The Peculiarities of the Language of “A Brief History of the Crimean Khans”

The article presents the study results of the language of a small work on the history of the Crimean Khanate, known under the conventional name “A Brief History of the Crimean Khans”. Earlier, the language of the work was characterized by researchers as Nogai-Tatar (J. von Klaproth, 1807–1808) and Crimean Tatar (M. A. Usmanov, 1975). In order to establish the language, a comparative study of the languages of the Berlin and Kyiv manuscripts of “A Brief History” was conducted, and their characteristic features were singled out. They formed two groups, one of which reflects the characteristic features of the languages of the Oguz group, and the second one – the languages of the Kipchak group. The analysis of the identified linguistic features of the manuscript versions of the work has showed that its language is mixed, in which the features characteristic of Turkic languages of the Kipchak group, widespread in the North Caucasus and the Northern Black Sea region, are combined with the features characteristic of Oguz languages, primarily Ottoman. Searches for the dialectal basis of the language of “A Brief History of the Crimean Khans” showed that it is, with minor differences, close to the language of the Crimean official letters and other documents of the Crimean Khanate of the second half of the 16th to the beginning of the 18th century, as well as to the colloquial language of the city of Bakhchisarai in the Crimea. All this made it possible to preliminarily characterize the language of the work as an old Crimean Tatar written language. Study of the peculiarities of the spelling of the numerals toḳuz (“nine”), toḳsan (“ninety”) and tört (“four”) with the initial sound /t/, which only partially corresponds to the spelling of these numerals in official letters and other documents of the Crimean Khanate of the second half of the 16th – beginning of the 18th century, allowed us to assume that the work was created among the Nogai people, subjects of the Crimean khans, in the North Caucasus. The analysis of the reports of J. von Klaproth regarding the Nogai-Tatar language of the work and the use by the Nogai of the old Tatar language in writing, which is called Jagatai (Dshagatai) or Shagaltai (Schagaltai), confirmed this assumption and made it possible to finally establish that the work was written in a language that coincides with the language of official letters and other documents produced in the Crimean Khanate between the second half of the 16th – the early 18th century, i.e. in the old Crimean Tatar written language.