The legend of the Moldovan plate (Evil Maryuka)
BENDER PLATE: Moldavian legend
(Published in the book "Bendery Fortress" N.Ya. Marx 1916)
Now no one sits at the gates of the old castle.
- 12. The legend refers to the middle of the 18th century, the time of the capture Russian Bender (approx. N. Marx).
- 13. In the name of the Lord, give what your heart tells you (note by N. Marx).
- 14. “Dissolved the belt” - figuratively - a bully, quarrel (approx. N. Marx).
- 15. Geklozhka - noblewoman, mistress (note by N. Marx).
- 16. Come here (approx. N. Marx).
- 17. Rags (note by N. Marx).
- 18. Homeless poor (approx. N. Marx).
- 19. Uncle. that's what the old people were called
Marx himself explains this legend in his book: “The proshak I asked at the Bendery Bazaar heard that the keys [to the fortress] were allegedly brought [to the Russian general] by a certain Maryuka, the kukona (lady) Maryuka, the wife of the Bendery Pasha and brought on the very plate that she took away from the beggar, the former her enemy, blinded by her own order. The hero of my legend, Vasily Lupu, was taken by me only because of the popularity of the Lupu clan, as patriots who defended the existence of the Orthodox religion and the Moldavian nationality, one of them Lupu, namely Vasily Lupu, was the Moldavian ruler in the 18th century.
The myth of the "White Lady" (ghost)
The mysterious story of the White Lady. The story is like this. At midnight, certainly under a full moon, the ghost of a woman in a white robe appears in the upper part of the middle tower of the citadel, holding a child in her arms, then she silently descends, sliding down the stairs, then swims to the other end of the citadel to the Gate Tower and disappears. It seems to be like a myth, but there are so many eyewitnesses of this myth that it becomes uncomfortable. There is even material evidence of this phenomenon. The place where the Lady descended from the tower and, according to eyewitnesses, stood there for some time, is all riddled with bullets. Both musket and modern. It was the guards who reacted to her appearance in such a way, trying to justify their fear and horror. Another one of the facts. When clearing the waterway in the Lower Fortress, under the southern mouth bastion, many fragments of human bones were found. There would have been just bones, but female hair was immediately discovered. Women's hair, copper-red, braided into a long braid, which is perfectly preserved and is now kept in museum funds. And the legend that is associated with this ghost is as follows: the Turkish pasha, as was customary then, took a pretty Slav woman from the nearest village of Varnitsa as his concubine, who was kept in the harem tower and soon became pregnant by the Ottoman. She could not come to terms with her fate and greatly missed her family. She ran away several times and, in the end, she was thrown down from the walls of the fortress, her son was given to the Janissaries. She is still yearning and looking for her child, because her soul is not at rest. Whose hair is this? And is it a myth?
The legend about the deeds of Mazarakiy Magus
When, towards the end of the 15th century, the Turkish yoke became more and more unbearable for Moldova, the Moldavian vizier (governor) of the city of Balti became a prominent figure in the country, Mazaraki Magus. He tried to prevent the invaders from entering in various ways.
Once Mazarakiy approached the outskirts of present-day Orhei, where he surrounded the Turkish settlements with a small army and forced 100,000 inhabitants to drown themselves in the local salt lake. Pasha (governor) Bender, having learned about this, he summoned Mazarakia to the fortress of Tigina, where he beheaded the vizier.
Anticipating death, he had previously ordered to build a church. Soon, the first city church was built in Chisinau, now known as the Mazaraki Church.
In the place of the lake, in which Mazarakiy forced the Turks to drown themselves, now the so-called Holy Orhei spring flows, containing a lot of hydrogen sulfide. Mineral water from the source already in modern times, in 2002, was awarded the Paris Exhibition.
According to the second version of the historian P.N. Batyushkov, the situation was somewhat different: “Documentary information about the time of the construction of the Mazaraki Church was not found in any of the Chisinau archives, despite the research made at our request, and only thanks to the kind assistance of L. S. Matsevich, the Chisinau priest Fr. Mikhail Chakir delivered the following legend, obtained by him after a long search among local old-timers from among the parishioners of the same church. One of them, an old man of about 70, told Father Michael that the mentioned church was built in 1752 or 1772 by the Turkish sardar Mazarakiy on the following occasion. His enemies filed a denunciation against him, as a Christian, to the Turkish sultan, from whom an order was issued to immediately bring Mazarakia to justice. living in Benderakh the Turkish wali (governor) summoned the accused to his court. Mazaraki, going to Bendery, prayed to God and at the same time made a vow to build on the mountain, where there is now a fountain, a church in honor of the then approaching feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, if the Lord God helps him to prove his case and come out justified from the Vali. In Bendery, Mazarakiy was fully justified and, returning to Chisinau, he built the promised temple. According to the narrator, this legend was evidenced by an inscription carved on a large stone near the church gates, but neither the inscription nor the stone survived.
