Southern group
Nicholas Zharkikh
Shortened text of the section. Full text in ukrainian version.
In order not to get lost the background events, I will mention the situation in which my work was written: counted, that yesterday (January 23, 2024) 18 people were killed (8 of them in Kharkiv), 130 were wounded in Ukraine’s attacks by the Muscovites.
22 injured in Kyiv, one warhead of the downed missile still exploded at Lokomotiv Stadium, causing serious damage to the building of the stadium services; in Sviatoshynsky district the warhead hit the apartment in a 5-story building and miraculously did not explode (January 24, 2024 at 8:06 am).
The names of the first group are reproduced in all jarlyks almost identically, without undergoing changes or distortions.
Instead, the names of the second group show considerable variability.
Today is the 701st day of the great aggressive war of the Rotten-Straw Horde against free and independent Ukraine. The war has been going on for the centuries, but today is such a small anniversary.
Horde noted his shelling of the town of Hirnyk in the Pokrovsky district of the Donetsk region: two killed, 8 wounded (January 25, 2024 at 8:01 am).
And now – the promised conclusions.
Kachibeyov – a tract with salty estuaries on the northern shore of the Black Sea around modern Odessa. It is impossible to derive from the mention of this name the existence of a castle / city / port there. In the jarlyks of the Crimean khans, this object, in addition to the list of grants, is mentioned in a separate article about salt mining.
Majak (Lighthouse) – the area at the bottom of the Dniester, immediately before its confluence with the Dniester estuary. There was a crossing over the Dniester, and Majak called some landmark visible from afar to go to this crossing. There was no castle / settlement / city here, the modern village of Mayaki arose at the end of the 18th century, after this territory came under the rule of the Russian Empire.
Dashiv both in ancient times and now it is located in the Gaysyn district of the Vinnytsia region. Placing it at the place of Ochakov at that time and today is a mistake of European cartographers of the 16th century.
Balykly – O. V. Biletska suggests seeing it at the confluence of the Chichikliya River in Bog [O. V. Beletskaya Balyklei in the 14th – 16th centuries. – Golden Horde civilization, 2017, vol. 10]. The problem is that modern archeology does not see any hillfort or settlement at this place [Ivanova S. V., Ostroverkhov A. S., Saveliev O. K., Ostapenko P. V. Essays on history and archaeology Bugo-Dniester interfluve. – K.: 2011, paragraph "The Golden Horde Age" on p. 214 – 232]. In the pool of Bog there is also Sugoklia and Gromoklia, but there is no Balyklia. Instead, we have an exact counterpart of the name in the town Balaklia in the Kharkiv region.
Karaul – a Tatar word that means "guard, sentry post" and is used in this sense to this day. The jarlyks confirm this understanding, giving the translation "guard town". There could be as many Karaul names as there were guards (something like every place where bog iron ore was mined was called Rudnya). At least one Karaul was located on the Dniester in the area of Rashkov, and the second – somewhere on the middle Bog. Karaul-Rashkiv was called a village in 1545-1581, there are no mentions of the castle. On the other hand, there is a village in the Gaysyn district of the Vinnytsia region Strazhgorod – exact match name in jarlyks.
Chornyj Gorod (Black city) is another name for modern Bilgorod-Dniester. I assume that the city as a whole was called the Bilgorod (White City), and its section, occupied by Italians, had a special name, the Black City (Mauro castro), and therefore the Italian Portolans know only this Black City, and not the White City. Of all the objects of the southern group, this is the only real city with real fortifications and a real port, even with a separate castle. Of course, there can be no question that this real city was owned by some Lithuanian or some Tatars. It was actually owned by Moldova, and then it was conquered by Turkey. All other names denoted tracts at most.