Two main versions of the death of Tartaria became known

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This article is part of a large historical investigation about Tartaria, its political center Katai and the main city of Khanbalik. For a more complete understanding of the conclusions obtained here, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the previous articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

The history of the capital is always the history of the entire state as well. The same applies to the city of Khanbalik, where the residence, the palace of the great khan of Tartaria, was located for a long time. Studying the history of this city, this heart of the empire, we can reconstruct the events that are still hidden by the governments of many states. Especially those who suffered from the imperial policies of Tartary in the past.

Khanbalik city was built much later

It should be noted that Khanbalyk / Khambalu did not immediately become the capital of Tartary. Ancient sources write that the first several generations of the great khans (starting with Chingiz) lived in it for only three months a year - from December to February. And only over time, according to my observations - from the 16th century - Khanbalik stands out from the Katay region as Metropolis, that is, the capital. If we combine the data of old maps with the story of Marco Polo that in Khanbalik there was the main palace of the great khan for the residence of the Venetian in Tartaria (supposedly in the 13th century), we get an interesting picture. It is logical that the Europeans most likely learned about the new capital of Tartary from the stories of Marco Polo, although they could have been from someone else before him. If this traveler lived in the 13th century, then why did European cartographers learn about Khanbalik only by the first half of the 16th century?

One contemporary says that before the construction of this medieval metropolis, an old city with the same name stood very close across the river. Other contemporaries call the old capital Taidu / Caidu. It is reported that astrologers predicted imminent popular protests and unrest in it, so the Tartar sovereign decided to build a new city nearby and move his residence there along with all the courtiers and townspeople (although not all fit). Therefore, two cities are often drawn on old maps on the Polisanga / Pulisangin river - Khanbalik on the left, and Taidu on the right bank. This means that when looking for traces of the main city of Tartary, you need to look for traces of two cities located across the river or its dry bed. On a map of allegedly 1450, a certain city of Kanlalek (Calalec with a title-abbreviation of the letter “n”) stands on the right bank of the river near the KATAI region.

Why Great Tartary was not great

All the maps of Tartary created by her contemporaries indicate that when talking about this Eurasian empire it is more correct to call the country not “Great Tartary”, but simply “Tartary”. This is how it is called as long as the capital exists and the great khan / ham (autocrat) rules, that is, until the 1680s. Later, the capital disappears, the fate of the emperor remains unknown, the country is divided into many kingdoms and principalities, that is, Tartary turns into a union, a confederation and is no longer an empire. And it becomes something like the late USSR.

In this regard, I propose to stop in our time to call Tartary the great and understand by that only late, decaying Tartary. Can it be considered great in the absence of a center, capital and ruler? And really contemporaries, when they began to write "Great Tartary", suddenly learned that this is really a huge state? Over the previous centuries, all countries and sovereigns knew that Tartaria was a powerful and gigantic empire from the Urals to the very east, from the very north to India. And then suddenly, after the disappearance of the capital, Tartaria began to be called great. Judging by the internal political processes in the country, the word “great” is a synonym for the word “union”, “union”, “united”, without a center, such as “United States of Tartary”.

Quite quickly, the Tartar kingdoms (like the republics in the USSR at one time) began to split off and go under the control of neighboring empires: the Siberian lands with their kings retreat to Muscovy (by 1730, the border of conquered Siberia stretches along the Ural River (Ch. Helong-Kiang; Chinese Tartar Saghalien Oula), the Tartar lands near China-China become part of the Chinese Empire, which has been ruled by the same Tartars from the Niuche province since 1644 (in official history they are called Manchus, in old books - always only Tartars)., or Independent Tartary for some time still remains more or less independent and sovereign. But later it is divided among themselves by large neighbors. Little Tartary and Crimea since 1452 belong to the Ottomans (descendants of the military leader (Osman = Ottoman) from the army of the great khan).

Where to look for traces of Khanbalik / Cambalu?

And so, in Chinese Tartary, the ruins of the capital of Tartary remained, since it stood not far from the Great Wall of China. With a high degree of probability, we can say that the disaster was precisely of natural origin. Many authors in the first decades after the 1680s. write about the destruction in these areas. On some maps, only cities in the Katai region remain intact, which stand at a sufficient distance from the Yellow River (Yellow River, aka Croceum or Caramoran). There is reason to believe that Marco Polo and other contemporaries called it the Polisanghin / Polsangin / Pulisanga River.

On the banks of the Yellow River, we see after the 1680s. new towns, but we no longer see previously known settlements. Closer to the Gobi Desert, the good old town of Campion is noticeable, sometimes Camul / Kamila, which have always stood next to Khanbalik. On some maps, for the first time in this area, namely, there is nothing at all between the sharp bend of the river and the Great Wall of China. Others write in these places that “ice is located here …”, although there used to be cities there.

