A Jewish toll-keeper asks if anyone is left in Lithuania
Editorial contextAt Perekop, the single gate into the Crimea, Michalo met a Jewish toll collector who watched endless columns of Lithuanian captives being brought in and asked whether there were still any people left in their lands, and where so many came from. Michalo then describes how the stronger male captives were mutilated, branded and chained to work by day and locked up by night, while young women were kept for pleasure.
So a certain Jew there in Taurica, in charge of the toll at its one and only gate, and always seeing an innumerable multitude of our people brought in as captives, asked us whether there were still any people left in our lands or not, and where so great a supply of mortals came from.
Working translation
Original wording
Unde Iudeus quidam ibi in Taurica ad portam eius unicam illam, teloneo praesidens & innumeram semper hominum nostrorum captivorum multitudinem importari illuc cernens, quaerebat ex nobis utrum adhuc homines in regionibus nostris supersint, nec ne, & unde hic tantae mortalium copiae.
About Crimean Tatars; Lithuanian and Ruthenian captives
Judges who are clerics, and no one carries a sword at home
Editorial contextMichalo contrasts Tatar order with Lithuanian lawlessness: among the Tatars no one overeats and no one starves, there are no beggars, thieves, false witnesses or corrupt judges, and it is forbidden to carry a sword while travelling inside their land. Justice is given free by religious judges (qadis), with no fee taken, and everyone from nobles to commoners lives under one law and the same dress and food.
So there is no need among them for anyone to worry anxiously about guarding his goods, or to load himself with weapons at home for his private defence. For it is outrageous and unlawful for anyone travelling within their land to carry a weapon.
Working translation
Original wording
Unde minime opus est apud eos angi quenquam sollicita rerum suarum custodia, nec se armis onerare domi ad privatam sui defensionem. Nam iter habenti intra regionem eorum ferre telum, enorme & illicitum est.
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
Idealised for moral contrast with Lithuania.
Eighty blows for a taste of wine
Editorial contextAttacking drunkenness in Lithuania, Michalo says more Lithuanians are executed for theft and robbery in a single month in one district than in one or two hundred years across all the Tatar and Muscovite lands where drink is forbidden. Among the Tatars, anyone who so much as tastes wine gets eighty blows with a stick and a fine of as many coins.
Certainly among the Tartars, whoever has merely tasted wine is struck eighty blows with the cudgel and fined as many coins.
Working translation
Original wording
Certe apud Tartaros, qui modo vinum gustaverit, is & octoginta fustuarijs ictibus percutitur, & totidem nummis multatur.
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
Eighty lashes is the Islamic penalty for drinking; Michalo states the law, not a case he saw.
Forty brothers, one father: polygamy and a Tatar village
Editorial contextMichalo argues that polygamy is why the Perekop Tatars, so often slaughtered by the Lithuanians, keep springing back. He cites a troop of forty full brothers in the army of Sultan Islam Giray, all sons of one Omeldesz by wives and concubines within little more than a year, and a Tatar village on the Vaka river in Lithuania still called 'Forty Tartars', that is, forty brothers. He adds that both Tatars and Muscovites keep their women without freedom.
this multitude of wives is why our neighbours the Perekop Tartars, so often cut down by us to the last man, spring up again. Not long ago in the forces of Sultan Islam there were forty brothers, his comrades, forty sons at once of a certain Omeldesz
Working translation
Original wording
haec multitudo uxorum facit ut vicini nostri Tartari Precopenses toties a nobis ad internecionem caesi, rursum repullulascant. nec ita pridem in copijs Oslam Soltani fuerunt 40. fratres collectanei eius, cuiusdam Omeldesz 40. filij simul
About Crimean Tatars; Lithuanian Tatars
The Tatars' mocking war cry: 'John, you sleep, I tie you up'
Editorial contextMichalo complains that Lithuanian soldiers idle in taverns while Muscovite and Tatar frontier troops stand watch in turns, and that the Tatars mock Lithuanian carelessness with a well-known jibe: 'John, you sleep; I am binding you.' He adds that Lithuania even pays yearly gifts to the Perekop khan.
our enemies the Tartars mock this lazy carelessness of ours with their usual jibe, falling upon us when we lie buried in sleep after our feasting, with these words: 'John, you sleep; I, tying you up...'
