Afanasy Nikitin

Afanasy Nikitin
Афанасий Никитин
Monument to Afanasy Nikitin in Tver, Russia
Born
Tver, Principality of Tver
Diedc. spring 1475
Near Smolensk, Grand Duchy of Lithuania
MonumentsStatue in Feodosia, Ukraine
Statue in Tver, Russia (1955)
Known forFirst Russian to travel to India and write about it

Afanasy Nikitin (Russian: Афана́сий Ники́тин; died 1472) was a Russian merchant from Tver and one of the first Europeans (after Niccolò de' Conti) to travel to and document his visit to India. He described his trip in a narrative known as The Journey Beyond Three Seas (Khozheniye za tri morya).

The voyage

Prior to his voyage to Persia and India, Afanasy Nikitin was probably engaged in long-distance trade and had previously traveled to the Ottoman Empire, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Moldavia,[1] Wallachia, Georgia, Crimea, and other countries.[2] In 1466 or 1468,[1][a] Nikitin left his hometown of Tver on a commercial trip, planning to trade in the lands around the Caspian Sea and go as far as Shirvan (in modern-day Azerbaijan).[4] He travelled down the Volga, stopping at the Makaryev Monastery, then passing through Uglich, Kostroma, and Plyos to get to Nizhny Novgorod. Following the caravan of the returning ambassador to Moscow from Shirvan, Hasan Beg, Nikitin and his fellow merchants traveled further south.[1] Near Astrakhan, his party was attacked and robbed first by Nogais (whom he calls Tatars), then again by Kaitags on the Caspian coast.[5][6] Niktin's belongings were stolen,[7] and some of his fellow Russian merchants were taken prisoner by the Kaitags.[5] Nikitin went to the Shirvanshah's (the ruler of Shirvan) camp in Shamakhi to plead for help.[8] His captured companions were rescued by the Shirvanshah,[9] who, however, refused to give him and his companions means to return home.[6] At that point, Nikitin writes, his party dispersed: "Whoever had something left in Rus' returned to Rus'; whoever had debts in Rus' went wherever they could."[7][8]

Hoping to recoup his losses,[b] Nikitin continued on to Derbent, which was a familiar market to him, and then to Baku.[12] He then crossed the Caspian Sea into Persia, where he followed a known trade route and made prolonged stops in market towns. He passed through Chapakur (Chapak Rud, where he remained for six months), Sari, Amol, Kashan, and Yazd before reaching Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.[1] All in all, he remained in Persia for two years.[13] Having heard about the riches of India from Muslim merchants, he decided to travel there.[1][12] In spring 1471, Nikitin sailed for India from Hormuz and, after making several stops,[8] arrived in the port of Chaul six weeks later.[1] It was probably after his arrival in India that he began writing his travel notes.[13]

Nikitin observed the markets, lifestyles and courts of the Bahmani Sultanate and the Vijayanagara Empire.[12] He visited the Hindu sanctuary of Parvattum, which he called "the Jerusalem of the Hindus".[14] He mentions that he engaged in horse-dealing, although his mercantile activities may have been more extensive than directly stated in his account. He decided to return to Russia after concluding that further travel would not make him any great profit and that he could not afford to remain in India.[15] On his way back, Nikitin visited Muscat, the Arabian sultanate of Somalia, and Trabzon. In November 1474, he sailed from Trebizond to Caffa (now Feodosia). It is most likely in Caffa that he composed Khozheniye za tri morya on the basis of his travel notes and memories. On his way to Tver, Nikitin died not far from Smolensk in spring 1475. Other Russian merchants took his notes to Vasily Mamyrev, secretary to Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow. The author of the Lvov Chronicle writes that he received Nikitin's notes in 1475 and incorporated them into his work but was unable to learn anything more about the traveler.[12]

During his trip, Nikitin studied the population of India, its social system, government, military (he witnessed war-games featuring war elephants), its economy, religion, lifestyles, and natural resources. The abundance and trustworthiness of Nikitin's factual material provide a valuable source of information about India at that time, and his remarks on the trade of Hormuz, Cambay, Calicut, Dabhol, Ceylon, Pegu and China; on royal progresses and other functions, both ecclesiastical and civil, at the Bahmani capital Bidar, and on the wonders of the great fair at Parvattum—as well as his comparisons of things Russian and Indian—deserve special notice.[14]

Religion

1997 commemorative coin of Bank of Russia. Nikitin in Rus'
1997 commemorative coin of Bank of Russia. Nikitin in India

After studying Nikitin's account, and especially his references to Islam (much of India was ruled by Muslim sultans, and many Muslim merchants lived along the coast), particularly the prayers he transliterates from Arabic and Turkic into Cyrillic letters, Gail Lenhoff and Janet Martin speculated that Nikitin might have converted to Islam in India.[16]

