Today I would like to acquaint the reader a little with the three-volume Northern and Eastern Tartaria by Nikolaas Witsen.
When this three-volume edition came out, a lot of solemn announcements of this event appeared on the network, but has anyone read the books themselves? I read it and did not share the joy. And that's why:
You should not look for similar pictures or texts about the great Tartary, the lost mighty state in this work. There will be no revelations, no hints.
Nikolaas Witsen.
Nikolaas Witsen, burgomaster of Amsterdam, very revered by Peter the Great, was a great lover of geography and history, a collector of all kinds of trinkets and data about different lands, who, judging by this book, did not disdain, judging by this book, both rumors and stories told by different sailors not even to him, but to the acquaintances of his acquaintances …
Nicholas Witsen Northern and Eastern Tartary.
The first volume is devoted to the description of various wild tribes living on the border with China, their way of life, language, clothing, wars, etc. All of them, although describing in detail, Witsen calls wild tartars, although it is difficult to trace at least some connection of some of the mentioned nomadic peoples with others, all of them are united by a barbarian way of life.
The second volume describes various peoples such as the Circassians, Georgians, Uzbeks, Mordvins, Kalmyks, Tungus and many others that are no longer recognizable by their names today.
Promotional video:
All sorts of wars with the Persians and Turks are described in detail, excerpts from the letters of Greek and Arab ambassadors and travelers are given, using the example of the prayer "Our Father", the dictionaries of these peoples.
Indeed, there is a lot of information, but if it were possible to analyze the frequency of repeated words on a computer, the words "wild" and "barbarians" would be at the very top of the list.
All nationalities, according to Witsen's version, are united by the following: they are nomads, Mongoloids, Muslims, good warriors, but the bow and arrows are the only thing they know, they do not even bother to cook food, but eat raw horse meat placed under the saddle in front of it.
There is no need to hope that someone will be intelligent enough to live a settled life - no, 90% are nomadic peoples. A very tiny percentage of mentions of those peoples who build houses from wood, at best, live in huts or dig holes under the cover of animal skins.
In terms of religion, the same thing is so bad that the percentage of Christians is absolutely insignificant, there are many Muslims, and the majority, and in general, not even one or the other, and not pagans and do not worship idols, but hang killed animals on trees and worship them.
All Witsen calls tartars, I have not found an explanation of the origin of this word.
In order not to be unfounded, I propose, for example, to read the section of the second volume about Crimea:
Nikolaas Witsen & quot; North and East Tartary & quot; Crimea (click to enlarge).
Crimeans are also rude barbarians, and they eat horse meat and even engage in the slave trade and, in general, descend from Jews or at least Mohammedans. All free time from the slave trade and eating horse meat is occupied by archery and theft.
And here, that rare luck, when you want to exclaim: “Aha! Gotcha! - the tartars drove out 460 years ago the people who were called the Polovtsians !!! Here, indeed, it is not clear who they are, they have never heard of such a people (irony). But, about the Polovtsians, there will be no further, then there will be again about eating horses with tartars …
Nikolaas Witsen & quot; North and East Tartary & quot; Crimea (click to enlarge).
And the name Perekop means, it turns out - to cross and not dug up. That is why the Perekop tartars and they cross the DIGGED (dug, dug even now the tongue does not dare to name) the Perekop ditch / strait doing this wrapped in sheep skins for the company with his khan. Eh, everything would be funnier, of course, if it were not so sad … Who dug this strait for tartare, of course, is not known to science. I dug myself.
With all the described savagery of tartare, it is mentioned that for some reason they have cities, but they still only wander.
On the third page is a drawing of Tartar Perekop. Only from the author you will not find information about who, why and when built all these defensive structures. And how this fits in with the wild tribes of archers is not clear.
Nikolaas Witsen & quot; North and East Tartary & quot; Perekop (click to enlarge).
And this is just a small example, everything else, believe me, is not a word, in the same spirit. Both volumes. The third volume is only a reference to the first two volumes.
How to treat all this?
Judging by the available information, this work was provided free of charge to many libraries in Russia. That it is sabotage or a noble gesture is not for me to judge. These golden tomes are intended rather for professional historians, for a normal person will not be able to understand such a jumble of "facts" that do not fit together in any way. Anyone writing a dissertation on the Udmurts or Tungus there, links to such an authoritative source will be extremely useful. Romantics expecting to find traces of the lost civilization of the Aryans in the book will feel sorry for their 200 euros.
