Berke, first Muslim khan of the Golden Horde
Editorial contextBatu's brother and successor Berke ('Burga'), Abu'l Ghazi says, met merchants from Bukhara on the road, was won over by their explanations of Islam, adopted it on the spot, and on his return ordered his subjects to follow. It is an early step in the Horde's move to Islam, the religion of the later Volga and Crimean Tatars.
he met upon the Road with several Merchants of Great Bucharia and falling into discourse with some of them, particularly upon the Articles of the Mahometan Faith, he was so pierced with the Explanations which these Men gave him of it, that he resolv'd off-hand to embrace that Religion
About Burga (Berke) Khan and his subjects
Keep in mind
A simplified story told four centuries later. The page ends 'but he died before...', so check the next page for how far the conversion got.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR for this volume is unreadable); long s normalized.
Tatar and Mogul: twin brothers
Editorial contextIn Abu'l Ghazi's genealogy, a king named Alanza Khan, descended from Japheth son of Noah, had twin sons, Tatar and Mogul, and split his realm between them. So the Tatars and the Mongols begin as two rival brother nations. A footnote in the printed edition insists that the Tatars are named after this prince, not after a river 'Tata'.
Alanza Chan had two Twin-Sons, the one called Tatar, and the other Mogull … 'Tis from this Prince the Tatars take their Name, and not from the River Tata, as the Mogulls from Mogull.
About Tatars and Mongols (legendary ancestors)
Keep in mind
A genealogical legend; the twins are not historical people.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR for this volume is unreadable); long s normalized.
The Tatars: one of the oldest Turkic tribes
Editorial contextIn his chapter on the tribes, Abu'l Ghazi describes the Tatars as a specific tribe, once 70,000 families under one powerful khan, that split into branches and declined. The main branch lived on the frontier of 'Kitay' (northern China) and was subject to its emperor, rebelling often. This is the historical Tatar confederation that Chinggis Khan later crushed, not the later Volga or Crimean Tatars.
The Tribe of the Tatars is one of the most antient and famous of the Turkish Nations; it was heretofore above 70000 Families strong, and had only one Chan who was very potent: But being afterwards divided into several Branches, its Power by degrees began to decline.
About Tatar tribe (a Turkic people in Abu'l Ghazi's scheme)
A note on this quote
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR for this volume is unreadable); long s normalized.
'We are no other than a Colony of Tatars'
Editorial contextThe anonymous English translator argues that Europeans should despise the Tatars less because Europeans descend from them: the Cimbrians, Celts, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Vandals and Franks were all 'swarms from the same hive' out of Tatary. On the next page he even toys with the idea that the Saxons were akin to the Uzbeks. This is 18th-century speculation about 'Scythian' origins, using 'Tatar' for any northern Asian people.
Our Contempt for the Tatars would still lessen perhaps, did we consider how nearly we stand related to them: that our Ancestors came originally from the North of Asia, and that our Customs, Laws, and way of Living were formerly the same with theirs: In short, that we are no other than a Colony of Tatars.
About Europeans and 'Tatars' in the translator's broad sense
Keep in mind
The translator's own theory, offered without evidence; nothing in Abu'l Ghazi's text says this.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR for this volume is unreadable); long s normalized.
Kipchak: the boy born in a hollow tree
Editorial contextThe legendary conqueror Oghuz Khan's officer died in battle, and his pregnant widow gave birth inside a hollow tree. The khan raised the boy and named him Kipchak, said to mean 'hollow tree' in old Turkish. The Kipchaks gave their name to the Dasht-i Kipchak, the steppe that later became Batu's Golden Horde.
she could find no other Place to retire to when her Time was come but an old Hollow-Tree; into which having crept when her Labour came on, she there brought forth a Son. … and gave him the Name of Kipzak, which signifies in the antient Turkish, an Hollow-Tree.
About Kipchaks (ancestors of the Golden Horde's Turkic subjects)
Keep in mind
A folk etymology from the Oghuz legend.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR for this volume is unreadable); long s normalized.
Melting a mountain of iron with seventy bellows
Editorial contextAfter a crushing defeat by the Tatars, the last two Mongol princes fled with their wives and herds into a valley ringed by mountains, Irgana-kon, reached only by a goat track. Four hundred years later their crowded descendants wanted out. A blacksmith noticed the mountain was thin and made of iron ore, so they piled wood and charcoal against it and melted a road through with seventy leather bellows.
a Farrier, who thought he had observ'd that the Mountain was not over thick in a certain Place, and also that it entirely consisted of Iron-Mine, propos'd to apply Bellows to it … they so effectually blew up by the help of 70 Leathern Bellows, that the Mountain at last coming to melt in this Place, left a Road large enough for the Passage of a loaded Camel
About Mongols (descendants of Kajan and Nagos)
Keep in mind
A famous Mongol origin legend (also in Rashid al-Din), not history.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR for this volume is unreadable); long s normalized.
A being of light enters through the tent's roof opening
Editorial contextThe widowed princess Alancu refused to remarry. One morning, she said, a shining orange-coloured man came down through the opening at the top of her chamber (in a felt tent, the smoke-hole), lay with her and vanished. In Mongol tradition the sons born after this were the ancestors of Chinggis Khan. The English margin calls it a 'Fable of an Incubus'.
having slept all Night long, she saw something as she awak'd in the Morning, as bright as the Sun, fall into her Chamber thro' the Opening a-top, and approach her in the Form of a Man, of an Orange Colour, with Eyes of a singular Beauty
About Alancu (Alan Qo'a), ancestress of Chinggis Khan
Keep in mind
The Alan Qo'a legend, known from the Secret History of the Mongols; a sacred origin myth, not history.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR for this volume is unreadable); long s normalized.
The translator: Irgana-kon is borrowed from Gog and Magog
Editorial contextThe English translator is openly sceptical: he calls the origin of the Tatars 'fabulous', Oghuz Khan 'a mere Legend', and the bellows story 'a whimsical Invention'. In a footnote he suggests the enclosed-valley tale grew out of Arabic legends of Gog and Magog (Yajuj and Majuj) shut up behind the mountains of the far north.
Their melting their way out of the Mountains with seventy Bellows, is a whimsical Invention. … In all likelihood this Fiction of the Moguls being inclosed in the Mountain of Irgana Kon, took its Rise from one of the like kind, which we find in Arabik Authors relating to the People of Yajuj and Majuj, or Gog and Magog
About Mongols; Gog and Magog
Keep in mind
The Gog and Magog link is the translator's guess.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR for this volume is unreadable); long s normalized.