Felt tents on carts, as in Herodotus
Editorial contextLeaving the Crimea, the party came on a few nomad tents: round, about four feet high and eight feet across, covered in rushes and thick felt, with a smoke-hole and a banner marking the horde. She notes they ride on carts called kibitkas, just like the cart-dwelling Scythians of Herodotus, and that women live in separate tents.
the very tents that I have been describing, called Kabitkies, are placed on carts of the same name, and drawn with their inhabitants from one grazing ground to another, as the difference of season, or a want of pasture for their numerous flocks, demands a change of place. The women are kept in separate tents pitched near those of the men
About Nogai Tatars
Keep in mind
The link to Herodotus's Scythians is a learned comparison, not evidence of descent.
Stone statues on the steppe that today's Tartars know nothing about
Editorial contextShe examined upright stone figures scattered over the steppe, each carved with a man's or woman's bust. From their dress and faces she judges them 'Tartar workmanship' of Kalmyk or Hun type, but notes that the living Tatars know nothing of them and she cannot tell whether they marked graves or grazing bounds. Matthew Guthrie adds a whole appendix on them.
They are standing perpendicularly in the ground, bearing each the bust of a man or woman tolerably sculptured for Tartar workmanship; which there can be no doubt of their being, from the particular dress in which they are represented, and the marked features of the Calmouks, or Huns. But whether these rude monuments of antiquity (for the present race of Tartars know nothing about them,)…
About Ancient steppe nomads; Nogai Tatars
Keep in mind
Attribution by dress and 'features' is guesswork; these stone figures (kamennye baby) belong to several earlier steppe peoples.
Ruins 'all of Tartar origin', and a palace the Kalmyks would not live in
Editorial contextIn his appendix Matthew Guthrie lists brick ruins on the Akhtuba, at Madzhary on the Kuma (32 buildings in 1780, only four by 1793) and near the Terek, which Pallas had drawn, and calls them all of Tartar origin from their shape, construction and inscriptions. He follows Pallas in thinking them tombs or shrines, because Mongols so loved camp life that the Kalmyk princes of his day would not live in a palace Russia built for them.
all of Tartar origin, as is evident from several kinds of proof, viz. shape, construction, and inscriptions… I am of Pallas's opinion with regard to the sepulchral or religious destination of all those ruins, from the known attachment of the Monguls to a camp residence, which to this day prevents their descendants, the Calmuc princes, from inhabiting a palace built for them by the crown of Russia
About Golden Horde Tatars; Kalmyks
Keep in mind
Second-hand from Pallas; Klaproth (W056) later argued Madzhary was a real town, not just a cemetery.
The khan's palace: 'painted Chinese structure'
Editorial contextLike Baron de Tott thirty years earlier, Maria Guthrie reaches for 'Chinese' to describe the painted palace of the khans. She says its interior is a maze (a 'Scythian labyrinth') with separate women's quarters, and on the next page describes the court mosque whose slender minaret sways under the climber.
The palace, which, as said before, rises in the middle of this curious Tauric city, to add greatly to the singularity and romantic appearance of the scene, is a curious species of painted Chinese structure, well suited to such a group of oddities.
About Crimean Tatars (Giray khans)
Keep in mind
She admits she lacks the vocabulary of 'oriental architecture'; 'Chinese' is an impression, not a statement about builders.
Kurgans: graves or ash heaps from Tartar tents?
Editorial contextCrossing the steppe she notes many conical mounds (kurgans) like those on the plain of Troy. She reports a view that they are heaps of ash from Tartar camps and adds her own twist: that the Tartars buried their dead beneath the ash to make cheap monuments. On the next page she suggests this is the origin of mound burial across Europe.
Some people contend that they are not tombs, but hillocks formed by the ashes thrown out of the Tartar tents while encamped on the spot; which is a fact, and a very wise measure too, as, by making the graves of their companions the bases of these conic hillocks, they prevent putrid exhalations, while they raise a rude monument to departed friends without either trouble or expence
About Nogai Tatars; ancient steppe nomads
Keep in mind
A speculation presented as fact; most steppe kurgans are ancient burial mounds far older than the Tatars.
How to make koumis
Editorial contextAt a steppe village hospitable Tatars brought koumis and a brandy distilled from mare's milk. Maria took down the recipe for her husband: warm mare's milk, a sixth part warm water and a starter of old koumis, sour milk or rye leaven, churned and left to ferment a day and a night. She found it sourish-sweet and pleasant.
To any given quantity of warm Mares' Milk, the Crim Tartars add a sixth part warm water of the same temperature, with a little old Koumis, sour cows' milk, or a piece of sour leaven of their rye-bread, as a ferment; and mix all together in a species of churn… The koumis has a sourish sweet taste by no means unpleasant to my palate
About Crimean Tatars
Marriage sight unseen
Editorial contextShe explains that a Crimean Tatar groom never saw his bride before the wedding and relied on a matron go-between. The groom then bargained with the father, usually offering a cow and some sheep; the imam married the couple with little ceremony, and the groom treated his friends to pipes, coffee and sherbet outside the house.
for an inhabitant of the Taurida never sees his bride till the nuptial torch is lighted up; so that if it were not for the friendly ministry of a grave matron, or go between (the Pronuba of the Antients), who has the privilege of taking a peep at the bride, a man might marry the grandmother instead of the daughter.
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
She says herself that 'all is mystery' about women's lives; this is what she was told.
Nailed by the ear to his own shop door
Editorial contextDescribing justice under the khans, she says judges ruled on the spot and punished at once: cheating shopkeepers were nailed by the ear to their doors, small offences got the bastinado and serious ones the bowstring for Muslims but a halter for Christians and Jews. She adds that Turks and Tatars rarely cheated.
A shopkeeper caught in the act of cheating with false or short weights was nailed by the ear to his own shop-door, that the whole market might know the knave, and watch him in future… Lesser offences were instantly punished with the bastinado, and greater with the bow-string, if a true believer; for a halter was the portion of an infidel
About Crimean Tatars (under the khans)
Keep in mind
Describes the system before Russian rule, which she did not see.
'Tartar' as a convenient catch-all
Editorial contextIn a footnote Matthew Guthrie admits that scholars like Georgi and Tooke had tried to separate Mongols from Tartars, but says the steppe peoples are so alike that everyone will go on using one generic name, 'Scythians' for ancient times and 'Tartars' for modern ones, simply to save trouble.
Notwithstanding all the trouble taken by Professor Georgi, Mr. Tooke, &c. to distinguish the Monguls, &c. from the Tartars, there is so much similitude… that a generic name for the whole will always be employed by every one who is not minutely treating of their subdivisions, let professed historians do what they please to prevent it
About Steppe nomads in general
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
Tatars collect money to 'free' a charming Greek lady
Editorial contextAfter mocking whirling dervishes, Maria offers a story to the Tatars' credit: a Greek-born countess, married to a Russian general, so charmed the Tatars of Eupatoria with her Turkish that they took her for a Muslim woman held captive by Christians and secretly raised money to buy her freedom.
so charmed the honest Tartars with the graces of her person, and conversation in the Turkish language, that they, ignorant of her rank and quality, conceived an idea of her being a fair daughter of Mahomet, held in Christian bondage by the right of war, and secretly opened a subscription among themselves to purchase her liberty
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
An anecdote about another traveller, not something she witnessed.