The Biography of Gazi Baradj 1262 AD

And this is a fragment from the ”Biography of Gazi-Baradj” by Gazi-Baba himself:

“In 1241 my Emir Gazi-Baradj participated in the campaign on Alman and reached the Avaria, or Modjar. The local Ulchians and Almanians set up an ambush and at night killed the Tatars who were with the Emir. We stopped in a separate stan and did not suffer in the ambush, but when we set off further, we found that we are pursued.

Then the Emir set up an ambush at the city of Burash, and crushed not less than 10 thousand pursuers. With the heads of the enemies on the spears, we approached the city and forced it to surrender. There Emir provisioned himself with all the necessities and, covering the distance to the Modjar, joined with other Tatars. Learning about the destruction of their comrades, these Tatars wanted to revenge by crushing the Modjar, but the Emir refused under the pretext that the Modjars and Bulgars are relatives, and forced them to turn back to the Kypchak. And this area the Great Kan of the Tatars transferred as a Tarkhanlyk to his relative, Khan Batu.

When the Tatars and our forces stopped in Bashtu on the return way, and the Khan asked how to keep the numerous Ulchians under his power, the Emir told him: “Among Ulchians many are dissatisfied with their Beks, these are Anchians. Gather and join them with the Kaubuys in one army, and it will loyally serve you”. And Batu and did it and ordered the army to call itself Tatarian, for the Tatars called all serving them [non-Tatars] the “Tatars”.

But the Kaubuys refused, and then the Emir suggested to the Khan to call the soldiers of this army the cossacks.”For the Bulgars, the word cossack means a valorous bakhadir, who fights without chain armours as a sign of the disregard to the death. Such bakhadirs give a vow not to marry-until the glorify themselves with battle deeds. Let these soldiers be similar to the cossacks”, added Gazi-Baradj. Batu liked this idea, and he approved it. And even earlier the Emir created the cossack army in the Bulgar, and it replaced the kursybay.

In the 1242 Gazi-Baradj raised to the throne in the Nur-Suvar his son of Khisam, and went from the Bulgar to the Kypchak, for he accepted the offer of the Great Kan to become his Bashкак in the Kypchak, with the idea of annexation of the Kypchak to the Bulgar. He built for Batu the city Sarai and settled the Bulgars there. Besides, he tried to put Bulgars in power everywhere in the Kypchak. His enemy in the Kypchak was Berkay, the brother of Batu, who was backed by the Khwarezmians and Kypchaks. Most of all Berkay was irritated by the Bulgars collecting the tribute from the Balyn, Djir, Djuketun, Kan, DjunKala and Balukta.

The Great Khan asked Gazi-Baradj to hire into his service our masters and salchis, to conquer the Machin, Imen island, and other countries. It was caused by the Chins’ tale about coming to the Chin from the Bulyar a thousand years ago of the one thousand people of two kinds, May and Ishtyak, and that these Bulgars became famous as excellent seafarers. Once they were sent to capture a distant Machinian island, and did not come back. Only one Bulyarian came back from there through the Near Machin island with the news that the inhabitants of that country pretended to submit to the Bulyars, but at night sank all their ships. He hired all the required people and sent them with a huge caravan to the Great Khan.

In the1246, when Gazi-Baradj died in the Sarai, his groom Yaldau raised Boyan and Tukhchi-Ismail on a new revolt against Khisam and the Tatars. The rebels captured the Bolgar and Nur-Suvar, and seized Khisam. Yaldau became the Emir. But this time the subashis, embittered by the last betrayal of the ulans, and the Burat’s cossacks did not support the Beks. The Great Kan sent Uran-Kytay to the aid of Khisam, and he, together with Burat and Kalmak, besieged the Nur-Suvar.

After Yaldau was killed on the wall by an arrow, the Nur-Suvarians opened the gate to Burat. Burat removed all the population, and then the Tatars leveled the city with the ground. When the brother of Kalmak, Burilday, tramped the Gali’s tomb near the Emir’s palace with his horse’s hoofs, an elder from among the brothers of the “El-Khum” approached him and said: “What are you doing? This is the tomb of a saint! You yourself are calling the death on your head!”

But Burilday split the head of the brother with a sword and continued his sacrilege…

And Kalmak took a nickname Burunday, because together with Burat he rescued the population of the Nur-Suvar from the destruction, and wanted it to be remembered…

Boyan and Tukhchi, who fled from the Nur-Suvar, locked up in the Bolgar, but under pressure of the scared Suvarchis they also had to release Khisam and to run away under a cover of night. It is said that Burat secretly let them through across his lines for the sake of the city. The released Khisam asked Uran-Kytay, in memory of the friendship of their fathers, who even died in the same year, to spare the Bolgar for his residence, and the Subyatay’s son took the Tatars away. Thus the Bolgar became again the capital of the Bulgarian State.

And Galimbek then expelled Boyan from the Kazan, and Boyan in 1247 founded the Ar-Kala, or Archa-balik, up the Arsu river. Then in 1248 he founded a new Ar-Kala, which also began to be called simply Archa”.

Gazi-Baba also preserved and the following important judgment of the seid Gali on this topic:

“… The might of our state, since the time of Idel in the Ur or Old Turan, from time to time was fading away because the people themselves ceased to be interested in its strength and supported the Khans only during the enemy invasions…”