In 1516, the rector of the University of Krakow, Matvey Mekhovsky, laid down an extremely negative attitude towards Siberia with his book "Notes on Two Sarmatians". “In these (Siberian) countries they do not plow, do not sow, do not use either bread or money, feed on wild animals, drink only water, live in dense forests in huts made of twigs. Forest life also made people look like foolish beasts: they dress in rough animal skins, sewn together at random, most of them stagnate in idolatry, worshiping the sun, moon, stars, forest animals and everything that comes across."
Indeed, the Russian pioneers saw Siberia as a land of eternal backwardness, a land completely uncivilized. However, later, while studying Chinese, Arabic, ancient, Western European and other sources, historians found mentions of many ancient Siberian cities. In place of one of them, it seems, is the city of Tomsk.
The Cossacks of Tyrkov and Pisemsky, who erected the Tomsk fortress in 1604, noted the improvement of the local vegetation - birch, elderberry, hawthorn, hemp, nettle. Academician Pallas in 1760 noted the unnaturalness of the Tomsk landscape - continuous hillocks and pits. Later, archaeologists on the territory of Tomsk discovered monuments of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, Iron, early, developed and late Middle Ages. Twenty years ago, archaeologist A. D. Haman uncovered an eight-meter cultural layer in the southern suburb of Tomsk. In addition, back in the 19th century, it was established that Tomsk is located in pre-Tomsk cemeteries with Sarmatian, not Orthodox, corpses, and near Tomsk there is a vast underground city, created long before Tomsk.
The Swedish prisoner of war Captain Stralenberg, exiled by Peter the Great to Siberia, and who joined the expedition of Messerschmidt, called this city Sad. In the next century, this position was supported by A. Kh. Lerberg, and in our time is seriously considered by the Moscow archaeologist and historian L. R. Kyzlasov.
The town of Grustina appears on medieval Western European maps. On G. Sanson's map, Grustin is located on the right bank of the Ob, just below the mouth of the Tom River. On the French map of 1706, Grustina is placed on the territory of the modern Novosibirsk region in the area of the cities of Berdsk and Iskitim. The geographical coordinates of Gustina on the map of G. Mercator are 56.5 degrees N. and 105 degrees E. With the introduction of a 20-degree correction for the position of the prime meridian (one of the founders of geography, Claudius Ptolemy drew the 20th meridian through Londinius), the longitude of Sadina is 85 degrees. Thus, the coordinates of Sadina to a degree coincide with the coordinates of modern Tomsk.
Sigismund Herberstein, who visited Russia in 1517 and 1526, found out in Moscow that it was two months' journey from the mouth of the Irtysh to the city of Gustina. Later, the Cossacks climbed from the mouth of the Irtysh to Tomsk in 59 days (Additions to the Tobolsk edition of the "Book of the Big Drawing").
Who built the city of Sadness? What ethnic group did he belong to? I. Gondius has a very definite statement on this score. The inscription on his map next to the town of Gustina reads: "Tatars and Russians live together in this cold city." Below, based on the materials of Tiesenhausen, we will make sure that Gustina was indeed a Russian city.
The name Grustina probably comes from the name of the Slavic demigoddess Gruzdina, who was in charge of opening the doors in the Land of the Land. The edge-land - the ancestral home of the Slavs, according to ancient Macedonian songs, was located far in the north near the White snow-covered sea. In End-Land there were two White (ice-covered and snow-covered) Danube, as well as the Holy Mountains. There were many man-made caves equipped with doors in the mountains. Gruzdina was in charge of opening seventy locks on these doors. A dragon named Surova Lamia lived in the intermountain lake. Near the mountains was the Harap field, and beyond it lived fierce divi people (devas). Here, near the Holy Mountains, the Cheta (Keta) king lived. And a leader named Kresen led the Slavs to the Danube.
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Comparison of the geography, ethno and toponymy of the Slavic Vedas with the toponymy of the Putorana Mountains allows us to conclude that our distant ancestors called the Putorana Mountains the Holy Mountains. Moving to the Balkans through the Tomsk land, the Slavs left here the name Lukomorye - this is how the territory from Tom to Yenisei is called on the Sanson map. It seems that the town of Sadina owes its name to this resettlement.
But if Grustina is in honor of Gruzdina, then there must be man-made caves equipped with doors in Grustin ?! In confirmation of this, in the book "About the unknown people in the Eastern country and about the pink bystander" we read: "Up the river of the great Ob, there are people walking under the earth in a different river day and night, with lights. And overlook the lake. And over that lake, the light is precarious. And the hail is great, but he has no posadu. And whoever goes to that city and then hears the shum great in the city, as in other cities. And when they come to it and there are no people in it and the shumu does not hear anyone. Nothing else is animal. But in every courtyard there is a lot of food and drink and every kind of goods. Who needs what. And he, putting a price against that, may he take what anyone needs and leave. And whoever will take the price of something, and go away, and the goods from him will be lost and packs will be found in their place. And how else they move away from that city and hear the shum packs like in other cities …”. Leonid Romanovich Kyzlasov considers it possible to attribute this description to Sadina.
There is reason to believe that the destruction of the city of Grustina is associated with the name of Tamerlane. According to Tizengauzen, Persian historians mentioned Tamerlane's campaign to Desht-i-Kipchak in 1391, during which the “Victorious army, reaching the Uruse city named Karasu, plundered it with the entire region” near the Tan River. And Tiesenhausen also has a repetition of this story: "When they reached Karasu, one of the Russian cities, they plundered the entire city inside and out." Historians knocked off their feet, but did not find a city with the name Karasu in medieval Russia.
Leaving Tashkent in January 1391, Timur reached the Ulytau district in the southwest of the present Karaganda region in April. Here, on the Altynshoky mountain, he ordered to erect a tower and leave a commemorative inscription on the stone slab, testifying that he was walking with two hundred thousand army “by the blood of Tokhtamysh”. This amphibolite slab was found in 1935 by a graduate of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, the future president of the Kazakh Academy of Sciences, Kanysh Satpayev, now it is kept in the Hermitage.
If we draw a vector from Tashkent to Karaganda, then it will be almost across the vector "Tashkent - Yaik". And on the continuation of the "Karaganda vector" lie the Baraba steppes. Here Timur's trail was recorded in 1719 by John Bell of Antermonsky from the expedition of Pyotr Izmailov to China: “Before reaching eight or ten days' journey to Tomsk, many graves and burials of ancient heroes, who probably fell in battle, are found on this plain. These graves are easily distinguishable by the heaps of earth and stone towering above them. When and between whom these battles took place so far to the north is unknown. I was informed by the Baraba Tatars that Tamerlane had many combat clashes in this country with the Kalmyks, whom he tried in vain to defeat."
Then Timur came to the banks of the Tom, because he was carrying out a campaign against Tokhtamysh, and here was his summer headquarters. The name of the Tatar village Takhtamyshevo on the left bank of the Tom River, ten kilometers above the city of Tomsk, has survived to this day. Timur set up his camp in a picturesque pine forest on the left bank of the Tom. This boron is still called Temerchinsky. Sources indicate that Tokhtamysh managed to migrate to the Volga, and then, angry, Timur plundered the Russian city of Karasu. Thus, the town of Sadina, in which "Tatars and Russians lived together," was destroyed in 1391.
Nikolay Sergeevich Novgorodov