In 1694, on the plateau skirted by the Yellow River near the Chinese Wall, the wording “Pays D’ORTUS” (or D’ORTOUS) appears, which means “PLACES OF PALACES” (“pays” - from French “place”) … Both now and in the “shaggy” times, “ORTO” among the local Mongul-Katays means and meant “palace”. For example, in the commentaries of Palladius from 1920 to the text of the book of Marco Polo we learn: "Ortho, in fact, is a separate palace of the khan, under the control of one of his wives." Another place in the text: “Chinese authors translate the word“ORDO”as“harem””. And another thing: "ORDO was established by Genghis Khan for empresses, who were selected (by him) from four different tribes." And the last time: “During the reign of the first four khans who lived in Mongolia (Mungalia), 4 ordo were significantly removed from each other, and the khans visited them at different times of the year …”. Immediately I would like to note that, according to Marco Polo, in each such palace the empress of Tartar had up to 10,000 subordinates. Nothing such ordo.

Forgotten flood of the 16th century

It so happened that the capital of Katay, and later of the whole of Tartary, was located on a plateau, on a plain between the mountains. On all maps, Khanbalik and Ordos are depicted on more or less flat ground among the mountain ranges near the Great Wall of China.

Further south, between Tibet and the western Chinese border, stretched another Tartar region - Kokonor / Kokonor. On a map from 1626 published by John Speed it is plainly stated that in these places as a result of the flood a large round lake was formed, a large number of local residents were buried under the water. Contemporaries called the reservoir Cincui hay. In our time, this place is located Qinghai Lake, or Kokonur. And, perhaps, in size, it quite accommodates about 7 medieval cities with nearby villages. It is interesting that in the descriptions of the reservoir, its properties and history, nothing is said about the fact that the lake was formed by a flood.

What do we read today about this lake? It turns out that the lake was created for thousands of years, and the name is translated from Chinese as "blue sea" or "blue lake". According to the English-language version of the Wikipedia website in different languages - Tibetan, Mongolian and Chinese - the body of water is sometimes called a sea, sometimes a lake. The lake is drainless. But at first, cartographers depicted how the Yellow River flows into Qinghai.

The English-language Wikipedia writes that at present, Qinghai Lake has a surface area of 4, 317 square kilometers; the average depth is 21 meters, the maximum is 25.5 m (in 2008). The Russian-language version of the site speaks of a maximum depth of 38 m!

"Located at an altitude of 3205 m and occupies the central part of the Kukunor Plain."

Where can such an amount of water come from to create a huge lake at a sufficient distance from the sea and at such an altitude with great force at one time? Of course, the analysis of specialists is needed here. In the meantime, we have data from contemporaries or almost contemporaries (1626) that it was a flood, not a flood. The fact that it was a wall of water, because it is said that either the boy was found in a tree, or the tree was driven into the boy's body. That is, the disaster was not a smooth, gradual process. It was a fast, powerful avalanche of salt water that lifted the water to great heights; but the tsunami did not go further - the mountains stopped.

In addition, for the first two centuries of the lake's existence, it was portrayed as larger in size than it is now. This can be attributed to the ignorance of cartographers about the real area of the reservoir. Perhaps over the years it has become shallow, dry.

To understand whether before 1557, there really was no Qinghai Lake or another similar in parameters on the place where the Coconor Tartars lived. Let's take a look at maps up to 1557-1600. There really isn't such a large lake.

Let's try to reconstruct the events. If it was a flood - a tsunami that “went” from the Yellow Sea through the territory of China-China, then it had to cover the lowlands in the north of historical China and then “go” to the west and south, where there are passages between the mountain ranges.

By the way, about the Great Wall of China. Most likely, it was not there in the middle of the 16th century, or the Chinese have only recently begun to build it. I have not yet managed to find anything similar to this structure on any map of this period. If it were in reality, the Europeans would probably have known it and depicted it graphically. In any case, they knew about some stone towers, columns of Alexander, portals in the Caspian mountains and other stone objects of that time and drew them on the maps of Asia. Thus, it turns out that the Wall of China did not exist at the time of the flood of 1557, or it was much shorter than it is believed. And it did not prevent the wave from crushing the Katay region with the capital of Tartary, which was located slightly north of the historical lands of the Chinai Chinese.

