Karakorum explained as 'the circle of the common people'
Editorial contextIn a footnote Zwick explains that kura means a circle, especially the ring of priests' huts around a Kalmyk temple tent, which served as the centre of a horde without a prince. He then derives the name of Genghis Khan's capital from the same word. It is a striking attempt to read an old imperial capital as a camp word.
Thus, the capital of the famous Genghis Khan, which is known in history under the name of Karakorum, was originally Chara Kura, or, in the Tartar dialect, Kara Kura, the circle of the Blacks, or common people.
About Mongols; Kalmyks
Keep in mind
This is Zwick's own etymology; the name is usually explained as Turkic qara qorum, 'black rocks'.
How a Kalmyk felt tent is put together
Editorial contextZwick opens a whole chapter on the Kalmyk tent, called gerr by its owners and kibitka by Russians. He describes a round lattice wall of willow laths, painted in red stripes, that folds flat in seven or eight sections, with poles rising to a wooden crown and the whole covered in large felts tied down with woollen girths. It is one of the most exact eyewitness descriptions of a steppe yurt in English before 1850.
The Calmuc huts or tents, in their own language gerr, and in the Russian kibitka, consist of a number of parts, which are easily put together, and taken to pieces. The tents are round, with a funnel-shaped roof, and a blunt point at the top of it. The frame-work, which is of willow laths about an inch thick, carved and painted in red stripes, forms a circular wall of lattice-work
About Kalmyks (Torgut horde of Prince Erdeni)
Russian towers built from Tatar rubble
Editorial contextThe few towers still standing among the ruins were not Tatar work at all, Zwick decided, but early Russian forts. His reasons are practical: the towers are held together with clay, while the Tatar buildings used a hard mortar, and they were patched together from broken pieces of fine older buildings, with glazed tiles stuck in any which way.
In the first place, they are built with clay cement, whereas the Tartars used a durable mortar; in the next place, they are evidently piled up from the ruins of handsome buildings, as may be seen by the glazed tiles which are stuck on at random, without any respect to the glazed side.
About Golden Horde Tatars; early Russian settlers
Keep in mind
The judgement that the towers are Russian is Zwick's own reading of the masonry.
Glazed brick and blue mosaic at Sarai
Editorial contextFrom the same ruins Zwick describes walls of glazed, pointed brick decorated with coloured mosaic on a deep blue ground, which he compares to the building styles of the Turks and Saracens from the Near East to Egypt and Spain. He says the same was true at 'Seray' further up the river. On the next page he describes a six-foot panel of this work, with a white inscription 'in the Tartarian language', reused in the wall of a peasant's cottage.
We perceived, from the ruins of this city, that here as well as at Seray, … walls were built of glazed brick and pointed, and mosaic work of various colours was employed in decoration here, as throughout the ancient Turkish, Tartar, and Saracen tribes, in the East, in Egypt, and Spain. The ground is usually deep blue, with other colours let in.
About Golden Horde Tatars
Keep in mind
The omitted words call Seray the capital of an empire whose name is garbled in the OCR.
A Kalmyk prince with a wooden castle and a piano
Editorial contextNot every Kalmyk lord lived in a tent. Prince Sered-Dscheh, a colonel in the Russian army, had a large wooden castle on the left bank of the Volga, fortified with Russian-style outworks after the Napoleonic wars and furnished with mahogany, mirrors, clocks, a billiard table and a piano. Even so, he held court out on the steppe for part of the summer.
He resides on the left bank of the Volga, in a large wooden castle, thirty paces in front, which he fortified with Russian outworks when he returned from the French war … His castle is well fitted up in the interior, and contains a number of saloons, with mahogany furniture, lustres, mirrors, a billiard table, piano-forte, a number of clocks, &c.
About Kalmyks (Khoshut horde of Prince Sered-Dscheh)
Grave mounds and brick foundations on the steppe
Editorial contextCrossing the steppe, Zwick stopped at kurgans, the grave mounds Russians call by that name. He thinks they come from many ages and peoples, but credits most of them to the Tartars of the medieval Volga empire whose ruined cities he names, and on the next page notes two mounds holding the remains of a square brick building.
Such tumuli are every where to be found on the steppes, and most plentifully on the willowy shores of the Volga … They probably belong to different ages, and different races of men, but the majority are undoubtedly to be ascribed to the Tartars … I saw a great number of these hillocks, near the ruins of their principal cities Serag and Tschigis.
About Golden Horde Tatars (as Zwick supposes), and older peoples
Keep in mind
The dating and attribution of the mounds are Zwick's guesses; the omitted words name the empire in a garbled form ('Eamschatkan' in the OCR, apparently for Kipchak).
Old wells lined with pine and tile
Editorial contextAt the 'Pine-tree Wells' in a treeless steppe, Zwick guessed the name came from a time when the Tartars had boarded the wells with pine floated down the Volga from the north. Bits of tile lay in the sand, and nearby grave mounds showed traces of masonry. He adds that Kalmyk and Tatar tradition credited such works to Janibeg Khan, who ruled from the Akhtuba and died in 1357.
Probably these wells were so called by the Calmucs, because they had been in former times boarded at the sides with pine by the Tartars, and the wood for the purpose might have been brought on the Volga from northern Russia, as it is at this day. Fragments of tiles are still to be found in the sand, and appear also to have been used in forming the wells.
About Golden Horde Tatars (by Kalmyk tradition)
Keep in mind
The explanation of the name is Zwick's guess; the credit to Janibeg is local tradition he heard.
