that the original Sarai of Batu was at Selitrennoye
Gorodok, and that the _New Sarai_ of Janibek was established by him, or by
his father Uzbeg in his latter days, on the upper Akhtuba? Pegolotti
having carried his merchant from Tana (Azov) to Gittarchan (Astrakhan),
takes him _one day_ by river to Sara, and from Sara to _Saracanco_, also
by river, eight days more. (_Cathay_, p. 287.) In the work quoted I have
taken Saracanco for Saraichik, on the Yaik. But it was possibly the Upper
or New Sarai on the Akhtuba. Ibn Batuta, marching on the frozen river,
reached Sarai in three days from Astrakhan. This could not have been at
Tzarev, 200 miles off.
In corroboration (_quantum valeat_) of my suggestion that there must have
been two Sarais near the Volga, Professor Bruun of Odessa points to the
fact that Fra Mauro's map presents _two_ cities of Sarai on the Akhtuba;
only the Sarai of Janibeg is with him no longer _New_ Sarai, but _Great_
Sarai.
The use of the latter name suggests the possibility that in the
_Saracanco_ of Pegolotti the latter half of the name may be the Mongol
_Kunk_ "Great." (See _Pavet de Courteille_, p. 439.)
Professor Bruun also draws attention to the impossibility of Ibn Batuta's
travelling from Astrakhan to Tzarev in three days, an argument which had
already occurred to me and been inserted above.
[The Empire of Kipchak founded after the Mongol Conquest of 1224, included
also parts of Siberia and Khwarizm; it survived nominally until
1502.--H. C.]
(_Four Years of Archaeological Researches among the Ruins of Sarai_ [in
Russian] by M. Gregorieff [who appears to have also published a pamphlet
specially on the site, but this has not been available]; _Historisch-
geographische Darstellung des Stromsystems der Wolga, von Ferd. Heinr.
Mueller_, Berlin, 1839, 568-577; _Ibn. Bat._ II. 447; _Not. et Extraits_,
XIII. i. 286; _Pallas, Voyages; Cathay_, 231, etc.; _Erdmann, Numi
Asiatici_, pp. 362 seqq.; _Arabs._ I. p. 381.)
NOTE 2.--BOLGHAR, our author's Bolgara, was the capital of the region
sometimes called Great Bulgaria, by Abulfeda _Inner Bulgaria_, and stood a
few miles from the left bank of the Volga, in latitude about 54 deg. 54', and
90 miles below Kazan. The old Arab writers regarded it as nearly the limit
of the habitable world, and told wonders of the cold, the brief summer
nights, and the fossil ivory that was found in its vicinity. This was
exported, and with peltry, wax, honey, hazel-nuts
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