For the sake of fairness, it is worth mentioning one map of the 16th century, on which the Great Wall of China is, but firstly, it is too detailed, which you will not find on the maps of that period, and secondly, it is drawn as if over the rivers, they shine through it, and the lines of the wall stand out with a more rich, as if new ink color. Most likely, the Chinese building miracle was added to the map later, when it became known exactly how and where it bends around the terrain.

So how likely is a tsunami to form as a result of an earthquake in the Yellow Sea region? It turns out that faults between three lithospheric plates are located a little to the east of it underground. Giant Eurasian and Pacific squeezes the small Philippine. Moreover, the movement of the plates is directed towards Eurasia, or rather the coast of China, towards the modern Ordos. The potential for aftershocks is really great. In this case, the ocean water will move towards the mainland.

So, we saw that there really was a flood in the region of Katai and Kitai. Maybe 1557 is not quite the right date, but let it be a kind of time reference. Could this particular flood have destroyed Khanbalik? In theory, yes. But there is one but. Why did Europeans continue to draw the capital of Tartary on maps for almost 150 years? Didn't they know anything? For example, the tartars did not allow foreigners to enter the lands of the great khan for many years, as the Chinese did in their Forbidden City.

But there is a sketch of the end of the 17th century, on which the French indicate the way to Khanbalik through Bukhara, Samarkand, Kasgar. On the right there is a postscript that this is the road that Muscovites usually use to Katay and Khambala.

It turns out that Muscovites, for quite a long time after the last battle with the Tatar-Mongols, wandered almost to the Great Chinese one, to the court of the Great Khan with a goal unknown to us. It is not in vain that, given a sufficiently high availability of written antiquity, it is almost impossible to find Russian analogues of the same periods on current European Internet resources. Thus, we ourselves cannot learn everything that was before 1700 from the primary sources. This means that the Russian gentlemen-historians have something to hide.

Given the high probability of errors in the dates indicated in the written sources of the 16th century, it can be assumed that the flood took place a little earlier than 1557, and it destroyed or severely damaged the first capital of Tartaria - the city of Taidu on the right bank of the Polisangan River. After that, the great khan built a new metropolis nearby, across the river - Khanbalyk. It, in turn, disappears from the maps only in the 1680s.

Version two: flood of the Yellow River / Polisangin

To understand what ultimately ruined Cambalu and neighboring cities, let us turn to the important date of yet another water cataclysm that brought a lot of suffering and sorrow to the local population. This is 1642. The year of the powerful flood of the Yellow River, or Yellow River. No wonder, oh no wonder the Chinese people called her “Woe of China”!

Before us is a map of China from the book of Athanasius Kircher in 1667 edition. Memories of the events of almost 20 years ago are still fresh in the memory of contemporaries. We read: "In the year 1642, the river buried 300,000 people under water."

On later maps, that is, after 1642, or more precisely, twenty or forty years later, the city of Khanbalik disappears from the maps of Europeans. In the texts (at least let us recall the scheme of the Muscovites' way to KATAI), they indirectly or directly connect Katay, Khanbalyk with Beijing. The Frenchman Manesson-Mallet writes in his book that before no one knew exactly where this city was, but now it became clear to everyone that Khanbalik is Beijing! What's incomprehensible?

Isn't it clear anyway? I will explain. Two years after a large-scale flood in China - namely in 1644 - a major military-political event took place, which radically changed the course of history not only in China and Tartaria, but throughout the world. This year the tartars began their intervention in the Celestial Empire. The Chinay Chinese built the Great Wall of China, and what's the use? Sources write that among them there was a traitor who opened the gates of the defensive structure, and the tartars rushed to China / Chin. If it were not for the flood of the Yellow River and major destruction on the territory of this country, the tartars might not have risked … Perhaps the flood caused some damage to the Great Wall of China, after all, the river crosses it … and this simplified the task of the assault from sides of Tartary.

Written sources say that the tartars took Beijing after a short time. The struggle for power in the Celestial Empire lasted less than 20 years. Now historians say: between the Ming and Qing cynasties. Ming is Chinese and Qing is Mongolian. But in the old books they write that the TARTARS invaded China / Chin in 1644 and took it completely under their control in 1660. The contemporaries signed the first rulers of the Qing dynasty with the words "Tartars of China", "Tartar King of China". More specifically, these tartars were originally from the Niuche region, who later called themselves Manchus. Modern historians, without exception, are sure that this nation was part of the Mongolian ethnos. What kind of Mongols they were, you can see in the old illustrations of contemporaries of those events. To be honest, I trust them more than the current historical science, the foundation of which was laid by the Europeans in their Russian colony. And by the way, it is precisely these Slavic / Scythian type Mongols who for a long time brought into the Chinese culture the traditional Manchu script, which is essentially the same Mongolian script that the khans of Tartaria wrote.

