Oak walls twenty-eight feet thick
Editorial contextUsing Professor Surovzov's 1778 study of the chronicles and of old gate sites, Erman reconstructs the Tatar city before 1552. It was nearly as big as the Kazan of his own day. Its walls were two parallel fences of very thick oak timbers, twenty-five feet apart, with the space between filled with stones and clay, and it had thirteen gates with towers.
The walls round the town measured in thickness twenty-eight feet, and were formed of two parallel wooden fences twenty-five feet asunder, and having the space between them filled up with stones and clay. The wooden fences, as well as the towers over the gates, were formed of oak timbers of extraordinary thickness. The gates, with their towers, were thirteen in number
About Kazan Tatars (the Khanate of Kazan)
Keep in mind
Reconstructed from chronicles and excavations of gate sites, not seen by Erman.
Kurgan graves of 'a race now extinct'
Editorial contextAt Krasnoyarsk Erman studied a collection of bronze objects dug from the kurgans (burial mounds) of the Minusinsk district, including round mirrors decorated with animals. The local Tatars told him the mounds belonged to 'a race now extinct, and totally different from theirs'. Erman noted that similar mirrors were still used in Buryat Buddhist rites, and wondered whether the builders were really so different from living Siberians.
The most important consideration, however, is, that these mirrors are found in graves which, as the present Tatar inhabitants of the circle maintain, belong to a race now extinct, and totally different from theirs.
About Tatars of the Minusinsk basin (Khakas); unknown ancient builders
Keep in mind
Erman saw the objects in a private collection, not the graves; the 'extinct race' is local Tatar belief. Modern archaeology links most Minusinsk bronzes to Bronze and Iron Age cultures (such as Tagar) long before the Turkic-speaking Khakas.
Log houses with curtained windows
Editorial contextThe houses of Kazan's Tatar town were small plain log cabins like Russian village houses, but inside they always had window curtains, behind which the women hid when anyone passed. On the next page Erman notes the many wooden jetties the Tatars built over Lake Kaban for their ritual washing before prayer.
The houses of the Tatar town are small and unadorned, like those of Russian villages, constructed of rough logs, without exterior planking. But in their internal arrangements they differ from the Russian cabins; they have, for example, always window curtains, behind which the women are careful to conceal themselves when any one passes by.
About Kazan Tatars
Graves boxed in logs, like little houses
Editorial contextAt the post village of Metyeshka, east of Kazan, Erman saw a Tatar burial ground. Each grave was covered by a man-length box about four feet high, filled with earth and built exactly like the dwelling houses, of rough-hewn logs laid one on another. The graves lay side by side, their long sides running east to west.
about the length of a man, and filled with earth. It is formed in the same manner as the dwelling houses, with rough-hewn posts laid one upon the other. The graves were in general parallel to one another, the longer sides lying nearly east and west.
About Kazan Tatars
Keep in mind
The sentence begins on the previous page (n177): 'On every grave there is a rectangular chest, raised about four feet above the ground'.
Yurts of 'the former rulers of the country'
Editorial contextNear Tobolsk, on the steep bank of the Irtysh, Erman entered sooty Tatar yurts at Philatefsk. They were shaped like Ostyak (Khanty) huts but cleaner, with a clay hearth (chubal), a built-in cauldron, and woven cloth, Bukharan carpets or felt in the sleeping recesses. The families sat cross-legged round brick tea, with horse-flesh cooking. He calls them 'descendants of the former rulers of the country'.
The Ostyak mode of living cannot be confounded with that of these people, yet the yurts of both are shaped alike; but those of the Tatars have always the advantage in cleanliness, and, besides the chubal of beaten clay, there is also the well-set boiler: in the recesses, too, instead of skins there lies usually some woven fabric
About Siberian Tatars
Keep in mind
Here 'yurt' means a small fixed winter hut, not a felt tent.
Evening prayer at the Kaban Lake mosque
Editorial contextErman was allowed into the great mosque of the Tatar quarter by Lake Kaban for evening prayer. In the entrance hall stood old gravestones dug up nearby, before which worshippers prayed in silence. Inside the plain round hall, men in white sat 'as motionless as statues' while the imam chanted the Koran; then the visitors were politely asked to leave. Erman was deeply moved by the simplicity and piety.
We entered first into a wide quadrangular hall: along the walls are placed rows of tall grave-stones, dug up in the vicinity, and set up here to perpetuate the memory of some saintly characters. The Tatars, as they came in, stood for a little time in silent prayer before these stones.
About Kazan Tatars
Tatar villagers with carpets and cushions
Editorial contextIn the Tatar farming villages beyond Kazan, Erman found people neatly dressed, the men with shaved heads under tight caps and trimmed beards, in contrast to the wild hair of Russian peasants. Their houses always had good carpets and cushions, and the women, in loose white gowns, never helped with rough work like harnessing horses.
