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153
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1890.
of A.D. 1613 the Tsar Michael sent an ambassy to Shảh 'Abbâs of Persia. Among other things he wished to complain of the succour granted by the Persians to the second false Demetrius at Astrakhân. The route was a difficult one, as the direct way to Persia by the Caspian Sea was closed to the travellers. The documents concerning this journey are preserved in the Russian Archives. They prove the existence of (Kalmucks) Qalmaqs on the Volga. The Muscovite Government did everything that it could to guarantee the safety of the embassy. Many merchants from Khiva and Bokhârå were detained in Russia as hostages, and in case the ambassadors arrived safely in Persia these merchants were promised exemption
to Khiva and Bokhârâ from Russia as early as A.D. 1578. As it was thought that Tikhanov the acabassador might come into contact with the Nôges or Qalmaqs, he carried letters in the Tatar language, which was used by them at that time and long afterwards. It seems that the Qalmaqs made their appearance on the Russian confines between A.D. 1606 and 1610 in large numbers, and were anxious to become Russian subjects. Till the time of the discovery of this document it has always been confidently asserted that the first Qalmaqs with Kho-Crliuk at their head came to the banks of the Volga about A.D. 1630 or 1632. It thus appears that they were found in those parts much earlier. In A.D. 1643 the Russian general Plestcheev defeated them at Saratov.
(e) Minor Notes. (1) Numismatics, by V. Tiesenhausen. (i.) Fraebn mentions on page 414 of his Recensio, a silver coin, struck in the year 88+ A.H. (= 1479-80 A.D.) by the Crimean Khan Mengli Ghirei. He could not however decipher the name of the place where it was coined. But a hoard of coins sent to the Imperial Archæological Commission has enabled the writer of the paper to fix the place. The similar coins of Mengli Ghiri of the same hoard shew that the name of the mint town must be read Kirk-ier (i.e. Chufut Kaleh). There are many more specimens of this coinage in the hoard.
(i.) Among the Crimean Coins of the xvi. century published by the late V. V. Grigoriev in the first volume of the Transactions of the Odessa Historical and Antiquarian Society, there is a badly preserved silver coin of Gazi Ghiri II. struck in the year 997 A.H. (=1589 A.D.) or 1007 A.H. (1598-99 A.D.). The name of the place is difficult to decipher. Grigoriev thinks the coin must have been struck somewhere in Slavonic countries, as Gazi Ghiri was at that
time absent on a campaign. His ancestors fre. quently coined money on their expeditions, as the inscriptions on them testify, e.g., "struck in the horde," i.e. "in the camp." He thought as the money was coined in 997 A.H., the year of an expedition to Poland, it might have been struck at Rakov in the palatinate of Lublin, and also suggested other places. But the writer on seeing in 1887 a well-preserved specimen of the same coin thinks that Grigoriev mistook an ornament on the piece of money for a letter. The real mint-town is Geslev, or Kozlov, the present Eupatoria. In all probability, there were also struck three coins of Gazi Ghiri, which are now preserved in the Museum of the Odessa Historical and Archæological Society.
(iii) Among the coins of the Khan Shadi Beg (1399-1407 A.D.) of the Golden Horde, scme are of silver and of very bad workmanship. The name of the mint-town offers great difficulties. Fraehn suggestsKeferda and others, but the writer, from recent specimens furnished to him thinks that the name is New Kaffa, now Theodosia. Historically the appearance of such an appellation is easily understood, in consequence of the mischief done by Yedigei to Kaffa in the year 799 A.H. (=1396-97 A.D.) .
(iv.) The writer thanks M. Miednikov for his correction of a mistake with reference to a fuls of Al Mansar. There is a great deal of confusion about the Khoråsån viceroys of the time in two almost contemporary Arabic writers. Al-Yaqub and At-Tabari. Did the governors of Khorasan receive their powers from Al-Mahdi, and were they styled his viceroys P
(v.) A classification is given by V. Tiesenhausen of the coins, amounting to 376, presented to the Society by M. Kall. Among them are some rare coins and such as up to the present time have not been published; as, for instance, the Sassani silver coin of Firaz, an 'Abbasi fuls of the year 143 A.H. struck at Samarqand: a Tahiri fuls of the year 207 struck at Mery: a samani fuls coined at Bukhara, apparently in the year 388: an Ilak dirham, struck in the year 407, in the town Ogrushna, the name of which mint, so far as the writer knows, appears on a coin for the first time; a fuls of a Khwarizmi Shah with the name of 'Ali, the son of Måmun: Shaibani silver coins of Aba-Sa'id struck in Eokhara and Samarqand; of Kuchkunji Khân, coined at Mashhad; of Sayyid Burkhan, Bahadur Khân, coined in Bokhara ; and of Aḥmad Timur, coined in Tashkand.
(2) The especial meaning of the very wels in the Persian spoken language, by V. Zhukovski.
