The Latin traveler and missionary Plano Carpini reports that the Bessermans (basurmans), tax collectors, speak Cuman. From this message, it can only be deduced that the Cumans were of Western origin, since the word Besserman is the Old German Besteuermann (tax collector), and in no other language except German does it have such a professional meaning.
It turns out that the «Tatar-Mongol» tax collectors in the Russian lands were Western European Crusader knights who spoke Cuman (Hungarian). For readers who are taken aback by this suggestion, we would like to inform you that there is indeed a rule in the collection of Hungarian church laws: to force Dominican and Franciscan monks to study primarily Cuman. This is known for certain, and nothing prevents us from assuming that the same rule applied to representatives of other Orders. The historian P. Golubovsky reports that in the annals of the Order of the Minorites, founded by Francis in 1208, a missionary writes: «Having set out to find Great Hungary there, I first decided to study the language of that country and, with God’s help, studied the Cuman language and Uighur literature, which are used in all those countries.»
But the Dominicans, whose order was approved by Pope Gregory in 1216, and who, along with the Franciscans, were in charge of the Inquisition, flourished in Austria-Hungary even at the beginning of the 20th century. This means that the missionary is talking about Hungary, which is called Uighuria here, and therefore it is completely unnecessary and even inappropriate to look for it in Asian Bukhara from the Uzbeks (one of the tribes of which is now called Uighurs), because it is not about Bukhara, but about Hungarian laws. Yes, besides, «Uighur literature» could exist then only in cultured Hungary, and not in illiterate Bukhara.
It is not the Buda-Pest Hungarians who should be distinguished from the Bukharian Uzbeks, but rather the opposite. It is time to come to the conclusion that the Hungarian missionaries reached Bukhara, where they gave rise to the myth of Great Hungary, leaving there, as a legacy, the name of the cultural part of the population as Uighurs, «Hungarians» — perhaps from a cross between the newcomers and the local population. By the way, the name of the city of Bukhara is extremely consonant with Bucharest.
The same conclusion is confirmed by the contents of the Persian-Cuman-Latin dictionary compiled by Petrarch (died 1374). Such a dictionary was relevant in the time of Petrarch, even after the end of the Crusades! Analyzing the dictionary texts, we find out that the Cuman language contains Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Slavic words. For example, from the Greek-Latin fanor = lantern, kalam = reed, tava = peacock, limen = estuary (harbor), kilisia = eclesia (church). From the Hebrew words there is: terah = law, sabbath = Sabbath. From Slavic — iksba = hut, petz = oven, kunes, in Slavic kuna (marten skin as a means of payment). There are also a lot of Turkish words in it.
It is difficult to admit that in a short time a «wild» nomadic people could introduce so many foreign words into their language, and we probably don’t know everything yet. But this could have been done by a cultured people who had very long-term relations with Russians, Byzantines and inhabitants of Chersonesos (Crimean Peninsula) and composed a kind of medieval Esperanto.…
The Ipatiev Chronicle reports on the Black Hoods (they are also Berendei) as allies of the Russian princes in the period from the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders (1st Crusade) to the eve of the capture of Tsargrad by the Crusaders (4th Crusade).
But «black hoods» is nothing more than a translation of the Turkic expression Karakalpaks or Kara guls, black caps. It is absolutely incredible that any group of people would come up with such a name for themselves. Even the modern «green berets» did not give themselves this nickname; it was given to them by journalists. So the Turkic expression «black caps» was given, of course, by the Turks, but to whom? Not by ourselves, surely? As a result, the whole mass of different Turkic nomadic clans in Russia received the common name of Black Hoods. It is also impossible to imagine that Russians would give all their Turks a common nickname in the Turkic language. Why not in Russian?
Where, in what localities, can the settlements of our chronicled Black Hoods be indicated? We meet them in the valley of the Ros River and in the principality of Pereyaslav. There are several facts indicating their stay in cities. At the end of the 12th century, there were even three Chernoklobutsk princes who owned towns in Russia: Kuntuvdey, Churnai and Kuldeyur. About Kuntuvdey, the chronicler says that he was «a bold and necessary man in Russia»; together with Kuldeyur, he participated in Igor Svyatoslavich’s campaign against the Polovtsians in 1188.
When it was necessary to surprise enemies, to take them by surprise, then Black hoods were indispensable. So, in 1187, Svyatoslav and Rurik sent them to the Polovtsian Vezh beyond the Dnieper under the command of Roman Nezdilovich, and the expedition was a success, since the Black Hoods found out in advance that the Polovtsians had gone to the Danube. No one was better able to scout out the enemy’s position, no one was more adept at sneaking into the enemy camp.
This is the official Russian version of the Black Hoods that came to the Dnieper region (allegedly from the east) after the Crusaders began their journey through Asia Minor, and disappeared from our historical horizon after 1204, when the whole of Byzantium fell under the rule of the Latins, and Russia, it seems, too.
And here is the Western version, which, unfortunately, no one has yet compared with the eastern one. At the very time, at the end of the XI — beginning of the XII century, when the Black Hoods just described were fighting with the help of the Russian Orthodox princes against the Polovtsians,[27] the same Black-Klobuch movement was taking place in Byzantium, but not from the east, but from within. It was, in fact, an opposition to the emperor, his policy of joint struggle with the Latins against Muslims. This is how Lavisse and Rambaud characterize Black Hoods in their book The Age of the Crusades (published in 1904):
«Monks (in Byzantium of the XI–XII centuries) formed armed gangs and roamed Macedonia, the Peloponnese and the islands of the Ionian Sea. They conducted religious propaganda in their own way, supported a «holy war» against the natives, pagans or Manichaeans, and preached a holy war against the Latins.… These wandering gangs have become a real «Egyptian punishment» for the regions. These men in black clothes, armed with bows and iron clubs, mounted on Arabian steeds, with falcons in their hands and fierce dogs in front, hunted people and raced across the country like «real demons.» They killed anyone they suspected of adhering to paganism or (Catholic) heresy, especially those whose lands were adjacent to their possessions. They robbed and enslaved the peasants. They flaunted their contempt for (Catholic) priests and especially bishops, called the latter «popes», vilified them in the eyes of the people as useless people, robbed or appropriated their estates. They swindled the simpletons to take possession of their possessions, selling them a place in paradise and amusing them with false miracles and visions. Soon they began to accept vagabonds, weavers, sailors, tailors, coppersmiths, beggars, thieves, even blasphemers and the excommunicated into their gangs, and spread like «black clouds» across the regions. We do not know when the robberies of these gangs, led by the abbots, stopped. Thus, in the church, as in the empire, along with extreme refinement, extreme barbarism prevails.»
Isn’t it obvious that these Byzantine monks, who still wear black hoods on their heads, are a mirror image of our chronicle Black hoods, and do we need to go to the Caspian Sea to «invite» them to Kievan Rus of the XI–XII centuries from Asia? And these religious fanatics disappeared with the change in the political situation, after the founding of the Latin Empire on the lands of Byzantium (in 1204), when the Russian princes fell to the pope and traveled to the Tatras to assert their rights to rule.