Sacred-geographical representations of the Kalmyks in the 17th century (by the materials of “Evlia Chelebi’s journey book”)

Abstract

The presented article is devoted to the analysis of data extracted from the “Travel Book of Evliya Celebi”, an Ottoman historical and geographical source of the XVII century. The detailed reports of the traveler, a huge factual material about such regions as the Volga region, the Don region and the North Caucasus, as well as a description of the life and way of life of the peoples who lived in these territories, are very interesting and valuable. From December 1666 to January 1667 E. Chelebi had meetings with nomadic people — Kalmyks. He communicates closely with the Kalmyk Taish and the common people, describes in detail the places of their settlement; describes the appearance and physical characteristics of men and women; tells about the language of the Kalmyk people. In the narration described by Evliya Celebi, the religious ideas of the Kalmyks are revealed, which are bizarrely expressed in the elements of rituals. The traveler describes in great detail the traditional customs and some specific rituals of the Kalmyks, which were never peculiar to either the Mongolian-speaking, or even more so to other nomadic peoples who inhabited the Russian Empire. We are talking about ritual cannibalism. Apparently, the Turkish traveler, describing under the ethnonym Kalmyk various peoples who inhabited, in particular, the European North, used the imaginary information about the Samoyeds that reached him. The fiction about the Samoyeds, which was widely used in the XVI–XVII centuries, was actively used by German, English, French and other authors, including E. Celebi. Nevertheless, the author of the article “The Travel Book of Evliya Celebi” is a valuable source material for a comprehensive analysis of the nomadic Kalmyk people, who have a rich history and culture. The significance of Evliya Celebi’s historical work is obvious and undeniable. It is the most important written source of the XVII century, a significant contribution to the world treasury of knowledge.