FICTIONAL MARRIAGE PROPOSAL OF ANONYMOUS ASTRAKHAN KHAN

The following text is reproduced from a handwritten copy of the letter made by the Italian humanist Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601) and contained in one codex of Ambrosiana Library in Milan (R 104 sup., fol. 194r) [see the description of the codex in: 3, no. 341. p. 125]. This codex (588 folios) contains Italian and Latin texts of the 16th century of extremely diverse content, which does not allow to determe neither the name of the author of the reproduced letter, nor the date of its writing. Nevertheless, a reference to the name of “Luther” in the letter suggests that it must have been written in the 16th century and an indication of the main purpose of the letter – matchmaking to anonymous queen – makes it possible to put forward quite a bold (but, for now, unproven) hypothesis that this letter might be addressed to approximates of the Polish Queen Bona Sforza and the widow of King Sigismund I the Old starting with the April 1, 1548. Following this hypothesis, the alleged author of the letter could be the ruler of Astrakhan Yamgurchi or the Crimean khan Sahib Giray. However, this assumption remains only a hypothesis, and the author of this article hopes that future researchers will be able to identify both the author of the letter and its recipients. Be that as it may, this letter is of undoubtedly fictitious character since it does not indicate the name of its author and the date of writing and obviously differs from official form of the Tatar rulers' letters. Undoubtedly, this letter refers to the literary genre of fictional letters of the rulers, which became extremely popular in Europe since the second half of the 15th century. As an illustration of this genre, the author of this article presents a “letter” of the Turkish sultan to the Tatars and their “response” from the fictional collection of “Letters of the Great Turk” [1, fol. 18r] of Laudivius Hierosolymitanus, which was a relatively widespread in Europe in the last quarter of the 15th century, republished 18 times in different cities of Western Europe according to Incunabula Short Title Catalogue of the British Library (http://istc.bl.uk/search/search.html) as well as published in Italian translation in 1563 by Lodovico Dolce [2, p. 51].