His loss of contact with Christianity and his life among Muslims (and apparent lapse from Christianity and conversion to Islam) bothered him, as he mentioned several times in his account. Indeed, he began his account calling it his "sinful voyage beyond three seas." He went on to explain that he continued to date events by Christian religious holidays and invoked the Mother of God and the saints ("the Holy Fathers"), he could not remember when Christian holidays were and so he could not celebrate Easter and other movable feast days or keep the Christian fasts (Lent, the St. Peters' Fast, the fast during Advent, etc.). Thus, he kept the fasts of the Muslims and broke fast when they did so. He also wrote that at Bindar in the third year of his journey he "shed many tears for the Christian faith". Very near the end of his account, he wrote of his wish to return home and to the Christian faith: "I, Afanasy, a damned servant of Almighty God, Maker of heaven and earth, pondered over the Christian faith, the Baptism of Christ, the fasts established by the Holy Fathers, and the apostolic commandments, and I longed to go [back] to Rus!"[17]

Yakov Lurye, an editor of Nikitin's Journey, sees his conversion as doubtful, pointing out that a circumcised convert would have been persecuted or even put to death in Rus', so if Nikitin had indeed become a Muslim, he would have avoided returning to his country, while in fact he died on his way back in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania not far from the Muscovite border.[18]

Nikitin in modern memory

Monument to Afanasy Nikitin in Feodosia, Crimea

In 1955, the local authorities of Tver erected a bronze monument to Afanasy Nikitin on the bank of the Volga River. The sculptor was Sergei Orlov. There is a folk legend that this statue was raised because Nikita Khrushchev, upon visiting India, told Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that there was a statue of Nikitin in Russia when in fact there was not (Nehru had asked if the Russians had honored the first Russian to visit India). So as not to be proven a liar, Khrushchev phoned back to Russia demanding that a statue of Nikitin be built immediately, before Nehru's state visit to Russia. The statue was featured on a Russian postage stamp in 2005 commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the establishment of the Tver Oblast.[19]

Nikitin was also featured on a coin commemorating the 525th anniversary of his journey.[citation needed]

In 1958, the Russian state-owned Mosfilm Studio and Indian director Khwaja Ahmad Abbas' "Naya Sansar International" production house co-produced a film entitled The Journey Beyond Three Seas with Oleg Strizhenov cast as Nikitin.

The 1962-built icebreaker Ledokol-2 was renamed Afanasy Nikitin in 1966.

In 2000, a black obelisk was erected in Nikitin's honor at Revdanda, 120 km south of Mumbai, the probable location where he first set foot in India.

In 2006, the Indian organization Adventures & Explorers, with the support of the Embassy of India in Moscow and the Tver Regional Administration sponsored a Nikitin Expedition, in which 14 travelers set out from Tver to retrace Nikitin's journey through Russia, the Middle East, and Central Asia to India.[20] The expedition lasted from 12 November 2006 to 16 January 2007. The Indian newspaper The Hindu filed several reports on the expedition's progress.[21] After reaching India, two members of the expedition set out in March 2007 from Mumbai in SUVs to retrace Nikitin's travels around India itself.[22]

The Afanasy Nikitin Seamount in the Indian Ocean is named in his honor.

On 17 April 2022, the Kozhikode Corporation paid tribute to Afanasy Nikitin, commemorating the 550th anniversary of his visit to Kozhikode. Moreover, Customs Road in the city was renamed after Nikitin, also establishing a ‘twin city’ status with Tver, the birth place of Nikitin.[citation needed]

