In Howorth’s _History of the Mongols_, 1877 (the one volume as yet published), a ponderous book of 743 pages, replete with the most erudite information, but unhappily unprovided with any guide to its contents, will be found at page 700, a long note, in which admission is made that the word Tartar has given rise to much discussion; and whilst the Russian and Byzantine authors, the Bohemian chronicler Dalemil, Ivo of Narbonne, and Thomas of Spalatro, are cited in favour of the use of Tatar, other authorities are quoted to establish a respectable pedigree for Tartar.—ED.
(2.) “Seat him on white felt, and raise him in it three times.”—The raising to the White Felt is similarly described by Giovanni dal Piano di Carpine (_Recueil de Voy. et de Mém._, etc.). Vambery (_Trav. in Central Asia_, 356) says that the being raised to the White Felt is still the exclusive privilege of the gray-beards of the tribe of Jagatai, and that the custom is kept up at the investiture of the khans of Khokand.—ED.
(1.) “Edil, which is a great river.”—The large river here called “Edil”, the Turkish for river, could have been no other than the Oxus or Amu-Darya. Orden cannot in any manner be identified with “Origens”, mentioned in chapter 25, where the author stayed when on his journey from Derbent to Joulad. That city of “Origens”, however, was also at an “Edil”, so that Schiltberger may possibly have confounded its name of Ornas, Arnatch, or Andjaz, with Ourjenj, equally situated on an “Edil” (in this instance not the Terek but the Oxus); the possessions of his iron lord extending from the neighbourhood of one river to that of the other.—BRUUN.
(2.) “A city called Haitzicherchen, which is a large city.”—Hadjy-tarkhan was situated on the right bank of the Volga, a few miles above the modern Astrahan, and near Itil, capital of the kingdom of the Khozars, an ancient city that had already disappeared in the time of Rubruquis, 1253, when Hadjy-tarkhan itself, it would appear, had scarcely begun to exist. Ibn Batouta (1331) notes having sojourned at the last-named place upon the occasion of his journey from Soudagh to Saraï; and Pegolotti says that travellers tarried there when on their way to China. The name appears as Azitarcan in the Catalan atlas, 1375, in which work, and in the splendid map of the brothers Pizzigani, we also find “Civitat de ssara”, or “Civitas Regio d’Sara”, the city of New Sarai, destroyed by Timour, and mentioned by Schiltberger. Its ruins are still to be seen near the town of Tzaref on the Akhtouba, an arm of the Volga. There was, however, the other Saraï, spoken of by Aboulfeda, Ibn Batouta, and Pegolotti, the remains of which are visible, also on the Akhtouba, but at a distance of two hundred miles to the south of Tzaref, and near Seliterny-gorodok, where numerous coins of the khan Uzbek have lately been found by a professor of the University of Kazan. No such coins have ever been picked up at Tzaref, which is not surprising, seeing that it was Janibek, the son of Uzbek, who transferred his residence from Saraï to the new city of that name, as Colonel Yule has already shown in one of his notes to Marco Polo (i, 6), and as I have since sought to prove in an article that was published at Kieff in 1876 (_Troudy 3go. Archeo. Syezda_).