Afanasy Nikitin and other fifteenth-century travellers to India
An 1857 Hakluyt Society anthology of four fifteenth-century journeys to India, including the Russian merchant Nikitin's trip down the Tatar-held Volga around 1466 to 1472.
Full title India in the Fifteenth Century
Afanasy Nikitin and other travelers; R. H. Major, editor
R. H. Major edited this collection for the Hakluyt Society in 1857. It gathers the Persian envoy Abd-er-Razzak (1442), the Venetian Niccolò de' Conti as told to Poggio Bracciolini (c. 1440), the Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin of Tver (c. 1466 to 1472, translated by Count Wielhorski), and Hieronimo di Santo Stefano. Almost all of it concerns India. The Tartar material is mainly Nikitin's opening pages, where he sails down the Volga past Kazan, the Horde and Sarai and is robbed by Tatars near Astrakhan, plus editorial footnotes and one remark in Poggio's Conti narrative.
How they knew
Part eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
For Nikitin and his translator, the Tatars of the Volga khanates (Kazan, Astrakhan, the Great Horde) and a Daghestan tribe, the Kaitaks. For Poggio, 'Tartars' is the modern name for the northern Scythians of Asia. The editor's notes use 'Uzbeck Tartars' for Central Asia.
Why read it
Nikitin gives a rare Russian merchant's view of the Volga in the last years of the Golden Horde's successor states, when Tatar khans still controlled the river route to the Caspian.
Watch out
Nikitin's Tatar passages are short, and the translator admits parts of the Russian text are obscure. The vivid details about Sarai and the Horde are in 1857 footnotes, not in Nikitin's own words.
Running the gauntlet past Tatar Astrakhan by moonlight
Editorial contextNikitin sails down the Volga past Kazan, the Horde and Sarai, then meets three Tatars who warn of a sultan watching for merchants. Paid to guide the party around Astrakhan, they betray it to the khan ('zar'), and the Russian boats are chased. It is a first-person glimpse of the Volga still ruled by Tatar khanates.
We passed unmolested through Kazan, the Orda, Ooslan, Sarai, and Berekezany, and we entered the river Buzan. Here we fell in with three godless Tartars, who told us false tidings … We sailed by Astrakhan at moonlight. The zar perceived us, and at once the Tartars cried : " Do not fly ;" and the zar ordered the whole orda to chase us.
Afanasy Nikitin (translated by Count Wielhorski, 1857)
Sarai, once the Horde's capital, now a heap of stones
Editorial contextA footnote to Nikitin's route explains that Sarai, on the Akhtuba branch of the Volga, had been the capital of the Golden Horde, where Russian grand dukes went for two centuries to pay tribute. By the nineteenth century it was reduced to ruins. The note is a useful reminder that the Horde did have a real capital city, and that it was well known to Russian historians.
Sarai, now a heap of stones and the abode of loathsome reptiles, still observable on the borders of the Akhtouba, an arm of the Volga, forty-six miles from the sea, was at that time the capital of the great or Golden Orda, the famous residence of the great conqueror Baty, the place where, during two centuries, the Grand-Dukes of Russia had to pay their allegiance and their tribute
Editorial footnote in the 1857 Hakluyt Society edition (translator Count Wielhorski or editor R. H. Major)
Editorial contextConti, as retold by Poggio, describes Cathay, whose lord is the Great Khan, and its capital Cambaleschia (Khanbaliq, the Mongol name for Beijing): a square city with a central palace-fortress and four round corner fortresses linked by a vaulted wall. By Conti's time the Mongols had been expelled and a Ming emperor ruled there, so this is a mix of older fame and report.
The lord of this country is called the Great Khan, which in the language of the inhabitants means emperor. The principal city is called Cambaleschia. It is built in the form of a quadrangle, and is twenty-eight miles in circumference. In the centre is a very handsome and strong fortress, in which is situated the king's palace.
Niccolò de' Conti as recorded by Poggio Bracciolini (translated by J. Winter Jones, 1857)
Editorial contextAfter a storm wrecks one of their boats on the Caspian shore, Nikitin's party is seized and robbed by the Kaitaks near Tarki. The Shah of Shirvan then negotiates with the Kaitak prince, his brother-in-law, for their release. The footnote labels the Kaitaks a Tartar tribe of Daghestan, an example of how widely the label was stretched.
A storm having arisen at sea, the smaller boat was wrecked on shore. Then came the Kaitaks and made the whole party prisoners, and we came to Derbend
Afanasy Nikitin (translated by Count Wielhorski, 1857); tribe identified in editorial footnote
Editorial contextNikitin passes 'the Orda' on the Volga. The editor explains that 'orda' (horde) was the name for the seats of the Tartar kings who ruled Russia, and later for the successor kingdoms such as the Golden Horde and the Crimean Horde. It shows that 'horde' named a royal seat or state, not just a mob of riders.
This is the name formerly given to the seats of the Tartar kings that ruled over Russia ; subsequently it was also applied to the different kingdoms that sprung up from the immense empire of Baty in the beginning of the fifteenth century ; as the Zolotaia Orda (golden or great orda), Krimskaia Orda, the Ordea of Crimea, etc, etc.
Editorial footnote in the 1857 Hakluyt Society edition
Editorial contextThe humanist Poggio Bracciolini, writing up travellers' reports in Rome, describes an envoy from 'upper India' who crossed the lands of the northern Scythians on his way west. Poggio adds that these Scythians are now called Tartars, a typical Renaissance habit of mapping the new name onto the classical one.
Travelling through the country of the northern Scythians, who are called at the present day Tartars, and of the Parthians, for the space of several months, he arrived at length at the Euphrates ; then, having embarked at Tripoli, he proceeded to Venice, and afterwards to Florence.
Poggio Bracciolini (translated by J. Winter Jones, 1857)