In culture

The Russian rock band Aquarium composed a song titled "Afanasy Nikitin Boogie". The power metal band Epidemia composed a song titled "Khozhdeniye za tri morya (Walking the three seas) about Nikitin's writings. A brand of Tver beer, "Afanasy", is named after Afanasy Nikitin.[23]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Previously, 1466 was widely accepted as the beginning of Nikitin's journey. This date was first proposed by Izmail Sreznevsky in 1856. In 1978, L. S. Semyonov proposed 1468 as the date of Nikitin's departure from Russia.[1] This later date has been increasingly used as the start of Nikitin's journey.[3] Nikitin's account contains no concrete dates, which makes the precise dating of its events difficult.[1]
  2. ^ Yakov Lurye writes that Nikitin must have acquired his goods on credit and would have faced enslavement as a debtor if he had returned home empty-handed, thus explaining his decision to continue his journey and seek further trading opportunities.[10] This is disputed by Gail Lenhoff and Janet Martin, who write that it is more likely that Nikitin had purchased his goods using his own modest resources.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Perkhavko 2013.
  2. ^ Alam & Subrahmanyam 2007, p. 84: "Nikitin had clearly travelled before, to Georgia, Crimea, Wallachia and other lands[...]".
  3. ^ Maxwell 2006, p. 245, n. 7: "Semenov persuasively argues in Puteshestvie Afanasiia Nikitina (Moscow: Nauka, 1980) that Nikitin stayed in India from 1471 to 1474, and that he must have left Tver' in 1468 and died near Smolensk at the end of 1474 or at the beginning of 1475. [...] Russian journals and texts are now beginning to accept these new dates, so I too will accept them in this article".
  4. ^ Alam & Subrahmanyam 2007, p. 83: "Nikitin left his native town in 1466, as part of a group of merchants whose intention it was to trade with the lands of the Caspian Sea littoral, and to go as far as Shirwan".
  5. ^ a b Khozhenie 1960, p. 108.
  6. ^ a b Lurye 1986, p. 71.
  7. ^ a b Lenhoff & Martin 1989, p. 322.
  8. ^ a b c Khozhenie 1960, p. 109.
  9. ^ Khozhenie 1960, pp. 108–109.
  10. ^ Lurye 1986, pp. 71–72.
  11. ^ Lenhoff & Martin 1989, pp. 324–326.
  12. ^ a b c d Lenhoff 2004.
  13. ^ a b Maxwell 2006, p. 245.
  14. ^ a b  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Beazley, Charles Raymond (1911). "Nikitin, Athanasius". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 690. This provides a more detailed itinerary of his outward and return journeys.
  15. ^ Lenhoff & Martin 1989, p. 328.
  16. ^ Gail Lenhoffand Janet Martin "The Commercial and Cultural Context of Afanasij Nikitin's Journey Beyond Three Seas." Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 37, No. 3 (1989):321–344; See also Janet Martin, "Muscovite Travelling Merchants: The Trade with the Muslim East (Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries)." Central Asian Studies 4, No. 3 (1985):21–38.
  17. ^ For an English translation of Nikitin's account, see Khozhenie 1960 or the older Major 1857.
  18. ^ Lurye 1986, pp. 77–78.
  19. ^ See Stamp News International at: http://www.stampnews.com/stamps/stamps_2005/stamp_1173967252_581033.html Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
  20. ^ See the online press report from the Embassy of India in Moscow at: [1]
  21. ^ See the online versions of the articles at: http://www.hindu.com/2006/12/10/stories/2006121000542000.htm Archived 2012-10-24 at the Wayback Machine and http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/26/stories/2006112602291000.htm Archived 2012-10-19 at the Wayback Machine
  22. ^ Das Mahapatra, Anirban (22 March 2007). "In footsteps of old Russian traveller". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
  23. ^ Торговая марка пива "Афанасий"

Sources

  • Alam, Muzaffar; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2007). Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-78041-4.
  • Berite, I. G., ed. (1960). Khozhenie za tri moria Afanasiia Nikitina 1466-1472 gg Хожение за три моря Афанасия Никитина 1466-1472 гг. [Afanasy Nikitin's Voyage Beyond Three Seas] (in Russian, English, and Hindi). Translated into English by S. Z Apresyan. Moscow: Geografiz.
  • Lenhoff, Gail D.; Martin, Janet L. B. (1989). "The Commercial and Cultural Context of Afanasij Nikitin's Journey Beyond Three Seas". Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. 37 (3): 321–344. ISSN 0021-4019.
  • Lenhoff, Gail (2004). "Nikitin, Afanasy". In Millar, James R. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Russian History. Vol. 3. Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 1055–1056.
  • Lurye, Ia. S. (1986). "Russkiĭ «chuzhezemets» v Indii XV veka" Русский «чужеземец» в Индии XV века. In Semyonov, L. S.; Lurye, Ia. S. (eds.). Khozhdenie za tri moria Afanasiia Nikitina Хождение за три моря Афанаия Никитина. Leningrad: Nauka. pp. 61–87.
  • Major, Richard (1857). India in the Fifteenth Century: Being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India in the Century Preceding the Portuguese Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, from Latin, Persian, Russian, and Italian Sources. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-00816-7.
  • Maxwell, M. J. (September 2006). "Afanasii Nikitin: An Orthodox Russian's Spiritual Voyage in the Dar al-Islam, 1468-1475". Journal of World History. 17 (3): 243–266. doi:10.1353/jwh.2006.0049.
  • Perkhavko, V. B. (2013). "Nikitin Afanasiĭ" Ники́тин Афанасий. Bolʹshaia rossiĭskaia ėntsiklopediia Большая российская энциклопедия [Great Russian Encyclopedia] (in Russian). Vol. 22. Moscow. pp. 717–718.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Riasanovsky, A. V. (1961). "Afanasii Nikitin's Journal". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 81.
  • Whittaker, C. H. (2003). Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825. Harvard University Press. p. 141.
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Further reading

  • Afanasy Nikitin's Voyage Beyond Three Seas: 1466-1472. Translated by Apresyan, Stepan. Moscow: Raduga. 1985. ISBN 9785050000590.
  • Postnikov, Alexei V. (2003). "Nikitin, Afanasii". In Speake, Jennifer (ed.). Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. Routledge. pp. 859–861.
  • The New Encyclopædia Britannica: in 32 vol. Macropaedia, India - Ireland, Volume 21. 1992. p. 183.
  • Zenkovsky, Serge A., ed. (1974). "Afanasy Nikitin's Journey across Three Seas". Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (Revised ed.). New York: E. P. Dutton.
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