Alessandro Guagnini of Verona served for decades as a soldier and commander in Poland-Lithuania, including at Vitebsk on the Muscovite frontier, and published this Latin description of 'European Sarmatia' at Krakow in 1578. It ends with a survey of the 'Campestrian' (steppe) Tatars divided into hordes: Kazan, Nogai, the Volga horde, Astrakhan, the Circassians and the Crimean or Perekop Tatars, followed by a chapter on Tatar customs, warfare and law. The corpus holds three scans of the Speyer 1581 edition and the 1768 Polish version. Much of the text is compiled from Herberstein, Miechowita and Polish chronicles, and Maciej Stryjkowski accused Guagnini of taking his work.
How they knew
Compiled from others
Who “Tartar” means here
The Turkic and Mongol-descended peoples east and south of Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy: Crimean (Perekop) Tatars above all, plus the Kazan, Astrakhan, Nogai and Volga hordes, Kalmyks, and remoter groups such as the Kirghiz; in the Polish history section, the Mongols of 1241.
Why read it
A compact sixteenth-century 'map in words' of the Tatar world as Poles saw it, which shows 'Tartary' as a set of hordes and khanates, some living in timber towns and fields, most in camps on the steppe.
Watch out
Largely second-hand and borrowed; Guagnini's own frontier experience is hard to separate from what he copied. Hostile framing is common, and the Latin OCR renders the long s as f and is often run together.
Samarkand, 'once the metropolis of all Tartary', now in ruins
Editorial contextGuagnini calls Samarkand a very large city that was once the capital of all Tartary but now lies disfigured by ruins, with many traces of antiquity, and the burial place of Tamerlane, 'that king of the Tartars' who, he repeats, carried the captured Ottoman sultan Bayezid round Asia in a cage bound with golden chains. For modern readers interested in 'lost Tartarian cities', this is a sixteenth-century writer naming a real capital and explaining its ruins by Timur's fallen empire.
Going eastward beyond Turkmenia, Samarkand is a very large city, which was once the metropolis of all Tartary but now lies disfigured by ruins, together with many traces of antiquity. In it is buried Tamerlane, that king of the Tartars, who once carried the Turkish emperor Bayezid … captive, bound in golden chains, in a cage like a bird through all Asia.
Working translation
Original wording
Sarmacandia Orientem versus procedendo, ultra Turcomaniam, urbs est amplissima, quae olim totius Tartariae Metropolis extitit, nunc vero ruinis deformis iacet, una cum multis antiquitatis vestigijs. In ea sepultus est Tamerlanes ille Tartarorum Rex, qui olim Turcarum Imperatorem Baiazetem … captivum aureis catenis vinctum, in cavea velut avem per totam Aziam circumvehebat.
Kazan Tatars farm and live in houses, unlike the steppe hordes
Editorial contextGuagnini opens his survey of the hordes with the Kazan Tatars, conquered by Moscow in 1552. He sets them apart from the 'Campestrian' Tatars because they till fields, live in houses rather than in the open steppe, and trade with Muscovites, Turks and other Tatars. At the end of the section he adds that the steppe Tatars proper 'have no houses' and live in bands across the plains.
These Kazan Tatars are cleverer and somewhat more civilised than the rest; they occupy themselves with farming and household affairs (in which they differ most from the others). They live in houses, not in the open steppe, and carry on trade and various exchanges with their neighbours the Muscovites, Turks and other Tatars
Working translation
Original wording
Hij Tartari Cazanenses reliquis ingeniosiores, & aliquantulum humaniores sunt, circa agriculturam, remque domesticam (qua a caeteris maxime differunt) versantur. In domibus non in campestribus degunt, mercimonia rerumque permutationes varias, cum vicinis Moschovitis, Turcis & caeteris Tartaris exercent
A Tatar curse: 'may you stay in one place like a Christian'
Editorial contextIn his chapter on Tatar customs Guagnini says they never stay long in one place and think doing so a great misfortune. When angry they curse their children with it: may you be stuck in one place forever like a Christian and smell your own stink. He adds that they measure the growth of their realm by how many provinces they have laid waste, since they live in the open fields.
(to) stay, and when angry they call down on their children this grievous evil, saying: 'O may you cling forever to one place, like a Christian, and smell your own stink.' … The more provinces they have laid waste, the larger, they say, they have made their realms (for they are used to living in the fields under the open sky).
Working translation
Original wording
morari, iratique liberis suis sic grave malum imprecantur, dicentes: O utinam eodem in loco perinde ut Christianus perpetuo haereres, propriumque foetorem olfaceres. … Quo vero plures provincias desolaverint, hoc se regna sua (in campis enim sub dio vivere solent) ampliora reddidisse dicunt.
The sentence begins on the previous page ('they think it a great misfortune to stay long in one place'). The curse also appears in Herberstein, so Guagnini may be copying.
The scan is too rough to double-check this quote by machine. Compare it with the page.
A magic head on a Tartar banner, breathing smoke at the Poles
Editorial contextIn the history of the Polish kings Guagnini tells how the Poles were winning against the Tartars until a Tartar standard-bearer came forward with a banner marked with a Greek X and, on top of the lance, a terrible head made by magic art that breathed foul smoke over the Poles. Bewitched, they lost their strength and were cut down 'like grain by hail', and the Tartars cut off every dead man's right ear and filled nine great sacks.
but a certain standard-bearer of the Tartars came forward with a banner on which was written a Greek letter in this manner, X; and above, on the point of the lance, was fixed a terrible head, made by magic art, spewing smoke and foul vapour from its mouth over the Poles, by which, as if infected with a plague and bewitched by the force of spells, they lost their strength.
Working translation
Original wording
sed quidam Vexillifer Tartarorum, cum vexillo, in quo erat scripta litera Graeca tali modo, X, processit: superius vero in cuspide hastae erat caput quoddam terribile infixum, arte magica confectum, ore fumum vaporemque sordidum in Polonos evomens: quo velut peste quadam infecti, & incantationum vi fascinati, vires amiserunt.
Alessandro Guagnini, Sarmatiae Europeae descriptio (Speyer, 1581), lives of the Polish kings, following Polish chroniclers
A battle legend from Polish chronicles (Dlugosz tells it of Legnica); Guagnini dates the reign from 1243 and does not name the battle. Some historians suspect a smoke or incendiary device behind the tale.
The fine print
How we know
claimed or disputed Authorship, date or authenticity is claimed or contested.
mixed: compilation from Herberstein, Miechowita, Kromer and Polish chronicles, with firsthand observation from Guagnini's service as a military commander at Vitebsk on the Muscovite-Tatar frontier; authorship disputed (Maciej Stryjkowski claimed the work)
Research notes
Plagiarism dispute with Stryjkowski documented in 1580; heavy borrowing from Herberstein and Miechowita. Later Polish editions (1611, 1768 in Zbiór dziejopisów) differ.
First edition Kraków 1578 located at the Lower Silesian Digital Library (edition 5021, imprint Wirzbięta 1578 confirmed in catalogue metadata; viewer not tested).
Late-sixteenth-century Latin synthesis of the Tatar hordes bordering Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy, with a section 'Tartariae descriptio'; widely reprinted (Polish translation 1611) and a major channel for the European image of Tartary.