NOTE 1.—­ + Barka Khan, third son of Juji, the first-born of Chinghiz, ruled the Ulus of Juji and Empire of Kipchak (Southern Russia) from 1257 to 1265.  He was the first Musulman sovereign of his race.  His chief residence was at SARAI (Sara of the text), a city founded by his brother and predecessor Batu, on the banks of the Akhtuba branch of the Volga.  In the next century Ibn Batuta describes Sarai as a very handsome and populous city, so large that it made half a day’s journey to ride through it.  The inhabitants were Mongols, Aas (or Alans), Kipchaks, Circassians, Russians, and Greeks, besides the foreign Moslem merchants, who had a walled quarter.  Another Mahomedan traveller of the same century says the city itself was not walled, but, “The Khan’s Palace was a great edifice surmounted by a golden crescent weighing two kantars of Egypt, and encompassed by a wall flanked with towers,” etc.  Pope John XXII., on the 26th February 1322, defined the limits of the new Bishopric of Kaffa, which were Sarai to the east and Varna to the west.

Sarai became the seat of both a Latin and a Russian metropolitan, and of more than one Franciscan convent.  It was destroyed by Timur on his second invasion of Kipchak (1395-6), and extinguished by the Russians a century later.  It is the scene of Chaucer’s half-told tale of Cambuscan:—­

  “At Sarra, in the Londe of Tartarie,
  There dwelt a King that werried Russie.”

["Mesalek-al-absar (285, 287), says Sarai, meaning ‘the Palace,’ was founded by Bereke, brother of Batu.  It stood in a salty plain, and was without walls, though the palace had walls flanked by towers.  The town was large, had markets, madrasas—­and baths.  It is usually identified with Selitrennoye Gorodok, about 70 miles above Astrakhan.” (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 260, note.)—­H.  C.]

Several sites exhibiting extensive ruins near the banks of the Akhtuba have been identified with Sarai; two in particular.  One of these is not far from the great elbow of the Volga at Tzaritzyn:  the other much lower down, at Selitrennoye Gorodok or Saltpetre-Town, not far above Astrakhan.

The upper site exhibits by far the most extensive traces of former population, and is declared unhesitatingly to be the sole site of Sarai by M. Gregorieff, who carried on excavations among the remains for four years, though with what precise results I have not been able to learn.  The most dense part of the remains, consisting of mounds and earth-works, traces of walls, buildings, cisterns, dams, and innumerable canals, extends for about 7-1/2 miles in the vicinity of the town of Tzarev, but a tract of 66 miles in length and 300 miles in circuit, commencing from near the head of the Akhtuba, presents remains of like character, though of less density, marking the ground occupied by the villages which encircled the capital.  About 2-1/2 miles to the N.W. of Tzarev a vast mass of such remains, surrounded by the traces of a brick rampart, points out the presumable position of the Imperial Palace.