Men and women here are neatly clothed. The smooth-shorn pate of the former, covered with the tight-fitting cap, and the precise cut of their beards, form a striking contrast with the savage head of hair, completely in a state of nature, which is usually worn by the Russians. Their houses are never without some good carpets and cushions to cover the seats and beds.
About Kazan Tatars
'Tatar' should mean Kazan
Editorial contextAt Torzhok, famous for embroidered Russia-leather boots, Erman notes that the Russians learned the craft from the Tatars and still call the boots 'Kasan boots'. For Russians, he says, Kazan was the land of the Tatars, and he complains that Western European scholars too often call peoples 'Tatars' who had nothing to do with Kazan.
The Russians learned this art from the Tatars, whom they soon surpassed, and the name "Kasan boots," now usually given to the boots and shoes made in Torjok, points to a Tatar origin; for among the Russians, Kasan was originally the land of the Tatars; and the learned men of Western Europe too often give the name of Tatars erroneously to tribes who had no connexion with Kasan.
About Kazan Tatars
Chinggis's men were Mongols, not Tatars
Editorial contextWriting about Russian fortune-telling customs, Erman says the tribes of Chinggis Khan who overran Russia were really a branch of the Mongols from the Irkutsk region, who later joined with the 'Tatar hordes'. Over time, he says, Russian historians wrongly gave the Tatars the whole glory of the conquest.
In point of fact, we know that the tribes under Chingis Khan, who overran that country, were really a branch of the Mongol nation from the government of Irkutsk, who subsequently formed a union with the Tatar hordes; and to the latter the Russian historians, in process of time, incorrectly attributed the whole glory of the conquest.
About Mongols and Tatars
Keep in mind
Erman's placing of the Mongol homeland 'from the government of Irkutsk' is his own view; the Mongol heartland lay farther south, in today's Mongolia.
Bashkirs, 'the shaven heads'
Editorial contextErman argues that the Bashkirs are the 'bald-headed' Argippaei described by Herodotus, and that Herodotus's travellers mistook their shaved heads for natural baldness. He rejects the usual explanation of the name Bashkir as 'bee-head' and offers his own: bash (head) plus a word for shaven, so 'shaven heads'.
Thus, we shall render the gentile name, Bashkir, as written by the Russians Bashkuirtsi, by its natural synonym, shaven heads
About Bashkirs
Keep in mind
Learned speculation. The origin of the name Bashkir is still debated, and 'shaven heads' is not generally accepted.
Yakut words are 'pure Turkish'
Editorial contextIn Yakutsk Erman compared the Yakuts with the Tatars of western Siberia in looks and language. Their words for God, iron and other metals and fishing gear were 'all pure Turkish', and they named their milk spirits as the Turkish Tatars did. So he rejects the idea that the Yakuts owed their culture to Mongol neighbours.
It cannot by any means be maintained, that the Yakuts have received the better part of their civilisation, at some time or other, from Mongolian neighbours; their names for the Deity, for iron, and the other metals, (excepting the tin of the Buraets), for their fishing gear, &c. are all pure Turkish.
About Yakuts (Sakha); Siberian and 'Turkish' Tatars
Queen Suyumbike, the rain-making enchantress
Editorial contextDuring the siege, the Russian soldiers in the trenches suffered from constant heavy rain, and everyone blamed the magic of the Tatar queen Sumbyeka (Suyumbike), 'celebrated as an enchantress', and the city's sorcerers. Inside Kazan, people hid in cellars and caves dug in the courtyards, and the defenders shot at their own captured kinsmen tied to the Russian palisades rather than surrender.
The Russian warriors who were stationed in the trenches without tents, suffered much from the constant heavy rains; and this annoyance was universally ascribed to the arts of the Tatar queen Sumbyeka, who was celebrated as an enchantress, and to the subordinate kolduni, or sorcerers of the city.
About Kazan Tatars
Keep in mind
A belief of the besiegers recorded in the chronicles. Historically, Suyumbike had already been sent to Moscow before the final siege.
The vegetable lamb was really cotton
Editorial contextWatching Bukharan cotton being sold at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, Erman explains the old story of the Baranets, a plant that grew a living lamb, told near the Caspian and repeated by Herberstein in the 1500s. He was sure it came from an embellished description of the cotton plant, and he quotes Herberstein's Latin, including Herberstein's remark that nothing is impossible for the Creator.
It appears to me quite certain that the story of the zoophytic plant, called Baranez, or lamb-plant, (formed as a diminutive, from Baran, a sheep,) originated in some embellished account of the cotton plant. Herberstein relates it at full length and unchanged, just as he had heard it
About Bukharan traders; Russian and European writers
Keep in mind
Erman's cotton theory is one explanation among several; others point to a fern (Cibotium barometz) whose woolly rhizome was sold as the 'Tartarian lamb'.