The rare and excellent history of Konchak: a Polovtsian chieftain
Donald Ostrowski
Our main source for Konchak is the Kievan Chronicle, which mentions him a number of times in the entries from 1172 to 1187 as an adversary of the Rus’. The chronicler also employs invective in referring to him as an “evil leader”, “despised by God”, “accursed”, and the “accursed, godless, and thrice-cursed Konchak.” The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, an epic poem reputedly from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, also mentions him prominently and at one point calls him a “pagan slave.” Yet, when one reads what Konchak was actually described as doing in these sources, his actions hardly seem to justify those epithets. He and Igor’ Sviatoslavich, for example, at one point escape together in a boat when they are fighting Riurik Rostislavich together. Konchak’s daughter subsequently marries Igor’’s son. And Konchak seems to treat Igor’ well when Igor’ becomes his prisoner after the battle on the Kaiala River in 1185. So, how “thrice-cursed” could he be?
We have no accounts of Konchak from other than these biased Rus’ sources, so, I wondered what if we were to tell Konchak’s story from the Polovtsian side, also biased to be sure but leaning the other way. Perhaps it would help to balance the demeaning epithets of the Kievan Chronicle and The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. Although Konchak is a historical personage, I have created for my narrator an imagined character, a Rus’ slave named Vaska, who is given by the Kniaz’ of Suzdal’ Iurii Dolgorukii (r. 1138−1157) to Konchak’s father, Aterkek, and then passed on to Konchak after Aterkek’s death. I have framed the story as though it were told to a certain Dusticello of Pisa after Vaska is captured in the steppe and sold back into slavery to a Black Sea merchant from Genoa. Readers familiar with the Travels of Marco Polo may recognize the slant allusion in naming. For the title of this piece, I pay homage to Bahā’s al-Nawādiral-Sulțāniyya wa’l-Mahāsin al-Yūsufiyya translated by D. S. Richards as The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin.
Further Reading
Dimnik, Martin. The Dynasty of Chernigov 1146−1246. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Dimnik, Martin. “Igor’s Defeat at the Kayala (1185): The Chronicle Evidence.” Mediaeval Studies 63 (2001): 245−282.
Heinrich, Lisa Lynn. “The Kievan Chronicle: A Translation and Commentary.” Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 1977.
“On Igor’s Campaign.” Translation with commentary by Jack V. Haney and Erik Dahl. 1992. http://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh/rus/texts/igortxt2.htm
Pritsak, Omeljan. “The Polovcians and Rus’.” Archivum Eurasiae medii aevi 2 (1982): 321−380.
Vásáry, István. Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pro-Ottoman Balkans, 1185−1365. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.