Miechowita's Treatise on the Two Sarmatias (1517)
The first systematic Western account of the Tatar hordes, written in Kraków from prisoners' and merchants' reports.
Full title Treatise on the Two Sarmatias, Asian and European, and on what they contain
Maciej Miechowita (Matthias of Miechów), Kraków physician and historian
Maciej Miechowita (Matthias of Miechów), a Kraków physician and historian, never travelled east. He questioned Tatar and Muscovite prisoners and merchants in Kraków and printed this Latin treatise in 1517. Book I describes the Tatar hordes (the Golden Horde beyond the Volga, Perekop, Kazan, the Nogais) and their origins, and rejects the Riphean mountains of classical geography. Herberstein and most later sixteenth-century writers drew on it. The atlas does not hold the text: the corpus knows a 1518 Augsburg copy only as digital image manifests, and nothing is stored.
- How they knew
- From informants
- Who “Tartar” means here
- The Tatar hordes of the Volga steppe, Perekop in Crimea, Kazan and the Nogai steppe, as reported to him. The card also lists Kosan and a reported Chagatai.
- Why read it
- It is the foundation of Renaissance Latin writing on the Tatars and on Asian Sarmatia, and the direct source of many later authors.
- Watch out
- Everything is second-hand, it argues against Ptolemy, and later authors copied it without saying so. The atlas quotes nothing from it.
What it says
No quotes from this one yet. Its text is out of reach for now, or the scan could not be read.
The fine print
How we know
informant testimony Written down from what informants reported.
informant testimony and compilation: Miechowita never travelled east but interrogated Tatar and Muscovite prisoners and merchants in Kraków; book I is the first systematic Western account of the Tatar hordes (Golden Horde, Perekop, Kazan, Nogai) and of their origin, and rejects the Riphean mountains of classical geography
Research notes
- Second-hand information from informants; polemical against Ptolemy; later authors copy it silently. Modern edition Anninskii 1936 (Latin/Russian).
- Not found on Internet Archive under Latin spellings; located via Europeana.
Why it matters
The foundational Renaissance Latin description of the Tatar hordes and of 'Asian Sarmatia', the direct source for Herberstein, Guagnini and most sixteenth-century writing on Tartary; translated into German 1518, Polish 1535, Italian (Ramusio vol. II).
Places named
Asian Sarmatia (Volga, Don, Caspian, Kazan, Astrakhan, Perekop/Crimea, Nogai steppe, Yugra); European Sarmatia (Poland, Lithuania, Muscovy)
Peoples named
Tatars (Zavolha/Golden Horde, Perekop, Kazan, Nogai, Kosan); Muscovy; Lithuania; Yugra; Chagatai (reported); Turks