wheeled chariots for their wives and daughters. These chariots are painted of various colours; and on the fore-part there is commonly placed a chest covered with ornamental tapestry,
About Kundure Tartars (a Nogai remnant) and Kirghiz
An oath sworn on one's marriage
Editorial contextPallas, who lived in the Crimea, says the Muslim clergy quietly taught that an oath on the Koran did not bind towards an infidel. The Russian governor therefore introduced the 'Dallak' oath, by which a man who swore falsely renounced his wife, so that 'a Tartar, who has any conjugal affection, will not easily forswear himself'. Pallas adds that even this was sometimes broken.
But a more solemn form of swearing, termed Dallak, is at present, on important occasions, adopted even in Turkey, by which the person taking such oath binds himself, in case of perjury, to renounce his wife; so that a Tartar, who has any conjugal affection, will not easily forswear himself,
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
Pallas writes as a Russian official's friend and is openly suspicious of the Tatar clergy.
A Mongol twelve-year calendar in the Crimea
Editorial contextPallas finds that the Crimean Tatars still use the Mongol twelve-year animal cycle, though some names have lost their meaning (the 'tiger' year became a small grey insect). They use it to forecast the weather and harvests of coming years, and Pallas, who lived among them, says their forecasts were generally wrong.
This aera, which recommenced in 1792, and will terminate with the year 1803, serves chiefly for predicting the nature and fertility of future years; but, in such conjectures, the Tartars are generally mistaken, as far as I could judge during my residence among them.
About Crimean Tatars
Nogais: 'unmixed descendants' of Genghis Khan's army
Editorial contextPallas divides the Crimean Tatars into three classes. The Nogais, as their faces show, are 'unmixed descendants' of the Mongol tribe that formed the bulk of Genghis Khan's invading army. The steppe Tatars keep some Mongol features and build with unbaked clay bricks; the nobles and the mountain people are mixed with Turks and other nations.
All these Nagays are, as their features evince, the unmixed descendants of the Mongolian tribe, who formed the bulk of the army of Tshingis-Khan, which invaded Russia and the Crimea.
About Nogais, steppe Tatars and mountain Tatars of the Crimea
Keep in mind
His judgement rests on facial features, a method no longer accepted.
'Tat': the Tatars' word for outsiders
Editorial contextIn the southern Crimean valleys Pallas finds people descended from Greeks and other settlers, strangers to the Tatar and above all the Mongol race. The 'original natives' of the Crimea, he says, look on them as aliens and call them by the scornful name 'Tat'. A later footnote derives it from the Turkish 'Mur-Tat', renegade.
…and who were strangers to the Tartar race, but especially to that of the Mongoles: hence the original natives of Crim-Tartary consider them as aliens, and point them out by the contemptible name of Tat.
About Crimean mountain Tatars
A pillar built of horse skulls
Editorial contextOn a conical hill above the Akhtuba, Kalmyks stationed at the military posts had built a circular column entirely of horse skulls and jawbones, with a low wall and ditch decorated with more bones and a huge horse head on top pointing east. The bones came from an epidemic that had killed the post's horses and those of the wintering Kirghiz.
…the Kalmuks who were stationed here at the military posts have erected a singular monument. It is a circular column, raised on the very summit of the hill, and constructed entirely of the skulls and jaw-bones of horses, closely adapted to one another:
About Kalmyks of the Russian frontier posts
The camel's tower and a pipeline of mare's milk
Editorial contextPallas was told of a great heap of bricks on the steppe, called by Russians the 'hill of the house of prayer' and by Kalmyks 'the camel's tower'. The Kalmyks said that Janibek Khan (who ruled the Golden Horde 1342 to 1357) kept mares here and piped their milk to his residence. Pallas dryly replies that the burial mounds all around show what the building was really for.
…there is a large heap of bricks, called by the Russians, Metshetnoi Bugor, or the hill of the House of Prayer, and by the Kalmuks, Temahne Balgasum, or the camel's tower. The Kalmuks give the following account of this place: Dshanibek-Khan kept here a number of mares, whose milk was conveyed by tubes, from this tower to his residence.
About Kalmyk tradition about Janibek Khan of the Golden Horde
Keep in mind
A Kalmyk legend that Pallas reports and rejects.
A city driven out by tarantulas
Editorial contextA story said the people of the 'city' at Madzhary had been driven away by swarms of great tarantulas, which is why the stream is called Byvalla, from the Tartar 'by' (tarantula) and 'valla' (bad). Pallas says there is no basis for it: despite searching diligently, he never found a single tarantula there.
There is no foundation for believing what is related of this supposed city, that its inhabitants have been expelled by great numbers of the large tarantula, or Phalangium araneodes, from which traditionary account the rivulet Byvalla has received its name; By, being the Tartar word for the tarantula, and valla, signifying bad or evil.
About local tradition about the Madzhary ruins