Working translation
Original wording
taxant hanc nostram supinam securitatem, hostes nostri Tartari, usitato suo scommate, cum nos post comessationes somno sepultos, his secum verbis invadunt: Iohannes tu dormis, ego te vinciens
About Crimean Tatars
Keep in mind
The jibe ends on the next page (n36, p. 30) with 'laboro' ('I am at work tying you up'); the quote stops at the page break.
Tatar religion: one God, Christ a prophet, prayer morning to night
Editorial contextMichalo summarises Tatar Islam as a Christian of his day understood it: a law shared with the Turks and other 'Saracens', professing one simple God, Christ as holy prophet and final judge born of a virgin but not crucified, and circumcision at the age Ishmael was circumcised. On the next page he praises their prayer morning, afternoon and evening, their fasting and their alms, and says they laugh at Christian fasts and churches.
It professes one simple God, and believes Christ to be a holy Prophet and the last judge of the world, born of a pure Virgin, but not to have suffered. It observes circumcision.
Working translation
Original wording
Deum unicum & simplicem profitetur, Christum vero, sanctum Prophetam & iudicem mundi postremum, Virgine pura natum, sed non passum credit. Circumcisionem observat.
About Crimean Tatars (Muslims)
Proud of their Scythian descent and divided into hordes
Editorial contextThe opening of the work: the Tartars, though Lithuanians think them barbarous and poor, pride themselves on their restraint and on the antiquity of their 'Scythian' race, which they claim never served anyone, and are divided into hordes ('Ordas, that is, nations'). Michalo lists the Perekop (Crimean) Tatars and their Budjak neighbours, the Nogai, the Volga horde (homeland of Batu, 'once ruler of the Muscovites and all Ruthenians'), Kazan, Kazakh, Bukhara and Samarkand hordes, and links their twelve rulers to the twelve princes promised to Ishmael.
Although the Tartars are held by us to be barbarous and poor, they nevertheless glory in the restraint of their life and in the antiquity of their Scythian race, asserting that it is a seed … that has never served anyone … and that it is now divided into various Hordes, that is, nations.
Working translation
Original wording
Etsi Tartari, barbari & inopes habeantur a nobis, gloriantur tamen continentia vitae, & antiquitate gentis suae Scythicae, asseverantes eam semen esse … nemini servivisse unquam … & varias nunc divisam in Ordas, id est, nationes.
About Tatars (Crimean, Nogai, Volga and other hordes)
Keep in mind
The OCR is damaged at 'semen esse'; the omitted words are illegible.
The Giray khans: a dynasty 'planted' by Lithuania
Editorial contextMichalo claims the Crimean Christians, weak and luxurious, invited a band of Tartars from the Volga horde to defend them, and that this Tatar power grew until it took the peninsula. He adds that the Crimean khans came from Lithuania: the last, 'Aczkirei' (Haci Giray), born near Trakai and sent by Grand Duke Vytautas to rule, whose descendants all bear the name Giray. He calls the dynasty a stock 'planted there by the brave right hand of Your Majesty's ancestors' that now repays Lithuania with endless trouble.
The last of the khans from Lithuania, Aczkirei, was born near Trakai and sent from here by the late Vytautas to that throne; ruling there in Taurica he fathered a son, Mengli Giray. … This, then, is the stock of the Girays, planted there by the strong right hand of Your Majesty's ancestors
Working translation
Original wording
Ultimus vero ex Lituania Caesarum Aczkirei, hic apud Troki natus, & hinc a divo Withowdo ad imperium illud missus, genuit imperans ibi in Taurica filium Menglikirei. … Haec igitur est Kireorum stirps, dextra forti progenitorum S. Mtis Vestrae ibi plantata
About Crimean Tatars; the Giray dynasty
Keep in mind
Partly true: Haci Giray, founder of the khanate, did spend time in Lithuania and had Lithuanian backing, but the claim of Lithuanian birth and appointment is a Lithuanian patriotic version.