A separate article can be devoted to the conquest of China by the Tartars. Here we will highlight only the most significant moments on the topic of Katay and Khanbalik.

The first moment. Even the official version of history admits that the Mongols (read: tartars) had already taken China / China and ruled this country before 1644. Now historians call this period the time of the Yuan dynasty, which was allegedly founded by the great Khan Kublai, an old friend of Marco Polo. The Chinese threw off the “yoke” of conquerors (officially) in the XIV century - 1368 (mentally, we add at least 100 years to get a more realistic date). Most likely, it was the Ming dynasty that came after the overthrow of the “yuan” and builds the main part of the tall stone border between China / China / Sina / China and Tartary; construction ends due to large-scale flooding and the invasion of tartare.

The second and most interesting moment regarding the destruction of the city of Khanbalik. The flood happened in 1642. For two years, some military, political and social events have taken place in Tartary, which lead to the fact that one of the country's regions independently decides to take China / China, as they say, “hot” (flood victims). At the same time, the center - KATAI and with him the great khan, the emperor of Tartaria - seem to remain on the sidelines; this is not their war, but the war of the Manchus, the Tartars of the Niuche region. This is more than strange and may testify in favor of the version that it was this flood that destroyed, even partially, the residence of the great khan. The likelihood of internecine strife among the Tartar elite, which played a role in the collapse of the Chingizid dynasty, cannot be ruled out.

Since the conquest of China by the Tartars, that is, from the 1644-1660s, the idea is ripening in the West that the capital of Tartary is Beijing. At first glance, this is illogical and very strange. But if you put yourself in the shoes of a contemporary, to whom news from Asia gradually reaches, in the form of rumors and speculation … How does it look like? Tartars settled in Beijing, build palaces there at their own Tartar discretion, change everything for themselves. Many tartars are in the civil service (graphic evidence of those times is available); Mongolian (Tartar) writing is circulating at the court. Isn't it the capital of Tartary?

This version can be contrasted with the French map-scheme of 1677, which traces the path of the Muscovites to Cathay and Cambalu. Like, you see, Khanbalik is still standing. But the fact is that in this French collection of maps and travel schemes it is said about walking and sailing in different years throughout the entire 17th century. Obviously, after the collapse of the capital of Tartary, the delegation of Muscovites was surprised to see the ruins and remnants of "medieval" buildings, which were described by French travelers in the 19th century.

In 1680-88, Khanbalik disappeared from the maps of his contemporaries. On some maps, there is still the Katay region (therefore, white) and KaraKatay (literally "Black Katay"), sometimes near the Yellow River you can see the cities of Campion and Camul, Zouza. It is thanks to the temporary preservation of these settlements (later they were given Chinese names) that one can make sure that Khanbalik was somewhere nearby - north, and not south of the Great Wall of China. In 1694, the first mentions of the Ordos region appear, which means “palaces”. On a French map of the 18th century, the plain (now the Ordos) between the Yellow River and the Great Wall of China is signed with a phrase something like "everything is icy - sand and crumbs."

Beijing can be confused with Khanbalik also due to the similarity of the layout of the palace complex. In the capital of China / Chyna, it is called the Forbidden City, and there is a suspicion that it was built by the emperors of the Manchu-Tartar dynasty (possibly on the basis of some other complex of structures) according to the "tracing paper" of the residence of the great Tartar Khan. But the Forbidden City is still different and it is more modest in size.

In the next article, we will use Google Maps to go directly to the province of Ordos, that is, the former KATAI. We use satellite maps to walk the streets and fields of the modern Chinese prefecture, study its history and try to confirm the results of our research.

As an afterword

After a long and detailed study of many old maps and books about China / Chin, Tartary and Asia in general, I found another interesting evidence.

On the map of 1747 in the north-west of the Ordos region, on the hike to the Altai mountains, Lake Karakum (or Kuran) is adjacent to the postscript (it is a little to the south) “Kurahan Ulan Nor should be located here”. The description of the map says that here, allegedly, was the residence of Khubilai until the moment he transferred it to Khanbalik. This means that somewhere nearby there should be traces of the more famous KATAYA center. However, we remember the words of Marco Polo about more than a hundred-day journey to Altai, to the tombs of the Tartar rulers. The same point is located quite close …

So, let's remember that you need to look for two cities, which are separated by a river or its dry tracks. The Ongin River flows into the lake, which may be derived from the Polisangin, a kind of abbreviated version. In the next and last article of this series of investigations, we will try to find this place on a modern map and find there something similar to the cities of Khanbalik and Taidu.

Anastasia Kostash, specially for the Kramola portal