A more extensive version of this legend is offered by local historian Vladimir Lorchenkov. "Death of Vizier Mazarakiy"
Vizier Mazaraki Magus was buried under the church on a hill near the town of Chisinau in 1479. He chose the place for burial himself.
Looking at the turban Bendersky pasha, who had already raised a disgustingly curved saber over him, the kneeling Mazarakiy thought that he was not mistaken in ordering to lay a church where, in the event of his sudden death, the priests would pray for the repose of the soul of the unfortunate vizier, and the chanters would begin to deduce with angelic voices a pitiful psalm for the murder of an innocent Christian soul.
“No, not in vain,” he said contentedly.
Pasha, lowering his saber, regretted that he was in a hurry and did not ask the executed vizier what he wanted to say before his death.
The legend says that the Moldavian vizier Mazaraki Magus was summoned Bendersky pasha, vicegerent of the Turkish sultan in Bessarabia, to the fortress of Tigina. Such challenges did not end in anything good for the Moldavian viziers: in the fortress, as a rule, they were buried alive in the ground, decapitated, put on the floor, or boiled over low heat. It is known for certain that shortly before the complete spread of the power of the Turks over Moldova in the fortress Bendery (Tigina) the Moldavian governor over the city of Balti was fried on a traditional Moldavian culinary grill - gratara - for twenty-nine hours. Documents testify that at the seventeenth hour the meat of the unfortunate gave a transparent juice, like when frying a goose. We doubt that the pasha ate this unfortunate man - here, perhaps, the chroniclers exaggerate - but everything else is beyond doubt. By the way, this governor was later canonized by the Orthodox Church and entered the spiritual annals as Vasily Roast.
Since archival data show that Mazarakiy was only beheaded, without preliminary torture and torment, we can assume that this governor, nicknamed the Magus, got off lightly. For those who, under the influence of stories about these medieval horrors, felt an irresistible pity for Mazaraki, we recommend that you turn to the Mazaraki Chronicle, which is nothing more than a documentary chronicle of the reign of this governor of Chisinau, compiled and executed by his order by the monks of the Caprian Monastery. In particular, it says...
“And from this summer, the defender of the land of Moldavian Mazaraki caused innumerable disasters to the enemies of the fatherland, the Turks and the Tatars like them, set fire to their settlements in the steppes of the southern country, sparing neither the women nor the children of the pagans, and for the glory of God in the third autumn of the war, one hundred thousand Gentiles were they were driven to Lake Orhei and drowned, which is why the water here became healing, and it smells like sulfur-boiled eggs.
And now the water from the lake near the city of Orhei is famous throughout Moldova for its healing properties. She smells of hydrogen sulfide. Water "Holy Orhei Spring" won two medals at the Paris Exhibition of Goods Quality in 2002. You can buy it in specialized stores "Your Health".
Without any doubt, and this is felt by the tone of the Mazaraki Chronicle, the governor Magus was proud of the extermination of a large number of Turks and Tatars. But, like many Moldavian commanders, he was forced to recognize the suzerainty of the Splendid Porte, and become just a vizier.
And after that, the Turkish pasha called him to headquarters, where he executed him, avenging the deaths of hundreds of thousands of fellow believers. If circumstances had turned out differently, Mazarakiy, no doubt, would have acted with the pasha in the same way as the pasha had done with him. We cannot claim that we know for sure what thought visited Mazarakiy's gray-haired head a moment before it rolled onto the patterned Moldavian carpet laid on the floor in the pasha's office. But we assume that he thought precisely about this: about the variability of fate, and that it does not matter whether you are a Turk or a Moldavian, as long as you kill and will be killed.
So, the murderer Mazarakiy was killed, and on the hill named after him, a beautiful church was built on the donations of the Magus, which still amazes residents and guests of the capital with its bizarre architecture. For Mazaraki, this no longer mattered. He died. His head rolled onto the patterned Moldavian carpet.
