HKB
Zychi chiamati Circassi,” and a great number of other references to ancient and mediæval use of the name will be found in D’Avezac’s Essay, so often quoted (p. 497).
GOTHIA is the southern coast of the Crimea from Sudak to Balaklava and the mountains north of the latter, then still occupied by a tribe of the Goths. The Genoese officer who governed this coast in the 15th century bore the title of Capitanus Gotiae; and a remnant of the tribe still survived, maintaining their Teutonic speech, to the middle of the 16th century, when Busbeck, the emperor’s ambassador to the Porte, fell in with two of them, from whom he derived a small vocabulary and other particulars. (Busbequii Opera, 1660, p. 321 seqq.; D’Avezac, pp. 498–499; Heyd, II. 123 seqq.; Cathay, pp. 200–201.)
GAZARIA, the Crimea and part of the northern shore of the Sea of Azov, formerly occupied by the Khazars, a people whom Klaproth endeavours to prove to have been of Finnish race. When the Genoese held their settlements on the Crimean coast the Board at Genoa which administered the affairs of these colonies was called The Office of Gazaria.
NOTE 2.—The real list of the “Kings of the Ponent,” or Khans of the Golden Horde, down to the time of Polo’s narrative, runs thus: BATU, Sartaḳ, Ulagchi (these two almost nominal), BARKA, MANGKU TIMUR, TUDAI MANGKU, Tulabugha, Tuktuka or TOKTAI. Polo here omits Tulabugha (though he mentions him below in ch. xxix.), and introduces before Batu, as a great and powerful conqueror, the founder of the empire, a prince whom he calls Sain. This is in fact Batu himself, the leader of the great Tartar invasion of Europe (1240–1242), whom he has split into two kings. Batu bore the surname of Sain Khan, or “the Good Prince,” by which name he is mentioned, e.g., in Makrizi (Quatremère’s Trans. II. 45), also in Wassáf (Hammer’s Trans. pp. 29–30). Plano Carpini’s account of him is worth quoting: “Hominibus quidem ejus satis benignus; timetur tamen valde ab iis; sed crudelissimus est in pugnâ; sagax est multum; et etiam astutissimus in bello, quia longo tempore jam pugnavit.” This Good Prince was indeed crudelissimus in pugnâ. At Moscow he ordered a general massacre, and 270,000 right ears are said to have been laid before him in testimony to its accomplishment. It is odd enough that a mistake like that in the text is not confined to Polo. The chronicle of Kazan, according to a Russian writer, makes Sain succeed Batu. (Carpini, p. 746; J. As. sér. IV. tom. xvii. p. 109; Büsching, V. 493; also Golden Horde, p. 142, note.)
Batu himself, in the great invasion of the West, was with the southern host in Hungary; the northern army which fought at Liegnitz was under Baidar, a son of Chaghatai.
According to the Masálak-al-Absár, the territory of Kipchak, over which this dynasty ruled, extended in length from the Sea of Istambul to the River Irtish, a journey of 6 months, and in breadth from Bolghar to the Iron Gates, 4 (?) months’ journey. A second traveller, quoted in the same work, says the empire extended from the Iron Gates to Yughra (see p. 483 supra), and from the Irtish to the country of the Nemej. The last term is very curious, being the Russian Niemicz, “Dumb,” a term which in Russia is used as a proper name of the Germans; a people, to wit, unable to speak Slavonic. (N. et Ex. XIII. i. 282, 284.)