“Ye-Lie-ban, ruler of the Russian tribe”

Objective: An attempt is made to explain the identity of “The Rus’ tribe’s ruler, Ye-lie-ban,” described in the Chinese-language primary sources from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Departing from past attempts to connect this figure to Yuri II of Vladimir or any individual at all, this article presents the argument that Ye-lie-ban originally referred to the city of Ryazan. Research materials: Primary sources were used, foremost among them the biographies of Subutai in the Yuan Shi (chapters 121 and 122), other sections of the Yuan Shi, Su Tianjue’s Yuanchao mingchen shilüe, the Novgorod First and Galician-Volhynian Chronicles, the Secret History of the Mongols, and Rashid-al Din’s Compendium of Chronicles. Secondary literature by leading figures in the field of Mongol history and nineteenth and early twentieth-century Chinese and French literature were consulted. Research results and novelty: It is argued here that Ye-lie-ban was an attempt to render the name of Ryazan in Mongolian, recorded by Rashid al-Din as “Irezan.” During the process of translation from Mongolian to Chinese or during copying that resulted in the creation of Sübe’etei’s biography in various recensions that have come down to our time, the East Asian author/scribe(s) were simply uncertain what the “Irezan” captured by Batu’s forces was. It appears that “Ye-lie-zan” (Irezan = Ryazan) was mistakenly altered to Ye-lie-ban at some early point in the creation of materials that resulted in Subutai’s biography, being described as an individual ruler rather than a city. Other unambiguous transcriptions of Ryazan in the Yuan Dynasty’s literature serve to corroborate this identification

Biography · Chinese literature · Compendium · Copying · Ruler · Eurasian Exchange Networks · Soviet and Russian History