It should be noted that in terms of artistic and coloristic design, the design of this carpet met the highest requirements: the finest ornament, elegant elaboration of patterns, the use of traditional styles, as well as modern ones, for those times, of course, trends in artistic design. A highly qualified designer with many years of experience worked on the creation of the drawings, like Petru Dascal, an artisan from the village of Kainari, who died in 1498, surrounded by loving grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The carpet, which took over the head of the vizier Mazarakiy, who was executed by the Turkish pasha, was a regular square with sides five meters long. The color of the carpet is bright green, it is bordered around the perimeter with a blue stripe. The carpet is smooth, lint-free, and a person looking at it has the impression that it is woven from linen. In the center of this magnificent example of Moldovan carpet weaving, exactly where the head of Mazaraki fell, you, looking closer, can see the image of a beautiful bird. It is also made in green, but darker, more saturated threads are used for it, as a result of which the bird on the carpet appears in front of you as if from nowhere.
Bird of Surprise. This is how the Turkish pasha called this carpet.
Death was not a surprise for Mazarakiy: from the moment he was forced to kneel, at least half an hour passed before the swing of the saber. All this time, the pasha walked around the prisoner contentedly, deciding when to strike. He was unhurried, this pasha who died during a raid on the partisan fortress six months later. In any case, Mazarakiy, an aged man who lived, as they say, for his own pleasure, died peacefully. His body was begged from the Turks by the relatives of the vizier.
The remains of Mazarakiy were solemnly buried in plain ground, without a coffin, as the deceased had bequeathed, at the place where, after the funeral, the construction of the church began. It lasted three years, and ended with the installation of a cross over the dome.
The Turkish pasha, who executed Mazarakiy, was buried, as he bequeathed, under the mosque. The Mosque of the Blessed Martyr Ibrahim - this is how this mosque, destroyed in 1942 by the occupying Romanian troops, began to be called.
“Head of the vizier Mazarakiy”
Mazarakiy does not like to remember all this when he hears the steps of Nikolai Grechany passing by the church. The sculptor does not in the least interfere with the late vizier - on the contrary, Mazarakiy fell in love with a desperate young man, and would be glad to help him, but the heavy slab over the crypt prevents him from leaving. And another head. Yes, the head - we completely forgot to mention that the head of Mazarakiy was not handed over to his relatives. For some time she was kept on a stake above the wall of the fortress in Benderakh. Unfortunately, for a long time it did not hold out like that, and because of the withering Moldavian summer, it began to rot. Since the pasha was not going to lose such a magnificent sight, it was decided to mothball the head.
For some time, there were fierce disputes at the pasha's court: to dry or dry the fish. All this testifies, of course, to the illiteracy of the court lords Benderwho could not know the now well-known fact: drying and drying are, in essence, different names for the same method of harvesting meat for future use by processing it with salt and wind.
Its peculiarity lies in the fact that pre-salted meat, in this case the head of the vizier Mazaraki, after a certain period of time, is dried (dried) in a dry and well-ventilated place. During storage, the moisture and fat content of the head gradually decreased, and it became drier.
It was the pasha himself who decided to dry the head of the vizier Mazarakiy, who - and we repeat this often, since the pasha liked to talk about it all the time - gave special pleasure to the spectacle of the head of the once rebellious, and then resigned and deceived Mazarakiy. Pasha even left a lengthy entry in his diaries for posterity about how exactly he processed the head of Mazarakiy.
By the way, one courtier advised him to boil the skull of the poor fellow, and adapt it for feasts, like a bowl. But the pasha considered this method to be primitive and unworthy of it, since only a lazy person did not make wine cups from the skulls of famous dead in the East. The courtier was put on a stake for bad advice, after which he was beheaded, and a cup was made from the unfortunate skull, which was presented to his eldest son. By the way, he did all this - planting dad on a stake, and truncating his head - the same son.
Turkish pasha cities Bendery was a man of strong character.
But he also loved to write for posterity. He called the diaries "Records of the Venerable." For the edification of sons and their offspring.” An entry about the drying of the head of the vizier Mazarakiy is on page 89 of this diary, published in Moldova in 1998 with the support of the “Foundation of Turkic Writing and Literature in Moldova”. We take the liberty of quoting this chapter, in which the pasha instructs his descendants how to properly treat the head of an enemy you hate.
By killing him. And remember, my son, the process of drying the head, as I learned, thanks to my wisdom, may Allah be glorified, who sent it down on me, consists of three main stages: salting; soaking; drying. Now I will tell you about salting, you listen to me.
As a rule, when salting the head of a giaur for drying, there are two ways: wet and dry. A not very large head of a giaur is salted in a wet way, and in this case it is not washed, but only wiped with a dry towel.
For salting, use only coarse salt, which is brought here from Edinet. I want to tell you that Allah is for each of us, from the despicable slave to the great lord Bendery fortress, - gave his appointment. This is his will, and obey it. But not only mortals have a purpose, but inanimate things and objects. The purpose of salt, my son, is to remove moisture from the head...
