“… After over twenty years, walking to the edge from the edge.
He suffered a lot on land and seas, And all that I noticed in detail, that I was not mature!
With his step and span he measured
And through the pen he assured his Fatherland
About the little things in sunflower things.
Reader, you are almost his ashes with tears, And read the work of his ways with attention."
History of great civilizations. We continue our story "about the Russians in Egypt." Today it will begin with a story about a wonderful book of pre-Petrine geographical literature, dedicated to the description of the Turkish Empire (which included Egypt at that time), which is called "The book about the secret and hidden concealment by me as a prisoner in captivity." Its author is unknown. We can only assume, judging by the text, that he was in Turkish captivity for many years. Despite his position as a prisoner, he managed, however, to visit all the major cities of the Ottoman Empire, including Cairo, Rosetta and Alexandria, and describe them in detail. His wanderings took a total of 5 years, 2 months and 20 days.
It is believed that this book was written by the boyar son Fyodor Doronin, a native of Yelets, captured by the Crimean Tatars, who sold it to the Turks. But this is just an opinion of who he is exactly - it is still unknown.
"The book about the secret and the secret …" is distinguished by a high patriotic spirit. The author clearly seeks to show readers what a threat to Russia lurks in neighboring Turkey. Therefore, he describes in great detail both the relief of the area and talks about mountains and rivers, seas and cities, their walls, ditches surrounding the city, city gates and other fortifications. He also drew attention to the motley multinational composition of the empire's population, its occupations and also the level of military training.
He writes about Russian prisoners as follows:
"There are unwitting Russian people in captivity on their land and at sea, in penal servitude there are many [very] many without number."
However, he himself somehow managed to get home. Otherwise we would not know this book …
But a person like Vasily Grigorievich Grigorovich-Barsky is very well known in history. And about his life just right to write a novel. From his youth, he was obsessed with a passion for travel, left his father's house, and returned to it only a quarter of a century later, having visited dozens of countries, seeing hundreds of cities and villages. On the basis of my own impressions, I wanted to know the life of different peoples and "other people's customs" and … I did. Although he was subjected to considerable hardships and dangers, which at the beginning of the 18th century, a lone traveler simply could not avoid.
So with him it was all the same. He was repeatedly robbed and beaten almost to a pulp. Serious ailments caused by the unusual climate and poor nutrition caught him right on the road. More than once, the disease of his left leg worsened, which from childhood did not give him rest. But as soon as our traveler regained consciousness a little, he again got himself clothes, took the wanderer's staff in his hands and continued to wander through foreign lands and learn a foreign world.
There was no money for bread - and he did not hesitate to ask for alms. There was no money for travel - I asked for the sake of Christ or Allah (this depends on the circumstances) to get a job on the deck of the ship. He posed as a "wretched Turkish traveler" and even as a dervish going to bow to the Kaaba. In Catholic Poland he pretended to be a zealous Catholic, in Arab countries he was a devout Muslim. If necessary, he could pretend to be a holy fool, and pretending to be crazy was child's play for him …
It helped him that over the years of his wanderings he studied Greek, Latin and Arabic, and high-ranking dignitaries, seeing such a polyglot and erudite, more than once tried to use him. But he did not know how to flatter and curry favor with them, and therefore could not resist among them. The abbots of the rich monasteries tried to keep him at home, however, he thought "to enjoy better the journey and the history of different places." And everywhere he carried ink, notebooks and wrote down everything he saw, and he also sketched a lot.
Strikingly, when edited, his notes were as many as four volumes. About 150 sketches of Grigorovich-Barsky have also survived: from portraits of individuals to images of cities he saw. Such an ebullient activity was incomprehensible to many of his contemporaries, and they explained it by the restlessness of his character, as well as by the fact that he was "curious about all kinds of spiders and arts" and "had a desire to see foreign countries." And so it probably was. People have different abilities and for different things. Here at Grigorovich-Barsky they were like that … And he was just an intelligent person, as this phrase of his speaks about:
"Where there is teaching, there is enlightenment of the mind, and where there is enlightenment of the mind, there is knowledge of the truth."
In the summer of 1727, he finally found himself in Egypt. First in Rosetta, then in Cairo, where he stayed for about eight months. In Cairo - "considering" this beauty, majesty and the structure of the city ", as well as" the customs of the Egyptian people. " He wrote a whole chapter about this: "About the great and notorious city of Egypt" (Cairo), in which he described the life of this city. So, thanks to him, we have a complete idea of what the capital of Egypt was in the first half of the 18th century.
Not far from Cairo, beyond the Nile, Grigorovich-Barsky saw "man-made mountains" - pyramids. And when he saw, he immediately described the three largest, calling them "Pharaoh's mountains." Three years later, he visited Alexandria, about which he wrote that "once it was a great city … but now that city was deserted and ruined."
Like Sukhanov, he described the ancient obelisks - "the pillars of Cleopatra" - and not only described them, but one of them even sketched, including the hieroglyphs with which it was covered. Moreover, he conveyed them very accurately. And here is what description of "Cleopatra's Needle" he gave:
“There are still inside the city, in its northern side … by the sea, two large pillars, made of solid stone, called the Pillars of Cleopatra. Cleopatra, on the other hand, was a glorified queen in ancient times, who, in her unforgettable memory, erected these two wonderful pillars, exactly the same in size and appearance. One of them has collapsed from time to time, while the second stands unshakably. It is believed that these pillars once stood in front of the royal chambers. Their thickness - I myself measured - is eleven spans, but I could not recognize the height, but I think that it should be ten fathoms. One, intact, standing stone, not round in shape, as is the case with ordinary pillars, but four-angled and sharp on top, and has the same width on all sides, and on it deeply, on two joints of the finger, certain seals or signs are carved. Many have seen them, but cannot interpret them, since they do not resemble either Hebrew, or Hellenic [Greek], or Latin, or any other script. Only one sign is completely similar to the Russian "live" [the letter "zh"], while the rest look like birds, some like chains, others like fingers, others like dots. I copied them all, with much care and difficulty, only from the first side of the pillar, surprisingly looking, as they are shown in the above image."
For twenty-four years of travel, Grigorovich-Barsky visited Asia Minor, the Middle East, the countries of the Mediterranean and North Africa. The Wanderings of the Pedestrian Vasily Grigorovich-Barsky were published after his death, but they became a real "Eastern encyclopedia" for Russians in the 18th century.
By the way, the first who drew attention to the works of this researcher of distant countries was the outstanding figure of Catherine's era, Prince GA Potemkin-Tavrichesky, who just ordered them to be published. So, in 1778, the work of VG Grigorovich-Barsky, "published for the benefit of society," came to a wide reader. However, it was known in handwritten editions for thirty years before that.
