Travels To Tana
From 1436 to 1452 Barbaro traveled as a merchant to the Genoese colony Tana on the Sea of Azov. During this time the Golden Horde was disintegrating due to political rivalries.
In November of 1437, Barbaro heard of the burial mound of the last King of the Alans, about 20 miles up the Don River from Tana. Barbaro and six other men, a mix of Venetian and Jewish merchants, hired 120 men to excavate the kurgan, which they hoped would contain treasure. When the weather proved too severe, they returned in March 1438, but found no treasure. Barbaro analytically and precisely recorded information about the layers of earth, coal, ashes, millet, and fish scales that composed the mound. Modern scholarship concludes that it was not a burial mound, but a kitchen midden that had accumulated over centuries of use. The remains of Barbaro’s excavation was found in the 1920s by Russian archeologist Alexander Alexandrovich Miller.
In 1438, the Great Horde under Küchük Muhammad advanced on Tana. Barbaro went as an emissary to the Tatars to persuade them not to attack Tana. Later, Barbaro was part of a group that drove off a hundred Circassian raiders. Barbaro visited many cities in the Crimea, including Solcati, Soldaia, Cembalo, and Caffa. Barbaro also traveled to Russia, where he visited Casan and Novogorod.
Giosafat Barbaro did not spend all of the years from 1436 to 1452 in Tartary In 1446, he was elected to the Council of Forty. In 1448, he was appointed Councilor of the trading colonies Modon and Corone in the Peloponnese and served until his resignation the following year. Since there was regular trade between Venice and Tana at this time, it seems likely Barbaro went to Tana to trade and returned to Venice for the winter over this time. Barbaro stopped these travels when the Crimean Khanate became a client state of the Ottoman Turks. Barbaro returned to Venice in 1452, traveling by way of Russia, Poland, and Germany. In 1455, Barbaro freed a pair of Tartar men he had found in Venice, housed them for two months, and sent them home to Tana.
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