In addition to the fact that the books were sent to all major libraries in Russia, everyone can find an electronic version on the Internet; very little has been written about the publication.
What is the reason for this silence? Most of the townsfolk, flattered by such a fashionable and heatedly discussed term "Tartary", expected from the book of exposures, confirmation of theories of distortion of the history of the Slavs. But, no, the book was too tough for many. Too boring. Witsen writes about China, Asia, Georgia and Armenia, Persia everywhere, these lands are inhabited by tribes of wild nomads, most of whom do not even know the letter, who hunt, archery, and eat raw horse meat.
Here and there, there is no, and there will be fragmentary references to the presence of some fortresses and temples, but who built them and when is not clear. It is difficult to understand whether there is any structure, statehood, institutions of power, anything that would unite these herds of nomads.
Historians are delighted with the book, and as I read more and more discouraged, I began to flip through the pages and chapters, reading was like a trip on a long-distance train where from the window you can see only the same trees and pines. And then I decided that something was wrong with this book! A ragged, incoherent bunch of wild fairy tales, I thought, and put the three-volume gold book on the shelf, gathering dust.
But, the story did not end there.
Recently, I started a small correspondence with the daughter of Wilhelmina Gerardovna Trisman, the translator of Witsen's book into Russian, who, like her mother, had been working on the book for many years and was preparing for printing.
"… I can't understand how one can be disappointed in a new, enormous source? This is a view of a huge, unknown territory, from the 17th century, basically, this is not his own text, but a compilation of information sent from people of various levels of culture, materials that he has been collecting for 30 years. …"
Of course, my attitude to the book seemed, to put it mildly, "naive", and given that people devoted their lives to work on translation, and children picked up the baton, it was extremely unpleasant to read such "conclusions" from some "smart guys" like me …
But who did the translation? What kind of person was this? Let's find out:
Wilhelmina Trisman
A book about the translator Tartarius Vistena was even published in Holland. But, Janine Jager's book "Wilhelmina Trisman" is written and published only in Dutch.
The cover of the book Wilhelmina Trisman. By the way, the left arm is in a cast (fell into the ice). But he cannot sit at home - Witsen is waiting!
Here is what Lydia Andreevna told me briefly about her mother:
… Years of life 1901-1982 (Rotterdam-Leningrad). Returning to Leningrad in 1945 after the evacuation, with great difficulty, she was taken to the staff of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, that is, the Kunstkamera as a technical worker, for a start. A career goal was a position in the Indonesia department of the Museum, where knowledge of the Dutch language was highly desirable.
In the meantime, the director of the Institute of Ethnography (the Museum was with him) decided to try such an opportunity - to try to translate from Old Dutch the well-known scholars of Witsen's books with the tempting name C and B of Tartary, a copy of which was in the Library of the Academy of Sciences. Well, it began.
And it lasted 5-6 years, with further refinement all my life. This work became planned at that time, my mother had a desk in the office of India and Indonesia, where she translated every day. What amazes me so far is that there is no special. she had no vocabulary and no basic knowledge at the philological level. She was a native speaker with whom she did not communicate seriously for 20 years. She received her education before the war in Leningrad, English, Ped. institute. Talent for languages, love of work and perfectionism were certainly there.
Why Indonesia? This is the former colony of Holland (up to 47 years old). All scientific literature, in a word, any serious information - in Dutch. The language is rare in Russia, and she is a native speaker. Later, until the end of her work and retirement at 70, she was engaged in Indonesian collections, wrote several articles …"
I have no right, there is no reason to doubt that the translation of the book has been done thoroughly, respectfully and professionally, word for word.
To sin on Nikolaas Witsen and to say that a recognized scientist, cartographer, burgomaster of Amsterdam wrote nonsense - too. This is funny!
Nikolaas Witsen
… Of the five children of Cornelis Witsen, Nikolaas (1641-1717) became the most famous. At the age of fifteen, he accompanied his father on a diplomatic trip to England, where he was a guest of Cromwell for several weeks. After returning from England, he studied mathematics, astronomy and philosophy at the illustrious Athenaeum School in Amsterdam, he was engaged in poetry, as well as engraving, which he later used in his scientific research and in shipbuilding.
