Iоn many books printed in pre-revolutionary Turkestan, it was customary to place advertisements of local firms and shops at the beginning and end. This allowed reducing the cost of publications at the expense of advertisers. So once, having opened a volume of an interesting Tashkent book by I.I. Geyer “Turkestan” (1909), in front of the flyleaf on bright pink paper I saw an eloquent announcement “Drink beer from the Tashkent plant of Ilyin’s heirs NOVAYA BAVARIA”. Well, here, I thought, another German trace in our city! Why not brew world-famous Bavarian beer in the hot East? It seemed that the participation of Bavaria in the Uzbek realities was limited to the recipe for the popular beer that our ancestors drank at the Resurrection Bazaar in Tashkent. But it turned out that this is not the case.
In 1998 the State Publishing House of Literature and Art named after Gafur Gulyam tasked me to edit a new scientific translation into Russian of the famous “Temur Code”, made by an excellent Farsi expert Hamidulla Karamatov. A detailed preface to the text of the manuscript was written by academician of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan Buribai Akhmedov. Then I became closely acquainted with this scientist-historian, a major expert on the Timurid era. In our lengthy discussions of the text of the translation, I once lamented that in the proposed comments to the new translation of the Temur Code, only the testimonies of Eastern authors, and the well-known “Notes” of the Castilian Ambassador Rui Gonzales de Clavijo, were taken into account. In response, academician B. Akhmedov handed me the book “The Journey of Johann Schiltberger in Europe, Asia and Africa (from 1394 to 1427)”, just published by Tashkent Publishing House “Sharq”. The book was beautifully published and repeated, including all extensive commentaries, a rare old Russian translation of a medieval German manuscript from Munich. This is how I first learned about the Bavarian knight who had visited our land at the beginning of the 15th century.
Johann Schiltberger, a native of the city of Freisingen came to the East not of his own free will. He was forced to spend thirty-four long years away from his homeland and became the first German who told his compatriots about the state of Amir Temur.
The years of birth and death of Johann Schiltberger have not been established. Johann left Bavaria, as he himself writes, as a twenty-year-old boy. After returning home from the East in 1427, I. Schiltberger managed to describe in detail his many years of wandering among the Muslims. The list of his manuscripts is kept in Heidelberg and has been published several times in the West. The Munich publication of 1859 was translated into Russian by F. Brune and published in Odessa in 1866. This translation edited by academician B. Akhmedov was repeated by the Uzbek Publishing House “Sharq” at the end of the 20th century.
It is known that at the end of the 14th century the Ottoman Turks began the intensive attack to the West. The troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg in 1394 at Nikopol on the Danube suffered a crushing defeat from the Muslims. Many participants in the battle were captured. Sultan Bayezid Yildirim, enraged by heavy losses, ordered the execution of all the captured knights, sparing only the youngest warriors. This is how Johann Schiltberger, a young squire of the Bavarian knight Leonhard Richardtinger, who was killed in a fierce battle, ended up in captivity with the Ottoman Sultan. After a while, the surviving Christian prisoners tried to escape, but did not succeed. For the next eight years, the military service of the young German landsknecht, forced to serve the Ottoman sultan, threw him throughout the Middle East. Everything went well enough for him, but on July 20, 1402, in the famous battle between the armies of the Ottoman Sultan and Amir Temur near Ankara, Johann Schiltberger, along with Bayazid Yildirim, was now captured by the victorious Temurid army. Here’s how the German soldier describes it:
“Both troops met near Ankara, and in the heat of battle thirty thousand white Tatars (as Schiltberger calls the Turkic-Mongol tribes allied to the Ottoman Turks, roaming in Asia Minor), put by Bayazid in the first row of the battle formation, went over to Tamerlane. Nevertheless, the battle, renewed twice, remained unsolved until Tamerlane ordered thirty-two armed elephants to move forward and thus forced Bayezid to flee from the battlefield. He hoped to find salvation behind the mountains, where he fled with a retinue of a thousand horsemen, but Tamerlane, having ordered to surround this area, forced him to surrender, and then occupied his state, in which he stayed for eight months. Taking his prisoner with him, he also took over the capital, from where he took out his treasures and so much silver and gold that a thousand camels were needed for transportation. He ordered to bring Bayezid to his own land, but the sultan died on the way. Thus, I was captured by Tamerlane, who was escorted to his country, where I was at his service.”
Schildberger’s testimonies provide very valuable material for historians of the Timurid era. The Bavarian served for a long time in the army of Amir Temur, and then his sons Miranshah and Shakhrukh. The German knight participated in the war of Mirza Miranshah with the Temurids’ worst enemy, the leader of the Turkmen clan Kara-Koyunlu Kara-Yusuf (in his memoirs Schiltberger calls him Joseph), and witnessed the capture and execution of Amir Temur’s son in Tabriz. In the end, Johann Schiltberger ended up in the army of Amir Temur’s grandson, Mirza Abu Bakr. In the memoirs of the Bavarian, there is an eloquent characteristic of this prince, who, like many of the descendants of Miranshah, was distinguished by enormous physical strength.
“I would like to note by the way that this Abu Bakr was so strong that when he once fired from a Turkish bow at the sharer at the plow, the iron passed through it, while the sharer remained in it.
Boris GOLENDER,
Researcher of the S. Yesenin Museum
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