Coarse salt dissolves more slowly and absorbs more moisture from the head. Remember this.
In a vessel covered from the inside with thin azure clay, pour a little salt on the bottom. Lay down your head, having previously shaved off all vegetation from it, and sprinkle so much salt so that it covers the entire head. To sweeten the bitterness of defeat to the enemy, be merciful and add some sugar to the vessel. Put a wooden circle on top, and oppression on it. As a sign of special favor, you can allow one of the courtiers to stand on the lid and be this oppression. What is it for, you ask? And I will answer you - heavy oppression will prevent the formation of gas bubbles and cavities in the head, from which rot can go in the head.
A few hours after salting, the head releases brine. You told me to drain it and put the vessel in an ice cellar. Salt penetrates the meat very slowly, my son, and where the head has not yet had time to salt, the cold protects it from spoilage. If you killed an enemy on a campaign, and there is no cellar nearby, place your head in a hole dug in a cool, shady place, and they were told to cover it with tree branches from above.
After three days, the meat of the head will turn dark gray, and the eyes. If you pull it by the skin, it creaks.
To find out if there is enough salt in a bucket, my son, put a raw egg in the brine. If it does not sink, you did everything right, may Allah save you.
It's time now to tell you about soaking. Rinse the salted head with cold running water. It is believed that the head should be soaked for as many hours as it has been salted for days. Now all you have to do is dry your head.
Lay it out in the sun for a few hours, then string it on a rope and hang it against the wall of your castle. If you do all this in the summer, when there is a possibility that it may be spoiled by fly larvae, dip your head in vinegar and take it out. Or brush with sunflower oil. Tell her to cover her head with a thin cloth while she dries. Dry it in a non-sunny place where there is a lot of wind, and make sure that rain does not fall on your head.
The last thing in the records of the Turk touched the head of Mazarakiy were the lines: “My son, remember everything that I have stated to you regarding this issue, and do as your father punished you, may Allah praise his memory. And remember: in no case should the method of salting the head be applied to fish, since the density of these objects is different.
Vizier Mazarakiy, even after his death, could not complain about the lack of attention from the Turkish pasha. By the way, he tried in vain: his son, a rickety nine-year-old boy, died two years after the death of his father during a big Bendersky Fire. And the well-salted, soaked and dried head of the vizier Mazarakiy was lost somewhere. This made him very upset.
Golden carriage of Ivan Mazepa
The most exciting legends about the Bendery fortress, which is not surprising, are the rumors about treasures and treasures hidden on its territory. The most famous such myth is associated with the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa and says that in the cellars of the fortress, no less than the golden carriage of the hetman, on which he arrived after the defeat in the Battle of Poltava, is hidden, and besides it, the "Mazepa's treasure", widely known to those who like to explore dark spots in history.
The story of the carriage with a high degree of probability is still fiction. The way Mazepa followed the defeat of the Swedes at Poltava to the walls of the fortress is well documented, and it is known that the completely ill hetman rode all the way in a simple wooden cart. But with the treasure, the situation is more interesting. Under Mazepa, there really were barrels of gold and silver, as well as a huge diamond of incredible value weighing 90 carats, with which he never parted. There are different versions of what happened to the hetman's treasures. Mazepa's associates could have hidden them, and some believe that the golden treasure was hidden by the Turks in the cellars of the fortress. It is curious that the unique map of its underground passages, exhibited in one of the Turkish museums, disappeared from the exposition immediately after the start of work on the reconstruction of the fortress.
According to experts, we can most likely talk about the serf treasury, which was never found during the three conquests of the fortress, as, for example, after the capture of Ishmael in 1790, in addition to the captured guns, gunpowder, shells and food supplies, the amount of the serf treasury was directly indicated , which was captured after the assault. There was nothing like that in the Bendery fortress. There is also no information about its export. It is even known how and where the captured Turks were delivered and how much they were paid salaries and how many carts were allocated for belongings. But nothing about money. Most likely, all this treasury still lies somewhere in the underground nooks and crannies of the fortress.
Poetry
on blowing up the Bendery bastions, according to the city building in 1790
Bendery, who shines and time respects A huge monument to glorious military deeds! Where are the strong firmaments with which you flourished? The fire hidden underground turns everything into ashes. What a spectacle! Flaming dust Suddenly stone mounds in the air with dust sweep, A clear day is gloomy, the earth's firmament trembles, And the indignant Dniester roars in its banks. The proud hail of insatiable flame became food. But in these ruins of Areev's dwelling, Where thousands of people fell at different times, Today hostility is pernicious and anger is buried.