In January 1663, to continue his education, Witsen went to Leiden, where he studied law at the university, but with great pleasure, as he writes in his autobiography, he attended lectures on philosophy; he made friends with the professor of Arabic literature Golius, from whom he received a lot of information about the Eastern countries and peoples. On July 11, 1664, he defended his dissertation in jurisprudence and received a doctorate in law. Education was supposed to end with a journey, and Nikolaas Witsen was assigned to the retinue of the Dutch embassy of Jacob Boreil, with whom in 1664-1665. made the trip described here to Muscovy.
The best historical document of this embassy turned out to be a lively and fascinating diary full of immediate impressions of Witsen and his travel sketches.
This diary can be classified as one of the most reliable and informative essays by foreigners about Russia in the 17th century. Engravings, created by Witsen from his own drawings, adorned the famous book by Adam Olearius "Description of the Journey to Muscovy" (1671) and one of the volumes of the prestigious "World Gallery" series, published in Leiden in 1724.
While in Moscow, Witsen met with many statesmen, including the Ambassador of the Netherlands von Keller, translator of the Ambassadorial Prikaz, and in the future - the head of the Siberian Prikaz, author of geographical works A. A. Vinius, Patriarch Nikon. He was interested in people and manners, customs and religion, culture and buildings, military affairs and ambassadorial ceremonies, the appearance of cities and villages, roads and transport, utensils and clothing of residents. He saw the Nenets (Samoyeds), Tatars, Kalmyks, Persians, Greeks, studied the writing of the Kalmyks and Tungus. Moscow appeared to the young Dutchman as a place of mixing of cultures of European and Asian peoples and carried away the idea of making a map of Tatarstan. Difficulties did not frighten him.
Ovid's dictum “Labor omnia vincit (All is conquered by labor)” adorned Witsen's lifetime editions and was engraved on his tombstone. Returning from Muscovy, Witsen began to persistently collect information about the peoples and lands of East Asia. The thirst for knowledge was also reinforced by objective circumstances.
New geographic data, which were at the disposal of Europeans at the end of the 17th century, contributed to the revival of interest in the northeastern route to China and East India past the northern shores of Asia, abandoned for a long time after the unsuccessful English and Dutch expeditions of the 16th century. New prospects for trade with the East opened up, promising unheard of success. My work was assisted by countless official duties, which made it possible to form an extensive circle of acquaintances.
Elected thirteen times as mayor of Amsterdam, Witsen at various times also held the posts of treasurer, adviser and deputy of the States General (Parliament of the Netherlands - TS), as well as their special delegate in England, was an observer of military operations against France, a permanent member of the Ost -Indian company, creator and curator of the Botanical Garden. He wrote the book "Ancient and modern shipbuilding and navigation" (1671). To him, Dutch legislation owes most of the decisions on helmsmen, accidents, coastal law, which he prepared, acting as a special commissioner for pilotage, a tax collector for lighthouses and buoys north of the river. Meuse, agent of the waters and canals of Amsterdam, etc. Witsen was a passionate lover of science. His library consisted of more than 2000 books, manuscripts,prints and maps. His collection of antiques included coins, antique sculptures, paintings, ethnographic rarities, weapons, and mathematical tools. The natural science collection included herbariums, minerals, fossils, shells, corals, and other marine products. He also had hundreds of vessels with animal specimens from the East and West Indies (among them - a bear cub, a tiny Surinamese child, a hippo embryo, five “sea lice”, fish, birds and snakes of all shapes and sizes).a tiny Surinamese child, a hippopotamus fetus, five sea lice, fish, birds and snakes of all shapes and sizes).a tiny Surinamese child, a hippopotamus fetus, five sea lice, fish, birds and snakes of all shapes and sizes).
His work in gathering information was tireless and painstaking. He interviewed people, wrote letters, exchanged parcels, instructed to find out something, collected "road builders", descriptions of regions and peoples, maps and their printing boards.
An important role in his work was played by Russian sources and materials, having published a number of which, the scientist thereby forever saved them for history. This information about Siberia was the most detailed and reliable. At a time when the most minimal information about the Asian North penetrated the West, the Russians had already traveled all over Asia to China. There were so many Russians in Batyev's capital Sarai that a Russian diocese was established there in 1269; Mongols brought thousands of Russian captives to China, so in the XIII century. the latter were many in the guard of the bogdykhan. Extensive information about Siberia was collected by the Russians during their colonization of this region, starting from the end of the 15th century.
