In the summer of this year, a silver mirror of the Golden Horde era with the image of al-Burak and an Arabic inscription was found in Transnistria.
In the mythologies of the peoples of the world, there is a charming winged character, known by various names, but equally depicted in many cultural traditions. This is a flying horse capable of moving between worlds, thanks to which it transports heroes through space and time. His image is captured on a silver mirror found this summer by Pridnestrovian archaeologists in a Polovtsian burial at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. Researchers suggest that the mirror came to the Transnistrian steppes from the Middle East during the reign of the Golden Horde.
The burials of medieval nomads were discovered in the Slobodzeya region during archaeological excavations. As the researchers believe, the tombs in question belong to the Polovtsy - the Turkic-speaking people, with whom the princes of Kievan Rus fought in the 11th-12th centuries. The accompanying artifacts speak in favor of this version - silver earrings, an iron knife and shears for shearing sheep, characteristic of this nomadic people. However, to understand what period of history we are talking about, three rare finds helped, the possibility of which in our region archaeologists did not even admit.
These are mirrors with oriental patterns, made of different metals: one copper,
second silver,
the third is silver with a gilded central part.
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On the back of the latter there is a well-preserved image of plants, the figure of a four-legged creature, and a circular Arabic inscription bordering the mirror. It turned out that this is a rhymed text, similar to benevolent sentences that are widely known in world ethnography.
Vyacheslav Kuleshov, a researcher at Stockholm University, was able to read it, and he spoke about the origin of such mirrors.
The creature around which a benevolent inscription is engraved, Kuleshov called al-Burak - the winged character of the Islamic tradition. The word itself is translated from Arabic as "shine", "sparkle", "shine". Al-Burak is always depicted as a supernatural winged animal with a beautiful human face and the body of a horse or mule. According to Muslim legend, he helped the prophets during their spiritual wanderings, therefore, he occupies a special place in traditional Islamic iconography.
Mohammed riding a beetroot. A fragment of a miniature by the artist of the Tabriz school Sultan Muhammad for "Khamsa" by Nizami Ganjavi, Iran 1494.
Mirrors with an image of al-Burak and an encircling inscription are widely known in the Middle East, Kuleshov says.
Northern Iran, XII - XIII centuries.
But whether there is a symbolic relationship between the mirror and the winged shining creature or his image is just an element of decor, one has to guess. Although the presence of an inscription-sayings already speaks of a possible magical symbolism, especially when you consider that in many cultural traditions a mirror is associated with the gates of the worlds. Let us remember that winged mythical animals, including al-Buraks, were endowed with the ability to cross space-time.
However, this topic is beyond scientific experience. In the historical sense, "mirrors with al-Buraks" allow us to connect the burials of medieval nomads discovered in Transnistria with specific time frames.
According to research, the nomads of the Black Sea steppes in the 13th century were conquered by the heirs of Temujin, better known as Genghis Khan. Those who resigned themselves to the power of the conquerors became part of the vast steppe state, which appears in written sources under the name of the Golden Horde. The rulers of this country were the descendants of Genghis Khan, but the bulk of the population was just the subordinate steppe peoples. They were called Tatars in the literature of that time, although the name was, rather, collective and did not denote a specific people.
The western limits of the Golden Horde extended to the Carpathian Mountains. The picturesque Old Orhei, for example, was once a large Golden Horde city with baths, a caravanserai, and a mosque. And there were at least two such cities in the region - on the site of the modern Moldavian village of Costeshty and the Ukrainian city of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky. Artifacts from the era of the Golden Horde were found in small quantities on the territory of Transnistria.
According to the specialists of the Research Laboratory "Archeology" of the Pridnestrovian State University, the burials of the nomads in question also belong to this time. This version is supported by a silver mirror with al-Buraks and an Arabic inscription. But how did it end up in the North-Western Black Sea region?
Historians note that in the XIV century the rulers of the Golden Horde adopted Islam as a state religion, which ousted all other ideological traditions from the steppe. However, the burials of the Polovtsians were made even before the dominance of Islam in this region, believes Vitaly Sinika, a senior researcher at the Research Laboratory "Archeology". The mentioned accompanying artifacts also speak of this, because Islamic canons prohibit burying the dead with things.
But the Golden Horde, covering the territories of Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Northern Black Sea region, is also a vast conglomerate of peoples, cultures and traditions that intertwined in this steppe civilization, creating a unique historical ornament. He can be seen in the finds, presumably, Polovtsian burials, discovered this summer in the Slobodzeya region.
Alexander Koretsky