A chapel mortared with a prince's ashes
Editorial contextThe Kalmyks did build in stone and wood, for their dead nobles. Zwick visited a small memorial chapel (zaza) for the late Torgut prince Sandschi-Ubaschi: a wooden room about four paces square on a stone base, reached by steps, with a flat roof and a small tower. He was told that the prince's ashes had been mixed into its mortar and whitewash.
This chapel was erected to the memory of the late Torgud Prince Sandschi-Ubaschi, father of the Prince Zerren Ubaschi, and his ashes, as the Calmucs informed me, are mixed with the mortar which cements and whitens the building. The foundation of this edifice is of stone, upon which is erected a wooden chapel, with steps up to it.
About Kalmyks (Torguts)
Keep in mind
The ashes in the mortar is what the Kalmyks told him.
Mountain Tatars who move house by cart
Editorial contextZwick visited a small Tatar clan that had once been vassals of the Kalmyks and were now Russian crown subjects. Their felt huts were just like Kalmyk ones, but when they moved they carried their women and children in wooden huts set on carts (arbas). He also describes the women's face cloth fastened just under the eyes.
The women wear full cotton dresses, and a cloth hanging from the top of the head to the waist behind, and fastened in front just under the eyes, so as to cover the face. Their manner of removing from one place to another with their herds, differs from the Calmucs, in as much as they make use of a great many arbas, upon which wooden huts are placed
About Cunduran-Mangut or 'Mountain Tartars' (a Nogai-type Tatar clan)
Left on the steppe for the dogs
Editorial contextZwick found the body of a Kalmyk woman laid out in furs under a felt, with wooden cups and utensils beside her. This, he says, was the normal way of disposing of commoners, whose bodies were eaten by dogs and vultures; the dogs that fed on them were then driven off as unclean. Princes and Lamas, by contrast, were cremated with ceremony, and their ashes mixed with mortar for a chapel or tomb.
At some distance from our tent, we found the corpse of a Calmuc woman, laid out in a fur dress, and covered with coarse felt. Wooden drinking vessels, and other unimportant utensils, were laid by her side. This is the common way of disposing of the dead, amongst the Calmucs of inferior rank, so that the bodies are usually devoured by dogs and vultures.
About Kalmyks
A whole horde on the move
Editorial contextThe missionaries travelled with Erdeni's horde as it moved camp. The column was more than a verst wide: strings of camels carrying the tents, goods and children in baskets, then the herds. No one walked; even mothers with babies rode. Zwick describes the migration as a festive show at which families displayed their best clothes and carpets.
The main body of this moving multitude extended more than a verst in breadth, and consisted of single columns of camels, bearing tents, household goods, and children, who were stowed in baskets; next followed troops of horses, cattle and sheep … Nobody performs a migration on foot … we even saw mothers on horseback with infants, who were hardly out of the cradle
About Kalmyks (Torgut horde of Prince Erdeni)
Sour milk for the poor, meat for princes, brick tea for all
Editorial contextIn summer the Kalmyks lived almost entirely on sour milk: mare's milk (tschigan) for the rich, cow's milk for the poor. Only the prince and great men ate meat, because the herds were their whole wealth. Their tea came from China by way of Siberia as hard cakes of coarse leaves and stalks, boiled with butter or sheep's-tail fat and salt.
None but the Prince, and the great men, had flesh in their kettles, for the whole wealth of the nation consists in their flocks and herds, and they are forced to use them sparingly. In winter, when they are short of milk, they buy meal from the Russians who inhabit the shores of the Volga
About Kalmyks
Keep in mind
The OCR on this page is badly garbled; check the scan.
Our Tartars: the missionaries' drivers
Editorial contextThe 'Tartars' who appear on almost every page of the journey are the two hired drivers of the missionaries' carts, not the Kalmyks of the title. Both spoke Russian; the elder, Andre, also spoke Kalmyk and had been baptised in the Orthodox Church, while the younger was a Muslim. Later Zwick notes that Andre spoke the dialect of the Kazan Tatars.
To transport our copies of Scripture, which were packed in chests, we bought a couple of two-wheeled Tartarian carts, (called arba,) with the requisite horses and tackle, and hired two Tartars as drivers. They both understood Russian, and Andra, the elder of the two, was acquainted with the Calmuc tongue also. He had been baptized into the Greek Church, in his youth ; the other was a Mahometan.
About Volga Tatars
A Tatar cart turned to stone
Editorial contextNear the same wells the Kalmyks told Zwick they had once cleared an old well and found a Tatar cart (arba) turned to stone, and he heard of similar finds in the Kuma marshes. He did not see it himself, and offers a sober explanation: salty soil hardens wood, as the Volga fishermen knew from their salting tubs.
In an old well in this neighbourhood, which the Calmucs cleared out some years ago, they are said to have found a Tartar arba in a state of petrifaction. Similar cases, as we were elsewhere told, have been found in the Kuma Morass. That the saltness of the soil may have contributed to the preservation of the wood is the more probable
About Kalmyks; Tatars
Keep in mind
Hearsay; Zwick reports it and explains it but did not see the cart.
Priest John and the Tartar princes
Editorial contextZwick's historical introduction repeats the medieval story of Prester John: a certain Master Philip told Pope Alexander III of marvels in Tartary and of the Christian priest-king there, and the Pope sent a letter east in 1177. Zwick is summarising older histories, not reporting anything he saw.
The first intelligence of the Tartarian Princes at Karakorum, was brought to Alexander the Third, by one "Master Philip," … who professed to have travelled in Tartary, and added many marvels of the might and dominion of Priest John, the head of the church at that place.
About 'Tartarian princes' of Inner Asia
Keep in mind
Second-hand history. Karakorum was not founded until the 1220s, so placing Priest John there in 1177 is Zwick's anachronism.