In compiling his map, Witsen acted as a collector and classifier of a huge number of disparate messages. From the court painter Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich S. A. Loputsky, he received a map of the New Land and the island of Vaigach, "a certain gentleman who lived in Arkhangelsk", told him "Description of the Samoyeds of the New Land", from Solikamsk they wrote about the routes through Siberia, from Tobolsk - " concerning Russian Christianity in China”. He used works that were then inaccessible to foreigners, had documents about Siberia, published in Russia only in the middle. XIX century. Thanks to his correspondents (whose names, as a rule, were not announced) in Moscow, Astrakhan and other Russians, as well as Chinese, Turkish, Egyptian cities, Witsen collected a huge archive about the countries of the Old World, which allowed him to create geographical works,most valuable in terms of documentation and abundance of materials.
Witsen's even closer ties with Russia and Peter were established in 1697-1698, when the government of the Netherlands instructed Witsen to receive and accompany Peter I to Holland. Nikolaas Witsen was with Peter on all his trips to The Hague and Utrecht, together with him he participated in public receptions of ambassadors, in celebrations, gave advice on the selection of people for service in Russia. Since the tsar wanted to take lessons in navigation and navigation, to study the design of ships, the art of engraving, Witsen recommended teachers to him. On behalf of the city, Witsen presented the Tsar with a fully equipped ship, which Peter named "Amsterdam".
Witsen introduced Peter to scientific celebrities of that time - Peter examined the wonderful collections of ancient coins and pagan idols of Jacob de Wilde, the anatomical office of Professor Ruysch, where he practiced surgical operations and left his note and signature in the album for visitors. At Dr. Boerhaave's, the tsar worked on the corpses, forcing his Russian companions, who watched him with disgust, to tear the muscles of the corpse with their teeth. I visited a medicinal garden, “… there are many foreign trees in that garden… The ambassadors in that garden were treated to Nikolai Vitzen and the ambassadors' bailiffs. In food and drink with all contentment”6.
Visiting Witsen's house, Peter got acquainted with his archaeological museum, which contained the so-called Siberian antiquities found in caves and burial mounds of Russia. “If old age did not bother me,” Witsen wrote on June 15, 1714, “I would be able to clarify the stories about northern gold and silver. I myself have a lot of minerals obtained from Novaya Zemlya, from Nerchinsk, from Siberia, Norway, etc."
7. Peter had a cordial friendship with Witsen: during the Northern War (1700-1721), Witsen's petition largely contributed to the decision of the States General not to take part in the war on the side of Sweden; with the assistance of Witsen from neutral Holland, despite the strict prohibition of her government, secretly [12] exported weapons for Russia, and the Russian ambassador in The Hague A. A. Matveev strongly warned his government not to offend Witsen by offering a monetary reward.
Witsen's friendship with the Russian emperor turned out to be important for the history of all of Europe.
Nikolaas Witsen died on August 10 (21), 1717. There is information that Peter I, who was at that time in Holland for the second time, was present at the death of Witsen, after whose death he said that he had lost one of his best friends in Holland. (From the Preface to The Journey …)
In 1692, Witsen published Northern and Eastern Tartary, an impressive 660-page book. The new, revised edition of this work already had a thousand pages and was published in two volumes in 1705. Despite the title of the book, Witsen did not confine himself to the northern and eastern parts of Inner Eurasia. In fact, his book described a much larger region than was represented on the map, because, in addition to Siberia, Mongolia, Central Asia, it told about Manchuria, the islands north of the Japanese island of Honshu and Korea, as well as Persia, Crimea, the Caucasus, lands in the upper and middle reaches of the Volga and the Urals. Witsen dedicated his map to Peter the Great, who in every possible way encouraged the scientific research of his Amsterdam friend."
Outcome
What did I want to say to all this? Where are the sensations? Where is the exposure? What happens, Witsen is right? Is that how it was?
Tartary is just "the shelter of a wretched Chukhonts and a forest unknown to the rays"?
Yes, I'm sure that was the case. And there is nothing wrong with that. What was found by Witsen's contemporaries whom fate brought on the territory of Tartary and what Nicholas told us in detail, is all true.
Ruins, Asians archers. Some roofing felts are rudiments of roofing felts, remnants of culture, here and there small kings, but more game, tents, nomads in skins.
But what about the great past of the Slavs? What a country, the state of Tartary, it was all! Marco Polo wrote about a great state, on ancient maps all of Siberia is dotted with cities!
Calmness, it all fits perfectly, there is no catch or deception here. I will not put an end here and write the final phrase revealing everything. Read other articles on our website tart-aria.info. Analyze, compare. All answers to all questions are always in sight.
Author: Sil2
