The Khans' graves upset a traveller's ideas
Editorial contextKohl had been taught to think of the Khans as destroyers who burned Moscow and terrorised Vilna and Warsaw. In their burial ground he found neat white marble monuments among vines, shrubs and flowers, with thoughtful inscriptions, and he concluded that 'the records of history' were imperfect.
In the burial-place of the Khans I found many memorials strikingly at variance with our notions of these barbarians; so many traces of humanity and piety, that I felt more strongly than ever, how imperfect are the records of history.
About Crimean Khans (Giray dynasty)
Moscow's mosque, rebuilt by a Tatar merchant
Editorial contextKohl visited Moscow's small mosque in the Tatar quarter. Its predecessor burned in the fire of 1812, and the poor congregation of about 120 Tatars could not rebuild until a wealthy Tatar paid for new walls. When Kohl saw it, it still had only a temporary roof and bare walls, and Russians had stolen one of its prized carpets.
The little building erected here to the honour of Allah … had a predecessor which in 1812 met with the same fate from the French fire, in which so many Russian churches shared. The flock were long unable to get together the necessary funds for a new temple, till about twelve years ago, when a wealthy Tartar erected the walls that are now standing.
About Tatars of Moscow (Sunni Muslims)
Kurgans built by others, dug up by everyone
Editorial contextDescribing the Crimean gold in the Hermitage, Kohl credits the southern burial mounds to the Greeks of Taurida and older peoples of the Caucasus and Siberia. The Tartars appear not as builders but as one of many later peoples, with Goths, Huns and Cossacks, who dug into the kurgans and melted down the treasure.
the countless graves of the Greeks of Taurus, and of the original inhabitants of the Caucasus and Siberia, have been objects of zealous research … the Tartars and the Cossacks of the present day, have plundered them, and melted down the treasures found therein. The greater part of the kurgans and mohilos of South Russia, have been long since burrowed like rabbit-warrens
About Tatars among later plunderers of ancient graves
Keep in mind
The list of plunderers ('Alarics' and a garbled name, probably Huns) is rhetorical.
Shop songs about Khans and the fall of Kazan
Editorial contextHearing singing from a grocer's shop in Yalta, Kohl went in and sat on an apple chest until late at night while two Tatars, an Armenian and a Circassian sang and explained their songs. Besides love songs, some were historical: about Khan Krym Giray, Khan Devlet Giray, the Russian conquest of Crimea and the taking of Kazan. Tatar history lived on in popular song.
Love formed, as usual, the principal theme, but some, to my surprise, were on historical subjects. One treated of Krim-Gerei, the last distinguished Khan of the Crimea, the friend of the well known French ambassador, Baron de Tott, another of Khan Devlet-Gerei, a third of the conquest of the Crimea by the Russians, a fourth of the taking of Kasan
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
Kohl relied on the singers' own explanations of the words.
OCR normalized; a dash in the original replaced by a comma.
'No Tartar has more than one wife'
Editorial contextSheltering from rain with a Tatar named Ali Mustapha Oglu, Kohl asked a guest how many wives he had. The answer was firm: one, as for every decent Tatar. The same man then told Kohl about his village's lawsuit against a Russian landowner who had turned a grant of 700 acres into 20,000 by enclosing Tatar woods and meadows.
We inquired of him how many wives he had, and his answer was, “Of course only one! No Tartar has more than one wife, except such as are rascals;” so that it appears Mahomet's indulgent permission to have four is made but little use of.
About Crimean Tatars
A note on this quote
OCR normalized; dashes in the original replaced by commas.
A stone for a man who lifted her veil
Editorial contextAt Alupka, beside Count Vorontsov's new palace, Kohl saw the Tatar village with a handsome new mosque the count had built 'for his Tartars'. When one of Kohl's companions lifted a passing Tatar woman's veil, she threw a great stone at him, and Kohl says they all took the lesson.
On the top of one stands the handsome new mosque, built by Count W. for his Tartars. One of our party had the temerity to lift the corner of the veil of a Tartar woman who was passing, to get a peep at her face … for the lady took up a great stone and hurled it at him
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
'Count W.' is Count Mikhail Vorontsov, governor-general of New Russia.
Leather masters and 'dressing-gown Tartars'
Editorial contextAmong the street cries of St Petersburg Kohl heard 'Kazan boots' and 'Bukhara dressing-gowns'. He credits Mongols and Tatars with founding almost every branch of Russian leatherwork, from Moscow's embroidered caps and belts to Kazan's morocco boots, and says Tatar sellers of silk robes were nicknamed 'dressing-gown Tartars'.
The Mongolians and Tartars are distinguished for their skill in the preparation of leather, and almost every branch of manufacture connected with this article in Russia has had its origin from them … Dressing-gowns are almost the only things that do not come through Russian hands, but from those of the Tartar makers … where they are often called “dressing-gown Tartars.”
About Tatars (from Kazan and Central Asia) trading in the capital
Keep in mind
The claim that Russian leatherwork originated with the Tatars is Kohl's generalisation.
Bakhchysarai, 'seraglio of gardens'
Editorial contextKohl explains the town's name from the Tatar word for garden and places the Crimean Khanate in history as the last surviving piece of the Mongol empire in Europe. It shows how a nineteenth century writer linked the Crimean Tatars back to the Mongols.
The word “Baktsha,” signifies in the Tartar language “garden” and the name of Baktshiserai would, therefore, signify “seraglio of gardens.” This city was for centuries the capital of the remarkable state which formed the last fragment of the great Mongolian empire in Europe
About Crimean Tatars; the Crimean Khanate
Moscow as a 'Tartar Rome'
Editorial contextKohl opens his chapter on Moscow's churches with Madame de Staël's famous exclamation on first seeing the city: 'Voilà Rome Tatare'. It shows how Western Europeans used 'Tartar' as shorthand for Moscow's un-European look.
'Voilà Rome Tatare' means 'There is a Tartar Rome'.
Working translation
Original wording
Madame de Staël, when she beheld Moscow … turned to her companions and exclaimed, “Voilà Rome Tatare.” The Russians themselves like to compare their city to that world subduer
About Tartars as a byword for the Asiatic side of Russia
Keep in mind
An anecdote repeated from De Staël's memoir, not Kohl's observation.
A roofless tomb, a walled-up tomb, a vine for a sinner
Editorial contextKohl retells the stories behind several Khans' tombs: one left roofless so the dead ruler could look up at heaven, one walled up because its occupant felt unworthy of God's sunlight, and one with a vine planted over the head so that a Khan who bore little fruit in life might do better in death. Another Khan asked to be buried under the mosque eaves so rain could wash away his sins.
without a roof, because “he considered the Heavens so beautiful and sublime, that even from his grave he would wish to look towards the firmament, the abode of God.” Another had had his tomb entirely walled up, because, as the inscription ran, “he did not feel himself worthy to be shone on by the least ray of God's sun.”
About Crimean Khans (Giray dynasty)
Keep in mind
Kohl could not read the Arabic or Turkish inscriptions himself; these explanations were presumably given by guides and read like local tradition.