On the Time and Place of Writing the Continuation of Ötemish-Hajji’s “Qara Tavarikh” (Comments on the Text)

• Main Author: A.V. Belyakov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: State Institution «Sh.Marjani Institute of History of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences» 2018-06-01
• Series: Zolotoordynskoe Obozrenie
• Online Access: http://goldhorde.ru/en/stati2018-2-9/
• ISSN: 2308-152X; 2313-6197

Objective: To offer commentary on the information provided by the continuator of Ötemish-Hajji’s “Qara Tavarikh” and to make an attempt to establish the time and place of the text’s composition. Materials: A number of details of the continuation can be verified by comparison with the documents from the archives of the Posolsky order. In addition, the continuation’s structure and its information allow us to delineate a circle of individuals among whom the manuscript circulated and by whom this addition was written. Results and novelty of the research: The author here establishes that the “Qara Tavarikh’s” continuation, most likely, was written in the 1660s to 1680s in Yaroslavl, among the retinue of the widows of the Siberian prince, Altanay b. Kuchum. This was a kind of reaction to the conversion of their children and relatives to Eastern Orthodoxy in the mid-17th century. Therefore, the continuation contains extensive historical and genealogical information and at the same time represents a polemical work. Using the example of the prince, Hansyuer b. Ali, the anonymous continuator creates the image of a true Muslim under the conditions of the onset of Orthodoxy upon Islam in Russia in the middle to second half of the 17th century. We are faced with a collective epitaph of the entire Siberian Shibanid family, which is interrupted with Kuchum’s grandchildren. According to the author or the commissioner of the continuation, the Shibanids could not be Orthodox. Despite some distortions of real events through silence and subjective assessments of certain historical personalities, the source under consideration, on the whole, quite truthfully represents the events of the 17th century connected with the residence of the descendants of the Siberian khan Kuchum in Muscovy.