Gripla - 2020, Qupperneq 147

GRIPLA146
Following this horrific description, Tamerláus explains to Ambáles that
it is because of these cruelties that he is going to war with Bastíanus.
Moreover, Tamerláus has a personal motivation: his sister was one of
the maidens previously abducted, raped and slaughtered by Bastíanus.
Thus in Bastíanus we are presented with a figure who is not only sharply
distinguished from Tamerláus (remember that when Tamerláus abducted
the Venetian princess, he allowed her to keep practising her faith and
married her rather than keeping her as a concubine), but has a fair
amount in common with Timur as we know him from other sources
(such as Oddverjaannáll). The description of Bastíanus and the Saracens
whom he leads focusses on their cruelty to innocents, young children,
the elderly and maidens, all of whom they slaughter mercilessly.58 They
are, moreover, besieging a city. It is also the slaughter of innocents dur-
ing a siege which lies at the heart of the description of Timur found in
Oddverjaannáll.
It is worth noting at this point that the text I have quoted is my own
transcription from AM 521 c 4to, and the reason for this is that this wit-
ness seems to show a particularly dense interplay of details traditionally
associated with Timur, moreso even than the texts in the rímur (from AM
521 e 4to) and from the other version of the prose saga (represented by AM
521 b 4to, as edited by Uecker). So, for example, while those texts refer to
Tamerláus and Ambáles’ enemy as ‘Bastíanusʼ and ‘Bastijnusʼ respectively,59
AM 521 c 4to calls him ‘Baiasetez, eda Bastianusʼ. In doing so, AM 521 c
4to draws attention to the historical figure who presumably forms the
model for Bastíanus, namely the Ottoman emperor Bayezid I (1354–1403),
who, as was mentioned at the start of this article, was famously defeated by
Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. Bayezid had interrupted his siege
of Constantinople precisely to go and face the threat presented by Timur,
whereas in the imaginative version being discussed here Tamerláus brings
the battle to Bastíanus mid-siege. Likewise, AM 521 c 4to is the only one
of the three texts which mentions the Tartars, apparently descended from
the Saracens/Ottomans whom Bastíanus leads. This, like the descriptions
58 Compare also, the slightly less gruesome account in, Uecker, ed., Der nordische Hamlet,
155.
59 Ambáles rímur, ed., 202; Uecker, ed., Der nordische Hamlet, 154.