The Narration of Basqaq Akhmat’s Settlements and Its Place in the Rus Annalistic Writing c. 1300

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the narration of the terrible events in the region of Kursk in the south-eastern periphery of Rus in the Rus annals (the earliest and the only reliable version of which is represented by the Laurentian and the Symeon chronicles). A conflict took place between a Tatar official (basqaq of Kursk) and two Rus princes, in the course of which many were killed including the princes in question. This narration is placed in the annals s. a. 1283—1284 although the events most probably took place in 1289—1290, as it has been shown by Vladimir Kuchkin. The author of the present paper argues that, firstly, the narration was not a local record from the region of Kursk but a report made for (and maybe by order of) some higher authority, most probably Metropolitan Maksim. Secondly, the place occupied by the narration in the annalistic text (at wrong dates but exactly between the end of Rostov material and the start of Tver one) prompts a reconstruction of the making of the “annalistic compilation of 1305”. The latter appears to have been not a one-time enterprise but a manuscript consisting of at least three parts written at different occasions.